Blockchain – Beyond Bitcoin (Part 6) Social Media, Digital Media and Publishing
How will Blockchain shake up Social Media, Digital Media and Publishing?
Continuing my series of posts on Blockchain, I focus on three other industries that will feel the Blockchain as a force for change.
Social Media
The Early Days
- Chatrooms where you could go and chat with people from all over the world
- Mailing lists where you could share ideas and points of view
I would not say these options were mainstream. Mailing lists were mainly for techno geeks, chat rooms for teenagers and both were more popular in certain countries than others.
In the mid 2000s there was an explosion in the mainstream use of social media with Facebook being the flag bearer.
2016
We now have Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Twitch, Perisocpe, Snap Chat, Google Hangouts, WhatsApp to name just a few. All of these Social media tools are owned and controlled by shareholders. This means these companies want profits. Users have been generating content for 10+ years which has seen the value of companies such as Facebook grow to 35b bn dollars. (ya 350,000,000,000 Dollars!!!!!)
Blockchain…
Blockchain is a very real threat to these business models. It’s now possible to create a decentralised platform that lives on the Internet. Users no longer need to a centralised server or company to manage the mailing lists, chat rooms or walls.
Thats great but why bother?
Facebook, Twitter et al. have developed slick easy to use applications that work on your phone, tablet and are very easy to use. The services they provide are mostly free to use so what's the incentive to move to some other platform?
Your digital footprint is valuable
Social media is not free. Everytime you log in to one of these company accounts advertisers are gathering your personal data in some shape or form; Who you follow, what you like, what time you log on to your account. You leave a digital footprint which has value. In Facebooks case its worth 350 Billion Dollars.
Get in on the action
Blockchain based contenders such as Steemit give back value to their user-base. As users participate they can get rewarded in digital tokens which can either be exchanged for cash (Steem Dollars) or which effectively give users a share in the value of the platform (Steem Power).
There are other benefits too
- Increased security. Personal data is no longer stored on central servers which can be hacked.
- Freedom of speech. The central idea to a Blockchain is that its an immutable record. This means that comments, posts cannot be removed completely and a record will remain of what was written.
Future developments
Blockchain based Identification systems would mean your entire identity could be registered on a Blockchain.
- Personal Details
- Qualifications
- Certificates
- Medical History.
Digital Passport
These details could all be integrate to a platform with a similar idea as Linkedin. It would be your digital passport which you could share details of when you need to prove who you are, where you worked, what qualifications... . This would all be done in one go and instantly verifiable. No one could forge your identity, or use fake qualifications. I will talk some more about this in a further post.
Digital Media
The Music and Movie industries have always been a victim of pirate copies of their intellectual property. It was just much harder and more costly to do or distribute before the Internet. There have been so many attempts to tackle this
Digital Rights Management (Music)
Adobe and Apple are examples of companies that invested heavily in this. It seems to have proven more of a nuisance for users than anything else. You can only use one device to read a book or listen to a song or the software is not compatible with your device.
Digital Rights Management has never really taken off for Movies , the download times have meant that until recently there has not been a great incentive for the industry to invest.
In the 2000s and 2010s Streaming has taken off. Pioneers of the movie industry such as Kevin Spacey, who is producer on the Netflix series house of cards, have recognised that the onus is on the Industry to provide an attractive alternative and value for consumers so that they don't illegally download the show. A carrot rather than a stick. In House of cards case they release an entire series all at once. The carrot is for people to use the better quality and superior experience provided by Netflix rather than the stick of prosecution.
You don't believe in Evolution???
DRM is not that smart. Its such a locked down system that it cannot evolve. When it was dreamed up there was no such thing as streaming. It's now a dinosaur in a cloud based, multi device, multi user connected world.
Providing a carrot in Netflixs case is big step but is still very much to the benefit of the Industry rather than consumers. In that case it forces you to buy Netflix if you want to play ball.
They can never take our FREEDOM!!!
Take back your freedom with Blockchain. Peertracks, Bittunes and Ujo are examples of Blockchain based start-ups that have a vision to revolutionise the music industry.
The innovation in this space is two fold; micro-payments and Blockchain based digital rights. Anyone can now be their own music producer and distributor. When these platforms gather momentum it will mean control is taken away from big companies if they don't get on board. Even if they do a parallel may be drawn with Credit Card companies. Blockchain will make things cheaper, faster and more flexible.
When you read how these models operate for the Music Industry its easy to imagine a similar idea and business model could be applied to Movies. To take it a little further users will be able to earn money from youtube or periscope type movies. Micro-payments are key here and a platform could develop similar to Steemit to challenge these.
@stephenkendal posted yesterday about The scalability of STEEM and STEEMIT is simply jaw dropping..!! and I agree. SteemTV, SteemGames.... The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
Publishing
Ebooks and the Internet have changed the way we consume written content forever. I can't remember the last time I read a newspaper or physical book. Everything is digital now. Publishing, like the music and movie industries, has tried many things but has not been able to stop the change that is inevitably coming.
News
The model many newspapers have taken, has been to restrict access to websites and charge for a subscription service. In reality this is not that different than the status quo, you just get your newspaper on your tablet.
Advertising is a large income for newspapers or magazine publishers. All newspapers and magazines have managed is to make this invasive. Now advertisers can get information about what your reading, when your reading it and much more. Who knows what they are collecting.
Micro-payments will revolutionise how revenue is generated. Now people can like articles (like in steemit) or a micro-payment could be taken for each page your read. This would mean you only pay for the content that you read, possibly with a daily cap.
The challenges that newspapers face are similar for other publishers. Blockchain based DRM and micro-payments will allow anyone to publish books, white papers, publications and charge for a fee online for use.
Conclusion
- Social Media already has a Blockchain challenger. People can take back control of their content and intellectual property. They can make money from what they produce.
- Digital Media will use the Blockchain to distribute rights and to allow creators to charge micro-payments for their content.
- In Publishing, the subscription models, advertising models and distribution models will completely change. The incentive for consumers will be to have easy to access content, reliable and high quality. People will be happy to pay for this if the price is reasonable and proportionate.
Image Credits. Images have been sourced from https://pixabay.com
Thank you for reading this. I write on Steemit about Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Science and lots of random topics.
Other Posts in this series
Blockchain – Beyond Bitcoin
Blockchain - Beyond Bitcoin (Part 2)
Blockchain – Beyond Bitcoin (Part 3) Banking
Blockchain – Beyond Bitcoin (Part 4) Trade / Ecommerce
Blockchain – Beyond Bitcoin (Part 5) Investments and Insurance
Great series. Appreciate your work.
One question I have with regard to the security aspect. Are all posts visible publicly? I've been assuming that so far. Everything I write is visible to the world. By default it is 'insecure', if that is even the right word to use. It's at the least transparent.
On steemit? Definately. It makes you think about what you write :)
Thanks for the compliments.
As this is there (in principle) forever, it is indeed better to think twice ;)
In my view even with normal websites the info is always there anyways. As soon as something is put out on the internet copies upon copies are made all over the place.
Nothing you put out on the internet is secure in that sense.
On a Blockchain it's just so much more transparent. You can still edit steemit posts but there is a history associated with each page, not directly accessible, but available and undisputable.
This is actually what i was sloppily meaning. You cannot hide anything as one can easily trace-back any transaction.
Great research and insight into the future of blockchain! Thanks for sharing your work on this.
Thanks for the encouragement. Its an exciting topic with lots of possibilities.