Much of this thread's content is out of date. Please refer to this newer thread for up-to-date information on the Factom protocol.

URL, if you prefer: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5077258

Hello folks, this thread's top post has been updated to note that much of the original content is drastically out of date and that there was consensus for a new thread management plan, meaning there is now a new thread to cover and keep up to date on all the good things regarding the protocol.

Link to the new thread

URL, if you prefer: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5077258

We'll lock this thread soon, but wanted to give a chance for any of you to wrap up any ongoing conversations here first

Dear Factom supporters,

We haven't posted here in a while as this thread has become a den for speculators, fudsters, and people who care more about making a profit with FCT rather than talk about Factom and what we are trying to do.
However we just want to make sure you guys know Factom Inc. is a well funded company, we have enough money to go on for a long while, and our team is growing at a steady pace.
We also want to make sure you are aware the company is not engaged in market making/trading in any way, shape or form. This is not what we do, we build software.

One piece of advice we want to give is do not risk money you are not ready to lose. Make your own judgement and do not listen to ANYONE on this thread, the promoters or otherwise.
Do not base your judgement on anything you read positive or negative on this thread nor anything else that doesn't come from our official channels and from Factom itself.

FCT are needed to make entries into Factom once they are converted and burned in the process. That is their main function, anything else is speculation.
From our side we are trying to do our best to make Factom known to every company we deem could use a system for honest record keeping, identity, and so on.
That's what we are concentrating on in terms of marketing and business development.

We will never invest any resource in promoting FCT on its own nor we will spend much time to post on this thread either. We like to leave the discussion to the community.
Our Brian Deery and Paul Snow, who are incredibly busy, occasionally post here (bless them) if someone has a technical questions or queries related to the network and software.
Milestone 2 (M2) also known as "Factom Federation" is being worked on every day by our developers and tested by our QA team. We will not release it until stable enough for the community to try out and take it from there.

A reminder of our official channels below, we encourage you to follow, like and subscibe:

• https://factom.com
• https://twitter.com/factom
• https://facebook.com/factomproject
• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZlpFmzDKrSmTObhSPuhdSw/featured
• https://www.reddit.com/r/factom/

Dear all,

We like this forum for discussion about Factom, organic discussion between Factom supporters. However for updates we actually use our social media channels.
Some of our Devs (i.e. Brian Deery and Paul Snow) occasionally post on this forum too trying to answer support questions as best as they can and with the little time they have.
They both are working very hard, together with the rest of the team, to deliver on our next software release.

When Milestone 2 is ready we will announce it on all our channels and here as well.
But we are not going to reply to every question or trying to calm down worries regarding FCT price, nor give a weekly update if there's no update to give.

FCT price is what it is, it goes up and down like every other coin.
It may go up in the future it may not, make sure you guys evaluate your risks appropriately.
We don't spend any time promoting FCT and we won't do that in the foreseeable future.
We don't give investment advice and we believe the value of FCT will reflect the value of the network when it goes live after Milestone 3 and beyond.

If you want to follow Factom more closely we recommend following us on:

• Blog: https://factom.com/blog
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/factomproject
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/factomproject
• Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/factom
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZlpFmzDKrSmTObhSPuhdSw

The above channels are were we are most active.

They didn't ask us for any payment nor to be added to the list. When the list went up it had 100 companies and projects listed already. They tweeted at us saying congrats for #21 on the list.
This is how we found out there was such a list, we simply tweeted it ourselves too. They have yet to contact us for anything else but keep tweeting to us every week mentioning the rank we achieve.

If you read carefully anyone can add themselves to the list, their admins get back to you after a week if you are approved or not. If they ask for money at that stage we don't know.
This is our side of the story.

And this is how the ranking works according to their page:

Our first tweet is also featured on the page and we will keep retweeting if and when they do.

All downloads are here: https://github.com/FactomProject/distribution. There are links to it on the guide you mentioned above.

Work in progress, including a lot of testing and bug fixing then more testing and bug fixing. Then repeat until we are ready to deliver.

Dear all, after an unexpected move of our thread to Altcoins/Announcements we have finally managed to move back to our original location.
We want to make sure that Factom or Factoids are not seen as an altcoin because it is not.
Of course FCT is a tradable token but its intended use is to allow to get access to the Factom network by being converted to Entry Credits.

On the other end Factom currently relies on the Bitcoin blockchain to anchor its data so we believe Project Development is the best place for this thread.
Thanks for your continued support, we are happy to have you with us.

Interesting article from Factom’s Chief Scientist Brian Deery, check it out and feel free to add your comments

https://redd.it/4eotn5

Email hello@factom.com for support.

No we don't, we have a command line and GUI wallet.

https://factom.com/howto for more info.

Store link corrected, typo! 

https://factom.com/entry-credits

Check our guides here: https://factom.com/howto

One thing you need to understand, as Brian mentioned, is that Factoids are not something Factom will or ever will spend Marketing resources on.
We have always been clear what Factoids are, they give access to the protocol by being converted to Entry Credits.

When you buy Factoids on an exchange you are not investing in Factom, you are speculating out of your own judgement. It's a free market and everyone is also free to do what they want.
There seems to be a lot of this going on recently, possibly from people who is trying to hedge away from Bitcoin seen the current debate on block size.
But this trend may or may not last much longer so be very careful where you put your money.
If we wanted to promote (or as they say pump) Factoids we would have put this thread in altcoins/announcements. We didn't.
However we had an old thread there but we decided to take it down as it was a distraction and unnecessary.

What Factom has been doing and will continue to do is to attend as many Bitcoin/Blockchain/Fintech related conferences in the world to promote what Factom is trying to achieve.
We have a for profit organization, Factom Inc, apart from the Factom Foundation (non-profit) and we are raising funds through regular Venture Capital to fund our operations.
One of Factom Inc purposes is to promote the use of the protocol by initiating relationships with corporations. And we are doing pretty well on that end.
In some cases we can announce our partnerships in some others we cannot due to non-disclosure agreements in place.
Our potential customers are not bitcoiners but corporations, financial institutions, governments, insurance companies, registries, etc...

Also check out our media page and see for yourself how much we have been talked about in the press: http://factom.com/media.
Not many other projects have had that kind of coverage, so we are very happy with our current Marketing professionals and efforts.

Milestone #2 is being worked on and we will release it when we deem it ready for release. All we can say is that it won't be much longer, can't be more precise.
If we release an ETA and we don't meet that for any reason how would you feel about it?
We are also working on improving our current GUI wallet, again to be released when ready.

We are looking forward to Milestone #2 as much as you guys are, as it will be more functional (with a better and more comprehensive API) and allow for greater use of our system
which in turn will increase usage of Entry Credits thus drive value. The team is full on it and yes they are also working on the new GUI wallet in parallel.

Worry not, we hear your feedback, bear with us and stay tuned, we will make announcements in due course.
We appreciate your support and are thrilled to have you with us.

Thanks for sharing.

We used to have a thread in Alternate cryptocurrencies > Announcements (Altcoins) but we decided to close it because FCT are not an alt.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=993334.0

We are happy with the attention we are getting on this thread, we don't need 1000 pages worth

Thanks for suggesting and for being an awesome community.

It's work in progress, we don't have an exact date yet but it's not too far away.
It's currently being finalized and tested by the team, however testing needs to be thorough for a stable release.

Stay tuned for announcements and calls for testing. 

We appreciate the feedback however the Chinese market is important for us as we are working with several companies out there.
Also how do you know the Chinese are doing what you say they are doing?

We know for a fact that our Chinese partners require FCT for their own testing purposes and in the future to run their systems of records.
What you are saying is your own opinion and should be treated as such. We do not promote speculation of FCT we have always been clear what FCT are used for but on the other end we cannot stop people doing what they want on the free open market which we don't control.