13 reasons for those who work with content, advertising and social media start paying attention to blockchain and cryptocurrencies technology.

I'm sure many of you won't believe but when I started my career in advertising the internet even didn't exist. Always working in agencies, in the 90's I saw the computer graphics/desktop publishing coming and the Photoshop 1.0 (if I remember correctly its name was Digital Darkroom first). Some more years later came the internet.

When I decided to move to "interactive media", trying to explain it to my fellow coworkers and bosses, they all understood as "alternative media" instead :-) At that time, in the beggining of this century, I witnessed the blow and blast of the dot.com bubble, when thousands of websites surged and disappeared, but eBay, Amazon and Google survived. Another change impact was the so called web 2.0, when I was asked to create for blogs and social media. First there were MySpace and Orkut (well known here in Brazil), them the dominance of Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Nowadays, just to avoid monotony and thanks to the Bitcoin's success, the blockchain and cryptocurrencies are rising. After I was introduced to Steemit I began to test and try ideas using the technology, mainly in social networks, my business area. As I got more time to study it (in June I left the agency of my last job) I want to organize and share the info I've found and collected. There are a plenty of initiatives and I felt it apropriate to share with colleagues in the profession.

For whose who work in advertising, content and social media, here follows a list of 13 reasons to start paying attention to blockchain and cryptocurrencies technology:

1. Acording to the authors of this article on Harvard Business Review (The truth about blockchain), more than the launching of the web browser (www), the blockchain can be compared with the invention of TCP/IP, the protocol where the internet was built.

2. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook creator, said he would study encryption and cryptocurrencies in his new year's resolution. Like almost everyone knows the Facebook is one of the few big companies with a huge advertising market share.

3. Using smart contracts running on blockchain, many initiatives aim to eliminate the middle men and optimize efficiency in campaigns with digital influencers and native advertising (sponsored content). Some examples: AdHive, Efir, Fango, Qchain and Unboxed.

4. Journalism projects like Civil, Publiq and Verity want to eliminate the risk of fake news using the blockchain technology's safety, transparency and decentralization. Beyond that, with their own cryptocurrencies, these services can create new sustainable models less dependent on advertising revenues.

5. Some initiatives are using blockchain to grant that the access and monetization of the personal data should be controled by the user himself. Services like Civic, Truth and Wibson are working over this proposal. It goes against the actual model where companies like Google and Facebook sell the use of our data to advertisers.

6. With the video consumption prevailing on the web, many initiatives mixing blockchain, cryptocurrencies and IPFS (a file storage decentralized tecnhology) are being lauched. Among them are Dtube, Flixxo, Props, Singular DTV and Paratii.

7. A recent research pointed that 40% of laptops and 15% of the smartphones in US use ad blockers to access the internet. Helping this trend the Brave browser permits, besides ad blockage, the alternative in rewarding websites and visitors with the BAT (Basic Attention Token) cryptocurrency.

8. Some so-called outdated companies like Kodak are being reinvented with the adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology. The Kodak One project, launched in the CES 2018, put the brand in evidence again with its intend in reward and protect the copyright of photographers and visual artists' work.

9. This idea created by Havas NY for Ameritrade won an award in Cannes Lions Advertising Festival this year: The first ad in the blockchain

10. Services rewarding with cryptocurrencies any users that answer emails (Earn.com), search the web (Presearch) or send SMS (Birdchain) can compete with established business models that uses the same tools for marketing and customer relations.

11. Advertising agencies dedicated only to work with blockchain projects and clients are being founded by big corporate groups as Havas or independent professionals like Truth.

12. Another article on Harvard Business Review defended that The blockchain will do to the financial system what the internet did to media. If the authors prediction was right, we who worked in advertising and content businesses and watched the transformation in our sectors, can imagine that a simple act like using a card to pay goods could be extinct soon.

13. This post that you're reading now was registered on Steem blockchain, a social network that rewards its users with cryptocurrencies and do not depend on selling ad spaces or users personal data to exist. Launched in July 2016, Steemit was the pioneer and almost surpassed the mark of 1 million registered users, in my explorations I found more that 60 others alternative social media sites like Sola, Supload, Lit.live and Minds.

What do you think? All this can pass and at the end those who actually controls the market would prevail and drive how the people work, consume and comunicate using the internet. But I'm sure of one thing, like what happened when Napster appeared (another p2p and decentralized technology), with the invention of blockchain Satoshi Nakamoto let the genie out of the bottle and now it is not possible to put it back again.

Thank you very much and good luck again!

Image credits: photo available on Canva.com, chain illustration by Athalaric (Dreamstime)

10% of all liquid rewards from this post will be donated to @brazilians

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Original post in portuguese: 13 motivos para quem trabalha com publicidade, conteúdo e redes sociais começar a prestar atenção na tecnologia blockchain e suas criptomoedas

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