Interview with Elmer: Liketu Founder

Interview with Elmer: Liketu Founder

Good day Lion's I trust you have been safe and well enjoying the wonderful start to the new year. I always find that at the start of new years there are always a flurry of really good projects to learn about and it is a great time to showcase one that is currently built on Hive called Liketu.

I recently met with @elmer who is one of the founders of the project to get a larger look into it and some of the work and inspiration behind the scenes. What we found once we pulled back the curtains was a competent and hard working group of developers working to alter the course of the current social media world and put power back in peoples hands.

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What is Liketu?

Liketu is just over a year old and was developed to provide a seamless dApp that mainstream social media users could utilise to transition to the Hive Blockchain and commence earning rewards. The dApp focuses on images and as explained by many other happy users of the service, is very much the Instagram of Hive.

Liketu also has some added features that mainstream users might be more accustomed to with the inclusion of those famous emoji style likes which won't eat into the reward pool only resource credits.

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A move to shortform content

Elmer and the team seem to be quite switched on when it comes to current social media trends and they have produced an article A New Way to Experience (Hive) Blockchain back in 2018 that delvs into how people consume content and the shift from longform to medium and now shortform content.

For a full breakdown and review of Liketu make sure to follow my page as I will be putting together my user experience and providing feedback to the broader community. For now, let's meet with Elmer and hear about Liketu.

The Interview

Can you tell us abit about yourself and your journey on Hive

I've actually been a part of Hive since the STEEM days. In-fact, our first announcement post of Liketu was in 2018, and I also attended STEEMFEST in Krakow Poland that same year. In those days, my participation was largely the same as it is now (a passive but very passionate investor) but observing the way social media was heading, I felt like there was a gap between what non-crypto people were using and what Steem was providing at the time. I decided that I would try build something more commensurate with current social media but using the Steem (now Hive) rails and bridge the gap in an attempt to bring normies to Hive.

I guess at some point we decided that pictures would be a good starting point so we went with that, and here we are today.

That was quite the move and we can see how shortform content is now dominating in mainstream social network chains. People no longer consume log form content such as blogs and it is all about the images. I have also noticed with my own content I get better traction around the 400 word mark and nothing over 500 words

Do you have future plans for liketu and what's your vision for its future use?

We have a lot of plans in the future, and if funds were not an issue, I'd be hiring and trying to tackle all of them all at once. Alas, one can only do so much when self funded.

In terms of what we've got in the pipe-line, we're quite excited to be shipping the mobile app soon. You would think that a photo sharing platform would be mobile centric and yet, we decided to go with desktop support first. However, we've been working to make the mobile experience up to par and so that'll be a big boost to users who are limited by only mobile devices.

We'll also be adding different kinds of media. Obviously, the internet has further evolved since our initial scope in 2018, pictures are perhaps becoming obsolete to short video. While I don't think any medium will ever go extinct, I do think from a personal perspective that short video is a lot more engaging and fun, so we'll be working on that.

Some of the other things we're working on are different ways people can monetize their work. As you know, we launched with a subscription service for premium content but after a few months, we discovered that blurring pictures on base level posts didn't really fit the mold on Hive.

Short form video content such as Reels that we're seeing now across all mainstream social media is an in thing and I can see that capturing the attention of a new age of Generation Z. You have your work cut out for you but I can see your vision is in the right place.

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Is there anything else you'd like people to know about the project?

Liketu is just over 1 year old, and we're entirely funded by ourselves and do everything in-house. While we may not be able to boast VC levels of funding, we can attest to having deep skin in the game and our only path to success is if the rest of the ecosystem is successful as well. In the long run, we believe that building a user centric experience which empowers users and places their interests in growing communities first, is the ultimate route to prosperity for everyone.

Prosperity for everyone is a great line and I think that is something that will stand out for many social media users. Thank you for your time today and I look forward to seeing your project grow and develop into a real competitor to the current corporate dominated industry

Image sources provided supplemented by Canva Pro Subscription. This is not financial advice and readers are advised to undertaker their own research or seek professional financial services

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