Decentralization is currently one of the hottest topics on the internet and has significant implications on how the world will transact in the next decade. Web3, blockchains, and decentralization work together to create a unique new digital asset class called NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to show proof of ownership of unique digital tokens. These unique tokens can be art pieces, profile pic collections, or cookbooks.
Communities that form around NFTs give the tokens their value. A decentralized community then is a community that helps turn a collection of individual tokens into a franchise by its own accord, with each member executing their part. Consider the Star Wars franchise run by Disney. Each team member executes the vision of the franchise, creating a captivating story for the audience to enjoy. Decentralizing this franchise could play out by allowing the community to mint NFTs of their favourite characters and using the proceeds to fund future movies or TV shows based on the characters the community chooses to fund. Furthermore, the community could then vote on future vision and design ideas based on their stake in the franchise.
Over the last century, we humans have created many products for our average consumer. In response to rising cultural globalization, conglomerates bundled up products and services, everything from our food to the media we consume. In response, entrepreneurs started unbundling these services and selling products of much higher quality than incumbents, reaching markets that would not otherwise be possible. Many established companies also seized the opportunity to cash in on the trend. The Nespresso story is an excellent example of this. The coffee division of Nestle could not gain a foothold in the premium coffee business until they decided to split up the division and add a marketing-focused CEO.
The greatest weakness in the current economy is the global market reach of products and services. Because of this, we're stuck in endless cycles of bundling and unbundling; companies gain centralized power by bundling their services and get disrupted by distributing higher-quality unbundled products and services. The best way to make a profit in business is by bundling up services, so the challengers then bundle products and services as they gain name recognition in the community. Companies offering products and services from software to telecom to entertainment follow this practice to avoid direct competition where they would have to cut costs to win customers.
Companies use two common strategies to market their business: influencers and direct-to-customer advertising. As this article shows, the world of advertising is massive, but only a few players dominate the game as global ad spending by companies reaches hundreds of billions of dollars. But any influence a company has over my wallet starts with a recommendation from curators that I follow. Word of mouth has a more significant influence on my buying habits than advertisements on my feed.
Like the industrial world, the media and entertainment industry has been playing the game of bundling and unbundling their products. Companies used to profit by broadcasting movies, TV shows, and sports and ship to your box set with ads spaced between shows to get the viewer's attention. The unbundling happened with the advent of the second generation of the internet with Facebook, Google, and YouTube. Much of the digital ads placed on your screen today work on a pay-per-click model, creating a cobra effect as both sides take advantage of the technology for personal gain. The fallacy of engagement measured through click rate started a culture of scam advertising. Businesses opened up to take advantage of ads and generate revenue through click frauds as bots spam click ads. So, you probably use an ad blocker to browse the web in peace.
In response, the tech industry began sending their products to popular influencers to get the product before people who would otherwise not see it. Social media influencers started a new epoch of unbundling services. This unbundling of the digital advertising business created a curator's economy as companies sponsor content from podcasts, blogs, Youtube videos, and social media feeds. So, since the advertising business has unbundled into the different sectors of the marketing industry, up next is the bundling of content around curators. We already see this happen as TikTok stars and Youtube personalities share content houses to reach larger audiences. Esports organizations are getting in on the market by signing the top content creators in the video game industry to capture the enormous gaming and streaming audience.
Game streamers are, in a sense, content curators. They decide the games they play in front of an audience based on new, popular, and fun. They are also content creators. Many digital influencers bring their loyal audience to other platforms and vice versa. Cross-pollination is commonplace. Content streamed on Twitch is clipped and uploaded to Youtube channels. Gaming YouTubers stream on Twitch to thousands of people. This Twitch leak shows a list of top streamers on their platform, with payouts totalling millions of dollars for nearly 100 streamers. Other examples include vloggers, podcasters, dancers, singers, and cover bands.
Tech personalities should also be considered content curators for reviewing and comparing various devices. People who make how-to posts or videos are also, in a sense, content curators. They tell you which products and services work well for the job to be done and show alternatives for the product or service. Curation platforms for products and services include news outlets, movies and TV shows, recommendation systems, and the various media outlets that show personalized content on your feed. There are many alternatives and routes you can take when deciding where to curate content and curators need to make sure the content they are releasing matches the platform. Each platform is unique in the type of content that gets recognized:
Instagram has pictures and stories.
Medium has academic writing and blogs.
TikTok has 30-second videos.
Twitch has streaming and e-sports.
Twitter has threads and thought leadership.
Youtube is the most diverse as popular videos can be 10-minutes long or long-form educational content.
The next generation of the middle class will be content creators and curators, achieved through the bundling of product sponsorships, platform ad revenue, and consumer donations. And to create a middle class of curators, platforms will need to take a page out of Twitch's playbook and gamify the user experience. The divide between the top curators and the rest of the industry parallels the divide between Google and other search engines, Spotify and other music players, or YouTube and other video platforms. Established creators get all the views. Systems on current platforms are such that you need steady viewership and consistent output to gain partnerships and advertising revenue for your content, decreasing the quality of the content and increasing the number of copycats and inferior content.
People crave self-improvement, connection, recognition, and belonging. Curators who can align monetization with end-user value by bundling up a unique array of content and creating a community will garner the attention of faithful fans who are willing to spend money for the value gained. If you can garner 100 or 1000 true fans who donate monthly for the value you give them, you can achieve a middle-class income from your home. This article has an excellent explanation for how you can start curating and generating value for your community.
Blockchain technology allows community members to become owners and govern the direction of the art, enabling utility through curation. It creates a stock market for artists as the community buys shares in the artists they like so that the rest of the world can enjoy the work for free. It also enables platforms to create quick and painless transactions so that curators can synthesize ideas, products, and services to add value to their community without the hassle of intermediaries.
As a decentralized social network, Yup aims to provide tokens to curators that add value to its customer by curating the best content across the internet into its platform. Every time someone likes or shares content on their platform, tokens get rewarded to the poster (curator) of the content.
Acting as a decentralized music platform, Audius aims to reward token holders through access to features such as badges, NFTs, and roles. They also hold competitions and award prizes directly to the winners through tokens which the artists can stake back into the system for future prizes or cash out.
For community recognition, NFT holders change their profile pictures to the tokens they hold. On Twitter, the holders of the NFTs come together to share new ideas for the space and show support for the artist, community, or ideology that the art represents. Instagram is adding support for NFTs, increasing the value of the art as influencers curate their favourites to their followers. Facebook became Meta to escape the troubles of their centralized systems and build for the future.
There are many challenges to face when everything is decentralized and anonymous. The best curators will be the ones that try to understand the space by interacting with developers and communities. Here is a framework for building an understanding of the digital landscape by Gary Vaynerchuk:
Have a mental commitment: I am doing this, and my time is valuable, so I will commit to learning properly. Build curiosity and intuition to say something is here.
Start watching YouTube videos, join Twitter discussions, join Discords
Listen to podcasts
Read twitter conversation
Have a hypothesis, google the hypothesis, and google the counterpoint to the hypothesis.