Blockchain Social Media: NFTs As a Game Changer?!
Why NFTs in combination with social media will become big
Hey DEFI TIMES community,
NFTs will shape the way we present ourselves on the internet. They are unique digital collectibles!
People buy them and develop a deep emotional relationship with their PJGs. They identify themselves with their online collectibles!
Why is that so? Well, the internet will grab more and more space in our lives. And we even got to a point where most of our social activity is on social media. We connect on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook etc.
We chat on messenger or WhatsApp - connected 24/7.
With NFTs, we take this to another level!
More and more parts of our lives will move to the internet: NFT will bring your identity and your soul there.
It's going to get even crazier when we finally make decentralized social media a reality. No doubt, NFTs will be closely connected to your online identity, and when we connect them with our social media profile… everything will change!
Let's explore this exciting new topic of NFTs and decentralized social media!
Subscribe to our newsletter to level up your crypto game!
Blockchain Social Media: NFTs As a Game Changer?!
The Need for Decentralized Social Media
The need for Decentralized Social Media has become more than clear at this point.
Your social media profile represents all the work you put into it. Is your following pretty large? Congrats, you probably spent a lot of time and effort building your skills, network, and following!
But I have bad news for you… You don't really own your audience. Every person who clicked on the follow button can be removed at any time - without any legal consequences! Because Facebook and co own your audience.
All the work is gone when Facebook decides that you are not allowed on the platform anymore. Centralized social media is flawed!
When Twitter suspended Donald Trump's account, it became clear that Donald never owned his account in the first place!
Decentralized social media gives power back to the people. Your followers are tracked on the blockchain - nobody can take them away from you!
We already see some cool alternatives to centralized social media. But none of them have taken off yet. Remember Steemit?
While Steemit seems to be gone by now, it proved to the world that decentralized social media is here to stay. It has actual demand.
Now, we only need a product that works for the masses!
The Problem with Decentralized Social Media Platforms
Steemit is probably the first decentralized social media platform to ever exist. It was launched in 2016 by Dan Larimer and Ned Scott.
During the bull market in 2017, the platform exploded, and steemit.com gained its first million users. Steemit.com is the primary user interface to access the underlying blockchain Steem.
As the platform exploded, so did its coin STEEM, an inflationary coin distributed to users of the platform. The promise was the following: If you post valuable content, you get paid in inflation rewards.
Pretty simple concept, right? Just as miners get paid for securing the Bitcoin blockchain, curators get paid for valuable content.
Everything worked fine in the beginning. People signed up and told their friends about it - it seemed like the first decentralized social network that was about to go for the masses.Â
But then the bear market hit in 2018, and people started to realize that they weren't in for the community… they were in for the money!
And as community members started to leave, the platform was slowly dying. But then something different happened, which probably was the most historic moment in decentralized social media history.
Justin Sun bought Steemit Inc, the company behind the blockchain Steem. That wouldn't have been a problem if the blockchain was decentralized. But it turned out… that it really wasn't!
Steemit Inc owned a large percentage of the STEEM supply, which gave Justin complete control over the blockchain. What happened was the most spectacular fork in blockchain history. The community decided to fork the Steem blockchain and created Hive, an exact replica of Steemit, but with one difference: They forked out Justin Sun's coins!
That was the death sentence for Steemit. Both Steemit and Hive lost momentum, and nothing really took off since then.
What seemed like a promising new idea initially became a complete failure - but critical information for building future decentralized social media. The most important learning was:
Don't build a blockchain from scratch - build on existing censorship-resistant blockchains
Community above everything else
Let's Ship
Decentralized social media has been discussed for years now, but no one seemed to find a good solution to get things going!
And here we are in 2021 and still have no clue how to bring it to the masses! ...Or do we?
Connecting NFTs With Decentralized Social Media
Up until very recently, nothing seemed to work. But now, things have changed!
Steemit didn't work because they heavily relied on STEEM prices to go up. Getting rich was first, the community was second - a project that was predetermined to fail from the very beginning!
We need a new way to put community above everything else:
Decentralized Social Media + NFTs = Moon
By combining NFTs and social media, we introduce an entirely new platform that leverages the power of community. NFTs have become status symbols, and everybody wants to show the world which NFTs they own.
That's why we need a social media platform where people can show off their NFTs. Their NFTs are connected with their social media profile and wallet addresses.
One very cool example is Showtime, a platform where people can connect NFTs with their profiles. It looks like this:
NFTs are all about community!
Own a CryptoPunk? Great, you are part of the punk community!
Own an ape? Welcome to the Bored Ape Yacht Club!
By buying an NFT, you choose your online community! And on Showtime, you can show the world which community you belong to. Previously, the only places to do so was Twitter or Discord.
But now, we have a standardized platform - specifically designed for NFT communities. And as the NFT market grows, so does Showtime!
It turns out that the way to bring decentralized social media to the masses is to invent a completely new concept. And by combining NFTs and social media, we finally have found a way to do so!
It's probably important to note that Showtime is not completely decentralized yet, but the company has expressed plans to completely decentralize the platform in the future.
Whatever it takes… in the end... decentralized social media will win!
Find us on:
DISCLAIMER: All information presented above is meant for informational purposes only and should not be treated as financial, legal, or tax advice. This article's content solely reflects the opinion of the writer, who is not a financial advisor.
Do your own research before you purchase cryptocurrencies. Any cryptocurrency can go down in value. Holding cryptocurrencies is risky.