TL;DR
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In Web3, we are told how “decentralization is going to put us back in control of our data.” But decentralization is the tool in this scenario – so what’s the end result?
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For users: if you build followers on one social platform, it will follow you to every other platform built on the protocol (imagine your IG followers transferred to TikTok, YouTube etc.)
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For developers: anyone can build a Web3 social platform with this universal approach – without having to worry about building their own protocols/databases.
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But the REAL win? We own our ‘social graphs’. Social graphs are how companies like Facebook predict our buying behavior and how they sell billions of dollars in advertising.
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This threat of easy competition means that Web3 social platforms should: be nice, favor users over advertisers, continuously improve the user experience. Pretty neat right!?
Full story
Have you heard the saying, “people don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole”?
Another way to put it is, when people buy a tool, what they actually buy is an end result.
In Web3, we are told how “decentralization is going to put us back in control of our data.”
But decentralization is the tool in this scenario – so what’s the end result?
Let’s take a look at social media to see how decentralization can get us better results, starting here:
Each social media platform is just a different configuration of text, images, video and audio. But each platform has its own way of working (its own ‘protocol’).
In Web3, the approach to reshaping social platforms is:
“Why don’t we take that ‘way of working’ (the ‘protocol’) and make it open/accessible for everyone to build on?
However they configure the feed of text, images, video and audio is up to them – we just provide them with the same tools/rulesets.”
(Kind of like Build a bear, for social platforms. Same tools and materials – different results every time).
The result for users:
If you build followers on one social platform, it follows you to every other platform built on the protocol (imagine your Instagram followers seamlessly transferred to TikTok/YouTube/Snapchat etc).
There’s a reason those #deleteFacebook campaigns never work – it’s because we have nowhere else to go.
Decentralized protocols change this…
The result for developers:
Anyone can build a Web3 social platform with this universal approach – no need to worry about building your own protocols/databases from scratch.
And convincing people to try a new platform isn’t that hard, because all of their followers instantly switch.
But the REAL win?
We own our ‘social graphs’.
Social graphs are essentially just a big spreadsheet of the pages we follow, the posts we like, the ads we click, the videos we watch – basically every action/interaction we take/have on a social platform.
Social graphs are how companies like Facebook predict our buying behavior and how they can sell billions of dollars worth of ad placements each year.
Web2 platforms trade our free-to-use apps in exchange for our social charts.
In Web3, the platforms can access our social charts only if We allow them.
Combine that with our social followers joining us on every platform and you start to see the power shift back to users.
For example, if a platform starts doing something that its users collectively don’t like, a new competing version can be launched with relative ease…
And as users, we can instantly and seamlessly take ALL our content, followers, DMs and interaction history with us.
This threat of easy competition means that Web3’s social platforms:
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Play nice.
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Prefer users over advertisers.
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Continuously improve the user experience.
Pretty neat right!?
