On The Other Side ep 61 - Making the internet less lonely w/ Gaby Goldberg
Primer: For all the hustle and bustle of the internet, the internet is a surprisingly lonely place. How do we make the internet less lonely? How does Web3 fit into the picture? Gaby Goldberg shares her thoughts in this episode of On The Other Side.
Background
Got into crypto 2 years ago
Grew up online, spent a lot of time in digital spaces
Studied a mix of computer science and philosophy at school
After school, she joined TCG crypto, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage consumer technology
Started meeting people who were building crypto products
Got to know the Bright Moments community. Attended their events in real life
Her Thesis
How Web1 And Web2 Leads To Web3
At a high level, Web1 was created in 1989, with a vision of a decentralized and open network of information where users were in control
At that time, consumer experience was poor as it was still highly technical
Over the next decades, consumers migrated from open services to sophisticated and centralized ones as those platforms reached scale
This made the internet less innovative and dynamic because it became harder for individuals, groups, and businesses to create things online
In 2021, there was a day when all of the Facebook apps went down. This made people realize that they have no ownership of their data and audience
Over the last decade, the role of the individual and value creation has become more important
Have reached an inflection point leading towards Web3, combining the decentralization of Web1 and the powerful consumer experience of Web2
On Digital Experiences
The first wave of social apps (Myspace, Facebook, Instagram) were created to allow people to share their real life experiences online
People started spending a lot of time online
Now, we have digital experiences (making friends online, follow digital native influencers, buy digital art, etc.)
Her experience growing up with the internet is that it was lonely, unless you come online with your real life friends
“I feel like the internet feels so lonely in that way, because we haven't really found a way to meaningfully share our digital experiences.”
- Gaby Goldberg
Invests in companies that make the internet less lonely
Being Chronically Online
Considers herself chronically online
The percentage of chronically online people has been increasing
The pandemic changed the way people find their community
In a report she read, more than 50% of Gen Z believed that their online identity is more important than their real life identity
User Ownership
Do Users Really Want To Own The Platforms They Create On?
A lot of these are buzzwords
The concept of Web3 and ownership is actually about owning something and having financial upside
Using music as an example, it is a way for artists to connect with their fans and build distribution without the help of a label
Today, most interactions between artists and their fans are mediated by third party platforms
Web3 becomes relevant as the artist can gain better insights on fan identities and their needs
Does It Require A Mindset Shift?
Governance in a crypto native context is often very tactile (e.g. voting)
In a lot of ways, governance already exists on these platforms (e.g. commenting on a thread to stay on the algorithm is a form of governance of how you want to engage with the algorithm)
Last year, her friend, Kiran, and her worked on a project called Decentralized Autonomous Media Network (DAMN)
They were thinking of building a media network that was owned and operated by its users
People are only incentivized to benefit themselves — People spam hashtags and the feed in order to game the algorithm for likes and follows. This makes the consumer experience worse
Thinks that a user-owned network would be better as people are incentivized not just to benefit themselves, but the broader network as well
Thoughts On Hyperlocal Internet
It’s tough when you lack liquidity in the network while trying to be hyperlocal
For dating apps, hyperlocality works as there is a clear need that it is solving
Different AR and gaming apps are coming out to incentivize people to go out
In each wave of technology, the person who won was the person who could help you get distribution:
Labels help you to get distribution on radio and live shows
The internet providing online distribution through streaming
OpenSea As A Discovery Platform
When the first shopping mall came out in the 50s, it was the best of everything
Businesses were happy to pay rent to the shopping mall because of the good curation
People would go to malls for this aspect of discovery
Subsequently, when the internet arrived, businesses realized that they can go direct to consumer
A similar thing happened in crypto. When NFTs first became popular, OpenSea was used as a search platform
Now, NFT projects and brands are going direct to consumers in the same way, leveraging NFT liquidity aggregators and spinning up their own secondary marketplaces
Decentralized Curation… Effective?
The effectiveness has been shown through their investments into curatorial groups
There’s a Twitter account called Entropy that posts cool photos that they curated from the internet
Realized Entropy is decentralizing their curation process by tagging the people who curated the photos
There’s also the potential of running into a Boaty McBoatface scenario:
In the UK, they gave the community the ability to name a scientific research ship
The community suggested the name Boaty McBoatface
Is bullish on the wisdom of the crowd
Encouraged by what she has seen from Curatorial DAOs like Flamingo and Entropy
The Impact Of Financialization On Adoption
In the last cycle, people who had insider knowledge or a strong on-chain analytical ability profited a lot
Earlier this week, she wrote an article titled Towards Crypto Literacy that discussed how a lot of companies/products that washed retail investors out in the last cycle should not have been considered crypto at all
Many people did not have the financial literacy to understand what was happening in crypto and how to protect themselves
The idea of people being responsible for their own actions/private keys are not going to work at scale
How Long Till Mainstream Adoption?
Thinks that it is more than 5 years
The US Being Increasingly Online
Social media today is less of an interaction between a user and a given network of other people, but an interaction between a user and an algorithmized version of self
“Your feed is curating you and your preferences and the things that you like. And so it really bleeds into your physical life. And the lines between the two are getting increasingly blurred.”
- Gaby Goldberg
There’s a new trend in TikTok called Corecore —A play on the other different aesthetics that have been commercialized online (e.g. Cottagecore, etc.)
Corecore is breaking down the fourth wall and showing how lonely and dystopian these digital experiences can feel
Web3 is less of an end goal, but more of a means/tool to course correct where we have gone wrong with the internet in the past
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