Hello Steemians!
Today I'm very excited to unveil a new platform based on the STEEM blockchain called Parley. Our goal is to provide a fast and easy to use interface for users to talk about and discuss the latest news, trends, and ideas in a decentralized manner.
Abstract
In the modern era, we use the internet for more than just sharing funny cat videos. It has enabled us to share our thoughts and criticisms of politics, companies, and news with ease on sites like Reddit, Medium, YouTube, and more. But it has also allowed the moderators of those sites to remove and silence those very same criticisms without a trace left behind.
At Hoxly (the company behind Parley), we believe that the internet's ability to raise democratic ideals to a level unseen before in history is being squandered. This is why we have built Parley.
What is it?
In short, Parley is a direct competitor to Reddit. The service allows Steem users to post links to interesting content they find on the web, and even more importantly it will allow creators to monetize their work regardless of whether it was posted directly to the Steem blockchain or not.
That said, unlike most Steem apps build thus far, we don't believe that the primary value of Parley is from top-level posts (although of course, they do still have huge value in bringing important news to hundreds of thousands of Steem users). Instead, we believe that most of the value lies in the comment section, specifically in the ability for users to discuss their thoughts about global events freely and without fear of censorship.
Who are we?
As I mentioned earlier the company behind Parley is @hoxly, the same team that brought you AskSteem (the search engine that powers search on DTube, DLive, Busy.org, etc.) and provides funding to @cryptofy's team of writers to publish high quality and trustworthy blockchain related news.
We truly believe that technologies like blockchain, IPFS, and distributed computing can change the world, and we're willing to be the force that makes that change happen.
How to Use
We've designed the user interface of Parley to be as intuitive as possible. The first step to posting your first news story to the blockchain is to visit parley.io in your browser.
Sign In with Steem
Once you're on Parley click the Account item on the top right of the menu. Then click Login, this will take you to a page that looks like the one above.
You can log in with your Steem credentials.
Username
Enter the same username you have on Steemit
Private Posting Key
Visit your wallet / permissions on Steemit and click the button that says Show Private Key next to Posting, copy that and enter it into the password box.
Alternatively here is a video tutorial demonstrating how to log in if you are having difficulties.
Your login credentials are stored locally in your web browser and are not sent to our servers at any point.
Submitting a News Story
Once you've signed into your Steem account you can post stories, leave comments, and upvote/downvote posts.
To post a new story follow these steps:
- A new item should have appeared on the menu called Submit Link (Click it).
- You will be directed to a page that looks like the screenshot above
- Enter the URL to the page you want to share
- Enter a title that describes the content on the page
- Choose a community to post in such as funny or news, currently only one is supported per post.
Embedded Content
Because we put so much emphasis on user discussion, we wanted to put as much information as possible about the link directly on the thread page. To accomplish this we support embedding content from thousands of different websites, including but not limited to:
- YouTube
- Kickstarter
- Dailymotion
- Vimeo
- Codepen
- Giphy
- Soundcloud
- Twitch
- many more
This also means that content on all of those sites can now easily be monetized by creators using Steem.
Final Thoughts
We're very excited to see what types of content the Steem community will be able to curate and we look forward to seeing thought-provoking discussions that might not have been possible elsewhere.
Join Our Discord
Additionally, for anyone who is interested, we have a public Parley Discord chat for users to ask questions and get in touch.
Missing Features & To-Do
While the current Parley is functional there are a few features that we'd like to implement as time goes on.
- Change Profile Info
- Change Voting Percent
- Multi-Account Support (Simultaneous Login)
- User Notification System
Want to support a decentralized and censorship-resistant news platform? Make sure to upvote, resteem, and most importantly start contributing content over at Parley.io