argentina’s taringa! partners with makerdao and airtm to launch a new crypto initiative
Contxto – An interesting trend is rising up quickly. More and more social media networks around the globe are starting to venture into a new space: crypto. This time, the Latin American counterpart to Facebook and Twitter, Taringa! from Argentina, is launching its own crypto-community.
In summary
With over 27 million platform users, Taringa! is leveraging its reach and making its own crypto initiative following Facebook’s Libra reveal. The announcement made at the Blockchain Summit Latam last week in Mexico City served as a platform to promote the new philosophy behind the company and how it plans to restructure operations.
In fact, the new project called Taringa! Pioneros (meaning “pioneers” in Spanish) is not only a fashion trend but a new core feature for the company. From here on out, it looks like Taringa! intends to use more decentralized technology.
The pilot is the company’s entrance to a more decentralized model. Meaning this is just the start of its transformation. Not only does Taringa! want to operate as a single site company but also offer decentralized content on different mediums and channels.
In-depth
As media companies and content creators start scrounging up ad-dollars, competing with major ad-tech companies such as Facebook and Google, Taringa! recognizes the value behind these content providers and welcomes them on board.
Since long time Taringa! implemented a virtual social ranking system based on everal variables. The system assesses the profile and “social prestige” of users. Based on reputation, engagement and popularity, users earn points based on their contributions.
Although initially these points had no tangible value other than inflating one’s virtual ego, eventually the community embraced and accepted them as legitimate ratings with social value.
Infatuated with their reputation system, founders identified an opportunity to turn this idea into something of actual monetary value for users.
As a matter of fact, the company’s new partnership with MakerDAO and Airtm will enable users to profit by exchanging these points for the stablecoin, DAI. Taringa! Pioneros will leverage MakerDAO’s existing DAI to increase this new program’s impact, credibility and transactions.
Users will then be able to exchange crypto to fiat through Airtm. Not only that but they’re certainly saving a low of risk, time, money and effort by using a current currency rather than creating one from scratch, such as Facebook did.
Second try!
This is not the first time Taringa! has dabbled with crypto. Before committing itself, it partnered with fellow Argentine company, Xapo, in 2015 to reward users with Bitcoin for their contributions.
“In 2015, together with Xapo, we integrated an income distribution system with which we pay users a percentage of the profits generated by the posts they make, in bitcoins. The program started in a beta version to which we had 35,000 members, but we decided to stop it because we realized that it had certain technical difficulties … Right now we have a small group of 2500 members on the program.”
Eventually, the program ended due to pirated content from their users and legal controversies. The program peaked at 35,000 users, and while still running, it currently only has 2,500 active users on the platform. Not something to brag about, really.
It sounds very similar to what BAT is doing today. Anyways, I reached out to better understand what will make this new attempt different from the one in 2015.
Latin America’s third-largest social network
A high-school student founded Taringa! in 2004. Created well before Facebook and Twitter, and even before the term “social media” was coined, it has grown a lot since then. It was eventually bought out by the Botbol brothers, Hernán and Matías, as well as Alberto Nakayama.
Honestly, I used to be a Taringa! user a long time ago. I remember using it to study when my millennial-mind needed quick answers to questions posed by my history teacher. Fast-forward and I didn’t even know the platform was still around. I’m impressed by its resilience, I must say, and even more by its capacity to pivot.
Before, it wasn’t a social media network as it is today. It was more like Reddit or Medium where users created content based on news, tutorials, life hacks and other personal insights. But the interaction between users was very limited still.
Now it seems more of a holistic content platform where Twitter profiles converge on a Facebook-like timeline with a pinch of Medium and even Slack due to the sidebar feature.
I’m certainly creating a profile, looking forward to that new initiative for rewarding content creators.
-VC
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