In brief
- Voice has made its posts publicly viewable.
- It's a decentralized social media network conceived by Block.one.
- It's been delayed for a while.
We do the research, you get the alpha!
Voice, the $160-million-plus social network founded by EOSIO progenitor Block.one, is inching closer to being fully operational.
As of Saturday, users included in the site’s beta launch have been able to invite friends to join the app, while public posts are now available for anyone to see.
Posts, listed on a single page which endlessly scrolls, are mostly plugs of Block.one’s EOS cryptocurrency and news articles syndicated from cryptocurrency publications.
“Bitcoin Pioneer Max Keiser says Buffet wrong about Bitcoin and Gold,” reads one post from trade publication Crypto Writer, “published in association with Voice.” User Subash Nalam, meanwhile, writes “Why This [sic] is going to be a long rally for EOS.”
Voice pitches itself as a decentralized, anti-censorship alternative to Facebook, Twitter and Medium. The app, according to CEO Salah Michael Zalatimo, encourages “transparency, authenticity and humanity” by rewarding considerate posting with crypto-tokens.
Voice is opening to users over a year later than expected. Intended for fall 2019, the project only entered beta testing in July, after a turbulent start that saw Block.one spend $30 million on a domain name.
Block.one, which raised $4 billion for its “EOS” blockchain throughout 2018, had a lot of money to spare. After plowing in a further $150 million on development, however, Block.one ceded the project to Zalatimo, who spun Voice off as a separate company.
In early June, he announced the decision to launch a beta earlier than expected, in July. Beta users would be able to invite friends from August 15.
“We had been building towards a big reveal this fall,” Zalatimo wrote on Twitter, on June 3. “But, we simply can’t wait any longer. We need to take social back from big tech NOW. So, we did what startups do.”