Intro

Farcaster has played host to many an influential survey. It makes sense; the signal to noise ratio is astoundingly high, with the opinions of seasoned builders, web3 users, artists and rebellious youth all coming together in one bourgeoning, positive-sum space. It feels good. It looks good. It is good.

Because we were excited to both enliven and tap into the potential of this community, Ben and I decided to create Surveycaster. The goal of our good little samaritan bot is to generate conversations that matter to the community and reveal otherwise hidden public sentiment that can be useful to us as builders and humans.

This article summarizes some of the key results we've seen since the launch of Surveycaster five months ago.

Want to support the next phase of Surveycaster? Vote for us in the Purple Prop House, or follow us on Farcaster

#3 - When will AI be our fren?

AI is so hot right now. For those of us who love tech, it represents the most significant acceleration of human capabilities we've seen in our lifetimes. Developers are 40% faster. Marketing is 10X cheaper. Writing is...well, not yet better, but it will be. One day.

And so we asked the logical question: When will AI be our fren?

...and the results were pretty surprising!

More than half of us expect to have a true AI friend in the next seven years. I'd venture to guess that some of us use it that way...now. It's going to get especially weird when that friend is embodied with the Apple Vision Pro [shivers].

Favorite comment:

#2 - You get a money, and you get a money, and you get a money.

When our AI overlords have taken over, what comes next? Sure, they'll be our friends, but they'll also be stealing our jobs, right? And therefore our livelihoods? Well, one solution that's been tossed out is UBI (Universal Basic Income). And...people have thoughts on this one. When we polled the FC population, we got a whopping 30 responses.

And the results saw a house divided.

Some folks thought UBI wouldn't be necessary - why even have money in a post scarcity world? Others thought it would be demotivating. But many both think it's necessary and that it's absolutely coming.

Favorite comment:

#1 - What's in a (Purple) Name?

The original and most highly engaged @survey of all time - who should retain the name Purple, between the Purple App (now known as Jam) and Purple, the public goods DAO? The DAO came first, but the app had traction. Was there room enough for all? Or did the matching names cause too much confusion to coexist?

The results, in this instance, were pretty unanimous. Also, check the OG chart visual courtesy of @poll, which we used before the deep purple visual transition.

In the end, @betashop (founder of Jam) provided an exceedingly gracious response - deciding to change the name of the app - and the tension was relieved.

If you've made it this far, we've got a little easter egg for you - a Surveycaster NFT is coming, and it's nothing like whatever you're expecting 👀. Be sure to follow @survey to get whitelist access.

Thanks for reading!

Want to support the next phase of Surveycaster? Vote for us in the Purple Prop House, or follow us on Farcaster