This post was entirely inspired by a brilliant one written by @bitcoinflood titled Is Web3 Going To Ever Be Reality?
The post is a reality check, and raises a whole spectrum of really important issues that I think we all too often shy away from talking about. I started writing a reply in a comment, but rapidly realised that the comment was turning into a post-length thing, so here it is !
First off, I'll say that while I don't 100% agree with everything @bitcoinflood says, I think his views are very much along the right lines. The thoughts below are my own, and I'm not going to pretend I've got all the answers, but perhaps it'll help keep the discussion going and get minds far better than mine to focus in on finding solutions to some of the issues.
We Should Be Talking About Leadership, Not Governance
Within Hive and other Web3 (and nominally Web3) places, when we talk about how things are organised, all the talk is about decentralisation and governance.
In the case of Hive, this means a witness structure where it is the top 20 who make the decisions. The concern I have with this is that the top 20 witnesses are good people and devoted to Hive, but are first and foremost developers and IT specialists with the knowledge to run a node.
But technical ability is not the same as leadership. What any tech business neeeds, whether Web2 or Web3, is a spectrum of talented people at the helm to guide things. Not just technicians; we need marketing experts, specialists in attracting funding, accountants, legal and ethical specialists, and a whole lot of other disciplines all working together as a team.
I recognise that having a single leader (or small group of leaders) leaves us at the risk of exposure to ego problems, and creates a target for regulators and hostile actors looking for a propaganda target.
But almost every successful business started with a single person with a vision, and a charismatic public-facing personality can go a long way to creating the kind of buzz leading to mass adoption.
A cynical part of me thinks that the answer might be in AI. Use AI to generate a "charismatic-but-slightly-eccentric leader" who is entirely virtual. Just don't let on to the wider world for a few years....
Web3 Needs To Stop Being Addicted To Web2
If Web3 keeps looking backward to Web2 solutions every time we meet a problem, then it'll never happen. But as @bitcoinflood correctly identifies, all too often developers on Web3 projects end up looking backward and making somehing that's Web2.5.
A good example of this is the way so many Hive users and communities point out to Discord. It's very much an archetypal Web2 platform, with the company monitoring and moderating content.
But perhaps Web2.5 is as good as we are going to be able to get if we are to gain public and regulatory acceptance. True Web3 may only be possible if we go fully "underground", becuse regulators and crypto exchanges all hate sites where they can't exercise control.
Simplification Is essential !
Web3 sites always sem to be insanely complex comapred to Web2 ones. Just compare even the "simplified" sign-up methods Hive has with the legacy social media latforms, where you can usually sign up with just an email and password (even if you then have to do KYC and verify your real world identity shortly afterwards).
That complexity runs through Web3 like the letters in astick of rock. Why have one front-end when you can have dozens ? Why have one token when you can create a whole second layer ?
All this complexity might add excitement and opportunity for those who have become used to it, but I suspect it's a big part of what scares off "normal" users.
We Need Cashflow
@bitcoinflood identified that Web2 platforms succeed only if their revenue comes from advertising.
But if you boil it down to basics, what makes a platform succeed is cashflow. Cashflow that is profitable enough that it creates a surplus that can be used to fund promotion and growth.
The big Web2 platforms didn't start with advertising. What they started with was capital, and lots of it (rumour has it that Google had a lot of CIA cash pumped in dicreetly at the beginning). They built a user base, and that user base then became something advertisers were willing to pay to gain access to.
Web3 has two problems on this front. First is the obsession with privacy and anonymity. That makes it very hard to target advertising, and scattergun type advertising is just annoying. Second is that most poeple want to use the internet for free. Why would someone pay to go on a Web3 platform when they can use a Web2 one for free and just put up with the ads ? Those of us who but HIVE are likely to be an educated minority.
I'm not sure if there is a single answer to this one. Instinctively I feel the solution probably involves bringing in business money as well as charging users for premium content and access. Google's masterstroke was to allow businesses to access Adwords and manage their own campaigns; it wasn't how much one business spent that mattered, it was that millions of small businesses were doing it.
For Web3, perhaps it's to enable businesses to create content quickly and easily (so that it's "pull" rather than "push" driven), but then encourage them to pay to have that content put into promoted positions. Or to enable poeple to shop related products directly from content type posts but charge a small commission each time.
Whatever it is, it needs enough businesses doing it to bring in millions, so it has to be automated and we have to have a user base large enough that businesses can get a return on their investment.
Web3 Needs To Solve Ordinary People's Problems That Web2 Doesn't
This is probably the toughest one of all !
What can Web3 do that Web2 can't ? We have to face the reality that if someone in Hive or another Web3 place develops a "killer app", that Web2 businesses have the budget and manpower to overwhelm us and then drown our idea with advertising spend and lawyers.
So we need to offer ordinary people something that solves a common problem, and something Web2 can't mimic.
Other than thinking that it's something driven by a blockchain, with a need for privacy and anonymity, I'm not sure. There's no way a Web2 company could resist scraping data, and I think that is their Achilles heel which Web3 could exploit.
All we need now is something based on those principles that millions or billions of people would want to use.... any ideas ?
Posted using The BBH Project