My First Impressions of Minds

Minds.com first came to my attention on Google+, which is a website I often turn to when I do not want to deal with Facebook or Twitter. I find that I have access to other like-minded people on Google+ without the clutter of people with whom I socialize in person. With that in mind, I am finding that Minds.com is very similar to my community on the G+, except that members appear to be much more vocal and in-your-face. 

Regarding the latter, it is understandable that many users may be refugees who have had to self-censor or may have been outright censored by other platforms. It is perfectly natural to take advantage of a freedom that is suppressed in other places. Like a drowning person gasping for air immediately upon surfacing. I sympathize completely. 

My style of online interaction has changed over the years to a more muted presence. It is not that I do not have opinions. Rather, my priorities have changed from trying to save the world to trying to save myself. Every hour I spend arguing and coming up with a witty retort is an hour in which I am not earning or spending time on higher priorities. 

One of those priorities is content creation. From time to time I write blog posts, record podcasts, create videos, or do photography. These are more important to me than the interminable arguments the web offers. For now, Minds seems to have a laissez-faire approach. This may be because it has not attracted the mainstream users that infest other social networks. I think I'm OK with that. The character of a network changes greatly once the world starts jumping on. I saw that with Twitter, Facebook, and G+. 

Having an economy built into the social platform through the use of tokens is useful in a way that Google Analytics and Adsense aren't. Good content gets rewarded. Bad content is not. There is no middleman. There is no demonetization. There is a financial incentive to provide valued content. Ultimately, this is the metric that matters more than traffic source, gender, age, browser, and other data provided by trackers. Money is the bottom line on all those metrics, which is what tokens do here. 

I do worry that, like other social sites, Minds could fold. However, I do realize that with people pumping Ethereum into the network for tokens, there is the possibility that it could be more self-sustaining via memberships without the need for advertising. I should like Minds to be around for a long time to make my time investment worthwhile.  

I do have some questions that perhaps will be answered in time. 

One of those questions is, does outside traffic count towards generating tokens? That is to say, if somebody visits my post from Google+, does that get rewarded?

How do we compensate the network? Servers and storage cost money, so there must be a way in which we can subsidize Minds. I suppose it is by subscribing to Plus, which brings Ethereum into the network. In this regard, it could work like Second Life and Linden dollars. 

There are many more questions I have which can be answered simply by exploring the Minds community. 

I have subscribed to some writing and photography groups. 

I will try out Minds as an alternative blogging platform.