The Power of Social Tokens (Web3)
The average YouTuber with one million subscribers only earns US$60k in annual advertising revenue - Antler
While it can take forever for an influencer to reach 1 million subscribers on YouTube, the bulk of the ad revenues go to the platform (YouTube in this case). Sadly, the influencers and their community have become a cash cow for these platforms (As they say, if the product is free, then you are the product). 🤷♂️
Problem?
All in all, influencers are finding it increasingly hard to monetize their talents. Influencers don’t directly engage with their community, run the risk of getting de-platformed without notice, and the community lacks any skin in the game wrt their influencer’s success or failure. 😪
Patreon, OnlyFans, and Substack partially solve the problem by allowing influencers to directly engage with their audiences and monetize through subscriptions. However, the community still can’t participate in any economic upside or governance wrt their influencer, potentially limiting their engagement and willingness to pay. ☹️
Solution?
Influencer owned, operated, and fulfilled tokens aka “Social tokens”.
Influencers can
- Creation: Mint these (social) tokens through platforms such as Roll, Rally, or ZORA
- Distribution: distribute tokens to their community based on their engagement/monetary contribution, including activities like social sharing, subscription, content suggestions etc
- Redemption: Allow token redemption by enabling reward mechanisms such as exclusive content, face to face chat, early access to NFTs etc
- Governance: Empower their community to participate in decision making (DAO based governance model)
Amazingly, Social tokens provide both ownership as well as utility to the influencer communities, something web2 can’t provide for. Voila! 🤙
Business model?
- Influencers/Community: Social tokens can be freely traded just like other tokens/stocks, creating liquidity opportunities for the influencers
- Social token Issuing platforms: These platforms retain a portion of the social tokens issued by the influencers to maintain and grow the platform
What’s next?
Effectively, social tokens can prove to be the currency of choice in web3, allowing influencers and their community to be the owners of their destiny (instead of the platforms determining their fate). Social token powered digital economies will increasingly become a norm as web3 companies like Roll try to become the Stripe of social tokens. 💰
The recent launch of $APE coin (by Bored Ape Yacht Club) indicates how social tokens can galvanise the creators and their community around a common interest. 💪
