In June 2020, Black TikTok creators went on strike to protest a lack of credit for their content on the social media platform.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet technology company reportedly valued at $100 billion.

ByteDance operates a suite of digital products including two, basically identical, major video-sharing applications: Duoyin and TikTok. The major difference between the two apps is that Douyin is available in China and TikTok is available outside of China.

ByteDance has built a suite of digital products that allows them to penetrate domestic and international markets.  As of 2020, Douyin had 600 million daily active users (DAUs) in China, which is more than Instagram's *worldwide *DAUs (500 million, 2020).

It's hard to fathom but TikTok's numbers pale in comparison – TikTok reported 700 million monthly active users (MAUs) internationally and $1 billion in revenue in 2020.

All of this to say – TikTok is backed by a tech behemoth that is not hurting if the latest Meg Thee Stallion song doesn't have an accompanying TikTok dance.

The narrative that a creator or group of creators can hurt major social media platforms is handicapping Black creators.

The current iteration of the World Wide Web is called Web 2.0. Webopedia defines Web 2.0 as the "second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online."

In the early days of Web 2.0, it was cumbersome to share content online. The easiest way to share content was to upload and link the content via FTP. This often required familiarity with servers (and HTML if you were publishing the content to a public-facing website).

Eventually, websites began popping up that allowed people to share content without creating their own websites. For example, YouTube allowed its users to share videos. Myspace allowed its users to share music (among many other things).

But it quickly became clear that people didn't want to only share their content – they wanted to connect with other people via content.

As the saying goes – the rest is history. Social media platforms proliferated, allowing billions of people worldwide to connect online.

Now, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have millions of people sharing content every minute.

Great, right?

Wrong, or at least, that's what many would argue.

Major social media platforms have built billion-dollar businesses from aggregating user-generated content without sharing economic upside with the users who generate the content.

Between the volume of user-generated content and algorithms that can surface similar content, no single creator (or even, group of creators) can disrupt these social media behemoths.

But let's be clear that this isn't a Black thing – many people are fed up with this business model. Throw in social and political issues like platform censorship and you have the perfect storm for Web 3.0.

Creators are past demanding recognition or compensation from major social media platforms – instead, they're building an entirely new decentralized Internet to displace intermediaries like Facebook and Google.

It occurred to me that everyone talks about the financial side of cryptocurrency, NFTs, Web 3.0, and decentralized finance. However, most people don't know what Web 3.0 actually is.

In short, Web 3.0 is the next phase of the World Wide Web that will empower creators to connect and share in the economic upside with internet users/consumers, without intermediaries or aggregators.

"Web 3.0’s decentralized blockchain protocol will enable individuals to connect to an internet where they can own and be properly compensated for their time and data, eclipsing an exploitative and unjust web, where giant, centralized repositories are the only ones that own and profit from it" (Forbes, 2020).

Source: https://fabianfranzen.substack.com/

With Web 3.0, a Black creator could:

• Sell their original viral video or meme (think "Eyebrows on fleek, da fuck")  as an NFT and keep a percentage of any future sales

• Distribute their original artwork or music (a shrewd option for independent artists) as an NFT and keep a percentage of any future sales

• Create a creator/community social token (think a $VRZZ coin that allows you to vote on the next Verzuz competitors, unlock exclusive memorialized NFTs from past competitions, and wager points to bet on who wins).

The possibilities are truly endless, but the takeaway should be that all of these are peer-to-peer global transactions with no intermediaries (i.e., no banks, no social platforms).

We have a while to go before the mainstream adoption of Web 3.0. But Black creators can leverage, what experts call, Web 2.5 to begin extracting economic value from their social media presence.

The following tweet sums up Web 2.5:

https://twitter.com/davenemetz/status/1429142560463724549?s=20

Based on this information, here's what Black creators can be doing today (instead of boycotting TikTok):

• Deprioritize virality. Widespread distribution was a drug created by major social media platforms because they know they're the only mechanisms that can facilitate or guarantee virality.

• Focus on building an engaged community that is willing to pay for your content (e.g., merchandise, exclusive videos, etc.),

• Read up on the 1,000 Fans Theory which argues you only need 1,000 true fans to make a fruitful living.

• Sign up for a Web 2.5 platform like Patreon, Ko-Fi, or Buy Me A Coffee to begin monetizing your most engaged community members today.

• Prioritize ownership. People who own the content they create will fare the best in Web 2.5 and beyond.

https://raindrop.io/simonembanna/further-reading-19794252/embed/search=%23tiktok

In June 2020, Black TikTok creators went on strike to protest a lack of credit for their content on the social media platform.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese internet technology company reportedly valued at $100 billion.

ByteDance operates a suite of digital products including two, basically identical, major video-sharing applications: Duoyin and TikTok. The major difference between the two apps is that Douyin is available in China and TikTok is available outside of China.

ByteDance has built a suite of digital products that allows them to penetrate domestic and international markets.  As of 2020, Douyin had 600 million daily active users (DAUs) in China, which is more than Instagram's *worldwide *DAUs (500 million, 2020).

It's hard to fathom but TikTok's numbers pale in comparison – TikTok reported 700 million monthly active users (MAUs) internationally and $1 billion in revenue in 2020.

All of this to say – TikTok is backed by a tech behemoth that is not hurting if the latest Meg Thee Stallion song doesn't have an accompanying TikTok dance.

The narrative that a creator or group of creators can hurt major social media platforms is handicapping Black creators.

The current iteration of the World Wide Web is called Web 2.0. Webopedia defines Web 2.0 as the "second generation of the World Wide Web that is focused on the ability for people to collaborate and share information online."

In the early days of Web 2.0, it was cumbersome to share content online. The easiest way to share content was to upload and link the content via FTP. This often required familiarity with servers (and HTML if you were publishing the content to a public-facing website).

Eventually, websites began popping up that allowed people to share content without creating their own websites. For example, YouTube allowed its users to share videos. Myspace allowed its users to share music (among many other things).

But it quickly became clear that people didn't want to only share their content – they wanted to connect with other people via content.

As the saying goes – the rest is history. Social media platforms proliferated, allowing billions of people worldwide to connect online.

Now, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have millions of people sharing content every minute.

Great, right?

Wrong, or at least, that's what many would argue.

Major social media platforms have built billion-dollar businesses from aggregating user-generated content without sharing economic upside with the users who generate the content.

Between the volume of user-generated content and algorithms that can surface similar content, no single creator (or even, group of creators) can disrupt these social media behemoths.

But let's be clear that this isn't a Black thing – many people are fed up with this business model. Throw in social and political issues like platform censorship and you have the perfect storm for Web 3.0.

Creators are past demanding recognition or compensation from major social media platforms – instead, they're building an entirely new decentralized Internet to displace intermediaries like Facebook and Google.

It occurred to me that everyone talks about the financial side of cryptocurrency, NFTs, Web 3.0, and decentralized finance. However, most people don't know what Web 3.0 actually is.

In short, Web 3.0 is the next phase of the World Wide Web that will empower creators to connect and share in the economic upside with internet users/consumers, without intermediaries or aggregators.

"Web 3.0’s decentralized blockchain protocol will enable individuals to connect to an internet where they can own and be properly compensated for their time and data, eclipsing an exploitative and unjust web, where giant, centralized repositories are the only ones that own and profit from it" (Forbes, 2020).

Source: https://fabianfranzen.substack.com/

With Web 3.0, a Black creator could:

• Sell their original viral video or meme (think "Eyebrows on fleek, da fuck")  as an NFT and keep a percentage of any future sales

• Distribute their original artwork or music (a shrewd option for independent artists) as an NFT and keep a percentage of any future sales

• Create a creator/community social token (think a $VRZZ coin that allows you to vote on the next Verzuz competitors, unlock exclusive memorialized NFTs from past competitions, and wager points to bet on who wins).

The possibilities are truly endless, but the takeaway should be that all of these are peer-to-peer global transactions with no intermediaries (i.e., no banks, no social platforms).

We have a while to go before the mainstream adoption of Web 3.0. But Black creators can leverage, what experts call, Web 2.5 to begin extracting economic value from their social media presence.

The following tweet sums up Web 2.5:

https://twitter.com/davenemetz/status/1429142560463724549?s=20

Based on this information, here's what Black creators can be doing today (instead of boycotting TikTok):

• Deprioritize virality. Widespread distribution was a drug created by major social media platforms because they know they're the only mechanisms that can facilitate or guarantee virality.

• Focus on building an engaged community that is willing to pay for your content (e.g., merchandise, exclusive videos, etc.),

• Read up on the 1,000 Fans Theory which argues you only need 1,000 true fans to make a fruitful living.

• Sign up for a Web 2.5 platform like Patreon, Ko-Fi, or Buy Me A Coffee to begin monetizing your most engaged community members today.

• Prioritize ownership. People who own the content they create will fare the best in Web 2.5 and beyond.

https://raindrop.io/simonembanna/further-reading-19794252/embed/search=%23tiktok