<aside> ✨ Last week we asked our community if they had heard of Web3, over two thirds of those who answered said they hadn’t.
However for the value that our members are creating within their own spaces, brands and communities; Web3 will change the expectations of how they share and create.
Let’s get straight into it...
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To understand Web 3.0, it’s important to understand what came before. The Internet, Web 1.0, and Web 2.0.
It all started with the internet. The term 'internet' is a combination of the words 'interconnected and network' because the internet started as the real physical infrastructure; the servers, wires and hardware which created the first primitive stages of the Web. Today the internet has grown to encompass both the wired and wireless global infrastructure which makes up how we understand the Web.
Web 1.0 followed the primitive internet, the creation of ‘browsers’ were taken 'online' and we saw the invention of clickable hyperlinks which connected information, Web 1.0 was primarily static, 'read-only' content and mostly for academic and research purposes.
As Web 1.0 started to become more consumer facing, communities began to understand the potential of this new digital space. ‘Guestbooks’ started appearing on websites, where readers could add their own comments and edits on the web pages, allowing first time a global audience creating user generated content around a subject or piece of content.
Web 2.0 slowly transitioned from Web 1.0 as the technology improved, powered by individuals and communities' desire to share knowledge and create content in this new digital world. This is known as the ‘read-write’ web, and is how we mostly understand the Web today, full of social media, websites, content, video, audio, energy.
At the beginning of Web 2.0, every time you went on the Web it was like you’d entered it for the first time. There was no account of you ever being there, no history, no autofill, nothing. This was called the stateless web and it was pretty inconvenient for users, so Web 2.0 introduced those ‘Cookies’ you love to agree to. The Cookies contain small packets of information (like fortune cookies) which communicate between the server and the Web browser.
For Communities, Web 2.0 became a space to come together, the first evolutions of social media gave people a safer, more anonymous environment where they could create their identities under ‘usernames’. Here, niche to mainstream communities began to form and share their life experiences and sense of identity.
In social media 2.0, individuals started to monetise the communities they built, turning some of them into audiences. Others began to create ‘finsters’, fake social media accounts in order to create multiple versions of themselves to exist online.
While Web 2.0 created a democratisation of information, and huge opportunity and value for individuals and communities, it quickly became made up of centralised spaces.
For those who had created value from the communities they built, they were now at the mercy of the platforms they built them on, renting the space and followers from the algorithms and company shareholders.
In fact, everything you create and publish it on instagram, they own it. Let that just sink in. They own your content, your images, your voice, your value.
So for the platforms in Web 2.0, the free to play model became the industry standard, making the user the most valuable product...and remember those Cookies that were designed to help you, they soon became a tool to track and extract your attention and behaviours, and monetise them for as long as possible. This is the breaking point we are at today, our value and sense of community extracted by global platforms who monetise us and sell back to us our deepest desires and cultures.
Web 3.0 (or better known as Web3) is what is currently being built now, it is what many hope is the future of the Web. At the centre of Web3 sits values and purpose which would revolutionise how we use and view the web today.
In Web3, the Web uses blockchain technologies and ‘protocols’ to bypass and decentralise applications which have been centralised previously. This allows users to directly share with each other instead of being at the mercy of a centralised platforms, for example, a social media company owned by a CEO or board of directors.
On a Web3 Social Media platform, users would be able to share and create value directly with each other; own their personal data, sell their own advertising, and if they didn’t like the social media platform anymore, simply move their followers onto another.
Web3 also allows for the web to be 'read, write and execute', by building with native internet currencies known as ‘cryptocurrencies’ and rules, known as programmable ‘smart contracts’ to execute them.
Smart Contracts are simply rules which can be written into the blockchain for all to see. They can execute automatically without the need for human intervention and allow for autonomous permissionless interactions in Web3, creating independence from individuals, organisations and even governments.
Recently, we’ve seen a Web 2.0 Platform ‘OnlyFans’ make the decision to ban NSFW content after ‘pressure from banking partners’ - leaving creators, influencers and entire communities who have created the value for the platform suffering.