What was it
ShareClout was a free and open source iOS app to share posts from the decentralised social media platform bitclout.com to Instagram stories.

Why I built it
ShareClout was really just an excuse for me to learn the programming language Swift. I was fed up of watching tutorials and wanted to learn through building my own thing.
Bitclout.com was built by the folks at DeSo, it's a proof of concept of what can be done on their decentralised social protocol. It immediately caught my attention through their innovation with "creator coins." I spent a lot of time on the platform and early on the team needed a hand growing it. I decided to help out by building a seemless way to share what was happening on the platform with the outside world. ShareClout allowed any user on bitclout.com to share posts right to their followers on Instagram. The hope was that people on Instagram would be intrigued and visit bitclout.com thus growing the small early community.


Results
ShareClout managed, at best, a handful of daily active users. The app stayed on Testflight and was free so I didn't make any money, although I did receive some bitcoin from the DeSo developer grant programme for my work.


Why it failed
ShareClout was built on a premise that I know understand to be completely untrue. That premise was the following: in order to grow a new social network (bitclout.com), you need to bring big creators from existing social networks (Instagram, Twitter etc) over.


This is not how you build a new social network. I've written about exactly how to grow a new social network from scratch here.


I'm actually pretty proud of this project and how it turned out. Sure it didn't make DeSo the viral social protocol it inherently has the capability for, but it did provide me with a few key realisations.
Firstly, that design comes much more naturally to me than engineering. I intended for ShareClout to be so much more elegant that it was, but I just didn't know how to translate my sketches into workable code. As such the final outcome succumbed to the constraints of my engineering.
Secondly, that building software takes way longer than you think it should.
Lastly, DeSo really was what sparked my interest in Web3. In some ways it is the signle project that propelled me into the crypto rabbit hole. I desparately want to continue building in the Web3 iOS space.