We are currently living in the social media era, where big companies have monetized and harvested your memories and experiences for their own gain, with little-to-no respect to your privacy. Vid aims to disrupt the social media space by giving you full control over your personal data. Instead of making profits from your memories, Vid will empower you to directly monetize your memories via advertisers if you choose to do so.

This article is going to give you a brief introduction to Vid and help you understand what sets it apart from its competition.

The rise of social media and video content

Social Media

It is not even an exaggeration to say that we are living in the era of social media. Facebook alone has 2.23 billion monthly active users and has a market capitalization of $467.42 billion. However, Facebook is a platform that is now mostly used by the older demographic. The younger demographic prefers Snapchat and Instagram, and that’s mainly because of another phenomenon - the rise of video content.

Video Content

The way we consume content has shifted from textual to video. This is especially true for the 18-24 year old demographic, which primarily uses video-based platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.

When it comes to video content and social media, here are some more interesting stats as per Brandwatch:

• Facebook now sees 8 billion average daily video views from 500 million users
• Snapchat users clock in a total of 8 billion average daily video views
• US adults spend an average of 1 hour and 16 minutes each day watching video on digital devices
• 78% of people in the US watch online videos every week, 55% watch every day

The increases us of smartphones has played a pivotal part here. It is much easier to consume and create video content than traditional content via smartphones.

The dark side of social media platforms

As we have seen with the recent Facebook-Cambridge Analytica and the Twitter censorship debacles, these social media platforms are far from ideal. These companies have shown time and again how much they take your data and your privacy for granted. They make profits by harvesting your data for their own gain. Even if you were to monetize your content somehow, these platforms will find a way to take the lion’s share of your revenues. Let us give you one of the more infamous examples of this.

Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito” is the most viewed YouTube video in history. The video, as of writing, has 6.23 billion views. For perspective, the earth’s population is 7.3 billion! As of September 2017, he made only $3.2 million from YouTube for the song.

So putting everything into perspective, what are the main pain points from the current landscape of social media?

• Users have no control over their data. The platforms harvest your data and experiences to make profits out of it.
• Platforms can even sell your data and compromise your privacy. They also have the power to censor you as they see fit.
• If you choose to monetize your content, these platforms will take a significant chunk out of your revenues.

Vid was built to right these wrongs of traditional social media platforms.

What is Vid and how does it work?

Vid is a privacy-focussed AI video journal app that allows you to remember your life and monetize your memories. Think of a video diary which updates itself and will enable you to look back at your life when you want to. So, how exactly does it do that?

Everyone nowadays is an active smartphone-user. We literally leave the imprint of our day-to-day activities on the apps that we use. Suppose you went out last night to watch a movie and then went for a fancy dinner. You must have:

• Booked an Uber to go to the movie theater.
• Booked the tickets using a booking app.
• Used some social media site to “check-in” or post that you are eating dinner at a particular place.

If you can find a way to collect the meta-data from these apps and organize them, then you will pretty much have a journal of what you did that on that particular night! Vid’s patented AI program does exactly that.

The AI will collect all these meta-data from all the popular apps. After that, it will auto-tag them, create a nice little video package, and then organize them in a calendar to give you your own personal journal.

Now, you are probably wondering that by installing Vid, you are giving it access to all your activity data. That seems pretty fishy, right? Fortunately, Vid also utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to ensure that it will not be able to access or even observe your data. Your data is yours and yours alone.

Why should you choose Vid?

This is a very valid question to ask. After all, there are established social media sites out there, so why should you even be bothered with Vid in the first place?

There are multiple layers to this question, so let’s tackle them one-by-one.

Firstly, the target market is humongous. Everyone with a smartphone is a potential user and Vid is specifically targetting Generation Y and Z since they are the heaviest consumers of video content. Also, as per Statista, people on average, use 7-8 social media accounts, saturation isn’t an issue. To show you that these are not just mere speculation, they released a version of the product in Q2 2018 with 15% of the total features in Apple Store. Within no time, the app started to trend and ended up gaining 30k users.

Secondly, the “memory media” industry is completely new. Nobody else is creating video journals based on your activities without compromising your privacy. Vid already has first mover advantage.

Thirdly, we have already discussed the current issues of the social media industry. On top of that, the social media landscape is riddled with fake accounts which spread misinformation. Vid users will go through strict user verification before they can use the app. Only genuine users with genuine memories worth treasuring are allowed on the platform.

Finally, users have the option to keep their journal private or public. If they choose to make their journal public, then they have the option of collecting revenues from various brands for advertisement. Vid won’t take any of this revenue. Your money is yours. This is beneficial for both brands and users. Brands will be reassured by the fact that only genuine Vid users will be advertising their product, while users will get the full revenue without having to give a cut.

Conclusion

Over the next few weeks, Vid will be announcing the names of influencers that own an equity stake in Vid and will be using the platform from the day it launches. These people have a combined following of >250 million. Even if 1% of their followers join Vid, that will be more users than Ethereum has daily transactions. Are you ready to join them and the Vid revolution?

If you want to know more about Vid then check out their whitepaper here.