Originally written by Nick Confrey
A new renaissance of creative potential is brewing – I see the potential of Web3 to give product development a new, community-driven approach. It introduces new tools and business models that will fundamentally change the way products are built. There are a lot of opportunities here, good and bad for society as a whole, and my goal is to use my experience in the largest social networks to make sure we don't repeat the mistakes of the past.
I love building social products. It makes perfect sense to take my friends and family questions and then build an app that they can instantly download and use on their phones. I want to continue to inspire joy in our relationships with others; in order to do that, I need to use the best tools.
Here are three reasons why I built a company in the web3 space:
First, build with others, not serve people
When I built creative tools on Facebook, I was building for people. I'll make an educated guess about what feature will help people the most, build it, and then post it to 10% of people and see how retention rates go. While I learned a lot about data-driven decision-making (and that people sometimes ask for features they don't actually want), it was an isolated experience. People are reduced to numbers, so it's easy to lose perspective. Compared to web3, your users interact with you in Discord.
In terms of extreme decentralization, the DAO actually structures the entire company and is managed by people. But even with progressively decentralized social platforms, individual features and ideas can be crowdsourced as you build.
This spirit of "building openly with your community" is contagious and fun. It is also driven by real incentives. By launching tokens or NFT collections, early adopters have a financial interest in your project. Every contribution or idea in Discord actually adds incremental value to the platform, and users end up with a consistent incentive.
Therefore, the trust that comes with consistent socialization and self-recognition is the basis for exploring the common capabilities of the squad.
Builders and communities have never been so aligned. I can reach out and get temperature detection from each of my users instantly, and they can also come up with new ideas or feedback to me.
I am bullish on the power of the community and think it can surpass the traditional incumbents.
Empower people to create the experiences they want most in this world.
Second, better terminal games
3. All current web2 social platforms have gone through a cycle from "cool to not cool". When Facebook and Instagram launch, getting an account and connecting with your friends is fun and low-key. It's cool to be part of the new wave of the internet. But eventually, something uncool happens – as the platform monetizes, you get stuck in ads and news articles. They enter the "extraction" phase of value. A16Z has a good diagram in Why Web3 Matters to illustrate this. When platforms "reach the top of the S-curve, their relationship with network participants changes from positive sum to zero sum." In order to continue to grow, data needs to be extracted from users and competed with (previous) partners".
Web2 platforms are getting cool because they put limits on your creativity. Suddenly, we're not just playing with our friends, we're creating content for the engine.
I realized that no matter how good a product I make in the world of web2, the result always needs to be the same: extracting the value of the user in the form of advertising.
Web3, on the other hand, won't hit the same ceiling because it doesn't need the era of "effort." New tools like the token economy mean we can go beyond web2's advertising business model. This is an upcoming "play-to-earn" world: the more fun and value users get on the platform, the greater their contribution to the economy.
Now that we have this graph, we can continue to benefit from everyone's participation because they are being accurately rewarded.
Third, dangerous, terrible, optimistic
I guess the last reason in the web3 space is to inject some nuance and rationality into this space known for its astronomical valuation and blind optimism that decentralization is the way to solve all social diseases.
Web3 can be dangerous and intoxicating because it offers so many intellectual tests (you're smarter here), wealth effect (making a lot of dollars), and social (WAGMI) validation.
In fact, there has been so much validation that I see many projects that are merely BUIDL without stopping to consider what the social consequences would be if they succeeded.
At the NFT New York conference in November 2021, I watched a panel discussion about decentralized social networking. One speaker told his adorado that his network "will never have any censorship!" Anything that is released will always be there! The crowd cheered. Anything that is released will always exist! The crowd cheered. I was immediately taken aback. I approached them after the group discussion and asked them what plans they had to control and deal with bullying and harassment. Their response was, "There's no way our system can take that into account." And, anyway, we focus first and foremost on small groups, so we want to have the effect of a local community. "
Does this "build first, worry later" approach sound familiar? Yes, that's what happened to Facebook: they built the world's largest connected social graph, with good intentions, but unfortunately hit by the reality of society. Great power comes great responsibility, and we can learn from the mistakes of the web2 era. Before we can cause more negative social impact, we can build something really valuable in web3.