Google (Youtube) and Facebook ( Instagram/Whatsapp) have fundamentally changed the way we consume advertising, journalism, art and perform communication. Before the arrival of the silicon valley giants we were still reliant on traditional media channels to consume our content. As time has gone by Google and Facebook have become increasingly powerful both through virtually the same business model: Acquire users attention and data to sell to advertisers.
While for many years, Youtube and it's key content creators had an amicable relationship, that all turned sour with the The "Ad apolocolpyose". Youtube content creators saw their years of hard work developing an audience to finally receive an income from their content disappear overnight. This showed just how vulnerable they were to the Youtube platform and how Youtube would back their advertisers 100% while caring very little for their content creators. As a result of the de-monitization, many content creators a started developing patreon accounts as potential replacement for the previous advertising revenue they received.
While youtube was angering influencers by changing their community guidelines, Instagram also came under fire for changing their algorithm that resulted in influencers seeing their post engagement decrease significantly. Both Youtube and Instagram's changes gave a warning signal to social media influencers; As long as they are on Google's & Facbook's platforms they are at the mercy of centralization and all that comes with it.
What we are now seeing is a number of social media influencers starting to question the value of their own worth to these platforms they produce content on. Influencers are realising that their impact and scale are increasing while their earnings from platforms are remaining the same/decreasing/cease to exist. Now it's easy for us to dismiss these platforms, but of course without them no one would be a social media influencer, however just like Google & Facebook disrupted traditional media, they themselves are now being disrupted by a significant beast in its' own right: The blockchain
Steemit is becoming a real alternative for social media influencers/content producers, instead of receiving a fraction of the value they contribute to a platform, they can earn a much more equitable amount and not have to deal with a lot of the 'community guidelines' that hamper their content. There is no central figure they need to answer to, effectively giving them all the freedom they need to produce their best content and be rewarded fairly. The option to move to Steemit or any other blokchain based content platform for influencers is a massive threat to the Facebook and Google for a number of reasons:
If you look back on the recent news of Facebook and Google seemingly suspending/banning cryptocurrency advertising you can see why they are doing it. It's not about protecting consumers, after all both companies have their fair share of advertisements that promote scammy products, but rather stifling the interest in cryptocurrency that puts their centralized user data business model at risk.
While it's not only the influential figures on social media platforms that can see the benefit in blockchain but also the ordinary users of Google & Facebook platforms. While not producing content that is consumed at scale, ordinary users also contribute to the value of these platforms by giving away their user data. This data is used by platforms to sell to advertisers to generate billions of dollars. Where blockchain becomes interesting is that there are a number of projects that give users of the platform the option to monetize their user data by selling it to the platform/advertisers. Users of platforms are finally being empowered.
What are your thoughts on the disruption?
Image Source 1: wikimotive.com
Image Source 2: cloudspanse.com
Image Source 3: steemit.com
