It has been a week since my first post, a text about my transition from web2 to web3. Since I have no social presence and didn't tell any friends, I didn't expect engagement or for anyone to care for the first couple of months. Therefore I was thrilled to see that a few people found my first tweet and enjoyed the post. It even introduced me to some new people in the space, one of them being $EB, who linked two fantastic articles just in the first week following him.

Last time I highlighted my worries about ending up in a misunderstood version of web3 and the struggles of finding what kind of position to go after. Since then, I've made some progress in my vision/plan. Firstly, I would like to share some things I've noticed in this process.

The more I read about the evolution of the term web3 and different interpretations of it, the more I realized how unclear my wording "misunderstood version of web3" was. Since there is no universal understanding of the term, all versions are misunderstood versions of some sort. When Tim Berners-Lee coined the term in 2006, the focus was the "Semantic Web". Galvin Wood evolved it in 2014 and instead focused on security and trustless interaction with ĐApps. To get a sense of its broadness, here is a table I found:

During the last year, the term has evolved even more, and many interpretations probably contradict each other at this point. Web3 has to some, become synonymous with the metaverse, which in turn to some, is synonymous with Meta/Facebook/Oculus. I wonder what Gavin Wood and Tim Berners-Lee would think about some "joining web3" by buying a Quest headset and playing around in Horizon. This all gets very confusing, but I still think many people I follow on Twitter, and “people in the space” have a relatively similar general vision, focusing on ownership, decentralization, and privacy. These are also the fundamentals that I am most excited about.

As a marketer, I'm particularly interested in two rows in the table, and from my understanding of web3, I would add a new column. I interpret the first row as something like ad KPI and the second as ad format. I will broaden them to marketing in general rather den advertising columns.

In web3, the marketer is every node in the decentralized network that is the community (builders and users), and their objective/KPI is valuable ownership. Today, a marketer's job is to “promote the buying or selling of a product or service." In web3, that would be updated to something like increase valuable ownership without building. The builders create the value, and the marketers can promote the value to increase it. An activity that is incentivized by ownership but is not necessary for the ecosystem to work. Marketing activity can also be incentivized through affiliate marketing rules in the system, like earning tokens by making someone move to your city or earning tokens by wearing an AR NFT shirt to a big event. Affiliate marketing in web3 is a subject I'm very interested in and plan to explore more.

These are unfinished thoughts about web3 and marketing; I'm struggling here. I would really like to hear what other people have to say. Let's discuss it on Twitter. My view is that if you see the web3 model in a vacuum, the marketer is not needed, but in our capitalistic world, it will naturally become a core part of the system.

Getting an idea of what a marketer is in the web3 context is essential to me. Just as there are still people having flourishing careers in the TV ad industry, there will probably still be great opportunities in web2 ads, even in the crypto industry, for many years to come. Still, I want to be at the core of the new frontier; that's what excites me. I try to use the same reasoning that kept me from spending too much time learning about SEO (search engine optimization) while getting into digital marketing. "SEO is dead" has been a meme in the industry for years. Thinking about the fundamentals, you can clearly see that a rapidly improving search engine (better search algorithm and simplified UI for website owners) should soon not need experts to manipulate rankings to their favor. Therefore, setting up your search appearance should become a job for copywriters and admin. On the other hand, it is still, years later, an 80 billion dollars industry full of career opportunities and a need for specialized knowledge.

Ads in web3 seem similar; the fundamentals are apparent, ads are not a part of the evolved version. It doesn't mean that ads will die, but it will probably not be where the exciting innovation takes place.

There is no shortage of exciting opportunities out there. Being interested in so many fields of crypto makes the application process fun. I have been in conversation with companies building NFT hubs and dApp platforms. Both on a mission to onboard builders/creators and users with minimum friction, I see a big trend in lowering the barrier to entry for non-tech people. Companies like NFT hubs that have a close relationship with both users and builders/creators are of extra interest to me, I think working in a 3d environment like that with multiple perspectives would be a very good learning experience.

I want to end off by giving a tip that may help you deal with the current state of the markets; been a fan of Charles for some time and recommend his YT monologs. "It doesn't have to be this way. There were areas of human history for centuries where things stayed roughly the same way." Grateful for these exciting times!

Wagmi,

Anton

It has been a week since my first post, a text about my transition from web2 to web3. Since I have no social presence and didn't tell any friends, I didn't expect engagement or for anyone to care for the first couple of months. Therefore I was thrilled to see that a few people found my first tweet and enjoyed the post. It even introduced me to some new people in the space, one of them being $EB, who linked two fantastic articles just in the first week following him.

Last time I highlighted my worries about ending up in a misunderstood version of web3 and the struggles of finding what kind of position to go after. Since then, I've made some progress in my vision/plan. Firstly, I would like to share some things I've noticed in this process.

The more I read about the evolution of the term web3 and different interpretations of it, the more I realized how unclear my wording "misunderstood version of web3" was. Since there is no universal understanding of the term, all versions are misunderstood versions of some sort. When Tim Berners-Lee coined the term in 2006, the focus was the "Semantic Web". Galvin Wood evolved it in 2014 and instead focused on security and trustless interaction with ĐApps. To get a sense of its broadness, here is a table I found:

During the last year, the term has evolved even more, and many interpretations probably contradict each other at this point. Web3 has to some, become synonymous with the metaverse, which in turn to some, is synonymous with Meta/Facebook/Oculus. I wonder what Gavin Wood and Tim Berners-Lee would think about some "joining web3" by buying a Quest headset and playing around in Horizon. This all gets very confusing, but I still think many people I follow on Twitter, and “people in the space” have a relatively similar general vision, focusing on ownership, decentralization, and privacy. These are also the fundamentals that I am most excited about.

As a marketer, I'm particularly interested in two rows in the table, and from my understanding of web3, I would add a new column. I interpret the first row as something like ad KPI and the second as ad format. I will broaden them to marketing in general rather den advertising columns.

In web3, the marketer is every node in the decentralized network that is the community (builders and users), and their objective/KPI is valuable ownership. Today, a marketer's job is to “promote the buying or selling of a product or service." In web3, that would be updated to something like increase valuable ownership without building. The builders create the value, and the marketers can promote the value to increase it. An activity that is incentivized by ownership but is not necessary for the ecosystem to work. Marketing activity can also be incentivized through affiliate marketing rules in the system, like earning tokens by making someone move to your city or earning tokens by wearing an AR NFT shirt to a big event. Affiliate marketing in web3 is a subject I'm very interested in and plan to explore more.

These are unfinished thoughts about web3 and marketing; I'm struggling here. I would really like to hear what other people have to say. Let's discuss it on Twitter. My view is that if you see the web3 model in a vacuum, the marketer is not needed, but in our capitalistic world, it will naturally become a core part of the system.

Getting an idea of what a marketer is in the web3 context is essential to me. Just as there are still people having flourishing careers in the TV ad industry, there will probably still be great opportunities in web2 ads, even in the crypto industry, for many years to come. Still, I want to be at the core of the new frontier; that's what excites me. I try to use the same reasoning that kept me from spending too much time learning about SEO (search engine optimization) while getting into digital marketing. "SEO is dead" has been a meme in the industry for years. Thinking about the fundamentals, you can clearly see that a rapidly improving search engine (better search algorithm and simplified UI for website owners) should soon not need experts to manipulate rankings to their favor. Therefore, setting up your search appearance should become a job for copywriters and admin. On the other hand, it is still, years later, an 80 billion dollars industry full of career opportunities and a need for specialized knowledge.

Ads in web3 seem similar; the fundamentals are apparent, ads are not a part of the evolved version. It doesn't mean that ads will die, but it will probably not be where the exciting innovation takes place.

There is no shortage of exciting opportunities out there. Being interested in so many fields of crypto makes the application process fun. I have been in conversation with companies building NFT hubs and dApp platforms. Both on a mission to onboard builders/creators and users with minimum friction, I see a big trend in lowering the barrier to entry for non-tech people. Companies like NFT hubs that have a close relationship with both users and builders/creators are of extra interest to me, I think working in a 3d environment like that with multiple perspectives would be a very good learning experience.

I want to end off by giving a tip that may help you deal with the current state of the markets; been a fan of Charles for some time and recommend his YT monologs. "It doesn't have to be this way. There were areas of human history for centuries where things stayed roughly the same way." Grateful for these exciting times!

Wagmi,

Anton