The emerging Web3 social media landscape appears chaotic and fragmented, with users struggling to adopt multiple similar platforms. With an ever-increasing variety of decentralized social protocols, consumers who are comfortable with well-established Web2 communities like Twitter and Instagram face barriers in integrating with Web3 spaces. This fragmentation comes with the silver lining of increased experimentation and innovation, paving a path to the successes of Web3 social networks.
The underlying social network of Web3 platforms is the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), and Nir Kabessa, the co-founder of Web3 social network aggregator Yup, states that “Twitter is our core competitor, rather than each other.” By adopting each other’s standards, platforms can work together to compete against centralized platforms like those of Web2’s era. Examples of such cooperation include Farcaster and Lens Protocol adopting an EVM identity with a common social graph.
The big advantage of Web3 social media is its permissionless nature and unbounded room for experimentation and customization, allowing developers to build platforms without any central authority controlling their actions. As platforms like Lens and Bluesky open-source their apps, Kabessa suggests that it would lead to a “renaissance of feature-specific” apps. Web3 sees potential for a variety of individualized experiences that people can create and share without worrying about limitations.
On the downside, the dependency of social media on the network effect could pose limitations to users, particularly when all their friends are not on the same platform. The mission of Yup as a Web3 social aggregator involves gathering various protocols into a single interface to reduce fragmentation, ensuring users don’t miss any content from their friends.
Kabessa also highlights the importance of not starting from scratch with users’ social graph of friends, followers, and interests. Yup does this by utilizing users’ on-chain behavior and activities on other platforms, providing a more seamless social experience.
In conclusion, the pros and cons of the fragmented Web3 social media space reflect a double-edged sword. While the rapid development and experimentation of protocols worldwide are pushing the frontier of permissionless technology and potential features yet to unfold, the fragmented nature and network effect barriers limit users’ ability to fully ease into the Web3 world and its countless platforms. The future of Web3 social media lies in striking a balance between embracing innovation while maintaining ease of user experience to seamlessly connect communities on a global scale.
Source: Blockworks
