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Speculative Vignettes are an activity that we use in design strategy for envisioning future products. They involve creating realistic personas and thinking through realistic scenarios with realistic technology that solves a certain problem.
Speculative Design is a storytelling exercise where we create stories with realistic personas and realistic products to think about the future we could build together.
In this piece, I'm thinking about web3 social DApps that could replace Linkedin. Specifically, I'm thinking about how we could drive adoption to them. I use myself as a prototypical evangelist, and think about four different personas that I interact with in my professional life.
Each Vignette includes:
Who the persona is that may adopt a Web3 Linkedin solution,
...the situation that they would be introduced in
...how the technology works, and
why it might drive adoption.
The apps I mention are fake—it is easier to talk about ideas than real organizations in speculative design, but the next phase is to get real about who would do what. I'm very excited about the concept of a Web3 version of Linkedin, and so far have tried out a few Linkedin Aspirants:
Braintrust: https://app.usebraintrust.com/talent/66077/
Kleoverse: https://kleoverse.com/nefko
Distrikt: https://distrikt.app/u/nefko
As of this writing, none of these aspirants are that useful, but I'm hopeful they'll grow better in the future. They're social platforms, so "usefulness" comes less from features than from community. Their success depends on an awkward catch-22: they need more users to be valuable, but how do you drive adoption if you don't have that value?
In that vein, I wanted to add a bit to the discussion. I am a professional UX researcher, strategist, and designer, so I know how valuable it can be to get good feedback and ideas. Hopefully these thoughts here can be a positive contribution.
Broadly, the content below is focused on key things that would promote adoption on these platforms. It is a selfish desire: a Linkedin Aspirant is only valuable if my professional network is there. Critically, I don't want to build a network from scratch there—I want to somehow convince people in my existing network to move over. This isn't easy, and I think it'll take a coordinated effort from all of us to make it happen.
The easiest "early adopters" are people like me—I work in web3 and believe in the vision. However, I just got back from my third conference of the year and used these Linkedin Aspirants ZERO times to connect with people I met at the conference. Let's talk about why.
I don't want to get too broad with critique of existing apps, but I do want to mention one thing that is super important since this is web3 and people have this weird tendency to try to put "tokens" on everything: The right people don't care about your tokens. The value is the relationships.
The right people don't care about your tokens. The value is the relationships.
I've seen several interfaces with the theme of "Fill out your profile and get 10 points." This gamification bullshit doesn't work because "points" aren't the reason people come to social networks—especially professional social networks.
The points I care about are US Dollars in my bank account. I get them when I make professional connections with people who will pay me real money to do real work. Teams working on web3 professional apps don't need to spend time coming up with elaborate token schemes. That time is better spent understanding how people build and maintain relationships using professional social networks.
Below I'm going to write a bunch of "vignettes"—short stories about how I would help onboard people to a Web3 version of Linkedin. Note that none of this stuff has anything to do with tokenomics or gamification. It has 100% to do with relationships—making personal connections and deepening them so I can win the real game: work on cool projects with cool people and make money doing it. Not stupid "tokens" (or points, or whatever).
Speculative Design is a storytelling exercise where we create stories with realistic personas and realistic products to think about the future we could build together.
The DApps that I'm mentioning here are all fake. I am real—nefko is my handle on most social apps, and Kyle is my name in real life. The personas below are based on real people in my life, I've just changed their names.
I am a freelancer, so I am VERY dependent on Linkedin. I almost never apply to job posts—100% of my contracts the last few years come from people in my network. Sometimes I meet them at conferences and a project emerges. Other times they are people I've worked with in the past at different companies. Most often, my clients are referred to me by colleagues I've worked with in the past.
So Linkedin doesn't help me "grow" my network, it helps me maintain and communicate within my network. Specifically, it is a:
Rolodex: It helps me keep track of people I'm connected with. Professional relationships are different from personal ones. If I have a personal friend that I haven't talked to in 8 years, chances are that we've moved on in life. However, a colleague that I worked with 8 years ago may still be very relevant to my work today.
Signaling mechanism: When I have some room in the pipeline, I let the people in my network know so we can start having early conversations. Posts work well for this. It is really nice because 2nd-degree connections can see those posts and then they can ask my colleagues (the 1st order connections) for a referral.
Trust Base: I signal that I'm a good consultant with a few key things: recognizable logos on my resume and testimonials from past colleagues/clients. As an individual contractor, testimonials are HUGE and I've collected a good number of them. I copy and paste them onto my website or into a pitch deck, but the place that they "live" is on Linkedin. Linkedin gives me a great interface to request a testimonial from someone, and others can trust that the testimonial is real because it is linked to that other person's profile.
Let's look at 4 different personas that I interact with today and what I would need a web3 aspirant Linkedin to work. These are based on real people in my network, I've just changed their names.
Webster the Web3 Entrepreneur. Webster was a client of mine earlier this year. I met him at a hackathon and later helped him with some design work on his early-stage product.
Connie the Conference Goer. I've bumped into Connie at a few conferences now. She is a potential collaborator, client, or connector to other clients. We also share a lot of professional interests, so I like to keep up with her thoughts on the industry.
Jamie the Junior Designer. Jamie has less experience than me, so she may be a great sub-contractor if I end up scoping a larger job with a client. I also play a mentor role with people like Jamie from time to time. She is also a part of a 100 person Telegram group that is all aspiring web3 designers—a rich pool of people for me to connect with.
Tula the web2 agency designer. This year, I've gotten MOST of my work from Tula. She isn't in the web3 space at all, but I've worked with her for years and her small company pulls me in as a sub-contractor for work often. She doesn't know anything about web3.
I would love to get all four of them to use a web3 Linkedin solution.
To illustrate how this could work, here are some DApps and things we may think about. All of these are fake and they have dumb names because this is just a story:
Professional Network Identity Protocol (PNIP) - A light layer on top of other identity protocols that has an agreed upon structure for things like Testimonials, Resumes, connection types (worked for, reported to, was a client of, etc...), and other professional-network must haves.
Resum3 - A DApp that is full function, but focuses mostly on editing and rendering profiles (resume information, testimonials, etc... similar to Linkedin profile pages)
Workstr33m: a DApp newsfeed-style DApp that filters Lens, Farcaster, and other web3 streams that is optimized for work content.
Testimon.io - a streamlined web experience for creating tesimonials.
Connectr - a mobile DApp with a super streamlined interface for making connections in real life via scanning QR codes.
PeopleNote - a part of the PNIP that enables me to take notes about people connected with that only I can see.
These DApps are storytelling devices. There is no reason that an app couldn't combine all of these functions, and I'm sure that there are product teams out there already thinking about these in part. I'm hand-waving the tech a little bit because my skills are actually in design, but if you're an engineer and want to set me straight, I love to learn (Feel free to put some time on my calendar).
Here are the stories of how I get Webster the Web3 Entrepreneur, Connie the Conference Goer, Jamie the Junior Designer, and Tula the Web2 Agency Designer all onboard a (fake) protocol called Professional Network Identity Protocol (PNIP) with a suite of (fake) apps.
Webster is the CEO of a funded, alpha-stage DeFi wallet company with about 3 people (including him) on the team. I've done about 4 short contracts with him when he needs design work, and we regularly keep in touch about when more contract work is needed.
Webster is very active in web3—it is actually through him that I learned about Farcaster. He is young and likes to try new things, and as a builder himself, he really understands how things need to fit together. As a CEO, he is constantly making connections with people.
Since I'm closing up a year with several months of work with Webster, I recently asked him for a testimonial (future clients like to know that past clients were happy, and I really want to have more clients that look like Webster).
Keep in mind, Webster is a web3 CEO, so the conversation would be VERY different from Tula, which I'll come to later:
Nefko: I'll send you link to Testimon.io, it is a super easy way to put a testimonial on my Resum3 DApp. I'm using that as a replacement for Linkedin. It is optimized for professional relationships like Linkedin, but it works across the most popular web3 social protocols so it is all on-chain.
Webster: Nice, so I can us it with my Lens handle?
Nefko: Yeah, or Farsighter, DeSo, some of the other ones. It connects to your social identities, but it uses a light protocol called PNIP for things like testimonials, structured resumes, etc... That makes it nice because there are several DApps in the space that are optimizing for different experiences. One is really great for finding jobs. One is more oriented on a newsfeed experience (but only for professional stuff). Another DApp has a really cool group-chat experience that is specifically for work topics, but they all support a common Professional Identity Protocol that is linked to your other web3 social identities.
I send him a hyper link to a really light-weight web-based app that enables him to write a testimonial and sign it with his wallet. He choses the option to spin up an account and just names himself for now and links it to his Lens handle. In the background (of course) the testimonial is an NFT with a standard structure.
Of the DApps that use Professional Identity Protocol, I can see that there is a new Testimonial NFT from Webster. I toggle it to display on my profile. (An important part of these NFTs is that you need two signers for them to display publicly—one from the sender and one from the receiver, so we can cut down on spam or malicious shit-talkers).
Since Webster signed up with his Lens handle, he can also see whether there are others in his network that he wants to follow on the Professional DApps. Lots of people in his Lens network are friends and family, so he doens't follow them on the Professional DApp, but he adds the people he has worked with in the past, some VCs that he has gotten funding from etc... If they haven't made accounts on Professional Identity Protocol, he can send them an invite.
There are several important factors.
(1) I already have a professional relationship with Webster, and he is happy to help me out. HOWEVER, there are limits to what I'll ask of him. It is important for both of us that we're investing our time and attention in something that will have value over time. So (2) the experience for him to write the testimonial needs to be a very low effort. More importantly, none of us want to spend time on something that may not reach critical mass. Because in this scenario (3) the DApp is connected to multiple existing (and growing) identity protocols, it is believable that the testimonial will have longevity (even if one of those DApps dies off). It is also important that it is all of them because if Webster prefers Lens but another one of my clients prefers DeSo, I need it to work with both of their preferences.
I met Connie at the last conference. It was great to talk to her, we were part of a breakout session on a really nerdy topic, and out in the hallway after the talk we decided to connect so we could keep in touch. Not only to I like talking to Connie, but she works for a company that is a pretty decent size and she's connected with a lot of other people in the industry. There may be an opportunity for us to work together in the future, or there may be someone in her broader network that may need a freelancer.
We did the awkward "connect on what?" dance before she pulled out her telegram QR code and I scanned it with my camera. Then we started that little ritual of planting seeds so we could remember who each other are...
I copied and pasted an "about me" blurb into the conversation from my Evernote app that had links to my website and Linkedin.
She took a selfie of us and then dropped it into the chat.
Then I sent another message that was awkwardly overly specific "I really enjoyed our conversation about account abstraction and the challenge of the ways that Ethereum addresses lack a pre-pending standard so that....[blah blah blah]"
Will it work?
I dunno.
I've met, like, 50 people at this conference. I hate using Telegram for this because it is structured like a messaging app and not like a professional profile app. Professional profile apps contain useful information about people (profiles) and mechanisms for surfacing that info at opportune times (such as Linkedin's "open to work" feature, or the ability to post on a feed when you're looking for a collaborator). Telegram has none of this, but we used it anyways because the QR scanner is good and fast. It also doesn't feel (for some people) like as big of a commitment as adding someone on Linkedin may be.
The Connectr DApp is a super light-weight mobile app that helps people easily connect. It was actually built by a handful of different companies working on Professional Network Identity Protocol (PNIP) who agreed that a full-featured PNIP profile app like Linkedin's app would be amazing, but expensive and hard to build. The Connectr App gives people the most important features of a mobile app for making connections quickly.
I've got it loaded up on my phone top and open it about 20 times a day when I'm at a conference. I'm at the Ethereum DevConnect conference, and I've used the PeopleNote settings to automatically tag people I connect to with a "DevConnect 2023" tag. Nobody can see this tag but me, but later on it helps me stay organized with people I connect with.
I pull it open and Connie scans my QR code which opens her own Connectr app. The app prompts us to select a connection type, and we each set "acquaintance." We can see a few aspects of each other's PNIP information, and if we opened a more full featured DApp like Resum3, we would see all of the information.
In that moment, I use the Connectr App to add a few more tags (that only I can see) about Connie, then I hit a button to send her a message. That pops open my preferred messenger for PNIP connections (Converse) and I send her a message over the XMTP protocol (she receives it on whatever her preferred messenger app is).
Connie's friend Frensa also wants to connect, but she doesn't have a PNIP profile yet. When she scans the QR code, it offers her the option to download the Connectr app or continue on a browser. Connie and I convince her that the app is worth it and tell her about it as the app is downloading.
Connie: Yeah, the great thing about it is that it is built on PNIP, so it is already integrated with whatever identity solution you're using—but it isn't utter chaos like Telegram.
Nefko: Yeah, I also got the Resum3 app, which is really clean Linkedin-like profiles. I really do like how it helps me keep up to date with what people are up to and send them messages. I also hate news feeds, so I don't have to worry about that stuff.
Connie: Oh, no way! I love the newsfeed. I have Workstr33m set up and I check it every day.
When Frensa's app is done downloading, she opens it up, creates a screen name, and we scan to connect to her. She immediately connects it to her Farcaster profile, but mentions that she'll have to wait till tonight to connect Lens because her Lens ID is on her hardware wallet which she left in the hotel.
Later that week, I see that she's filled out her professional profile.
It seems like every time I go to a conference someone has stood up some shitty web browser thing that uses an NFC scanning card that makes me build a profile on another website that I'm going to loose in a slew of browser tabs and immediately forget the name of.
As a key entry point to the PNIP ecosystem, it is key that (1)there is a simple QR-based mobile app that isn't buggy and works even when the internet is sketchy because of there is crappy venue wifi, foreign SIM cards, or finicky VPNs. It is also important that it (2) is fast and handy to find the QR code—people do different things in different contexts, so an interface not fit with the user's goal in that moment creates a bad experience. The Linkedin interface is very feed-oriented, but when you're trying to connect with someone the QR code is important.
Most importantly, (3) the app can't be a throw-away brand that people don't recognize. Most people have hundreds of browser tabs open on their phone, so browser experiences simply get lost and forgotten. We're all exposed to hundreds of new logos, protocol names, etc... at a conference and it is hard to keep track of it all. By having an icon on a phone top, Connectr and the PNIP become top of mind and memorable for a user, and by (4) having it obvious that it connects to a broader ecosystem like Lens, Farcaster, or DeSo in the background makes it feel like it has substance.
Finally, (5) it is important that users can get in the door quick and establish profiles later. This is important for two reasons. (5a)One is that it limits procrastination—if I have to fill out a whole profile or connect the right wallet or whatever, I always tell myself that I'll "look into it later," then I forget and move on. Establishing the connection first and quickly means I'll have something of value (a connection to a real human being) which is a reason to come back.
The other reason (5b) is that the more people I connect with, the more valuable it becomes for me to fill out a profile. If I download the app, just put in my name, then connect with 12 people in my breakout session, I now have an app with 12 valuable connections. When I'm riding home in the taxi that night or sitting on the toilet or whatever, I'm more likely to fill out that profile because the value has been pre-loaded. I got the value up front, now I'm willing to put in the work. (Remember, the value isn't in some PNIP Points scheme or token thing—the value is that I have an opportunity to share information about myself with people that I want to have relationships with).
Jamie is so cool. I met her at a small conference a few weeks ago. Whereas I work at the "Senior" level (I have about 12 years of experience), Jamie is just starting her career which means she bills at a lower price point and is building the skills that I was working on a few years ago. For me, it is great to connect with people like Jamie because if I land a client project that is too big for me, I can hire people like her as a sub-contractor to help out.
Of course, in this business, people are always in and out of full-time jobs, etc..., so I don't really need to know ONE Jamie, I actually need to know a LOT of Jamies. I also need to know some specialists like visual designers or motion designers that I can learn from and also maybe bring in for a little work when a client needs a specialist. So when Jamie told me about a web3 UX design group with around 100 designers in it that sounded awesome.
...then she told me it was on fucking Telegram.
Telegram is a chaotic mess. I won't go into the UX problems here, but suffice it to say that Linkedin has been designed from a UX perspective to be a professional connection platform and Telegram has not. Today what usually happens is:
Join something on telegram → get overwhelmed with notifications → Turn off Notifications → Completely forget about the telegram group.
It's not a good cycle.
Literally a few minutes ago a former colleague messaged me on Linkedin trying to find a Webflow designer. I don't do web flow, so I posted in Telegram, and someone in the big group responded, but now I have to figure out if I should connect them on Telegram or Linkedin or Email... there are downsides to each)
I tell Jamie that since this is a professionally oriented UX designers group, it would be awesome if they used GroupChatt3r* instead—it is like Telegram, but it connects to web3 social protocols. GroupChatt3r also has hooks for PNIP identities, so she can set a setting on the UX Web3 Designers group that requires users to create a PNIP identity when they join.
*I just made this up, but it seems like I learn about a new web3 chat app every day, so I'm sure something like this exists.
Like the QR code journey above, users only have to give themselves a handle and the PNIP is made in the background, but GroupChatt3r adds in a link to the user's PNIP profile (when you tap the link, it pops open the Resum3 app or prompts the user to download it).
This is great! These young, talented designers who are looking for jobs fill out their profiles with all of their skills, NFT proofs, whatever, etc.... They start posting content on WorkStr33m and Jamie makes an extra channel in GroupChatt3r that pulls in the posts and comments from people in the group.
It is great for me as well.
Here is the thing about people that I kinda-know-but-not-really on Linkedin: I never know whether to "connect" with them or not. I need two variables on Linkedin:
Type of connection (if they're a colleague): Worked with, reported to, they reported to me, client of, etc...
Linkedin has this
How deep is the connection? handshake, acquaintance, colleague (I'm just making these up for now)
Linkedin does NOT have this, you're either "connected" or you're not. It is hard to have connections with people you "kind of" know. (which plays into their business model, actually)
On PNIP, when I'm added to the group, that automatically sets a "Handshake" connection setting with these other members. It means that they can send me messages, I can make notes about them, etc... It is the loosest connection—we can kind of track and follow one another, but we haven't really worked together. This gives me the ability to fine-tune filters on feeds, fine-tune messaging settings, etc...
In my case, I spend time looking at people's profiles, making notes about their experiences and interests. I have zoom calls with some of them and track notes about their portfolio work.
Then, in the future, when work comes up that I need some help on, I post in the group and also do some DM outreach to people that I've already met and talked to.
This is really a story about pulling in groups of people to an app. I hate mass chat experiences like Telegram, but I recognize that Jamie probably likes it. I prefer profile-oriented front end experiences and "group" pages for organizing messaging.
When we're able to bridge these experiences with a common protocol, we can build communities of people even when their interface preferences are different. It also means that we can fit the interface to the session-intent. The Telegram interface is a messaging interface—it is good for group chats. It is not a great profile experience, so it is not good for searching for candidates.
Linkedin (as a VC-funded mega web2 company) has (generally) solved this problem with a really big, heavy, complicated app on desktop and another big, complicated app on mobile. They've done a good job, honestly. They have a messaging experience, a feed experience, a profile experience, etc...—a feat they can pull off because they were early to the game and have lots and lots of money.
In web3 we run these as different apps from different companies, but as long as the underlying social graph is shared, it will work wonderfully. The reason that this could work in web3 is because if you're the Resum3 (profile DApp) company, you don't need to necessarily build a chat app. You can probably just integrate the PNIP identity into another app as an add on which is more of a partnership conversation. Everyone can concentrate on building a great experience for a particular persona type or usecase and users don't have to have migration pains.
I've actually knowns Tula for 12 years now. She was a senior designer when I was an intern at my first job out of college, and we've kept in touch ever since. These days, Tula is working for a small design consultancy that has around 10 full-time employees and a handful of contractors like me in an extended network that they pull in for projects that we'd be a good fit for.
Tula doesn't know anything about web3, but she is an important part of my network. She is NOT like the others I described above—she won't use Telegram, doens't have a Lens or Farcaster handle (and has probably never heard of them), and doesn't really care about web3 values or ideology (she probably thinks that web3 died back in 2022).
However, when we think about legitimacy, Tula and her colleagues and clients are important for me. Probably half of the work I do today is for traditional Web2 clients, and I like to also get testimonials from them when I've done a good job. They're not going to offer me an "NFT" to "prove" that I've done work on their project. In fact, the main reason that I ask for testimonials from them is because the work I do is usually all under NDA, so I can't even really share it in a portfolio.
Today I just ask them for a testimonial on Linkedin. That works. But I believe in web3, so let's think about how I could get that testimonial over to web3 and—maybe eventually one day—how I could pull Tula over as well.
Tula gives me a testimonial on Linkedin (they're called "Recommendations" on that platform). Using Resum3 DApp's testimonial feature, I copy and paste Tula's testimonial text into the DApp and put in a link to her Linkedin profile. It mints a PNIP handle which is stored in a smart contract for Tula to claim later.
When someone views my PNIP profile on Resum3 or a similar DApp, the DApp hits a Linkedin API (that hopefully exists?) and pulls back her picture, name, and current title coupled with the quote text. (Would be awesome if it just pulled the whole testimonial, but they don't seem to have URLs).
A few years later when the world shifts and DApps are starting to grow in popularity, Tula decides to build a profile on Resum3. She gets the option to "start with her Linkedin profile"—a simple scraper that pulls over the data about her experience, etc...
However, in this case when she puts in her Linkedin URL and does the verification, it identifies that there has actually been a profile waiting for her this entire time. The Linkedin Verification unlocks that smart contract and the testimonial she gave me is now linked to her profile.
This is the most speculative use case, but also the most important one to think about long-term. I honestly have no ideas how Linkedin's APIs work, and I imagine it'll be a finicky mess.
Still, there is some value to this way of thinking. The most important thing is that (1) as a current PNIP user, I get to have the value of Tula's testimonial without forcing her to convert. Migration will happen in waves and the first wave will be the web3 people (like Webster, Connie, and Jamie above). We can't be an island, but we also can't pull everyone over all at once, so we have to really think about these middle-ground experiences.
There are some common threads among all of these speculative situations.
These could be another post (and I'll probably make one) but I want to pull out a few of them:
Strategies should be mapped to inter-human interactions. It is hard to prioritize features in early stage companies. When thinking about what is most important, think about the choreography of how people meet and interact with one another—this isn't "human" centered design, it is "relationship" centered design because the value of a social app is really emergent from interactions among people. Thinking in very detailed scenarios helps us think about what features will be more important.
Interoperability with broader web3 protocols is key. I believe that there are some data structures that are particular to professional networks (that I'm calling PNIP here), but the majority of identity management should be interoperable with other web3 identity platforms. This makes it easier (and more appealing) to existing web3 users.
Web2.5 is still the key for now. In a social network, everyone I'm connected too isn't likely to have the same experience with web3. It is important to consider that tech savviness CANNOT be a segmentation principle for adoption strategies. Let people sign up in a web2 way and transition them slowly.
Most people aren't anons. Most of us who work actually don't want to be anonymous. We like web3 because it liberates our social graph from the Linkedin (Microsoft) corporation, not because we want to be anons hiding behind cartoon avatars.
No company has to own every touchpoint. In web3, your DApp does not need to accommodate every front-end use case. Focus on being a part of a strong, interoperable network of DApps rather than one big super-app. Your DApp can just focus on a great experience without having to raise billions in seed capital, and we'll all contribute to and benefit from network effects.
If we're going to reach a critical mass of users, we need to do our UX strategy together. A User Journey around a protocol may touch many different DApps. Different personas in an ecosystem will prefer different types of experiences. For a protocol to gain critical mass, we need to make sure that different teams are working to cover the different use cases and user types so that a large migration can occur.
Diversity is wonderful in interfaces, but we need the protocols to be unified.
If you've made it this far, then wow you really care about this.
I also don't know if there is already a consortium working on a real version of PNIP, so if you know of one, let me know. I'm also (obviously) naïve about how some of the aspects of the tech work behind the scenes here. I'm a designer, not a dev.
But if this topic is interesting to you and you want to continue the conversation, I'm game. As is probably pretty obvious, I have a stake in this future—it is important to my own UX strategy consulting business. I'm happy to hop on a call and brainstorm together, hack together, or (if you have the budget for it), even work on a project together.
I didn't illustrate these or really think about them deeply—it was just something I was thinking about this morning, but we could spin up figma, storyboard things out, build test apps, open conversations about standards, etc...
Speculative Vignettes are an activity that we use in design strategy for envisioning future products. They involve creating realistic personas and thinking through realistic scenarios with realistic technology that solves a certain problem.
Speculative Design is a storytelling exercise where we create stories with realistic personas and realistic products to think about the future we could build together.
In this piece, I'm thinking about web3 social DApps that could replace Linkedin. Specifically, I'm thinking about how we could drive adoption to them. I use myself as a prototypical evangelist, and think about four different personas that I interact with in my professional life.
Each Vignette includes:
Who the persona is that may adopt a Web3 Linkedin solution,
...the situation that they would be introduced in
...how the technology works, and
why it might drive adoption.
The apps I mention are fake—it is easier to talk about ideas than real organizations in speculative design, but the next phase is to get real about who would do what. I'm very excited about the concept of a Web3 version of Linkedin, and so far have tried out a few Linkedin Aspirants:
Braintrust: https://app.usebraintrust.com/talent/66077/
Kleoverse: https://kleoverse.com/nefko
Distrikt: https://distrikt.app/u/nefko
As of this writing, none of these aspirants are that useful, but I'm hopeful they'll grow better in the future. They're social platforms, so "usefulness" comes less from features than from community. Their success depends on an awkward catch-22: they need more users to be valuable, but how do you drive adoption if you don't have that value?
In that vein, I wanted to add a bit to the discussion. I am a professional UX researcher, strategist, and designer, so I know how valuable it can be to get good feedback and ideas. Hopefully these thoughts here can be a positive contribution.
Broadly, the content below is focused on key things that would promote adoption on these platforms. It is a selfish desire: a Linkedin Aspirant is only valuable if my professional network is there. Critically, I don't want to build a network from scratch there—I want to somehow convince people in my existing network to move over. This isn't easy, and I think it'll take a coordinated effort from all of us to make it happen.
The easiest "early adopters" are people like me—I work in web3 and believe in the vision. However, I just got back from my third conference of the year and used these Linkedin Aspirants ZERO times to connect with people I met at the conference. Let's talk about why.
I don't want to get too broad with critique of existing apps, but I do want to mention one thing that is super important since this is web3 and people have this weird tendency to try to put "tokens" on everything: The right people don't care about your tokens. The value is the relationships.
The right people don't care about your tokens. The value is the relationships.
I've seen several interfaces with the theme of "Fill out your profile and get 10 points." This gamification bullshit doesn't work because "points" aren't the reason people come to social networks—especially professional social networks.
The points I care about are US Dollars in my bank account. I get them when I make professional connections with people who will pay me real money to do real work. Teams working on web3 professional apps don't need to spend time coming up with elaborate token schemes. That time is better spent understanding how people build and maintain relationships using professional social networks.
Below I'm going to write a bunch of "vignettes"—short stories about how I would help onboard people to a Web3 version of Linkedin. Note that none of this stuff has anything to do with tokenomics or gamification. It has 100% to do with relationships—making personal connections and deepening them so I can win the real game: work on cool projects with cool people and make money doing it. Not stupid "tokens" (or points, or whatever).
Speculative Design is a storytelling exercise where we create stories with realistic personas and realistic products to think about the future we could build together.
The DApps that I'm mentioning here are all fake. I am real—nefko is my handle on most social apps, and Kyle is my name in real life. The personas below are based on real people in my life, I've just changed their names.
I am a freelancer, so I am VERY dependent on Linkedin. I almost never apply to job posts—100% of my contracts the last few years come from people in my network. Sometimes I meet them at conferences and a project emerges. Other times they are people I've worked with in the past at different companies. Most often, my clients are referred to me by colleagues I've worked with in the past.
So Linkedin doesn't help me "grow" my network, it helps me maintain and communicate within my network. Specifically, it is a:
Rolodex: It helps me keep track of people I'm connected with. Professional relationships are different from personal ones. If I have a personal friend that I haven't talked to in 8 years, chances are that we've moved on in life. However, a colleague that I worked with 8 years ago may still be very relevant to my work today.
Signaling mechanism: When I have some room in the pipeline, I let the people in my network know so we can start having early conversations. Posts work well for this. It is really nice because 2nd-degree connections can see those posts and then they can ask my colleagues (the 1st order connections) for a referral.
Trust Base: I signal that I'm a good consultant with a few key things: recognizable logos on my resume and testimonials from past colleagues/clients. As an individual contractor, testimonials are HUGE and I've collected a good number of them. I copy and paste them onto my website or into a pitch deck, but the place that they "live" is on Linkedin. Linkedin gives me a great interface to request a testimonial from someone, and others can trust that the testimonial is real because it is linked to that other person's profile.
Let's look at 4 different personas that I interact with today and what I would need a web3 aspirant Linkedin to work. These are based on real people in my network, I've just changed their names.
Webster the Web3 Entrepreneur. Webster was a client of mine earlier this year. I met him at a hackathon and later helped him with some design work on his early-stage product.
Connie the Conference Goer. I've bumped into Connie at a few conferences now. She is a potential collaborator, client, or connector to other clients. We also share a lot of professional interests, so I like to keep up with her thoughts on the industry.
Jamie the Junior Designer. Jamie has less experience than me, so she may be a great sub-contractor if I end up scoping a larger job with a client. I also play a mentor role with people like Jamie from time to time. She is also a part of a 100 person Telegram group that is all aspiring web3 designers—a rich pool of people for me to connect with.
Tula the web2 agency designer. This year, I've gotten MOST of my work from Tula. She isn't in the web3 space at all, but I've worked with her for years and her small company pulls me in as a sub-contractor for work often. She doesn't know anything about web3.
I would love to get all four of them to use a web3 Linkedin solution.
To illustrate how this could work, here are some DApps and things we may think about. All of these are fake and they have dumb names because this is just a story:
Professional Network Identity Protocol (PNIP) - A light layer on top of other identity protocols that has an agreed upon structure for things like Testimonials, Resumes, connection types (worked for, reported to, was a client of, etc...), and other professional-network must haves.
Resum3 - A DApp that is full function, but focuses mostly on editing and rendering profiles (resume information, testimonials, etc... similar to Linkedin profile pages)
Workstr33m: a DApp newsfeed-style DApp that filters Lens, Farcaster, and other web3 streams that is optimized for work content.
Testimon.io - a streamlined web experience for creating tesimonials.
Connectr - a mobile DApp with a super streamlined interface for making connections in real life via scanning QR codes.
PeopleNote - a part of the PNIP that enables me to take notes about people connected with that only I can see.
These DApps are storytelling devices. There is no reason that an app couldn't combine all of these functions, and I'm sure that there are product teams out there already thinking about these in part. I'm hand-waving the tech a little bit because my skills are actually in design, but if you're an engineer and want to set me straight, I love to learn (Feel free to put some time on my calendar).
Here are the stories of how I get Webster the Web3 Entrepreneur, Connie the Conference Goer, Jamie the Junior Designer, and Tula the Web2 Agency Designer all onboard a (fake) protocol called Professional Network Identity Protocol (PNIP) with a suite of (fake) apps.
Webster is the CEO of a funded, alpha-stage DeFi wallet company with about 3 people (including him) on the team. I've done about 4 short contracts with him when he needs design work, and we regularly keep in touch about when more contract work is needed.
Webster is very active in web3—it is actually through him that I learned about Farcaster. He is young and likes to try new things, and as a builder himself, he really understands how things need to fit together. As a CEO, he is constantly making connections with people.
Since I'm closing up a year with several months of work with Webster, I recently asked him for a testimonial (future clients like to know that past clients were happy, and I really want to have more clients that look like Webster).
Keep in mind, Webster is a web3 CEO, so the conversation would be VERY different from Tula, which I'll come to later:
Nefko: I'll send you link to Testimon.io, it is a super easy way to put a testimonial on my Resum3 DApp. I'm using that as a replacement for Linkedin. It is optimized for professional relationships like Linkedin, but it works across the most popular web3 social protocols so it is all on-chain.
Webster: Nice, so I can us it with my Lens handle?
Nefko: Yeah, or Farsighter, DeSo, some of the other ones. It connects to your social identities, but it uses a light protocol called PNIP for things like testimonials, structured resumes, etc... That makes it nice because there are several DApps in the space that are optimizing for different experiences. One is really great for finding jobs. One is more oriented on a newsfeed experience (but only for professional stuff). Another DApp has a really cool group-chat experience that is specifically for work topics, but they all support a common Professional Identity Protocol that is linked to your other web3 social identities.
I send him a hyper link to a really light-weight web-based app that enables him to write a testimonial and sign it with his wallet. He choses the option to spin up an account and just names himself for now and links it to his Lens handle. In the background (of course) the testimonial is an NFT with a standard structure.
Of the DApps that use Professional Identity Protocol, I can see that there is a new Testimonial NFT from Webster. I toggle it to display on my profile. (An important part of these NFTs is that you need two signers for them to display publicly—one from the sender and one from the receiver, so we can cut down on spam or malicious shit-talkers).
Since Webster signed up with his Lens handle, he can also see whether there are others in his network that he wants to follow on the Professional DApps. Lots of people in his Lens network are friends and family, so he doens't follow them on the Professional DApp, but he adds the people he has worked with in the past, some VCs that he has gotten funding from etc... If they haven't made accounts on Professional Identity Protocol, he can send them an invite.
There are several important factors.
(1) I already have a professional relationship with Webster, and he is happy to help me out. HOWEVER, there are limits to what I'll ask of him. It is important for both of us that we're investing our time and attention in something that will have value over time. So (2) the experience for him to write the testimonial needs to be a very low effort. More importantly, none of us want to spend time on something that may not reach critical mass. Because in this scenario (3) the DApp is connected to multiple existing (and growing) identity protocols, it is believable that the testimonial will have longevity (even if one of those DApps dies off). It is also important that it is all of them because if Webster prefers Lens but another one of my clients prefers DeSo, I need it to work with both of their preferences.
I met Connie at the last conference. It was great to talk to her, we were part of a breakout session on a really nerdy topic, and out in the hallway after the talk we decided to connect so we could keep in touch. Not only to I like talking to Connie, but she works for a company that is a pretty decent size and she's connected with a lot of other people in the industry. There may be an opportunity for us to work together in the future, or there may be someone in her broader network that may need a freelancer.
We did the awkward "connect on what?" dance before she pulled out her telegram QR code and I scanned it with my camera. Then we started that little ritual of planting seeds so we could remember who each other are...
I copied and pasted an "about me" blurb into the conversation from my Evernote app that had links to my website and Linkedin.
She took a selfie of us and then dropped it into the chat.
Then I sent another message that was awkwardly overly specific "I really enjoyed our conversation about account abstraction and the challenge of the ways that Ethereum addresses lack a pre-pending standard so that....[blah blah blah]"
Will it work?
I dunno.
I've met, like, 50 people at this conference. I hate using Telegram for this because it is structured like a messaging app and not like a professional profile app. Professional profile apps contain useful information about people (profiles) and mechanisms for surfacing that info at opportune times (such as Linkedin's "open to work" feature, or the ability to post on a feed when you're looking for a collaborator). Telegram has none of this, but we used it anyways because the QR scanner is good and fast. It also doesn't feel (for some people) like as big of a commitment as adding someone on Linkedin may be.
The Connectr DApp is a super light-weight mobile app that helps people easily connect. It was actually built by a handful of different companies working on Professional Network Identity Protocol (PNIP) who agreed that a full-featured PNIP profile app like Linkedin's app would be amazing, but expensive and hard to build. The Connectr App gives people the most important features of a mobile app for making connections quickly.
I've got it loaded up on my phone top and open it about 20 times a day when I'm at a conference. I'm at the Ethereum DevConnect conference, and I've used the PeopleNote settings to automatically tag people I connect to with a "DevConnect 2023" tag. Nobody can see this tag but me, but later on it helps me stay organized with people I connect with.
I pull it open and Connie scans my QR code which opens her own Connectr app. The app prompts us to select a connection type, and we each set "acquaintance." We can see a few aspects of each other's PNIP information, and if we opened a more full featured DApp like Resum3, we would see all of the information.
In that moment, I use the Connectr App to add a few more tags (that only I can see) about Connie, then I hit a button to send her a message. That pops open my preferred messenger for PNIP connections (Converse) and I send her a message over the XMTP protocol (she receives it on whatever her preferred messenger app is).
Connie's friend Frensa also wants to connect, but she doesn't have a PNIP profile yet. When she scans the QR code, it offers her the option to download the Connectr app or continue on a browser. Connie and I convince her that the app is worth it and tell her about it as the app is downloading.
Connie: Yeah, the great thing about it is that it is built on PNIP, so it is already integrated with whatever identity solution you're using—but it isn't utter chaos like Telegram.
Nefko: Yeah, I also got the Resum3 app, which is really clean Linkedin-like profiles. I really do like how it helps me keep up to date with what people are up to and send them messages. I also hate news feeds, so I don't have to worry about that stuff.
Connie: Oh, no way! I love the newsfeed. I have Workstr33m set up and I check it every day.
When Frensa's app is done downloading, she opens it up, creates a screen name, and we scan to connect to her. She immediately connects it to her Farcaster profile, but mentions that she'll have to wait till tonight to connect Lens because her Lens ID is on her hardware wallet which she left in the hotel.
Later that week, I see that she's filled out her professional profile.
It seems like every time I go to a conference someone has stood up some shitty web browser thing that uses an NFC scanning card that makes me build a profile on another website that I'm going to loose in a slew of browser tabs and immediately forget the name of.
As a key entry point to the PNIP ecosystem, it is key that (1)there is a simple QR-based mobile app that isn't buggy and works even when the internet is sketchy because of there is crappy venue wifi, foreign SIM cards, or finicky VPNs. It is also important that it (2) is fast and handy to find the QR code—people do different things in different contexts, so an interface not fit with the user's goal in that moment creates a bad experience. The Linkedin interface is very feed-oriented, but when you're trying to connect with someone the QR code is important.
Most importantly, (3) the app can't be a throw-away brand that people don't recognize. Most people have hundreds of browser tabs open on their phone, so browser experiences simply get lost and forgotten. We're all exposed to hundreds of new logos, protocol names, etc... at a conference and it is hard to keep track of it all. By having an icon on a phone top, Connectr and the PNIP become top of mind and memorable for a user, and by (4) having it obvious that it connects to a broader ecosystem like Lens, Farcaster, or DeSo in the background makes it feel like it has substance.
Finally, (5) it is important that users can get in the door quick and establish profiles later. This is important for two reasons. (5a)One is that it limits procrastination—if I have to fill out a whole profile or connect the right wallet or whatever, I always tell myself that I'll "look into it later," then I forget and move on. Establishing the connection first and quickly means I'll have something of value (a connection to a real human being) which is a reason to come back.
The other reason (5b) is that the more people I connect with, the more valuable it becomes for me to fill out a profile. If I download the app, just put in my name, then connect with 12 people in my breakout session, I now have an app with 12 valuable connections. When I'm riding home in the taxi that night or sitting on the toilet or whatever, I'm more likely to fill out that profile because the value has been pre-loaded. I got the value up front, now I'm willing to put in the work. (Remember, the value isn't in some PNIP Points scheme or token thing—the value is that I have an opportunity to share information about myself with people that I want to have relationships with).
Jamie is so cool. I met her at a small conference a few weeks ago. Whereas I work at the "Senior" level (I have about 12 years of experience), Jamie is just starting her career which means she bills at a lower price point and is building the skills that I was working on a few years ago. For me, it is great to connect with people like Jamie because if I land a client project that is too big for me, I can hire people like her as a sub-contractor to help out.
Of course, in this business, people are always in and out of full-time jobs, etc..., so I don't really need to know ONE Jamie, I actually need to know a LOT of Jamies. I also need to know some specialists like visual designers or motion designers that I can learn from and also maybe bring in for a little work when a client needs a specialist. So when Jamie told me about a web3 UX design group with around 100 designers in it that sounded awesome.
...then she told me it was on fucking Telegram.
Telegram is a chaotic mess. I won't go into the UX problems here, but suffice it to say that Linkedin has been designed from a UX perspective to be a professional connection platform and Telegram has not. Today what usually happens is:
Join something on telegram → get overwhelmed with notifications → Turn off Notifications → Completely forget about the telegram group.
It's not a good cycle.
Literally a few minutes ago a former colleague messaged me on Linkedin trying to find a Webflow designer. I don't do web flow, so I posted in Telegram, and someone in the big group responded, but now I have to figure out if I should connect them on Telegram or Linkedin or Email... there are downsides to each)
I tell Jamie that since this is a professionally oriented UX designers group, it would be awesome if they used GroupChatt3r* instead—it is like Telegram, but it connects to web3 social protocols. GroupChatt3r also has hooks for PNIP identities, so she can set a setting on the UX Web3 Designers group that requires users to create a PNIP identity when they join.
*I just made this up, but it seems like I learn about a new web3 chat app every day, so I'm sure something like this exists.
Like the QR code journey above, users only have to give themselves a handle and the PNIP is made in the background, but GroupChatt3r adds in a link to the user's PNIP profile (when you tap the link, it pops open the Resum3 app or prompts the user to download it).
This is great! These young, talented designers who are looking for jobs fill out their profiles with all of their skills, NFT proofs, whatever, etc.... They start posting content on WorkStr33m and Jamie makes an extra channel in GroupChatt3r that pulls in the posts and comments from people in the group.
It is great for me as well.
Here is the thing about people that I kinda-know-but-not-really on Linkedin: I never know whether to "connect" with them or not. I need two variables on Linkedin:
Type of connection (if they're a colleague): Worked with, reported to, they reported to me, client of, etc...
Linkedin has this
How deep is the connection? handshake, acquaintance, colleague (I'm just making these up for now)
Linkedin does NOT have this, you're either "connected" or you're not. It is hard to have connections with people you "kind of" know. (which plays into their business model, actually)
On PNIP, when I'm added to the group, that automatically sets a "Handshake" connection setting with these other members. It means that they can send me messages, I can make notes about them, etc... It is the loosest connection—we can kind of track and follow one another, but we haven't really worked together. This gives me the ability to fine-tune filters on feeds, fine-tune messaging settings, etc...
In my case, I spend time looking at people's profiles, making notes about their experiences and interests. I have zoom calls with some of them and track notes about their portfolio work.
Then, in the future, when work comes up that I need some help on, I post in the group and also do some DM outreach to people that I've already met and talked to.
This is really a story about pulling in groups of people to an app. I hate mass chat experiences like Telegram, but I recognize that Jamie probably likes it. I prefer profile-oriented front end experiences and "group" pages for organizing messaging.
When we're able to bridge these experiences with a common protocol, we can build communities of people even when their interface preferences are different. It also means that we can fit the interface to the session-intent. The Telegram interface is a messaging interface—it is good for group chats. It is not a great profile experience, so it is not good for searching for candidates.
Linkedin (as a VC-funded mega web2 company) has (generally) solved this problem with a really big, heavy, complicated app on desktop and another big, complicated app on mobile. They've done a good job, honestly. They have a messaging experience, a feed experience, a profile experience, etc...—a feat they can pull off because they were early to the game and have lots and lots of money.
In web3 we run these as different apps from different companies, but as long as the underlying social graph is shared, it will work wonderfully. The reason that this could work in web3 is because if you're the Resum3 (profile DApp) company, you don't need to necessarily build a chat app. You can probably just integrate the PNIP identity into another app as an add on which is more of a partnership conversation. Everyone can concentrate on building a great experience for a particular persona type or usecase and users don't have to have migration pains.
I've actually knowns Tula for 12 years now. She was a senior designer when I was an intern at my first job out of college, and we've kept in touch ever since. These days, Tula is working for a small design consultancy that has around 10 full-time employees and a handful of contractors like me in an extended network that they pull in for projects that we'd be a good fit for.
Tula doesn't know anything about web3, but she is an important part of my network. She is NOT like the others I described above—she won't use Telegram, doens't have a Lens or Farcaster handle (and has probably never heard of them), and doesn't really care about web3 values or ideology (she probably thinks that web3 died back in 2022).
However, when we think about legitimacy, Tula and her colleagues and clients are important for me. Probably half of the work I do today is for traditional Web2 clients, and I like to also get testimonials from them when I've done a good job. They're not going to offer me an "NFT" to "prove" that I've done work on their project. In fact, the main reason that I ask for testimonials from them is because the work I do is usually all under NDA, so I can't even really share it in a portfolio.
Today I just ask them for a testimonial on Linkedin. That works. But I believe in web3, so let's think about how I could get that testimonial over to web3 and—maybe eventually one day—how I could pull Tula over as well.
Tula gives me a testimonial on Linkedin (they're called "Recommendations" on that platform). Using Resum3 DApp's testimonial feature, I copy and paste Tula's testimonial text into the DApp and put in a link to her Linkedin profile. It mints a PNIP handle which is stored in a smart contract for Tula to claim later.
When someone views my PNIP profile on Resum3 or a similar DApp, the DApp hits a Linkedin API (that hopefully exists?) and pulls back her picture, name, and current title coupled with the quote text. (Would be awesome if it just pulled the whole testimonial, but they don't seem to have URLs).
A few years later when the world shifts and DApps are starting to grow in popularity, Tula decides to build a profile on Resum3. She gets the option to "start with her Linkedin profile"—a simple scraper that pulls over the data about her experience, etc...
However, in this case when she puts in her Linkedin URL and does the verification, it identifies that there has actually been a profile waiting for her this entire time. The Linkedin Verification unlocks that smart contract and the testimonial she gave me is now linked to her profile.
This is the most speculative use case, but also the most important one to think about long-term. I honestly have no ideas how Linkedin's APIs work, and I imagine it'll be a finicky mess.
Still, there is some value to this way of thinking. The most important thing is that (1) as a current PNIP user, I get to have the value of Tula's testimonial without forcing her to convert. Migration will happen in waves and the first wave will be the web3 people (like Webster, Connie, and Jamie above). We can't be an island, but we also can't pull everyone over all at once, so we have to really think about these middle-ground experiences.
There are some common threads among all of these speculative situations.
These could be another post (and I'll probably make one) but I want to pull out a few of them:
Strategies should be mapped to inter-human interactions. It is hard to prioritize features in early stage companies. When thinking about what is most important, think about the choreography of how people meet and interact with one another—this isn't "human" centered design, it is "relationship" centered design because the value of a social app is really emergent from interactions among people. Thinking in very detailed scenarios helps us think about what features will be more important.
Interoperability with broader web3 protocols is key. I believe that there are some data structures that are particular to professional networks (that I'm calling PNIP here), but the majority of identity management should be interoperable with other web3 identity platforms. This makes it easier (and more appealing) to existing web3 users.
Web2.5 is still the key for now. In a social network, everyone I'm connected too isn't likely to have the same experience with web3. It is important to consider that tech savviness CANNOT be a segmentation principle for adoption strategies. Let people sign up in a web2 way and transition them slowly.
Most people aren't anons. Most of us who work actually don't want to be anonymous. We like web3 because it liberates our social graph from the Linkedin (Microsoft) corporation, not because we want to be anons hiding behind cartoon avatars.
No company has to own every touchpoint. In web3, your DApp does not need to accommodate every front-end use case. Focus on being a part of a strong, interoperable network of DApps rather than one big super-app. Your DApp can just focus on a great experience without having to raise billions in seed capital, and we'll all contribute to and benefit from network effects.
If we're going to reach a critical mass of users, we need to do our UX strategy together. A User Journey around a protocol may touch many different DApps. Different personas in an ecosystem will prefer different types of experiences. For a protocol to gain critical mass, we need to make sure that different teams are working to cover the different use cases and user types so that a large migration can occur.
Diversity is wonderful in interfaces, but we need the protocols to be unified.
If you've made it this far, then wow you really care about this.
I also don't know if there is already a consortium working on a real version of PNIP, so if you know of one, let me know. I'm also (obviously) naïve about how some of the aspects of the tech work behind the scenes here. I'm a designer, not a dev.
But if this topic is interesting to you and you want to continue the conversation, I'm game. As is probably pretty obvious, I have a stake in this future—it is important to my own UX strategy consulting business. I'm happy to hop on a call and brainstorm together, hack together, or (if you have the budget for it), even work on a project together.
I didn't illustrate these or really think about them deeply—it was just something I was thinking about this morning, but we could spin up figma, storyboard things out, build test apps, open conversations about standards, etc...
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