ichthyoid

A few months have passed since I’ve started blogging on Coil, and it’s been a great experience. It has motivated me to keep writing and posting, since, not only was it online, but also because Coil provided an avenue for revenue, regardless of any arbitrary number of followers. Furthermore, it was great to start on a platform that was also pretty new, and so be able to work out what I wanted my blog to be about without too much scrutiny.

From its About page, the stated goal of Coil is:

“Coil exists because content monetization doesn’t work for everyone, and we think it should. Our model offers an alternative to the status quo of paid advertisements and selling the public’s attention to the highest bidders – A solution that will serve the people who aren’t being served well today.”

That statement says that Coil provides a solution. As I thought about it more, however, I think Coil actually is attempting to provide two services. I’ll talk about this more at after my actual recommendations.

However, it would suffice to say that one of these functions is to provide a platform for people to be able to share their creations, while also receiving a bit of revenue from it. This seems to be the primary purpose of the actual Coil website. Currently, the only avenue through which people share on the website is blogging, though there may be other ways in the future.

To that end, I will be lending my time today to write about things which I believe will make this a better platform to create and blog on. And so, without further ado, here are 3 Ways to Improve Coil:

1. Add Topics and Subjects

I believe integrating and tagging articles with subjects and topics, as well as re-gearing the website’s navigation around them, will deeply improve the user experience on Coil. As a basis for this, I’m going to compare Coil to another platform: Medium. It’s not inappropriate to compare the two, as Coil was (first?) announced by Ripple’s former CTO on that platform.

Coil and Medium share many similarities as writing platforms. However, when I browse the medium website, not only am I given popular and recent articles to read up front, but in the top menu bar, I’m given a selection of topics of interest grouped by subject which I can browse and read from. Furthermore, when I first sign up for Medium, I’m presented with a choice of the kinds of subjects and topics I’m interested in reading about. After making my selection, I’m then given both popular and recent articles related to what I wanted. After I’ve read a few articles, I’m encouraged to participate (through “claps”) as well as follow the author of the article if I so desire. There is then a list of other recommended articles both by the author and those with similar subjects.

This kind of catering from Medium really helps it feel as if the platform is catered towards me as a consumer. Just as many would on Instagram, Facebook, or Youtube, I’ve spent a lot of time perusing Medium just reading article after article, without much thought spent on how much time has gone by.

I believe Coil can benefit from having this kind of interface and subscriber-based improvement. By having articles and blogs categorized by subject (as determined by the author), subscribers would be able to look at and browse for things which pertain to their interests, as well as the authors who write on those subjects. Letting subscribers choose their own content through signing onto topics they would want to read allows the readers to do the filtering for themselves, rather than having to rely on a universal search algorithm. And then, having recommended reading after finishing an article also helps to keep the flow of reading and engagement higher.

2. Adding a Comments Section for Articles

Currently, the only two ways creators can see engagement on Coil is through payment pointers and the “like” button. However, while these tools can be useful, they don’t really keep readers and authors actively engaged with each other on Coil’s website.

There were many times after writing my blogs that I wanted to end by encouraging readers to give me feedback. However, because Coil doesn’t currently allow this on the website, I couldn’t get that engagement. As a creator, one of the best ways to get feedback (even if critical) is through a comments bar or section. It’s a great way to learn to write better and participate in conversations through what we’ve made.

The biggest worry, especially in this day and age of the Internet, is trolls and bots overloading our comments sections with spam. And so, with this in mind, I suggest implementing a comments section the following ways:

First, allow authors to decide whether or not they would want people to comment on their blogs on a per article basis (and even as a default setting we can change). It would also be great to be able to allow authors to determine if only subscribers and/or followers could comment on their articles.

Second, allow authors and creators the ability to approve or block certain comments or subscribers (or even followers), to help keep out spam and trolls from our own feeds.

Third, to better keep out automated bots and trolls, it would be great to require some kind of CAPTCHA or similar input from readers to be able to comment.

Now, this implementation isn’t necessarily perfect, and since I’m not a software engineer or web developer, I don’t exactly know how difficult all of this would be to create. The only experience I’ve had is making my own website from Wordpress many years ago, and using plug-ins to keep out the riffraff as well as some minor html or javascript editing.

However, even if those specific ideas above aren’t the best way, I do believe adding a comments section through which authors and readers can interact would really bring the platform’s engagement up to a much better level.

3. Allow Tipping on Coil

In my opinion, one of the greatest things to happen in the XRP ecosystem in the past few years is the development of the XRP Tipbot. Using it, I can tip XRP to various other creators or people on Reddit, Twitter, and Discord platforms. It’s an amazing way to show my support to others, and receive support from people as well.

I believe this can be implemented in two simple ways as well. In addition to the “upvote” button, there could be a tip button which readers can use to tip creators directly from their Tipbot account (Coil or otherwise). In this way, subscribers can directly help the Coil authors they support, not just by sitting on a page to let Coil slowly pay for them.

The second way is to allow authors to tip commentators back. This helps to give authors the ability to give back to the “community” they are wanting to foster on the Coil platform. I would love not only to be able to talk to those who take the time to give me feedback on my blogs and articles, but also to tip the ones who have been especially helpful in this regard.

I think that this more active engagement will further allow authors to build an audience that is personal to them, rather than having Coil just be about subscribers who are feeding an overall web of monetization. I believe it will also (ultimately) help to build out Coil as a welcoming place for readership and creators alike.

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