What the Hell is 'friend.tech' and Why is EVERYONE Talking About It?
TL;DR
It feels like friend.tech is everywhere right now..
With friend.tech, you buy a creator's shares (monetary value out), gain the ability to DM them, and can sell at a profit if/when the shares go up in price (monetary value in).
Bypassing app store terms and privacy agreements makes life easier for the developers of friend.tech - but those benefits don't necessarily extend to the end user.
Full Story
If you haven't been on X (formerly Twitter) over the past week or so, you might not have heard of friend.tech.
But, it feels like it's everywhere right now.
The basic concept behind the app is this:
You go to friend.tech → sign up/in with your X account → issue 'shares' of yourself on the app → anyone that buys your shares can DM you.
If demand to 'slide into your DMs' increases, the value of your friend.tech shares follow.
It's kind of like subscribing to someone's Patreon - but instead of paying a subscription, you pay a one-time fee and get a 'share' in return.
...shares that have the potential to go up in value.
Which makes the monetary value exchange a two-way street (potentially).
And that's friend.tech's hook:
With something like Patreon (or X's 'subscribe' feature), you buy a monthly creator subscription (monetary value out) and get access to private content.
With friend.tech, you buy a creator's shares (monetary value out), gain the ability to DM them, and can sell at a profit if/when the shares go up in price (monetary value in).
Here's what makes friend.tech's business model kinda genius:
Every time a share is bought/sold on the platform, friend.tech takes a 5% fee.
This structure yielded the creator(s) a cool $1M worth of Ethereum in just 24hrs, last Friday.
It piggy backs off X's network effects. Meaning new users don't need to sign-up to friend.tech - but simply sign-in using their existing X account.
That's smooth!
Friend.tech is not an App Store-based application. To install it, you have to go to the website, click the 'Share' button and choose the 'Add to Home Screen' option. (This adds a tile to your mobile home screen that links to the site).
The point of this round-about method being: Friend.tech doesn't need to pass any Apple/Android App Store terms and conditions agreements, or share any of its revenue with third party platforms/companies.
Now, here's where things gets murky...
Bypassing app store terms and privacy agreements makes life easier for the developers of friend.tech - but those benefits don't necessarily extend to the end user.
In fact, it could put them at risk.
When you click the link friend.tech's privacy policy on its homepage, you get a pop up that reads 'Coming soon!'.
Not great.
Personally, we're going to wait this one out.
But! If your curiosity gets the better of you, here're some tips on best practices from Ignas, a crypto nerd we found on X:
Safe travels out there, folks!