For those of you who still remember, there was a time when most of our friends, neighbours, or even the local businesses around us were expressing a strong resistance towards the internet.

Business owners had to until they saw everyone around them creating a website, for them to do the same.

Fast forward a few years, and almost everyone is on the internet now. Despite how resistant they were merely half a decade before.

Some of us believe that the same phenomenon will happen with the blockchain, and that a few years from now everyone you know will have their own website, platform or store on the blockchain.

And that’s our story today:

Token Customization and the Future of Social Media

Social media has played a great role in the recent years to connect businesses with their customers, creators with their audiences and for anyone who seeks to directly reach potential users and customers, Facebook Ads would probably the safest choice.

However, this is an entirely different situation for any social media platform - or any website really - that is on the blockchain. There are a lot of reasons why, but I’ll give you the most important one:

Facebook is banning all ads featuring cryptocurrency and blockchain. We’re not talking about reducing the reach here but rather eliminate the ads altogether.

The biggest value in this case can be found in YouTube, not Facebook.

YouTube hosts thousands upon thousands of content creators who combine massive influence, with outstanding engagement to an already existing - and enormous - audience that is active every day of the week.

Oh, and they’re getting demonetized faster than a factory worker under a communist regime.

And now we are starting to see an abundance of win-win scenarios.

The YouTube algorithm has done a tremendous job to maximize the engagement, in order to keep both the users and creators active on the platform.

The creators are incentivized to post frequently, they engage with the audience regularly, and often they give prizes and giveaways as they reach a certain milestone.

Milestones are an incredibly powerful tool by the way, but we’ll get to that shortly.

The spectacular influence of YouTube creators is hard to ignore. And as it couldn’t be any other way, it hasn’t been left unnoticed by the marketing teams of some of the largest companies in the world.

All of the sudden you see all sorts of mainstream celebrities going to YouTube studios. You see Sky Sports teaming up with the YouTubers Football Daily to present the pregame show, you see The Rock collaborating with YouTuber Logan paul...

The attention is shifting so much that even huge Blockbusters like DeadPool are collaborating with YouTube channels like Screen Junkies.

The biggest difference between YouTube and Facebook - aside from banning crypto-ads - is that you can find plenty of creators who create content frequently and reaching thousands of people every time.

And with a substantial influence over their followers by the way.

Here’s where the token customization comes in play:

You could form partnerships with the creators who most identify with your community/niche/interest and then not only you would vote for them and their content.

But you could give them a founder’s percentage for the role they play in that community. That on its own is no small incentive but it gets better as you add in those milestones they all love so much, and you get yourself a recipe for success.

And now you’re gamifying the entire experience.

For example when the community grows to 50K users the percentage gets bigger, when it grows to 100K another increase gets unlocked and their hard work is rewarded.

This way, their self-interest is tied to yours and suddenly everyone is doing their best for the common growth and sustainability of the platform, all while having fun.

Speaking of fun, why not gamify the blockchain experience for the users as well?

You replicate YouTube’s infamous “Giveaways” (which is a tried and proven strategy to increase engagement) and you allocate a part of the resources to reward the most engaged members of the community.

That could another interesting customized feature to keep in mind.

A prime example of that is what Marvel does with the Infinity Gauntlet giveaways, or what The Walking Dead did with the Lucille Bat or any other collectibles and memorabilia really.

What they do is that they create a win-win for each of the parties involved.

The fans are happy to participate in a game where they can win exclusive content and gifts, the creators win because they get free gifts and special deals and they grow the engagement even further.

And the studio wins because they located where the real attention is and they created successful partnerships with the key people that excel in spreading the word.

“There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.”

― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point.

Closing Thoughts

This post opens with the parallels between the internet and the blockchain and how many business owners had to wait until they saw enough people they trust and follow launching their websites for them to do the same.

Trying to explain the potential benefits that the internet could bring to their businesses was as pointless as it gets. They probably were well aware the value the internet was bringing them, especially introducing them to a much wider consumer-base they couldn't otherwise reach.

However, we're a peculiar species and for many people the fear of the new and the unknown trumps the reasoning and critical senses.

A possible way to bypass that is to sooth those fears by connecting with those creators they follow and resonate with and guide them through some of the most fascinating aspects of blockchain.

Or even better, creating a trend around it.

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