Original title: " Web3 Social Media Under the Lens "
Author: LiJin, Variant joint creation
Compilation: Yvonne, MarsBit
A decade ago, Linkin Park was the biggest band in the world, or at least the most popular music group on Facebook, with 56 million followers and 58 million likes. On Facebook, the band will not only announce music releases and concert dates, but also a 2013 video game.
Then, Facebook changed its algorithm, as it often does, to maximize the metric that brought it higher revenue. Guitarist Mike Shinoda said that Facebook told the band, "Every time you want to post and reach 100% of your fans, you need to spend advertising money" and that free posts will only be seen by a small part of the band's fans.
Algorithms separate artists and audiences.
But Facebook and other Web2 social media platforms have clearly declined due to algorithm tweaks and extractive monetization strategies. The advent of Web3 means that value no longer needs to be primarily attributed to social media intermediaries whose primary purpose is to facilitate connections. With Web3 social networking, more value flows to users and those content contributors who make the web valuable in the first place.
What is Web3 Social?
Last December, when I looked ahead to 2023, I predicted that decentralized social networks would be the "next big thing." These platforms can operate in a variety of ways, but they share some common characteristics, including censorship resistance and user control over data.
Web3 Social implicitly leverages blockchain technology and tokenization, distinguishing it from federation models and other forms of decentralization. Whereas Web2 social business models pretty much require collecting user data to drive advertising and subscription revenue, Web3 social can minimize or even completely eliminate platform disruption. In Web3 social, the goal is to connect users and attract developers, and then avoid affecting both as much as possible.
In February of this year, I had the pleasure of hosting a Twitter Spaces event with Web3 Social Graph Lens Protocol founder Stani Kulechov and Lens users to discuss how they evolved from traditional social networks.
For those unfamiliar with the protocol, Lens describes itself as "a user-owned, open social graph that any app can tap into." In practice, this means that instead of creating a profile, you create an NFT. Likewise, all your fan relationships and content are represented as NFTs. The entire social graph is on-chain, including the act of unfollowing someone by burning NFTs.
Third-party developers have built dozens of apps based on the Lens Protocol, including the social media app Lenster, the video-sharing platform Lenstube, and Phaver (a management app that combines elements of Yelp, Pinterest, and Amazon listings).
Three Characteristics of Web3 Social
Conversation members identified three defining characteristics of Web3 social from a creator perspective.
First, it's platform-less. Without a platform, no third party owns the content you create. Instead, you created it and you own it. By extension, Web3 social networks are also censorship-resistant, meaning social connections cannot be removed or restricted by the platform.
Second, Web3 social data is portable. As Shinoda discovered, Linkin Park doesn't own its own relationships with users, while Facebook does. However, Web3 has an advantage: it uses wallets, which allow for a direct relationship between users and creators so that you don't have to constantly rebuild your fan base; even if the personal social protocol is closed, the wallet remains.
The end result is that neither followers nor creators are tied to a certain platform. Shane Mac, CEO of XMTP Labs, said he was inspired to co-found the company, which develops a protocol for Web3 messaging, to avoid a repeat of the Linkin Park encounter. “Every time you build an audience on Web2, then you just keep building new audiences, and then you lose touch with those audiences over and over again,” he said. “I think the pattern here has fundamentally What you’re saying now is that if you have to use an app to access your conversations, your network or your relationships, you don’t actually have that audience.”
Third, because it's Web3, it's composable. Just like DeFi benefits from money Lego, Web3 social protocols gain value and utility through applications built on decentralized social primitives. "It's reminiscent of when kids at Stanford were building apps on Facebook," says video creator Chris Comrie. Over time, however, Web2 platforms typically evolve from partnering with builders to competing with them (As Chris Dixon wrote in 2018), Web3 networks are more conducive to composition because they have always been optimized for cooperation. (See Jesse's 2019 article "Past, Present, Future: From Co-ops to Cryptonetworks.")
The result is a better service for creators and their fans.
These combined features create new monetization avenues.
The first we already know: the NFT series. For example, Shinoda launched a mixtape NFT for his Ziggurats project on Tezos in 2021. For example, NFTs allow musicians to reject recording and touring processes designed to drain their funds. By selling directly to fans and repurposing royalties, artists can make more money out of their revenue streams.
Lens goes a step further by turning every post into a collectible item. Followers who decide to follow/favorite pay the same way fans do on Patreon, minus a 5-12% platform fee and a processing fee per transaction (cryptocurrency, not credit card).
Plus, creators aren’t the only ones who can make money — so can curators. When retweeted posts are favorited by others, you can earn some income together with the artist. It's sort of like an affiliate link, where sites fill their pages with backlinks to Amazon and other retailers -- when someone clicks the link and buys something, the site gets a cut of the sale. Divide into small portions.
Those using the protocol can build tools that enhance monetization themselves. For example, Amplicata helps users earn rewards for retweets, connecting them to advertisers. This composability also means that benefits need not be limited to any one application. Content from one Lens app can be used on other platforms, enabling cross-app revenue sharing.
The end result of Web3 social is wider distribution, as creators now have tools to monetize smaller fan bases.
MarloWe Brett, head of NFT at Phaver, said: "[Record companies] have a certain standard or a certain person, they will promote development, and all other artists who may not meet certain standards will be marginalized." A conversation with a musician using Lens. “I think artists are discovering, at least in terms of what they say, that they have the ability to be completely authentic and fully themselves.”
In other words, creators can reach more niche audiences because they don't have to go through intermediaries to reach larger, more homogeneous audiences.
This is a natural extension of my 2020 "100 Real Followers" topic, when I wrote: "The global adoption of social platforms like Facebook and YouTube, the mainstreaming of the influencer model, and the rise of new creator tools , has changed the bar for success. I believe creators only need to accumulate 100 true fans instead of 1000, and pay them $1000 per year instead of $100. Today, creators can effectively start with less Make more money from fans."
While this theory still applies to the Web2 platform, it's a better fit for Lens, which optimizes user-creator interaction rather than platform monetization.
challenges remain
While many users are excited about the opportunities Web3 social brings, Lens must address several pressing challenges in order to survive and thrive.
The first is the question that plagues many decentralized networks: “Wen token?” The rumored AirDrop has already prompted some to start using the protocol in ways that don’t add value, but actually make the network less attractive to other users . Today, lens-based applications are rife with spam and bot activity, as well as low-quality engagement from AirDrop. Given the path dependence of social networks, this "network pollution" puts Lens' continued growth and vitality at risk.
Second, while I've discussed some of the shortcomings of existing social platforms, they have something that Web3 platforms don't: a large user base. In order to surpass the traditional web, Web3 social must capture unique directions that were not possible on the Web2 platform. Whether through NFT or otherwise, creator monetization is a compelling value proposition, but Web3 social also needs to provide a differentiated experience to ordinary users (not just creators). This could mean taking a financial or asset-first approach, allowing users to profit from their activities on the network.
