@tldr

A quick* update on $bracky: Building on Farcaster has given our team a priceless gift: The gift of genuine conviction that we have a product which high quality users actually enjoy, come back to, and like telling their friends about. We are now working on distributing that product into new social spaces. Everything we've worked on for a year has been consciously structured so that @bracky could help us grow by being able to "live in any social feed". That's been the vision. Why live inside social feeds? People do not need more single-player sports betting apps. That's what everything out there does – whether a betting company or a prediction market. What is actually differentiated is using sports betting not as an end in itself (that leans dystopic) but as a tool to facilitate more social connection and engagement in the the sports events we can all be a part of (highly positive sum). Less like a video game, more like watching the game with your friends in the basement or even being in the crowd at a stadium. We plan on Bracky living in many digital spaces, but in the near term our focus, outside of Farcaster, is on Base App and Twitter. Base App is super interesting bc it (1) composes with Farcaster and XMTP and (2) there are net-new crypto users on Coinbase App proper. Base App's challenge is the same as Farcaster's (converting and harnessing the new growth) Twitter is appealing bc it's just an absolutely massive distribution space. You can actually go "viral" there in a way that is viable for retail products. They also have a base of crypto friendly users ("Crypto Twitter") that is theoretically helpful as a friendly foothold. The challenge with Twitter is the culture – feels like Mad Max postapocalyptic. Thread Markets on X are our first move in figuring out how to create the pockets of social signal that make Bracky feel as fun in other places as they do on Farcaster. So far they have been very positive start. We want to double down. (Side note: If you know accounts on X who have 10k+ followers and like sports, I would love a warm intro!) It may be a grind to unlock this new behavior — the path of discovery and acceptance takes some effort and iteration, but it is the kind of thing where the reward is commensurate with the difficulty. It’s important to stay committed and stay optimistic while we give it a go. There are other social spaces that are exciting to us – basically any place that already has social context and allows automated accounts / applications: telegram, discord, fb messenger, world, even iMessage. I would love to work on them all simultaneously, and they also are useful to have as backup plans if any spaces turned adversarial to us – but right now we believe most in Base App and Twitter as the next concentric circle outside of our Farcaster nucleus to work on and win. Everything we ship will be addressing ways we think we can really move the needle in winning in these spaces: being discovered by new users; creating a fun and retentive experience; having something worth talking about to their friends. And each space has a unique social topography. We’re not really thinking much about handle, fees, etc. It's about creating great experiences in new social spaces. I laugh when people look at us as "just another gambling thing". There's plenty of those already. What does not exist is a product that brings the most fun part of sports – being a part of something bigger – into the digital spaces where we spend so much of our time. That's something worth unlocking. *oops

27 replies

52 recasts

160 reactions