Investor Report for 2022 Q4
Dear Investor,
This is Piotr Michalak, ccFound CEO. I welcome you in the New Year. I hope that at least the second half of 2023 will bring us calm in the financial markets and in geopolitics. I wish you to achieve your goals - and may your health be good!
In today's report, we'll discuss ccFound's user acquisition progress, marketing activities, changes to the platform, our finances and plans for the coming months - including the AI / ChatGPT revolution.
CCFOUND PROMOTION
The ccFound platform has so far gained 19,421 confirmed users. We recorded 26385 total registrations, but on average 35% of people do not confirm registration.
We have implemented a unique standard - we send a reminder about the need to confirm the registration three times.
Recently, we are getting about 150-200 registrations a day, including 130-140 confirmations. The best day saw 278 sign-ups and 173 confirmations, and that was in early January, when Facebook's and TikTok's ad systems shut down after the holidays.
The worst results were brought by Christmas Eve with 23 registrations and 14 confirmations. It may sound strange, but from the perspective of the good of ccFound, we are glad that the holidays are over.
PAID ADVERTISING
We are currently growing linearly (not exponentially) solely through Facebook and TikTok ads. In this regard, a huge work of fighting hostile systems is performed by board member Wiktoria Jaros. Thanks to the fact that we have not entrusted the process to an agency, we gain know-how inside the organization and we are sure that it is done well.
This job requires systematic conversations with employees of both platforms, optimization of ad group settings, testing new ads and target groups in different layouts, bypassing restrictions when we are blocked, etc.
Users are effectively acquired only by Maciej "Dziemian" Dziemiańczuk's advertisements. However, my co-worker's ads from years ago and mine do not work at all. This shows how difficult the topic of direct advertising of a new social networking site is.
Historically, we pay an average of PLN 11 per user. This means that in order for us to reach over 100,000 users this year, we must either spend over PLN 1 million or other forms of promotion must work (which I will write about later).
We do not want to allocate such a large amount for acquisition. That is why we are already starting to trim the ads, leaving the most effective ones that attract the user for a maximum of a few zlotys.
SEO
Paid advertising can only work to speed up the portal from scratch - in the future it must promote itself. We hope that there will be more registrations from user referrals (viral "word of mouth") and from search engines (SEO - search engine optimization). This must become the foundation of development.
And indeed - for several weeks we have been recording from 12 to 27 registrations a day from "unknown sources", mostly from Google. It's not much, but it's a swallow that heralds spring. We also receive notifications from Google Search Console with congratulations on the increasing number of hits from the search engine.
We have just passed the second SEO audit and are now implementing another round of optimization for Google!
LANGUAGES
The more languages supported by ccFound, the more pages to be indexed by search engines.
As you know, we added Spanish and French in the last quarter. We are currently preparing Chinese (specifically Mandarin) and Indian (Hindi) languages.
This means that all content will be translated into these languages and will be indexed over the next few months.
BETA
On the way to dominating the search results, there is also the planned exit from the "beta" version of the website!
Therefore, the address of each ccFound subpage will change as the "beta" subdomain will be removed. And that means having to re-index all pages in search engines.
While Google is dealing with this problem, the sooner we do it, the better.
PM4A OFFERS (pay me for answering)
In the days to come, we will add a feature to add a "pay me for the answer" type of response. This is a great feature for lawyers, doctors, nutritionists, tax advisors and other experts who get too time-consuming case to solve in the user's query. You will be able to post something that resembles a paywall, but it works in reverse - you get paid first and then you reply.
It's easy to imagine how many problems there are - for example, what to do if the user does not receive an answer or it is unsatisfactory? All these exceptions were foreseen and included in the project, which, as you can see, is more complicated than it might seem.
TOKENDS
Many of you are waiting for the tokens for the last weeks of the service to be sent. For now, as you know, we do it manually. Unfortunately, we found errors in the calculation system and we are still working on their solution. You will receive a notification about this from the platform as soon as we count the overdue tokens (they certainly won't run away - they are waiting on the platform's technical wallet).
LENSES
ccFound has grown tremendously as a multi-subject portal. The moment has come when it is necessary to narrow it down to the interests of each user. Soon after logging in, you will be guided through the (so far simple) process of selecting tags that interest you.
Ultimately, we see it so that the user will have several sets of interests - like profiles - or lenses - that can be changed. For example, I'm a lawyer in the morning and I want to see legal issues on ccFound. For the evening, however, I wear lenses with sports and entertainment themes.
CAPITAL
The ccFound Group currently has PLN 6.75 million. We still have to recover overpaid taxes from the Tax Office in the amount of about PLN 2 million. The recovery process can take up to two years. ccFound currently has little exposure to cryptocurrencies, according to a recent report.
Unfortunately, the recent drops in USD, where most of ccFound's savings are located, did not help us. Our analysis, however, shows that a rebound in the USD is likely, after which we will start an aggressive exit from this currency.
We are also waiting for a deeper slump in the stock and crypto markets in the coming months. In this regard, we adopt the strategy from the reports of Jacek Lorek, an investment advisor on the KNF list No. 59 of 1995. The reports are available for viewing at the link https://lp.instytutkryptologii.pl/raporty-z-rynku/ - highly recommended.
NEXT COLLECTIONS
As you already know from the previous report, we hit a bad time for collecting money from VC. We still have an open round. We are currently not taking any action towards its closure and are planning a pivot.
We see two possibilities:
1. Or monetization will appear in ccFound, and we will additionally implement artificial intelligence (more on that later) and become a good investment for VC,
2. Or we will organize an ICO / IEO investment match-up for a new product under ccFound, specifically - a groundbreaking mobile application related to artificial intelligence.
A new board member joined us as interim manager. He specializes in e.g. in obtaining financing. He will remain anonymous during the trial period. However, I mention it because it is an argument for implementing the above strategy.
EXPENSES
On average, in 2022 we spent 544,000. PLN per month (gross with VAT), and in total PLN 6.5 million. The most, nearly PLN 3 million, for a team of software developers, then PLN 800,000. PLN for the marketing team and PLN 700 thousand. PLN for the marketing budget.
This year, we are cutting costs significantly. At the moment, the budget assumes expenditure at the level of PLN 5.1 million, an average of PLN 427 thousand. PLN per month, with which we want to go below 400 thousand. In this regard:
- we no longer have a marketing department (previous report),
- expenses for the team will decrease (2 people leave),
- we will limit advertising expenditure (described above),
- we optimize the infrastructure (cloud),
- we are analyzing other expenses to be reduced.
MOBILE APPLICATION
We have created a mobile version of ccFound for Android. It is currently in closed tests for invited users and will soon see the light of day. The only barrier is the processes of the Google Play store.
Creating an iOS app will be a more difficult task. Currently, Apple's policy requires that new applications add value to a website that can be opened in a web browser.
We will still verify it. In addition, we discovered what we can create to meet this requirement. The next points will answer that.
CHATGPT REVOLUTION
You've probably heard about the mess ChatGPT made by OpenAI, in which Elon Musk was an investor. The release of ChatGPT made us look into the future and imagine that in a few years people would be out of work.
ChatGPT is not the only conversational robot on the market. It became known because it was freely and widely available. It is estimated that the company burns at least $3 million a day to maintain this environment. It won't last forever.
OpenAI is already considering introducing a paid "PRO" version - as I predicted. This is official information. Besides, OpenAI provides an API for exposing your own environments.
At the same time, OpenAI could mess up a lot if they made a contextual advertising system such as Adwords available in the robot. But would it pay for itself, since each query to AI consumes 10-100x more computing power than a query to Google?
People started to wonder: Will ChatGPT make services like Google, Quora or ccFound obsolete?
According to one entrepreneur I spoke to, in the future, the entire user interface of a computer will look like talking to a computer. We will no longer push buttons and fill out forms, but tell AI what to do.
At the same time, ChatGPT and similar tools are just conversational robots. Their algorithm is based on finding the most likely next track or syllable. They do not understand the question asked like a living person. They are more like a quasi-biological search engine algorithm with the ability to synthesize sources.
As a result, many of the answers given are written very generically, as if written by an SEO copywriter or a student on the principle of whipping water.
This is also how one of the influencers, TechLead, comments that we live in a world where content is king. TechLead asks: Is what you see from ChatGPT content that makes a difference and will go viral?
As a species, we are capable of deeper reasoning and drawing conclusions (breakthrough thoughts). Unfortunately, not all of us are at this intellectual level. Nor do we all expect content that is the result of deeper understanding or groundbreaking thinking!
Let us also note that the current AI model is based on GPT3.5 technology. What happens when OpenAI switches its chat to GPT4? It is to be a model 570 times larger than the current one. In a few months we will know the difference between them.
In conclusion, ChatGPT showed that AI bots are a huge threat to existing services and business models.
Threats are best used as opportunities. How will ccFound capitalize on the wave of popularity of AI tools?
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AT CCFOUND
We spent the last few weeks analyzing various tools for building AI conversational bots. We initially rejected the OpenAI API itself as costly, difficult to implement, and poorly documented. A more mature technology was chosen.
In the first step, we will create a bot that will answer questions on ccFound. It will be clearly marked as AI.
These answers are not always of high quality, but they will give the community a feel for how the technology works. Keep in mind that not everyone has seen or uses ChatGPT in this context (nor will it always be free).
This, of course, generates costs, which is why we are debating monetization models. The first step we will test will be to implement Google Adsense ads in the bot response. We were supposed to have no ads on ccFound, but the situation requires flexible thinking, hence the potential pivot.
Adsense ads woven into the AI statement will not be invasive and will satisfy the user's needs, according to the idea: "As a user, I want to get a referral for a paid product if it solves my problem."
If this solution does not work, we will consider, for example, buying AI answers in the PM4A Offers format (pay me for answering) or on a subscription basis.
We are also considering implementing our own AI chat and here we come to a revolutionary idea for a mobile application (and not only).
CCFOUND REVOLUTION
We realize that the ability to ask questions and verbalize one's problems is a higher-order competence, even for high-functioning individuals.
The experience of everyone, even the most intelligent person, is to struggle with problems in the subconscious for a few weeks, after which we come to the conclusion that we can express them and put them into words.
And few of them have the humility that allows them to submit such a question on the forum to seek many opinions and obtain a three-dimensional, multi-perspective view.
This experience is so universal that (also few) people support themselves through coaching, mentoring, psychotherapy and (in some cultures) spiritual guidance for their own development and constant overcoming of barriers.
Hence the powerful conclusion: ccFound shouldn't just be a place to ask a question. ccFound should help you verbalize your problems.
This path leads through realizing that I experience some emotions, most often I worry about something (e.g. drafting to the army), which I have a lot of thoughts related to (e.g. threats to me and my employees).
Only secondarily does the process of extracting specific questions from these thoughts take place (What is the risk associated with invitations to military exercises? Is the oath really mandatory as rumors say?).
This task could be performed by artificial intelligence. So we see two conversational bots: let's call the first "AI coach" and the second "executive summarizer".
The first bot asks the user about their situation and tries to verbalize the problem, then checks if this is what the user would like to ask. The second bot analyzes, for example, 800 articles of the Military Conscription Act and answers the question.
The user can ask during the conversation for further details, e.g. "What chance does a letter explaining that I am the sole breadwinner have?".
The bot then summarizes the entire discussion and posts it on ccFound as a finished solution. Users can continue to ask in the comments to the publication, to which the AI also responds.
Users also provide knowledge that artificial intelligence does not have, e.g. "I spoke to a general friend who unofficially told me that it would work differently than in the act ...".
Unfortunately, we currently do not have the funds for this purpose. We are considering another round of funding focused on just that. What do you think? Share your opinion with us in the comment.
READY AND DONE
In the last report I said that we are working on a simple artificial intelligence that will recognize what the question is written about and automatically match tags to translations of the question into other languages. This feature has been in development for several months and was recently rolled out.
"Tag Manager" (as we call it) is necessary because tags cannot be translated 1:1 into other languages (translations would be incorrect or inaccurate). For example, the term "token" cannot be translated into Polish as "tokens".
Thanks to the Tag Manager, we are able to quickly launch new languages on ccFound without fear that new content will not be assigned to any (or wrong) tags.
#
Recently, we launched a daily newsletter with an overview of notifications: informing about the most interesting questions, answers to your questions, subscriptions, etc.
We already know from statistics that it doubled user engagement:
- The number of statements used to be between 50 and 100 per day.
- Since the implementation of the newsletter, we get from 100 to 300 statements.
#
A big but simple feature is the ability to post anonymous questions and answers. Especially in combination with the 18+ mark, they allow you to ask honest, difficult, sometimes intimate questions. The same applies to the answers given.
#
A big change is the advanced sorting of content on the home page and the ability to save these settings permanently for the user. You can now choose:
- Sorting by the number of likes ("popular"), the number of replies ("on top"), news [we will refine these names].
- Narrow down to only subscribed tags, questions and authors.
- Narrow down to the last 90, 60, 30 days.
- Narrow down: with answers, without answers, with only 1 or maximum 3 answers (we are looking for questions from people we can help because they have few answers).
We will further develop this function, e.g. by setting 18+ and "deleted" (actually hidden) content and narrowing it down to interest packages (so-called Lenses).
#
We have added two more payment options for paid questions: "Select a winner" and "Exclude answers from win". We have also extended the time for paid questions to a maximum of 7 days.
#
We encountered attempts to spam our SMS user confirmation system, which led us to implement a phone number verification tool.
#
We have implemented a search engine that searches for similar content when asking a question, and thanks to this we will reduce the number of duplicate questions.
#
We have recently changed the view of tags, thanks to which they look neater on the left side and in other places of the platform. We will further refine it.
We improved the display of the user's transaction history.
We have added the ability to give tips (tips - the so-called donate button) to other users.
You can now add images to your questions, and we're working on adding multiple images.
We have launched an Android application - for now only for beta testers. The iOS application will be more problematic - I will write about it later.
We have designed a new, simple and understandable system of user statistics and reputation points. It is still being implemented; you will soon see it in the user's profile.
We've added features to pin questions to the Featured section. We have already collected negative feedback about this feature and we will consider what elements to show on the right side of the platform.
We've added voting for tags in comments as well (so far it only worked for tagging questions).
We are gradually adding information popups - for example, an explanation of what a paid question is (soon another).
#
We changed the marking system. We removed the excess of negative flags, which sometimes caused the content to be simultaneously marked (maliciously and often incorrectly) as spam, scam, illegal, etc., which generated 3-4 separate cases in the court system.
We've added "outdated" and "valuable", "timeless" and "personal" tags. I encourage you to use them, because in the future, additional functionalities of content ranking and filtering will be created on their basis.
#
We do a lot of work behind the scenes and it's not visible on the platform itself, but it's essential. In this regard, for example, we updated the frameworks to the latest versions. Of the larger cases of this type, I will describe one to give you an idea of the struggle.
Many processes on ccFound happen asynchronously. For example, when you add a question, it is not translated at the same time, but the system queues it for this task. Then - this is another task - it gradually matches it with tags in this new language using the aforementioned Tag Manager.
The main problem we are facing now is the spontaneous stopping of the queuing system, "Rabbita". The problems started when processing a very large amount of operations on the queue. For example, sending newsletters clogs another system that processes messages in the queue, "Consumer".
At the moment we have optimized it as much as possible. We have connected full monitoring - this will allow for more efficient identification of bottlenecks. With the many benefits that the asynchronous approach gives us, the problem everyone faces is optimizing the operation of such tools.
#
We fixed many bugs reported by the community. To be honest, it's fair to estimate that most of our work at this stage is polishing existing features, including tweaking the look and feel of the user experience. Here are just a few examples of such tasks. There are dozens of them and it would take several pages to list them all.
- we have set English as the default language when there are no translations to the target
- when editing a translated comment and question input languages were mixed up
- we have disabled the obligation to complete the description of the question
- it was not possible to enlarge the added graphics
- voting for a translated comment resulted in displaying a machine translation
- there was no option to choose the winner of the paid question
- the search engine showed deleted content
- text formatting did not transfer to translations
- you can't see the deleted answer, but you can see its translation into other languages
- the deleted profile was still visible
- I added a paid question, the system blocked my funds, I deleted this question and I still have no funds
- and many others
MANAGEMENT
In the past quarter, we carried out another audit of our programming processes to check whether we are working efficiently and what we can change for the better.
We are constantly improving in this area. For example, to improve the process of publishing changes to the portal from the development environment to the production environment, we create in-depth integration tests that will check the compatibility of front-end and back-end code faster and more accurately than a human.
We have implemented time-tracking of the entire team. This controversial solution was implemented not to "track people", but to monitor how much time we spend on individual tasks and what are the differences between our planning and execution. We all apply it without exception - also at the board level.
In November, the second integration of the team took place, which is becoming more and more harmonious. We see a strong need for such meetings among our people working remotely, and we are planning another meeting in March.
QUESTIONS
I invite you to our platform for further discussions. Recently I asked some questions about the future of our platform:
What's the best way to explain ccFound to new users?
https://beta.ccfound.com/en/questions/3887/how-to-best-explain-ccfound-ideas-to-new-users
When to introduce FOUND coin to the stock exchange?
https://beta.ccfound.com/en/questions/3888/when-we-should-introduce-token-found-coin-to-the-market
[Highlight - and Active Paid Question]
How to use artificial intelligence in ccFound (and monetize it)?
https://beta.ccfound.com/en/questions/4093/how-to-use-artificial-intelligence-in-ccfound-i-monetize
Dear Investor,
This is Piotr Michalak, ccFound CEO. I welcome you in the New Year. I hope that at least the second half of 2023 will bring us calm in the financial markets and in geopolitics. I wish you to achieve your goals - and may your health be good!
In today's report, we'll discuss ccFound's user acquisition progress, marketing activities, changes to the platform, our finances and plans for the coming months - including the AI / ChatGPT revolution.
CCFOUND PROMOTION
The ccFound platform has so far gained 19,421 confirmed users. We recorded 26385 total registrations, but on average 35% of people do not confirm registration.
We have implemented a unique standard - we send a reminder about the need to confirm the registration three times.
Recently, we are getting about 150-200 registrations a day, including 130-140 confirmations. The best day saw 278 sign-ups and 173 confirmations, and that was in early January, when Facebook's and TikTok's ad systems shut down after the holidays.
The worst results were brought by Christmas Eve with 23 registrations and 14 confirmations. It may sound strange, but from the perspective of the good of ccFound, we are glad that the holidays are over.
PAID ADVERTISING
We are currently growing linearly (not exponentially) solely through Facebook and TikTok ads. In this regard, a huge work of fighting hostile systems is performed by board member Wiktoria Jaros. Thanks to the fact that we have not entrusted the process to an agency, we gain know-how inside the organization and we are sure that it is done well.
This job requires systematic conversations with employees of both platforms, optimization of ad group settings, testing new ads and target groups in different layouts, bypassing restrictions when we are blocked, etc.
Users are effectively acquired only by Maciej "Dziemian" Dziemiańczuk's advertisements. However, my co-worker's ads from years ago and mine do not work at all. This shows how difficult the topic of direct advertising of a new social networking site is.
Historically, we pay an average of PLN 11 per user. This means that in order for us to reach over 100,000 users this year, we must either spend over PLN 1 million or other forms of promotion must work (which I will write about later).
We do not want to allocate such a large amount for acquisition. That is why we are already starting to trim the ads, leaving the most effective ones that attract the user for a maximum of a few zlotys.
SEO
Paid advertising can only work to speed up the portal from scratch - in the future it must promote itself. We hope that there will be more registrations from user referrals (viral "word of mouth") and from search engines (SEO - search engine optimization). This must become the foundation of development.
And indeed - for several weeks we have been recording from 12 to 27 registrations a day from "unknown sources", mostly from Google. It's not much, but it's a swallow that heralds spring. We also receive notifications from Google Search Console with congratulations on the increasing number of hits from the search engine.
We have just passed the second SEO audit and are now implementing another round of optimization for Google!
LANGUAGES
The more languages supported by ccFound, the more pages to be indexed by search engines.
As you know, we added Spanish and French in the last quarter. We are currently preparing Chinese (specifically Mandarin) and Indian (Hindi) languages.
This means that all content will be translated into these languages and will be indexed over the next few months.
BETA
On the way to dominating the search results, there is also the planned exit from the "beta" version of the website!
Therefore, the address of each ccFound subpage will change as the "beta" subdomain will be removed. And that means having to re-index all pages in search engines.
While Google is dealing with this problem, the sooner we do it, the better.
PM4A OFFERS (pay me for answering)
In the days to come, we will add a feature to add a "pay me for the answer" type of response. This is a great feature for lawyers, doctors, nutritionists, tax advisors and other experts who get too time-consuming case to solve in the user's query. You will be able to post something that resembles a paywall, but it works in reverse - you get paid first and then you reply.
It's easy to imagine how many problems there are - for example, what to do if the user does not receive an answer or it is unsatisfactory? All these exceptions were foreseen and included in the project, which, as you can see, is more complicated than it might seem.
TOKENDS
Many of you are waiting for the tokens for the last weeks of the service to be sent. For now, as you know, we do it manually. Unfortunately, we found errors in the calculation system and we are still working on their solution. You will receive a notification about this from the platform as soon as we count the overdue tokens (they certainly won't run away - they are waiting on the platform's technical wallet).
LENSES
ccFound has grown tremendously as a multi-subject portal. The moment has come when it is necessary to narrow it down to the interests of each user. Soon after logging in, you will be guided through the (so far simple) process of selecting tags that interest you.
Ultimately, we see it so that the user will have several sets of interests - like profiles - or lenses - that can be changed. For example, I'm a lawyer in the morning and I want to see legal issues on ccFound. For the evening, however, I wear lenses with sports and entertainment themes.
CAPITAL
The ccFound Group currently has PLN 6.75 million. We still have to recover overpaid taxes from the Tax Office in the amount of about PLN 2 million. The recovery process can take up to two years. ccFound currently has little exposure to cryptocurrencies, according to a recent report.
Unfortunately, the recent drops in USD, where most of ccFound's savings are located, did not help us. Our analysis, however, shows that a rebound in the USD is likely, after which we will start an aggressive exit from this currency.
We are also waiting for a deeper slump in the stock and crypto markets in the coming months. In this regard, we adopt the strategy from the reports of Jacek Lorek, an investment advisor on the KNF list No. 59 of 1995. The reports are available for viewing at the link https://lp.instytutkryptologii.pl/raporty-z-rynku/ - highly recommended.
NEXT COLLECTIONS
As you already know from the previous report, we hit a bad time for collecting money from VC. We still have an open round. We are currently not taking any action towards its closure and are planning a pivot.
We see two possibilities:
1. Or monetization will appear in ccFound, and we will additionally implement artificial intelligence (more on that later) and become a good investment for VC,
2. Or we will organize an ICO / IEO investment match-up for a new product under ccFound, specifically - a groundbreaking mobile application related to artificial intelligence.
A new board member joined us as interim manager. He specializes in e.g. in obtaining financing. He will remain anonymous during the trial period. However, I mention it because it is an argument for implementing the above strategy.
EXPENSES
On average, in 2022 we spent 544,000. PLN per month (gross with VAT), and in total PLN 6.5 million. The most, nearly PLN 3 million, for a team of software developers, then PLN 800,000. PLN for the marketing team and PLN 700 thousand. PLN for the marketing budget.
This year, we are cutting costs significantly. At the moment, the budget assumes expenditure at the level of PLN 5.1 million, an average of PLN 427 thousand. PLN per month, with which we want to go below 400 thousand. In this regard:
- we no longer have a marketing department (previous report),
- expenses for the team will decrease (2 people leave),
- we will limit advertising expenditure (described above),
- we optimize the infrastructure (cloud),
- we are analyzing other expenses to be reduced.
MOBILE APPLICATION
We have created a mobile version of ccFound for Android. It is currently in closed tests for invited users and will soon see the light of day. The only barrier is the processes of the Google Play store.
Creating an iOS app will be a more difficult task. Currently, Apple's policy requires that new applications add value to a website that can be opened in a web browser.
We will still verify it. In addition, we discovered what we can create to meet this requirement. The next points will answer that.
CHATGPT REVOLUTION
You've probably heard about the mess ChatGPT made by OpenAI, in which Elon Musk was an investor. The release of ChatGPT made us look into the future and imagine that in a few years people would be out of work.
ChatGPT is not the only conversational robot on the market. It became known because it was freely and widely available. It is estimated that the company burns at least $3 million a day to maintain this environment. It won't last forever.
OpenAI is already considering introducing a paid "PRO" version - as I predicted. This is official information. Besides, OpenAI provides an API for exposing your own environments.
At the same time, OpenAI could mess up a lot if they made a contextual advertising system such as Adwords available in the robot. But would it pay for itself, since each query to AI consumes 10-100x more computing power than a query to Google?
People started to wonder: Will ChatGPT make services like Google, Quora or ccFound obsolete?
According to one entrepreneur I spoke to, in the future, the entire user interface of a computer will look like talking to a computer. We will no longer push buttons and fill out forms, but tell AI what to do.
At the same time, ChatGPT and similar tools are just conversational robots. Their algorithm is based on finding the most likely next track or syllable. They do not understand the question asked like a living person. They are more like a quasi-biological search engine algorithm with the ability to synthesize sources.
As a result, many of the answers given are written very generically, as if written by an SEO copywriter or a student on the principle of whipping water.
This is also how one of the influencers, TechLead, comments that we live in a world where content is king. TechLead asks: Is what you see from ChatGPT content that makes a difference and will go viral?
As a species, we are capable of deeper reasoning and drawing conclusions (breakthrough thoughts). Unfortunately, not all of us are at this intellectual level. Nor do we all expect content that is the result of deeper understanding or groundbreaking thinking!
Let us also note that the current AI model is based on GPT3.5 technology. What happens when OpenAI switches its chat to GPT4? It is to be a model 570 times larger than the current one. In a few months we will know the difference between them.
In conclusion, ChatGPT showed that AI bots are a huge threat to existing services and business models.
Threats are best used as opportunities. How will ccFound capitalize on the wave of popularity of AI tools?
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AT CCFOUND
We spent the last few weeks analyzing various tools for building AI conversational bots. We initially rejected the OpenAI API itself as costly, difficult to implement, and poorly documented. A more mature technology was chosen.
In the first step, we will create a bot that will answer questions on ccFound. It will be clearly marked as AI.
These answers are not always of high quality, but they will give the community a feel for how the technology works. Keep in mind that not everyone has seen or uses ChatGPT in this context (nor will it always be free).
This, of course, generates costs, which is why we are debating monetization models. The first step we will test will be to implement Google Adsense ads in the bot response. We were supposed to have no ads on ccFound, but the situation requires flexible thinking, hence the potential pivot.
Adsense ads woven into the AI statement will not be invasive and will satisfy the user's needs, according to the idea: "As a user, I want to get a referral for a paid product if it solves my problem."
If this solution does not work, we will consider, for example, buying AI answers in the PM4A Offers format (pay me for answering) or on a subscription basis.
We are also considering implementing our own AI chat and here we come to a revolutionary idea for a mobile application (and not only).
CCFOUND REVOLUTION
We realize that the ability to ask questions and verbalize one's problems is a higher-order competence, even for high-functioning individuals.
The experience of everyone, even the most intelligent person, is to struggle with problems in the subconscious for a few weeks, after which we come to the conclusion that we can express them and put them into words.
And few of them have the humility that allows them to submit such a question on the forum to seek many opinions and obtain a three-dimensional, multi-perspective view.
This experience is so universal that (also few) people support themselves through coaching, mentoring, psychotherapy and (in some cultures) spiritual guidance for their own development and constant overcoming of barriers.
Hence the powerful conclusion: ccFound shouldn't just be a place to ask a question. ccFound should help you verbalize your problems.
This path leads through realizing that I experience some emotions, most often I worry about something (e.g. drafting to the army), which I have a lot of thoughts related to (e.g. threats to me and my employees).
Only secondarily does the process of extracting specific questions from these thoughts take place (What is the risk associated with invitations to military exercises? Is the oath really mandatory as rumors say?).
This task could be performed by artificial intelligence. So we see two conversational bots: let's call the first "AI coach" and the second "executive summarizer".
The first bot asks the user about their situation and tries to verbalize the problem, then checks if this is what the user would like to ask. The second bot analyzes, for example, 800 articles of the Military Conscription Act and answers the question.
The user can ask during the conversation for further details, e.g. "What chance does a letter explaining that I am the sole breadwinner have?".
The bot then summarizes the entire discussion and posts it on ccFound as a finished solution. Users can continue to ask in the comments to the publication, to which the AI also responds.
Users also provide knowledge that artificial intelligence does not have, e.g. "I spoke to a general friend who unofficially told me that it would work differently than in the act ...".
Unfortunately, we currently do not have the funds for this purpose. We are considering another round of funding focused on just that. What do you think? Share your opinion with us in the comment.
READY AND DONE
In the last report I said that we are working on a simple artificial intelligence that will recognize what the question is written about and automatically match tags to translations of the question into other languages. This feature has been in development for several months and was recently rolled out.
"Tag Manager" (as we call it) is necessary because tags cannot be translated 1:1 into other languages (translations would be incorrect or inaccurate). For example, the term "token" cannot be translated into Polish as "tokens".
Thanks to the Tag Manager, we are able to quickly launch new languages on ccFound without fear that new content will not be assigned to any (or wrong) tags.
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Recently, we launched a daily newsletter with an overview of notifications: informing about the most interesting questions, answers to your questions, subscriptions, etc.
We already know from statistics that it doubled user engagement:
- The number of statements used to be between 50 and 100 per day.
- Since the implementation of the newsletter, we get from 100 to 300 statements.
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A big but simple feature is the ability to post anonymous questions and answers. Especially in combination with the 18+ mark, they allow you to ask honest, difficult, sometimes intimate questions. The same applies to the answers given.
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A big change is the advanced sorting of content on the home page and the ability to save these settings permanently for the user. You can now choose:
- Sorting by the number of likes ("popular"), the number of replies ("on top"), news [we will refine these names].
- Narrow down to only subscribed tags, questions and authors.
- Narrow down to the last 90, 60, 30 days.
- Narrow down: with answers, without answers, with only 1 or maximum 3 answers (we are looking for questions from people we can help because they have few answers).
We will further develop this function, e.g. by setting 18+ and "deleted" (actually hidden) content and narrowing it down to interest packages (so-called Lenses).
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We have added two more payment options for paid questions: "Select a winner" and "Exclude answers from win". We have also extended the time for paid questions to a maximum of 7 days.
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We encountered attempts to spam our SMS user confirmation system, which led us to implement a phone number verification tool.
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We have implemented a search engine that searches for similar content when asking a question, and thanks to this we will reduce the number of duplicate questions.
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We have recently changed the view of tags, thanks to which they look neater on the left side and in other places of the platform. We will further refine it.
We improved the display of the user's transaction history.
We have added the ability to give tips (tips - the so-called donate button) to other users.
You can now add images to your questions, and we're working on adding multiple images.
We have launched an Android application - for now only for beta testers. The iOS application will be more problematic - I will write about it later.
We have designed a new, simple and understandable system of user statistics and reputation points. It is still being implemented; you will soon see it in the user's profile.
We've added features to pin questions to the Featured section. We have already collected negative feedback about this feature and we will consider what elements to show on the right side of the platform.
We've added voting for tags in comments as well (so far it only worked for tagging questions).
We are gradually adding information popups - for example, an explanation of what a paid question is (soon another).
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We changed the marking system. We removed the excess of negative flags, which sometimes caused the content to be simultaneously marked (maliciously and often incorrectly) as spam, scam, illegal, etc., which generated 3-4 separate cases in the court system.
We've added "outdated" and "valuable", "timeless" and "personal" tags. I encourage you to use them, because in the future, additional functionalities of content ranking and filtering will be created on their basis.
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We do a lot of work behind the scenes and it's not visible on the platform itself, but it's essential. In this regard, for example, we updated the frameworks to the latest versions. Of the larger cases of this type, I will describe one to give you an idea of the struggle.
Many processes on ccFound happen asynchronously. For example, when you add a question, it is not translated at the same time, but the system queues it for this task. Then - this is another task - it gradually matches it with tags in this new language using the aforementioned Tag Manager.
The main problem we are facing now is the spontaneous stopping of the queuing system, "Rabbita". The problems started when processing a very large amount of operations on the queue. For example, sending newsletters clogs another system that processes messages in the queue, "Consumer".
At the moment we have optimized it as much as possible. We have connected full monitoring - this will allow for more efficient identification of bottlenecks. With the many benefits that the asynchronous approach gives us, the problem everyone faces is optimizing the operation of such tools.
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We fixed many bugs reported by the community. To be honest, it's fair to estimate that most of our work at this stage is polishing existing features, including tweaking the look and feel of the user experience. Here are just a few examples of such tasks. There are dozens of them and it would take several pages to list them all.
- we have set English as the default language when there are no translations to the target
- when editing a translated comment and question input languages were mixed up
- we have disabled the obligation to complete the description of the question
- it was not possible to enlarge the added graphics
- voting for a translated comment resulted in displaying a machine translation
- there was no option to choose the winner of the paid question
- the search engine showed deleted content
- text formatting did not transfer to translations
- you can't see the deleted answer, but you can see its translation into other languages
- the deleted profile was still visible
- I added a paid question, the system blocked my funds, I deleted this question and I still have no funds
- and many others
MANAGEMENT
In the past quarter, we carried out another audit of our programming processes to check whether we are working efficiently and what we can change for the better.
We are constantly improving in this area. For example, to improve the process of publishing changes to the portal from the development environment to the production environment, we create in-depth integration tests that will check the compatibility of front-end and back-end code faster and more accurately than a human.
We have implemented time-tracking of the entire team. This controversial solution was implemented not to "track people", but to monitor how much time we spend on individual tasks and what are the differences between our planning and execution. We all apply it without exception - also at the board level.
In November, the second integration of the team took place, which is becoming more and more harmonious. We see a strong need for such meetings among our people working remotely, and we are planning another meeting in March.
QUESTIONS
I invite you to our platform for further discussions. Recently I asked some questions about the future of our platform:
What's the best way to explain ccFound to new users?
https://beta.ccfound.com/en/questions/3887/how-to-best-explain-ccfound-ideas-to-new-users
When to introduce FOUND coin to the stock exchange?
https://beta.ccfound.com/en/questions/3888/when-we-should-introduce-token-found-coin-to-the-market
[Highlight - and Active Paid Question]
How to use artificial intelligence in ccFound (and monetize it)?
https://beta.ccfound.com/en/questions/4093/how-to-use-artificial-intelligence-in-ccfound-i-monetize
22 users upvote it!
8 answers