In the Web1 era, users were able to read information on the Internet. After the birth of Web2, users can freely and conveniently publish information and speech on the Internet. Anyone with a social media platform can now gain influence and have fans. However, when traffic is monopolized by the platform, creators and readers will face unfair coercion, such as the control of user information, exploitation of creators, and monopoly of opinions and public opinion. Can the decentralization of Web3 redefine social content?
This article is a summary of the AC Capital Panel meeting.
Q1: What is the core difference between Web3’s social content platform and Web2’s?
Silicon: There are mainly two points. One is that Web3 has a more open content pool, and the other is more flexible economic rules, namely the content distribution process and the benefit distribution process.
The first and biggest difference is the open content ecosystem of Web3. All content platforms in traditional Web2 are relatively conservative about their own content. Especially in the second half of the Internet, you will find that people basically do not open their content pools. For example, WeChat public accounts, its articles are difficult to be searched by Baidu or Google, and the same is true for other platforms. Web3 is more open and decentralized. On the technical level, for example, the application of decentralized storage technology can make the content pool more and more open. Mirror is an example that I think is particularly amazing. It is not only a product, but more like an infrastructure. It has accumulated a lot of good content pools, and then there will be many downstream products that focus on better distribution based on the content pool. From the perspective of the overall system, I think such a system must be more efficient, avoiding a lot of reinventing the wheel, so that more abundant rules and systems can be built like building blocks.
The second difference lies in economic rules. In the traditional Internet, in addition to the supply side and the demand side, the most important part of the content economy is the distribution link. There are only two distribution mechanisms in the traditional Internet, social distribution and algorithm distribution. Later, we found that the power of algorithm distribution is greater than social distribution. The reason is that there are many social nodes in the content economy for content dissemination. In the traditional Internet, their contributions cannot be incentivized, or their commonalities cannot be captured. In Web3, due to the emergence of economic rules, the advantages of this group of people will be magnified, their value will be reflected, and the platform can build more flexible and diversified economic rules to improve the efficiency of social node distribution.
Troy: I think the largest Web3 content platform that people can use now, in an intuitive sense, is not that its infrastructure is Web3, but that its content is about Web3. From this perspective, there is a recent product called Binance feed, which is not Web3 technology, but in terms of the number of users, it is the largest Web3 content platform, and it is a centralized content platform.
I was reflecting on whether the Web3 technology we provide really serves the product we make, whether it really solves the needs of users, or whether we can only solve some needs in our imagination? Then from this phenomenon, the decentralization of content storage is a good point. My ideal is that the concept of platform should not exist in the future, but everyone should form a consensus on how content should be stored, promoted, and distributed. Once this consensus is established, there should not be a platform to define how we publish something on this platform. So if we divide the entire content ecosystem into modules such as creation, dissemination, statistics, consumption, and reading, I think each module should be able to form some consensus. The actual practice is like a protocol, algorithm or solution, and then there are only some project initiators, and everyone goes to jointly open source and verifiable to do this thing, and everyone is happy to use it after the result is done. This is a possible form of the more ideal Web3 content platform in my mind.
James: The first point is the universal underlying database. Compared with Web2, Web3 emphasizes universality, permissionlessness and composability. The content of the Web3 platform can be retrieved and accessed by other platforms, and there will no longer be monopoly barriers between giants like Web2. The databases of Web2 content platforms are not interoperable, and each platform has built a moat, using user data as a way to monetize and monopolize resources. However, Web3 can exempt everyone from some repetitive functional designs, such as content management and distribution. Everyone does not need to repeatedly build their own cars behind closed doors, but only needs to explore the differentiated functions and necessary components themselves. This is a very essential change. Another point is the design of token incentives and economic models. Especially in the content platform area, if everyone has an airdrop expectation for something, there will actually be a lot of content generated by those who rely on incentives and wool-pulling. The quality of this part of content is very different from the spontaneously generated content. This is also a problem that our industry may focus on solving in the future. Web3 solves the problem of early users through token incentives, but whether these users will produce some high-quality content or affect the overall user perception of the platform, or even drive away high-quality users, is actually a more core issue.
Ahino: I think the biggest difference is decentralization itself. Through some incentives, more content creators, such as those who may have the desire to create but have not yet implemented their creation, can benefit in a more direct way, and at the same time, some incentives can make the entire creator ecosystem more prosperous. In Web2, what you see is what you get, that is, what you see is what you are recommended, but in Web3, what you build is what you get. In the process of building this thing, you will naturally see it, and then the thing you build is very interesting, and there are many like-minded people who join in to build it, and then get it.
Q2: What core issues are Web3 content platforms facing? For example, token incentives lead to low platform content quality. Do you have any opinions or good solutions?
Silicon: I think it is not just a problem faced by the content economy. I feel that it is actually something that most projects will encounter. In the first two rounds of the bull market, users of all projects were mainly investment-oriented, which is particularly harmful to content, because content is the most important thing in all tracks. If the incentive attribute of the economic model is too strong or the economic model cannot filter out good articles, it is very likely that there will be a bunch of low-quality articles on the platform. In the early days, many people will come in and remain active, but in the end they will find that the content itself is of low quality and it is difficult for users to settle down. Finally, the entire economic system will enter a death spiral; if the design incentive is too weak, it will not be able to achieve good growth, and there is no way to do a good job of creating a base for users. I think the most difficult problem may be the control of the degree of incentives.
Troy: I think the target users of the entire blockchain were not a very large user group, so many product functions were designed according to this thinking inertia. If our goal is to make a product that can really become a high DAU product used by many people, then we cannot follow some of the previous thinking paths. When we started an Internet business, 1 million DAU was a starting test phase, but now if we can achieve 1 million DAU, it is actually very good, then we may reflect on what went wrong in our growth strategy, why what we are doing is very different from Web2 from the perspective of web3 DAU. The initial growth of our product was actually very good. Discord users quickly reached 40,000 to 50,000, and the good thing was that there were not too many water army users. Our thinking was the same as many project parties, such as looking for other project parties to cooperate with and co-branded Space. These will have growth, but these are relatively linear and lack an explosive growth. The traditional approach can introduce a fixed user level, but if our goal is a high DAU, the growth strategy must be designed to be chain-like explosive. For growth, it is not just a growth campaign or activity, but is placed in product design. How can product design enable it to survive the cold start and then introduce more users through a chain approach?
Ahino: First of all, we don’t pursue everyone to be able to create good content. There is a certain threshold for creating good content, being willing to share it and being recognized by many people. So if we build a good Web3 social content distribution system or presentation platform, so that this group of people can get together, agree on and promote something, and let everyone create content for the same mission or to achieve a certain influence, it may be more motivated, and it will also make more people want to see and participate. Under the guidance of a vision recognized by everyone, the content can be made more refined and larger in scale.
Q3: How do you view building new social content relationships through X to Earn?
Troy: To Earn is essentially just a growth strategy for ReadON, because the focus of the content platform is still on content consumers. The core is still how to make a good product that can really enable users to benefit from the content.
The controversy of X to earn actually lies in what basis can you earn? Is it a long-term thing or a short-term Ponzi-like thing? The core difference lies in whether the project can still provide long-term economic incentives when it reaches a relatively stable state. If it can be achieved, there must be economic input from the outside.
This can be achieved in two situations. The first is that the user is not just using this product to earn money, but there are functions and values that the user is willing to even pay for, or is willing to repay the money earned in the game. cast. The second type, like ReadON, can create a platform for other project parties to come here to promote, market, and find content creators. This has clear external value input.
Silicon: I will talk about two details. First, when designing a model, why should users earn and what is the rationality? I think there are two good designs and one bad design for the Earn model.
The first purpose of good design is to increase user growth and motivate more people to use the platform in the early stage. In essence, these early users have contributed to the network value of the platform, so they deserve rewards. The second purpose is to describe the contribution of the early network effect. In to-earn products, many users contribute value to the entire process or ecosystem of the product, but the value may be too subtle or trivial, and it is impossible to capture this value under the traditional fiat-based transaction rules. In the Web3 platform, some rules can be designed to allow this group of people to receive corresponding incentives. The bad Earn design is that the Earn model destroys the quality of the entire content ecosystem.
Secondly, as a content platform, what is the long-term lifeline? The long-term lifeline may not be short-term growth, user volume, or short-term price, but whether there can be a good content creation incentive and a good content dissemination and screening mechanism in this ecosystem.
James: In the X to earn model, an important problem that all project parties encounter is that early participants have made money, and the pressure on the cash-out side is too great. After the project party has become popular, the user experience and the platform's economic system have not been maintained in time. If we regard the whole thing as a pool, some people want to make money from it, and there should be some people who come to this platform not to make money. For content platforms, it means that users really want to write or read content, and they really want to express their emotions or personal demands on the platform. This is a system that can survive for a long time. We know that the reason why many projects collapsed is that a large number of early users came in, everyone wanted to make money, and then cashed out and left, but not many people stayed for real needs. The core of solving this problem is still the need for high-quality and necessary social relationships and the generation of social content, plus subsequent processes and maintenance. For ordinary users, there is a very important thing called not migrating unless necessary. How to retain and maintain core relationships and core content is a problem that needs to be paid attention to when building a new social content platform through X to earn.
Ahino: The threshold for content creation is actually quite high, and how to implement the screening and distribution of high-quality content is a very important process. This can actually be completely handed over to the users. When users become Curators, first of all, it lowers the threshold for users to participate in content creation. On the other hand, users can better spontaneously disseminate good content. I think it is quite interesting to add a role like Curator to the Earn link.
Finley: There is nothing wrong with to earn itself. The first thing to do is to achieve better conversion for these users while achieving growth. The second thing is to attract more non-to earn users. The last thing is how to balance incentives and external value input.
Free sharing session:
Troy：
Content aggregation platforms allow everyone to see topics and content that they are interested in, which is exactly what users need. ReadON judges the quality of a content through simple reading behavior. If a user spends a long time reading a content, then we will recommend it a little earlier; on the other hand, content curation is indeed a very important point when it comes to content.
Regarding paid content, is there some way to better disseminate excellent content to users? For example, like music copyright, the company first buys the copyright, and then allows users to consume and read through a membership system. The income for the creator to obtain the copyright comes from the amount of consumption.
Silicon：
Content is essentially a consumer product. The content economy is divided into the supply at the source, the distribution in the middle, and the final consumer end. Web3 can optimize it by starting from these three links. For example, the community has made a lot of optimizations on the supply side. In the community, the creators' desire to create and the feedback on their creations will be stronger, which improves the production capacity; Curator and x to earn have made a lot of optimizations in the content distribution link, which improves the efficiency of traditional social distribution; and the model of reading to get incentives has made optimizations on the consumer end.
Middle-class creators do not have a lot of fans, and the content they create may not have a lot of traffic. There are actually a large number of such people, and generally on different content platforms, they also contribute a lot of brand value. However, it is difficult for this group of people to obtain good monetization or get due returns in the traditional advertising payment model, such as some excellent answerers on Zhihu. In addition, under the advertising-oriented profit rules, users only see traffic content, and naturally the living space for in-depth content is squeezed.
Traditional content platforms actually have paid content that is pretty good, but compared to free content platforms, it is not at the same level. What is the problem with content payment? First, I think paying for content is a very anti-human thing. Frankly speaking, only a small number of people will know that they are willing to pay for this content. Another type is that this content is very addictive, such as only fans. For general content, most users actually have no awareness of paying, or there is a big psychological threshold when paying. This is why I think the subscription system is a good model from the perspective of Web2, because the subscription system reduces the frequency of payment and lowers the decision-making threshold of users; the second is the problem of dissemination and distribution. Why is the free content Internet so prosperous? It is because free content is very easy to spread, whether it is algorithm distribution or traditional forwarding, it is very easy to spread, then payment directly blocks all the fission paths of the Internet, making it difficult for paid content to grow.
What are the possible solutions?
First of all, there is the issue of dissemination. Relying on Curator for dissemination would be a more promising path. Among paying users, it will be found that social dissemination is very important. Secondly, consumer trust in content is very important, so if someone endorses and forwards it, the payment threshold may be lower. Curator can help distribute paid content through social relationships and can get some rewards in the process of curation, including from downstream payment behaviors. This is one idea.
Then there is the anti-humanity issue. In Web3, users can use tokens to view content, but can tokens be designed in a clever way? For example, users can get free tokens through many channels, but they have to spend tokens when reading articles. Can users think of many channels to get tokens when consuming tokens, so that the psychological threshold for users to pay is not so high? In general, consumers pay a little more tokens than they get, which can ensure that consumers continue to pay. This requires a more sophisticated design of the economic model. If this can be achieved, I think it can better lower the payment threshold for consumers.
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