How CyberConnect Is Unlocking a Web3 Social Media Model
Can letting users own their data help take down tech giants?
By: Zack Guzman
May 3, 2023
Social media is predicated on users being asked to post on a free platform, while having their data harvested. The value of adding more users to the platform might help the Facebooks or the Twitters of the world, but not necessarily the early users who made the platforms what they are today.
But that value is now being unlocked and returned to users by Web3 social applications being built on decentralized networks. Networks like CyberConnect are paving a new path forward by enabling users to own their connections and data as they interact with others across a number of different applications.
That interoperability to take your connections and followers with you anywhere on the web is a game-changer, according to CyberConnect co-founder Wilson Wei.
"If you were a creator and spent five years working on a YouTube channel creating the best content you could and accumulated a million followers or something like that and suddenly you want to switch to a different platform — let's say Twitter, or Twitch, or TikTok — you're not able to do that — you have to start from scratch," he said in a new Coinage interview. "A lot of social platforms are building on their own database, and it's like a walled garden — every data piece is siloed and they use that to lock users on a platform."
Instead, as Coinage highlighted before, Web3 social graphs like Lens or CyberConnect, allow users to take their connections and jump accross multiple applications. By creating decentralized and transparent social graphs (basically the equivalent of a social media site's private database of your posts and connections) these Web3 social projects can be used to create an open, community-owned equivalent of the privately owned Web2 social media sites we're familiar with.
These sites also aim to solve the "cold-start problem" by rewarding early users of their platforms. The networks are powered by tokens, which also represent governance stakes in how these projects are run. CyberConnect is looking to finally unlock some of that ownership for its users by dropping its own CYBER token, beginning with a CoinList sale on May 18.
Watch our full interview with CyberConnect's Wilson Wei above to learn more, or check out our full episode on Web3 social media.
