Hi! We recently pushed a big release to Jouzt.com that included some exciting new features. Don’t worry, this blog isn’t here to promote our awesome features, it’s here for those following our Jouzt journey.
The reason I wanted to make a post about this particular release is because the changes we just implemented represent a small milestone in manifesting some of the values that Jouzt is built on.
The main 2 features we just introduced are Cosmetics and Jouzt+. And this post is about:
How these features represent our values:
I enjoy gaming. And I’ve always appreciated games that “motivate” me with cosmetics. Why? Because I don’t need cosmetics, they represent a subjective want. In other words, the cosmetic economy gives me choice and control.
I get to choose whether a cosmetic is worth my time to earn, or worth my money to pay for. And that puts the onus on the developers to make those cosmetics worth earning or paying for, and the game worth playing.
As such, when I enjoy a free game, I find myself buying cosmetics, to the degree that I find reasonable, to support the game and its creators. It’s a reciprocal relationship built on trust and value.
Compare this to a streaming platform that inconveniences me with ads unless I pay, or a social platform that makes money by harvesting my data and selling it for ad space and possibly other, more nefarious purposes. We don’t ever want Jouzt to go in that direction.
This is why we chose to invest in building a cosmetics economy in the platform. We know that at this stage in our journey we can’t compete with platforms that have billions of dollars and billions of users. But we can offer things they don’t: choice, control, self-expression, support and appreciation for our users who make the platform.
Since our cosmetics are all made by human creators, they also represent our commitment to invest in people over AI a tech efficiencies. This is core to our platform.
So why not just give everyone every cosmetic? Why make users have to earn them at all? The answer is also important to our values:
We want Jouzt to keep growing into a fun and supportive social platform to contrast the divisive practices of the giants who dominate the social media space. You will notice that pretty much all our cosmetics are earned by doing something positive for another user: following them, giving claps, leaving a comment etc. Of course, we need engagement to grow and we hope this will help with that, but we are specifically chasing positive engagement, even though negativity pays more according to the big platforms who reward you for clashing with other users (real influencers know that controversial posts always do better because they yield more attention and engagement by exploiting human nature).
Ok that’s it for this post. Thank you for getting to the end of another Jouzt journey update! See you on the platform!
