The World Wide Web and its resources have become entwined with everything people do, from basic banking activities to dating and keeping up with family. Yet, most of this arose as a byproduct of Web2, or Web 2.0. One of Web2’s defining aspects was the rise of social media. Centralized social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more recent entries like TikTok have reshaped how people interact, exchange information, launch businesses, and market. Web3 social media platforms share similar disruptive effects, but carry them out differently. Let’s dig into what some of those differences are, and which five social media platforms you should keep an eye on.
What Is Decentralized Social Media?
For anyone following the ups and downs of the cryptocurrency market, one of the big selling points is its underlying blockchain technology. What makes it so appealing is that it employs a decentralized ledger. Without drifting too far into the technical explanation, think of it as lots of different people (or computers) hanging on to a copy of all the transactions. Combine that with solid encryption and you’ve got a pretty secure, if not necessarily stable, method of trading securities or assets like cryptocurrency.
A decentralized social media platform aims to employ a similar structure on the decentralized ledgers of blockchain. These platforms rely on independently run servers, rather than independently stored ledgers. So, a decentralized Twitter alternative will have multiple servers running the software. Among other benefits, that removes the problem of a single point of failure: If one server goes down, it doesn’t cripple the entire service. It also provides superior user control, potentially enabling free speech and limiting censorship.
In essence, by disconnecting social media from corporate control, a decentralized platform offers an opportunity for true user-owned content.
How Is User-Owned Content Different?
A popular term used in marketing circles is user-generated content (UGC). This refers to the content that an actual product or service users create, which heavily features the product or service. The content creators aren’t paid for the content and aren’t sponsored by the company. In practice, though, it amounts to free advertising. For example, the camera company GoPro garnered enormous benefits from this kind of content via YouTube videos of people engaged in various sports activities. Yet, in many ways, this content remains under the control of corporate entities. YouTube, for example, can take videos down. Other social media platforms also maintain the right to delete content, which often results in legitimate content being taken down, including legitimate advertising and marketing content.
With a decentralized social media platform, the power to upload or delete content typically rests with the users themselves. They decide what gets posted and what comes down, based on their principles. That makes their content truly user-owned because no third party can arbitrarily choose to delete their images, videos or comments with little or no recourse for the users. It also means that people can upload content that might disturb the sensibilities of others. For example, a user in a location where the government or police are engaged in violence against their citizens can upload videos without concern that an admin in an air-conditioned office somewhere will censor it.
Web3 Social Media vs. Traditional Social Media Platforms
In some ways, you can distinguish a Web3 social media platform from a traditional social media platform by whether it’s decentralized or centralized. If it’s decentralized, it’s probably a Web3 platform. If not, it’s probably a traditional platform. Of course, the differences run a lot deeper than that.
One of the guiding principles of traditional social media, much like websites, is that you want to keep people on the platform as long as possible. That often means limiting what content can move between platforms, and even limiting what other sites you can link to on a given platform. By keeping displayed content limited to what appears on the parent platform, you encourage users to stay on that platform. Decentralized social media will typically not limit where content comes from or where links will lead users. In essence, it helps democratize content distribution.
Ideally, Web3 platforms will also operate on a permissionless basis, as well as on a trustless one. In other words, you won’t rely on third parties to grant you access to the platform, nor will you rely on them to mediate your interactions with other users. This should facilitate community-building in the way Web2 social media platforms have promised, but has ultimately failed to deliver.
Best Web2 Social Media Platforms For Web3 Marketing
While Web2 social media platforms aren’t always the best for privacy and user control, they’re still enormous platforms for marketing the content you post on Web3 platforms. While the best site for any content will vary, big Web2 hitters are generally your best options for promoting your work. These sites include:
Instagram
YouTube
Facebook
TikTok
While Twitter used to be a huge platform for creators, the change in ownership – and uncertainty about policies moving forward – has driven a lot of creators off the platform. Many people are waiting for things to shake out before deciding if they’re staying or going back.
With these essentials out of the way, let’s look at some of the big Web3 platforms you’ll want to keep an eye on as a creator.
Diamond App
Diamond is a content-focused platform that lives up to the Web3 dream. It’s decentralized and uses blockchain to store content such as blogs and social graphs. That makes the content posted there much more portable between different apps. It also facilitates monetization for creators looking to build audiences.
Audius
Audius caters to the music crowd, both creators and listeners, serving as a streaming service with some crypto baked into the app’s DNA. It’s blockchain-based, with the audio files time-stamped at the time of upload. While the monetization of the app is still finding its feet, the audio tokens people can earn are tradeable on several crypto exchanges.
Steem
Steem is less a social platform in and of itself, and more of a framework for other social media platforms. Its core design lets people build social apps, and supports blogging platforms as well. It employs the basic decentralized option of blockchain technology, but its main attraction for creators is that it rewards them with in-house cryptocurrency. While the exact mechanics of the rewards are complex, the idea is that there is a rewards pool for creators. The platform keeps values stable by soft-pegging the cryptocurrency to the U.S. dollar.
Minds
The Minds platform promotes itself as an alternative to Facebook, but also includes some monetization features more common to platforms like Patreon. The platform rewards users for interacting with it by posting new content. The rewards take the form of Ethereum cryptocurrency. Users can spend cryptocurrency on the site to fund their advertising. They can also support other creators on the site by pledging some or all of their crypto rewards to subscriptions to other users.
Plai Labs
Plai Labs is something of a unique animal in the Web3 world. It’s built a full-blown metaverse social media platform, named Massina, and aims to develop video games for the Web3 world. Its first foray into that gaming space is called Champions Ascension, in which users earn rewards through their play. While the game remains in the early stages, it also leverages the unique facet of using NFTs as the primary character design. While the NFTs all originate in-house at this point, and must be acquired at auction, the company plans down the road to let users upload their digital assets.
Summary
The world of Web3 and the social media platforms that will live there are still firmly in the development stage, but they’re developing fast. These platforms will reject the received wisdom of centralized social media and embrace the opportunities for decentralization that blockchain provides. Their websites will allow for much greater privacy and content mobility between apps and help secure user-owned content for the creators. While still in its nascent stages, the cryptocurrency potential of blockchain also provides options for rewarding users on these sites for participation, content creation and even gameplay. With those options in place, it’s only a matter of time before the internet sees a new revolution.
