The Interledger Community 🌱: Mathew Safford

MG.Social Operations Ceased

Mathew Safford — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 17:10:52 +0000

A reminder that MG.Social operations ceased in June, 2022.

When we ceased operations we opened up our GitHubs to the public so that anyone in the community can build off what we already created.

Thank you to everyone who supported us during our run. We would have liked to continue the project but did not see a viable path forward at the time we closed our doors.

With the shuttering of Coil earlier this month we believe this proved to be the right call. Best of luck to the Interledger Foundation and those continuing to build in the web monetization space.

MG.Social — Grant Report #2

Mathew Safford — Sun, 12 Dec 2021 00:18:48 +0000

New web app is live at Web.MG.Social!

Project Update

Our project has been a success and we have met all the goals that we had set out to accomplish during our grant period of June - December, 2021.

Below we detail our accomplishments and what we have in store next.

Progress on objectives

One of our big objectives was to launch an MG.Social mobile app for iOS and Android.

You can find our MG.Social iOS app in the Apple store here..

You can find our MG.Social Android app in the Google Play store here..

The other main technical goal of the project was to launch our new MG.Social web app which can be found here.

MG.Social has been incorporated as a private corporation in the state of CA. Find us on the State of California business search page here.

MG.Social has obtained legal and tax representation to ensure that we maintain all required legal and tax compliance.

@newmediarights has been particularly helpful to us in drafting an updated terms of service and privacy policy and creating contractor agreements.

Key activities

When we were deciding what success would look like for the window of this grant period we wanted:

-An MG.Social mobile app released for iOS and Android (completed)
-A re-designed and improved web front-end released (completed),
-New MG.Social marketing materials (completed)
-The completion of legal and tax items (completed).

In addition to accomplishing these goals we had hoped to grow the MG.Social user base to at least 500 accounts by the end of 2021, we have blown past that goal and now have over 1350 user accounts as of December, 2021!

At the beginning of 2021 we set a goal to increase our average monthly web monetization revenue at least 240% by the end of the year.

When looking at the 3 month period of September-November 2020 we had a monthly average of $5.41 in Web Monetization revenue.

For the period of September-November 2021 we had a monthly average of $31.94 in Web Monetization revenue, an increase of 490% over the same time period in 2020!

Communications and marketing

We have created animated marketing videos for the release of our MG.Social mobile apps, located here.

We also created an animated teaser video for the launch of our new MG.Social web app, located here.

We have partnered with the XRPL Merch Store to offer MG.Social branded apparel which can be found here.

What’s next?

-Integrating decentralized posting capabilities into MG.Social.

-Launching a re-vamped MG.Social voting system to bring new XRPL token support to the platform.

-Launching support for NFT minting/galleries/trading on the XRPL with the XLS-20d standard

All this and more will be discussed in the upcoming MG.Social vision paper which will be released before the end of 2021.

What community support would benefit your project?

Everyone from the Web Monetization community please check out our project if you have not already done so.

We welcome any feedback on how we can improve. If you are working on something interesting in this space you think we should be aware feel free to reach out!

We are always looking for potential partnerships that will drive value for our company and users.

Additional comments

Thank you to everyone that has supported us so far on this journey. We are just getting started and we hope you continue to follow us and we grow and improve the MG.Social platform.

Relevant links/resources (optional)

We will continue to post updates on our progress to this community. Be sure to follow us on our other pages as well:

Twitter
Blog
Cinnamon.Video

MG.Social: New web app is live!

Mathew Safford — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 17:26:13 +0000

We have launched our redesigned MG.Social web app which can be found at Web.MG.Social.

We will continue to update the app and add additional features.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us and followed along with the process of getting the new web app developed and launched!

MG.Social new web app promo

Mathew Safford — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 17:21:32 +0000

We are putting the final touches on our new, redesigned MG.Social web app which will launch soon.

See our promo video for the new MG.Social web app here

Promo video created by Besatree

MG.Social — Grant Report #1

Mathew Safford — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 04:12:57 +0000

New MG.Social Web App Interface Preview:

Project Update

Greetings Web Monetization Community!

It's hard to believe September is already here! This year has been flying by as we have been hard at work over the last several months on our 2021 roadmap for MG.Social.

In that time we have launched an MG.Social mobile app for Android and iOS, issued our own MGS utility token, launched our new Public Square decentralized web app, and ran a community governance vote that decided the next XRPL token to be incorporated for Xumm tips on MG.Social.

We continue to work hard on completing the items remaining from our 2021 roadmap and formulating a new roadmap for 2022 and beyond.

The biggest item we have remaining for 2021 is the launch of our new, entirely redesigned MG.Social web app which we plan to release before the end of the year (a preview image is pictured above).

Progress on objectives

Technical Objectives:
-An MG.Social iOS app released to the public: Completed.
-An MG.Social Android app release to the public: Completed
-A redesigned web-front end deployed to production: In progress
-Security audit: In progress

Marketing Objectives:
-Animated marketing video for MG.Social mobile app: Completed
-Animated marketing video for new MG.Social web app: in progress
-New images and banners for social media accounts and blog: Completed

Legal Objectives:
-Business registration: Completed
-Contracting agreements: Completed

Tax/Accounting:
-Consultation, compliance and filling: In progress

Key activities

We have worked with our developers to both enhance our existing products and launch new ones. To enhance our main subscription-based product (MG.Social), we now have our own utility token that we will use as a daily reward for MG.Social engagement. We are building use cases that will utilize our token. One such use case is a decentralized, pay-per-post social network (PS.MG.Social) and another is MG.Social governance voting (Vote.MG.Social).

We had the marketing team, Diburam Creativa, that created our MG.Social explainer video create a new promo video our MG.Social mobile app. We also created new and improved banner images for our blog and social network accounts that match the branding from our new marketing videos.

New Rights Media helped us to draft a new privacy policy and terms of service for MG.Social. New Rights Media also drafted contractor agreements for us for when we get further work done for MG.Social.

We worked with a Firm to incorporate MG.Social as an S-Corp in California. We are working with an accounting firm to provide accounting services and ensure we meet all tax obligations.

Communications and marketing

We have been sharing updates about our progress and the things we have in the works at:
-Our Web Monetization Community page
-Our own MG.Social platform.
-Our MG.Social Blog.
-Our Twitter.
-Our Cinnamon.Video page.

Interviews:
We had a great chat with Greg Hannan of Vivid IoV Labs about how we got to where we are and our vision and future of the MG.Social platform.

Below are links to the marketing videos created for us by Diburama Creativa:

Platform Inroduction
Mobile App Launch

Merchandising:
This is one area we did not address in our grant. We have recently designed and purchased MG.Social merchandise and will be launching an online store soon. The one logistical hurdle we've been trying to iron out is the costs associated with international shipping. Our online store platform is setup and ready to go and can be found here. We will add in products once we solve the shipping issue.

What’s next?

For the remainder of the grant period we will work to complete and launch the new MG.Social web app. We will be meeting further with our accounting firm to ensure our tax compliance is met. We also still need to implement our local community engagement project. We have outlined the program and in the process of implementation.

What community support would benefit your project?

Anyone from the community is welcome to join MG.Social and give us feedback on how we can improve the platform and experience. If anyone has any questions about our experiences or need any guidance feel free to reach out to us through any of our channels listed below.

Additional comments

Thank you to everyone in the Web Monetization community for all your help and encouragement! Special thanks to Adam Waring of @gfam and @ericahargreave who have been particularly helpful to our project. Best of luck to everyone on their projects!

Relevant links/resources

MG.Social
PS.MG.Social
Blogs.MG.Social
MG.Social on Twitter
MG.Social on Cinnamon

MG.Social Statistics for August, 2021

Mathew Safford — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 14:30:19 +0000

In our latest blog we look at how MG.Social did in the month of August, 2021.

August was a period of explosive growth for the MG.Social platform. After crossing 300 user accounts created on MG.Social we celebrated by running an #MGS300 token distribution, which lead to a massive surge of interest, attention and more users coming to the MG.Social platform (now over 850!).

We are looking to continue this momentum as we move into September!

Thank you to everyone for supporting us as we continue to work on our 2021 roadmap.

MG.Social Statistics for June & July, 2021

Mathew Safford — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 07:57:48 +0000

In our latest blog we look at how MG.Social did in the month of June & July, 2021.

In July we had our first MGS utility token distribution. MGS is a token on the XRPL. We are distributing the MGS token to encourage daily user interaction with the MG.Social platform. Our first MGS use case is for community governance and we have further use cases planned for this year and beyond.

The MGS utility token distribution had a clear impact on our numbers for July and we will look to increase the participation as much as possible when we launch our second distribution in October, 2021.

Thank you to everyone for supporting us as we continue to work on our 2021 roadmap.

MG.Social: New Web Apps Demo

Mathew Safford — Thu, 15 Jul 2021 23:34:38 +0000

In our latest video on Cinnamon, we show a quick demo of our new MG.Social web apps which are currently in development and scheduled to be released by the end of this year.

Thank you for following along with our progress in 2021!

MG.Social: Socialize... Monetize!

Mathew Safford — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 08:03:38 +0000

New Promo Video

MG.Social is an ad-free, Web Monetized social network that rewards creators with streaming micropayments and Xumm tips on their postings.

Our mobile app is available in the Apple iOS and Google Play.

MG.Social Statistics for May, 2021

Mathew Safford — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 14:40:02 +0000

In our latest blog we look at how MG.Social did in the month of May, 2021.

Since Coil blogs are moving to write.as this post has been made on our new, self-hosted Wordpress blog platform. As part of this change we are now offering free web-monetized Wordpress blogs to MG.Social users.

Thank you to everyone for supporting us as we continue to work on our 2021 roadmap.

MG.Social Statistics for March & April, 2021

Mathew Safford — Sun, 02 May 2021 13:12:29 +0000

In our latest Coil blog we look at how MG.Social did in the months of March and April of 2021.

Thank you to everyone for supporting us as we continue to work on our 2021 roadmap.

MG.Social: mobile app live for iOS and Android

Mathew Safford — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 19:35:27 +0000

We are proud to announce that the first version of our MG.Social mobile app has been accepted into the iOS and Android app stores.

This is still only a first version, and we have many improvements and small bug fixes still to make. So we will continue to work hard to develop and improve the app, and will share the progress here.

Soon we will start to tackle the next item on our MG.Social roadmap for 2021: a full re-design of our web interface. We are excited to continue to grow and develop the MG.Social platform and continue to be a part of the greater web monetization ecosystem.