Unboxed #11 - The Creator Economy (Part 4) : Web3 Making It Community-owned and Fairer
Okay, guys… Now it’s time to dive more into latest trends and happenings in the Creator Economy… I am sure you must have gone through yesterday’s post - “Little Recap of Creator Economy”. If not please check below :-)
Done? Cool… Let’s start now…
The New Creator Economy : A Community-owned Ecosystem
Platforms are becoming community-led where both creators and their audience members have the opportunity to have greater upside based on their contributions.
Before we start exploring the next iteration of the creator economy, through the lens of Web3 platforms, let’s take a step back and explore the history of the creator economy since the inception of the internet.
Web1 | The Information Economy → Content consumers (Year 1985)
Web1 refers to the first version of the web: read-only. Also called ‘The Information Economy,’ Web1 examples are static web and personal sites, where the users’ role was mainly limited to reading the information provided by a few content producers, with no option for them to circle back to those creators. An example is AOL, which was consumption-only.
Web2 | Creators = Bloggers → Brand representatives (Year 2004)
As more people started gravitating to the internet, Web2 saw the rise of influential people who started blogging, gradually amassing significant fame and online audiences on platforms such as MySpace, Blogger, Soundcloud as well as Vinyl.
Thereafter, Web2 creators started monetizing their audience primarily via advertising, becoming the channels for other brands - allowing creators to earn revenue through affiliate advertising and sponsorship agreements. However, they were just the conduits of these other brands and businesses with no loyal attachment to the company.
‘’The same way that Silicon Valley became a mindset and millennials from all over the world realized that tech entrepreneurship can be a career option, Gen Z’ers for the very first time can now earn a living from their ingenuity online. We at General Catalyst are very excited about a future where ownership and the economic upside is given primarily to the creators who have, for too long, been undervalued and underpaid for their creative labor.’’ - Niko Bonatsos, Investor at General Catalyst
Web3 | No more platform monopolies → Creator Ownership (Year 2021/2022)
New Types of Creator Platforms
In Web3, the definition of creator is changing as power dynamics shift from the platforms to the creators and their communities.
Today, the creator economy is no longer just about providing value to the platforms, it’s about new forms of direct creator-community relationships. There is an opportunity for creators not only to offer more to their fans (including financial upside) but for both creators and their communities to finally be able to participate in the collective value that they help platforms create.
“It feels pretty exciting at the moment because Web3 is still such a new and open field. It’s interesting to see the unique ways it’s enabling creators to build and own communities while bringing their creativity to broader groups of people, and really involving their community as part of the creation process. I think that the community angle is going to be the most interesting over the next little while and really brings a new lens to the creator economy. There’s a lot to figure out - but access, inclusion, and awareness feel like important next steps. I’m excited to see how things shape up!” - Silvia Oviedo Lopez, Head of Marketplace at Canva and formerly Head of Creators at Pinterest
The New Creator Economy: 140+ of The Latest Creator-Led Platforms
In this market mapping, we focus on the new Web3 creator platforms that enable creator (and community) ownership as well as the tools to enable creators to participate in this new creator economy.
*A dataset of the companies can be found below, as well as an additional dataset with investors who are actively investing in this space with their typical cheque sizes, geography and stage focus, plus much more. All of the investor data has been individually provided by the investment firms directly.
‘’It will be the Web3 Creators who will rebuild the global economy and take us into a beautiful, decentralized, free and trusting world. I can’t wait.’’ - Tim Draper, Draper Associates
We chose and selected the companies based on research, recommendations and publicly available information. Companies who have raised significant amounts of capital have not been included as the mapping aims to outline the latest startups. The mapping is not exclusive to the companies listed.
“We’ve entered the beginning of the end of the creator economy era. Creators are increasingly burnt out and turned off by endless competition, vacuous content production, and spending more time pleasing algorithms than their actual creative practices. New structures for creativity -- built around squads, collectives, and new expressions of the label model -- are emerging in Web3 and beyond. Creators are on the cusp of moving out of the individualism of the creator economy and into a new era of creativity in multiplayer mode.” — Yancey Strickler, Co-founder of Metalabel.xyz and Kickstarter
Direct Monetization Platforms
Community Tokens
Platforms allowing creators to monetize engagement in a crypto native way
Collab.Land , Bonfire, Buildspace , Continuum, Coordinape, CrowdPad, CryptoLeague, Dime, Fave, Fold, Glow, Guild, Jadu, Jomija, Minti, Monument, Moonwalk, QuidliRabbitHole, Rally, Rare Circles, Roll, Stader Labs, Superlocal
‘’There are new startups that are attempting to solve for the problems of communities being rewarded for their contribution. The concept is that based on certain contributions (e.g. Github pull requests, voting on proposals, engaging on Discord, owning NFTs, etc) the DAO members will be rewarded with certain "perks" (e.g. tokens, other rights). The core concept is that creators can have their own social tokens that appreciate in value based on supply/ demand, which aligns their fans' interests with the creators' interests, making it a win-win for both parties.’’ - Ed Roman, Managing Director at Hack VC
NFT Marketplaces
Marketplaces allowing creators to monetize digital assets.
ArtWallStreet, Async Art, Autograph, DeFine, Ethernity, Formfunction, Fractional, Holaplex, Jambb, Kalao.io, MakersPlace, Masterpiece, Mintable, Mintdrop, OneOf, Palm, Phantom, Portion, Quantum Art, Rarible, Showtime, SuperRare, Upland, Zora
"The major shift is 'make your customers owners,' so that the early users and contributors receive part of the value they help platforms create, and eventually have governance over it and more control. We are essentially giving these companies to the users - and that's the biggest societal social shift that we're creating here. It's just a new form of capitalism, a little more egalitarian and a little more socialist, that is allowing everyone to take part in these huge wealth creations that are happening in the world versus limiting it to the elite investors or the founders. We talk about wealth disparity a lot in the world. But how are we going to combat that?" - Bradford Stephens, Co-founder & Managing Partner at Blockchain Capital
Play to earn
Admix, BAYZ, Carry1st, Clytie, CropBytes, Goals, Illuvium, Realm, Stardust
Content
Glass, Glowstick, Livepeer, Mirror, Papyrus, Raiinmaker, Sigle, VersoView, Yup, Zestworld
Metaverse
Bullieverse, Decentraland, Genies, Hyaliko, Miiji, Orderinbox, Ready Player Me, Space Runners, Spatial, Zensportsia
“Within the creator world, I am most excited about the metaverse direction we are all walking towards. Web3 is a mash-up of 3D worlds, social gaming, NFTs, and virtual goods ownership. It stands for community, brand and ownership.” - Nicole Quinn, Lightspeed
Music
Afterparty, Audius, Beatoven, CurrentsFM, Dequency, Dropstar, Mint Songs, Nina, Pianity, Royal, Sonomo, Sound, SoundMint, Stage11, Trubify, Unblocked
"What Web3 really does is it unlocks the possibility for creators to offer more. If we take newsletters as an example, the concept in Web3 becomes 'why subscribe when you can invest?' In the case of Mirror.xyz, you now have the opportunity to invest at the earliest stages of a publication in exchange for a token or NFTs so you effectively have ownership in that.’’ - Jarrod Dicker, Partner at TCG
If you want to share anything or have any suggestions/questions, please leave them in the comments!
That’s it for today :-)
Hope each of you has a great start to your day. I’ll talk to everyone tomorrow.
— Amit
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