Right now i view earning as a great onboarding tool for consumer apps, since nobody is used to being paid for their time on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Spotify, etc…

Product-market fit remains the best indicator of long-term success (you can’t pay people enough to use a bad product), but for consumer social apps like Fountain & SN where network effects are very important, this makes a lot of sense as a way to cross the chasm and get a critical mass of users.

Like all good growth hacks, there will come a time where earning money is expected, and it will be harder for apps to get new users with this onboarding strategy.

In the meantime, consumers are going to benefit with actual rewards that they can use anywhere, and that’s a great thing. The earning genie isn’t going back in the bottle.

I suspect that over time, the highest value sat-earning apps will be things like Stakwork where you’re actually performing a task that someone is willing to pay for the completion of… aka a job or a bounty.