Bigger Than Bitcoin? I interviewed the creator of the NEW blockchain called Optio

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Did you know that the Facebook user agreement, the Terms
and Conditions is fifteen thousand words long. Most people don't
read fifteen thousand words in a year.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Now. Some might argue that they're doing a bad thing, but.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
The reality is Facebook is a publicly traded company.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
The protection of personal data, I think everyone knows it's
a problem.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Yeah, we make jokes about it.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
I was just talking about this yesterday and now I'm
getting an had about it.

Speaker 4 (00:23):
Is Google listening to me? Yes? Yes, the answer is y.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, absolutely so.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
I designed a blockchain and the idea was the individual
users would own their data and they would be able
to if they want to monetize if they can, but
if they don't want to, they don't have to.

Speaker 4 (00:40):
Brian, thank you for coming on, man, I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Our story kind of goes back a little bit because
obviously you work with Parlor, and then Parlor has been
kind of helping me out a little bit behind the scenes.
So if you wouldn't mind just kind of giving yourself
a quick introduction, let us know who you are, and
we'll go from there.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Awesome. Yeah, my name is Brian Ferry and I am
the vice chairman of Parlor.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
And in the industry for a very long time, probably
longer than you've been alive. And interestingly, I built a
project back in the late nineties, and I'll tell you
the idea, and you tell me if you think it
was a good idea. So the idea was users could
come to this site. And back in those days, there
were no digital cameras. There were only you know, film cameras, right,

(01:22):
So you'd come to the site, you plug in your scanner,
and you could scan photos of your kids, you know,
Johnny playing baseball, whatever, and then you would put them
on your page, and you would invite your family and
friends to gather around and they could make comments and
share your photos and whatnot. We sold that project to Intel.
Intel thought it was really dumb, said nobody would ever

(01:44):
do it, so they sold it to Kodak, and then
Kodak filed for bankruptcy. So I like to say I
was the first Facebook that never was right, you.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
Had the first indineer of Facebook. And then what came
after that in your journey, I guess what brought you
to Parlor.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
So after that?

Speaker 1 (02:00):
In fact, in two thousand and two, I gave a
speech at a conference and I talked about where the
future of the Internet was going, and I talked about
how these big tech companies would start to collect personal
data and they would sell it and monetize it, and
that the users would give up pretty much everything, right,

(02:21):
and I was laughed at. Everybody thought, there's no way
that's going to happen. Then a couple of years later,
Facebook come out. I've been in the tech space for
a really long time, and in twenty fifteen, I had
a tragic event in my life. My wife passed away
in her sleep, and in the aftermath of that, it
was determined that she had been given two different medications

(02:45):
that interacted with each other. And the reason that happened
is she was being treated by two different physicians in
two different medical systems, and they weren't sharing the data.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
They weren't sharing the information.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
So about four years after that, I started working on
a project that would make it so people could own
their medical data, because we don't own our medical data.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
It's owned by this system exactly.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
And so that brought me to blockchain tech, and I
was fascinated by blockchain. At first, I thought crypto was
kind of a dumb I didn't get it. I turned
down five hundred bitcoin to design a logo. So that
was one of my great things that I've done. Anyway,
So I did a project where I was working on

(03:31):
decentralizing medical and health data. And then right around the
end of twenty nineteen, you know, I saw what was
going on in the world as far as you know,
social media sort of manipulating the conversation, and of course,
then the election of January twenty twenty, and I was like,
this has got to stop. And so so I designed

(03:54):
a blockchain, and the idea was that the individual users
would own their data and they would be able to
if they want to monetize it, they can, but if
they don't want to, they don't have to. And I
was like, I got to build a social network to
do this, and so I started working on it, and
I ended up meeting Yasser El Jabali is of course
the chairman of Parlor, and I had contracted with him

(04:17):
to help me build a social network. And one afternoon
he called me and said, why do you want to
build another social net? Like there's plenty of them out there,
and so I told him my idea and he was
blown away and he said, well, I just acquired Parlor,
and so we came together and we relaunched Parlor, and
we integrated it to the blockchain and we make it so.

(04:40):
You know, it's one thing to say you have a
free speech platform. It's an entirely different thing to say
you have a platform where the users own their data.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
Right.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
And I think this is a good point to give
the context of Parlor because and forgive me if I
say something wrong, Parlor was kind of the original free
speech app.

Speaker 4 (04:58):
Yes, you know when they first came out.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Then they got blamed for things on January sixth and
they got taken off of AWS.

Speaker 4 (05:07):
Yeah, forgive me if I get anything of this run this.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
I know, so there's parts of that that are wrong.

Speaker 3 (05:11):
Okay, how about you tell the story, yecause you know
way more than idea.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
So, Parlor between twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen was the
fastest growing social media on the planet. It was at
one time, at one point it was the most downloaded
app in the App Store, and it was becoming so
popular because it was a place where you weren't censored
and you could, you know, have free speech. And a

(05:37):
lot of people reported in the news that it was
involved some in the January sixth stuff. It was later
determined by the FBI that it had nothing to do
with it. But I have my own theory as to
why AWS closed it off and shut it off. It
was a business decision, right, and they were I think

(05:59):
they were trying to get more of than Twitter's business.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
And it was seen as a competitor to Twitter back then.

Speaker 4 (06:07):
This is before Elon must Spot Twitter.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yes, so it was back when Twitter had a lot
more control and hands the people down.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (06:14):
And AWS is Amazon website.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
And their web services yep.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
And the original owners of Parlor, I don't think they
were really tech people, and so when AWS shut them off,
they couldn't figure out how to move it and.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
Get it back up.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
It went dormant for a couple of years until we
acquired it. But during that time, this is the fascinating part,
is seventeen point five million people still had it on
their phone.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
They didn't never delete it off their phone.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
So when we stood it back up and announced to
the world that that it's back, it just came back
really really fast.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
How many What was the high for active users for
Parlor back in the hey.

Speaker 1 (06:51):
Years, It was close to twenty million, So most of
the users are still there.

Speaker 3 (06:55):
Wow, and now we're now it's just trying to get
them back active on the platform.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Yeah, and so we stood it back up in April.
We've been kind of quiet. Every month, we're adding new users,
but we haven't done a real big announcement to the world.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
And there were a couple of reasons for that.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
One was we're refactoring the app, creating a better user experience.
As you know, we launched PlayTV, we launched Burst so
and Burst is you know, like a TikTok alternative, and
we did all that by and are integrating into the blockchain.
So users when they're using the app are earning these

(07:32):
rewards that they can turn around and use to get
discounts on products, buy products, and services. So it's really
kind of a powerful ecosystem where the users are really
in control of their experience.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
So, yeah, would you mind for just the listeners that
don't quite understand, Like I know, blockchain is one of
those things. It's a it's a buzzword that's thrown around
a lot. If you could give us the importance of
why you believe the blockchain is so important to the
future of free speech and the future of your app,
Like why blockchain did you go down this route?

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yep? So there's a couple of reasons.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
One is, we want the users to benefit from their data, right,
And what blockchain allows us to do is collect that data,
but we broadcast it on a blockchain. And what that
does is it it gives you the power to own
the data, but yet not have the data centrally stored

(08:28):
in the database.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Right. So, and we use cryptography to do that.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
And then because of the blockchain's immutable nature, meaning once
a record is stored, it can't ever be unstoraged, right
or changed, what that allows us to do is to
track your actions and as you're using the app and
the actions that you're taking, we use a blockchain protocol
called proof of impact. So the more impact you make

(08:55):
in the app, the more the more rewards you learn.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Right.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
So I kind of describe it like frequent flyer miles
for personal behavioral data.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Sure, that makes sense. And then so how do you
see this?

Speaker 3 (09:08):
And I was going to ask atleast as when I
talked to her, but I'm talking to you and I
so it's a question I cued up for her. Parlor
was booming because Twitter, Facebook, they were all just owned
and bought for and paid for and there's just no
opportunity for speed speech. Now we're jumping into an Elon
Musk X world, So it is it's different playing ground

(09:29):
for you guys. Yes, what do you feel is going
to be your competitive edge? Something that well, we're supportive
of X, We're thankful for all the stuff that Elon
Musk has done and releasing the Twitter files. Where do
you see Parlor's competitive pitch coming back and be like, hey, guys,
open that app back up, come back to Parlor.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
What are those competitive So there's a few things.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
There's a lot of things that X is trying to
do that they haven't done yet, which we have right
so we've done all of the things that they want
to do now. I don't think it's about functionality. I
don't think that it's about other apps. I don't think
it's about other tools. What I think is the audience

(10:11):
on X and the audience on Parlor are there for
different reasons. And so when I talk to influencers like you,
when you talk to our audience and then you talk
to the audience on X or on Instagram, you're really
talking to two different audiences right In one, you're speaking

(10:33):
kind of to those who might not think like you,
and parlor is really about people that think like you.
So the messaging is different, the opportunity and the experience
is different. I believe that in the future I might
not be alive this long, But in the future, I
believe decentralizing is going to change fundamentally every industry.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
And let me give you an example.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Some might say that it is it's a little nefarious
for Facebook to collect twenty five thousand data points on
every user, then use AI to create a digital twin,
and then target you with information that you didn't even
know you wanted. Right, some might say that's nefarious and

(11:24):
maybe even evil. Did you know that the Facebook user agreement,
the Terms and conditions is fifteen thousand words long. Most
people don't read fifteen thousand words in a year, let
alone before they sign up for Facebook. Right now, some
might argue that that is bad, that they're doing a
bad thing, But the reality is Facebook is a publicly

(11:45):
traded company, and that means that the executives Mark and
the team have a legal responsibility, a fiduciary responsibility to
make as much money as they can for their right
exactly right, He's doing his job, so it's not we
shouldn't look at it as bad.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
We should say he's dang good at doing what he does. Right.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
But that's the problem with centralization when you have when
you have shareholders that you're beholden to, you have a
fiduciary responsibility to take advantage of your customers.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Right now, I believe in the future all.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Businesses will decentralize, will go away from that model.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Now that's going to take some time, right, but think about.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
This, you and I we have an iPhone, yes, right,
do you know that we are a part of one
of the biggest problems on the planet because we own
an iPhone? The lithium minds that mine the lithium for
the batteries in our phone. You know what the average
age of a lithium minor is eleven, that's the average age.

(12:52):
So we're participating in child labor. Now, we don't do
it knowingly, and certainly if we knew and we thought
about it, we might go, oh, right, well, why do
these mining companies use child labor? Same reason they're beholding
to their shareholders. So as decentralization starts to happen. I

(13:14):
believe it's going to make an impact in all the
biggest problems that we face in the world.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
It's a unique concept because when people think of crypto,
they think of bitcoin, they think of ethereum, they think
of doge coin, for example. But the exciting thing. I
actually had someone that was really into crypto on the podcast,
and what he was most excited about was not about
the crypto coins, was about the technology of the blockchain,
that's exactly, and what that could mean for so many
different utilities in our life. And I've never considered it

(13:43):
to be I've you know, we even talked about like
housing deeds and like different really cool things that you
could do on the blockchain. But the protection of personal
data is something that I think everyone knows it's a problem.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
I think everyone just, yeah, our data is stylet there.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Well, yeah, we make jokes about it.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
I was just talking about this yesterday and now I'm
getting an ad about it.

Speaker 4 (14:03):
It's great. Is Google listening to me? Yes?

Speaker 2 (14:07):
The answer is yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
So this concept of using blockchain of the technology to
keep things protected and decentralized is a really unique thing,
and you may have mentioned earlier, and I've forgive me
if I didn't hear you when we first got going.
Is Parlor the first social media app to be built
on a blockchain?

Speaker 2 (14:23):
No? Interesting, No, there's several that have tried to do it.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
The heavy lift in any project is getting millions of users.
Parlor is the first blockchain project with millions of users.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
That's social social media.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
So last question, and I know we have a million
things to do. I could talk to you for an
hour or maybe I'll have to give you on my
actual relationship. It'll be fun because like the way my
brain works is when I hear something, I process and
I'm like, oh, I now need to know this next thing.
So we could talk for thirty minutes, but just for
the sake of time, I have one more question, the
unique thing what drew me to Parlor. Obviously, you guys

(15:01):
have been nothing but kind to me, reaching out, and
I haven't evenally even announced to the like any of
my followers, that I haven't even talking to you guys yet.
But when the unique things was connecting PlayTV and then
your social media account on Parlor. Yes, and again, forgive
me if I say anything from from what I've understood
from talking to Ryan and some others is if someone

(15:21):
would post a video on PlayTV and they get a
follower from that video on PlayTV, that follower transfers also
to their parlor account.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Correct.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
So that to me is the one of the unique
things that you have different than YouTube, Instagram X is
this unique feature to have an algorithm on a video player,
because that's what X is missing. Yes, right now, X
doesn't have a video player. Videos are abed and you
can scroll, but it's it's still mainly text. And then

(15:51):
you have YouTube, which is all video, but it's not
a social media platform. Sure they have posts, but it's
it's a video platform. You guys under one brand and
one blockchain has been able to connect both. Do you
see that as being something that's going to be attractive
to creators and people.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
So, and that's what I was talking about when I
mentioned that X is trying to do some things that
we already have done.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Right.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
So, you know, I've been in tech a long time
and the most interesting changes in tech are not revolutionary.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
They are evolutionary.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
And the problem is when you're a when you're a giant,
moving really fast is really hard.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
It's big ships turn slow.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
So one of our advantages is that we got all
that done before we had all this infrastructure problem and
all these other problems that come along. But I don't
I think the most interesting and compelling part, especially for
content creators, is your You own your content. When you
post something on YouTube, it's gone. You don't own that

(16:56):
content anymore. And here you own the content and you
get to decide how it gets used and monetized, and
you will earn a significant amount more than those big
tech companies share.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
When do you expect to have that program for creators
rolling out on PlayTV today?

Speaker 2 (17:15):
We announced it today.

Speaker 4 (17:17):
Wow, So I mean this is breaking.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
I feel like we should post this podcasts breaking news
segment right now for Parlor. Well, Brian, first of all,
thank you for coming on. I mean, I think this
is not going to be the last time we talk
to each other as we keep growing. And for those
that haven't joined Parlor, y's the call to action joy Parlor.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
You can Followvily. I have an account on Parlor.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
I don't know if you have an account on Brian
Dylan on Parlor and go to play TV download play
tv and I'll tell you my personal What I absolutely
love about both is what we just said. It connects
to both. If you find one on one, you can
find them on the other end. It's just a beautiful thing.
And it's just going to get better. It's just going
to get better. Yes, and I'll add this.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
When you go download the apps, go down into the
settings and go set up your Parlor pay wallet, because
you will immediately start earning rewards for making an impact
in the community.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
So literally, by using the app, people can get rewards. Yes, man,
it sounds like a win win for me. It's awesome, awesome. Well,
thank you man for coming on the show. Guys, if
you haven't yet checked out Parlor, download the app, also
play TV download both of them and check us out there.

Speaker 4 (18:24):
Thank you for coming the show, man, I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Thanks thanks for having me.

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