Web2 Social started in the early 2000s. From Yahoo Messenger to Orkut to MySpace to Facebook to Instagram/Snapchat to TikTok to the new Twitter, they have been operating under fundamentally different constraints than Web3.
The original sin: Advertising
Since Facebook has onboarded a large part of the world, the focus has been increasing the time spent on their app.
Advertising was their key driver. It left them no choice but to have engagement as the key metric and focus on capturing attention.
I believe this is the biggest sin that is causing polarisation and gives rise to the Social Dilemma. To the extent that Instagram, TikTok and Twitter have become replacements for Television.
The real social networks moved to smaller groups on Whatsapp / Telegram / Signal.
Web3 social doesn’t have this problem. So we can focus on building long-term relationships.
High engagement = low context
Engagement game led to current popular social platforms to become low context.
MySpace allowed me to drag and drop design my profile page with javascript animations and complete freedom of design. Highest reflection of someone’s personality.
Orkut and Facebook boiled it down to a plethora of fields letting me showcase my books, music, places i visit, sports, family relationships, and a host of other rich data.
Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok further reduced this to a bio, link, and location.
At every stage, the decision was driven by optimising engagement. If I want to understand more about a human on Instagram or Twitter, I have little choice but to go through their content feed rather than about their personality.
This killed the rich profiles. And thereby, the ability to connect based on a richer personality make-up.
Media vs Network
| Social Media | Social Network |
| Cat pictures and dance videos | Meaningful content |
| Strangers you want to impress | Trusted connections |
| Replacement for TV | Low fidelity version of a gathering of friends around a bonfire |
| Engagement as key metric | Trust/Alignment as key metric |
| Dopamine appealing to impulse | Sense of belongingness |
Advertising drove these platforms from being social networks to social media.
Social networks are meant to bring people together based on some common ground, give them avenues to interact, protect their privacy, and establish rituals to reinforce trust.
The reason why i am active on Facebook even now is because it gives me reminders for my school friends’ birthdays. Or sends me posts when they have a “life event”.
Twitter and Instagram do not have any such features because they passive media consumption. They are also largely video based or moving towards being video based because they are getting closer to replacing Television.
I believe web3 can build a true social network and it starts with richer profiles with deeper datapoints about our psychological make up.
That is what we’re building at ValuesDAO.