Over the past year I have gone from occasionally posting a picture or two a few times a day on Instagram to writing multiple weekly articles on a variety of subjects and posting them to Reddit, Publish0X, and PeakD. The primary reason I have been doing this is because I believe there is a quiet war going on behind the scenes for the future of social media. What the hell do I mean by that and who is going to come out on top? That's what I'm here to talk about these days.
If you spend much of your time in tech fields I'll bet you are thinking one of two things right now:
"You really think social media has a future?!?"
or
"Everyone knows Facebook is the king of socials, duh."
I can see the perspective in both of these and have had both of these perspectives come up when bringing this subject up in person. In the second half of 2021 social media both feels like a ubiquitous part of life and a broken down relic of the past. I don't think I know a single person in my life who still views these platforms favorably and, often, when they are brought up it's in conversations of addiction, industry overreach, and the lack of data privacy.
This last month my father, who is a nearly blind farmer approaching his 70s, told me he "was going to have to get me to make him a Facebook" and if anything made the final nail be8inbg in that coffin clear that was it. For most people with two eyes and a brain Cambridge Analytica seems to have been some sort of cultural last straw. While many of us still use Facebook or Facebook adjacent products like Instagram nothing The Zuck is leading feels cutting edge these days. That's way he's pattering on about The Facebook Metaverse. Mark knows that, as things stand, Facebook is too large to fail and too massive to correct quickly. They need a game changer to be relevant again. So 'Metaverse'.
And they might pull it off! Facebook still have the extreme cultural relevance the ability to set project budgets that dwarf small nation states GDPs. Someone is going to pull off 'The Metaverse' first, a super-massive corp is most likely, and Marks tabloid billionaire competition seem ... distracted? I've known that if I lived long enough I'd see the Metaverse since I first read Snow Crash. Are we 5 or 50 years out? Gonna have to wait to find that one out.
So, regarding social media, what is the best that we have access to now? Let me kick forward a small bit of personal data. As I mentioned I've been writing articles weekly for months now and, to reach the largest audience, I've been posting them around PeakD, Reddit, and Publish0X. The ability to have my writing directly monetized is substantial and Reddit still has the ability to connect you to thousands of folks who enjoy the subjects you're writing about in a very potent way.
Indulge me in one last tangent: Aaron Swartz is a personal hero of mine, and I don't say that lightly. I can think of maybe a handful of other names I respect as much and none left us as early. Swartz was a Szabo, Turing, Finney, or Mitnick level creator working in the fields I find most interesting and, largely, he was one of the people most responsible for the original incarnation of Reddit. After leaving reddit he devoted himself to freeing knowledge and making educational materials available to those who could not afford them through traditional avenues. For this he was jailed, tortured, and his life was ended. Rest in peace Aaron, you were the best of us.
That's one of the major reasons I find it so depression that reddit in 2021 is the bloated and decaying corpse of a long dead animal. What, for so long, I considered my very favorite sites on the internet, has become a place to go and fight with people who like the same things as you. I'm not here to convince you, just go post something to reddit, they'll be ready to let you know what you did wrong but rarely why.
In 2021 discourse on Reddit is so shit I honestly don't believe it could possibly be due to an immature userbase. A tool doesn't accidently end up this jagged, this is how the thing has been designed. Reddit has moved from a place that aggregates all your favorite things into a single feel into some sort of engagement through hostility engine and, simply put, it fucking sucks and no amount of MOONS is going to change that.
So, this comes down to the other two platforms I've been using, Publish0x and PeakD. Both of these platforms run on content monetization and, while PeakD may have more utility due to running on HIVE, Publish0x has a wider readership. Lets take a quick look at the metrics from my last few articles from each site.
At the time of this piece being writtenj HIVE is close to $0.50. This means that on PeakD im seeing most of my articles grab a handful of change with the more successful ones pulling in $7-8! That's lunch-money, baby! On Publish0x ... well, the numbers are just plain lower. pennies, numcles and dimes, not a single dollar to be seen. Not only is that not great it's downright demotivating.
Not only that but look here:
I've been using Publish0x so much longer than I've been using PeakD I have more than double the followers and still, the income doesn't even come close to comparable.
I'm afraid it's not even close. PeakD, even as a much smaller platform earlier in it's growth, get's about as close to a flawless victory as you can. In my opinion PeakD and it's robust and interesting tool-set of ways to pull income, is the future of social media. By the time Facebook and Reddit know it's name it will be be because it's just left them in their dust!
Looking to hang out with other Crypto-Gamers join us over at the The Crypto-Gaming Guild discord. We are looking for game captains and folks who can help organize. If you are interested, please step up!
The games we are currently focusing on are:
Rising Star
Splinterlands
UpLand
Neon District
Alien Worlds
Lost Relics
eXode