Bill Ottman, CEO and Co-Founder of Minds.com

Minds.com is an open-source social media platform that puts individual users first. Social media platforms like Facebook data mine and sell user information to companies. The end result being that big corporations sell their users as the product.

Minds has all the same capabilities as Facebook, yet offers many more features, making it one of the most sophisticated social media platforms that exists. Users earn points for all their activities and can either sell or use those points to boost posts. The site also offers encrypted private messaging and has a bitcoin wallet integrated into it.

Being a more privacy centred alternative to Facebook, Minds has attracted many activists, including members of the hacktivist collective known as Anonymous.

Crypto Hustle decided to reach out to Bill Ottman, CEO and co-founder of Minds.com

What motivated you to start Minds and what’s your ultimate vision for the site?

The world needs a top social network to be free, open source, (de)centralized, encrypted, reward-based and powered by the people. I know that’s a lot of adjectives, but they’re necessary :p

The ultimate vision is not necessarily up to me. That’s why it’s called Minds. It’s a manifestation of what the community wants it to become. That’s the beauty. With all the surveillance, corrupt algorithms, censorship and overall lack of opportunity on major proprietary networks, we saw a clear path and social need for this.

Are you noticing strong growth in your user base?

Yes, especially this month we are seeing all-time high activity.

Do you have ways that you’re monetizing the site?

We currently have 1 monetization feature which allows US based users to exchange money for shares to each other’s channels. This is called a p2p boost. Many many more monetization features will be rolling out. Giving people the tools to make money and be independent is essential.

In terms of monetizing for the company, we sell points and do a little bit of advertising on content to pay for the servers. Ideally we will end this because 3rd parties suck. But we would never put ads on anyone’s content who doesn’t want it.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in running this platform?

Challenges are aplenty. Keeping up with demands of users, bugs and simultaneously developing the app to be competitive with top social nets. We are a small startup that suddenly found ourselves competing with top sites in the world, so it isn’t easy because they have billions of dollars.

Any plans to turn minds points into a cryptocurrency and/or integrate the platform into a blockchain?

We are definitely in the process of drawing out whitepapers for cryptocurrency integrations. I imagine the point system will remain, but I could see a coin working in tandem. The key is that it is done right as we see many unfair cryptocurrencies out there. If/when we do it we want it to be sustainable, scalable and fair.

Where do you see Minds in 5 years?

In the stars.

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Rocky

Rocky is a cryptocurrency analyst, strategic consultant, educator, position trader and investor. He started his journey learning about Bitcoin in 2013, became obsessed with it and dropped everything to work full-time in the space since 2015.