Exploring the Future of Web3 Social: From Definition to Business Models, and the Impact of the AI Wave

Web3 social is redefining our understanding of social networks and providing innovative solutions to the problems existing in Web2 social. This article will delve into the core concepts of Web3 social, its current development status, advantages and challenges, as well as the role it plays in reshaping social networks.

1. Why do we need social media in Web3?

The essence of social interaction has not changed with the development of history. From ancient letters to modern social networks, the core human needs for social interaction have always included:

1. Maintain connection and sense of belonging
2. Information Learning and Exchange
3. Cooperation and Mutual Assistance
4. Social Identity and Self-Expression

Web2 social products like Facebook and X have addressed the demand for "speed, quality, and cost-effectiveness," but they have also brought some issues:

1. Data Ownership: User data is owned by the platform, leading to issues such as privacy breaches and the lack of value returning to users.
2. Centralization: The platform has unlimited rights to use the content, and its ability to resist censorship is weak.

2. Analysis of Web3 Social Industry Products

Web3 social products explore multiple aspects, mainly including:

1. Data value feeds back to users

   • Lens Protocol: Tokenizing user social graph data into NFTs
   • friend.tech: Tokenizing personal influence
   • Bodhi: Tokenize content assets

2. Anti-censorship

   • Farcaster: Decentralized identity, on-chain and off-chain integration
   • Nostr: An open-source decentralized protocol based on relays

3. Web3 Native Social Scenarios

   • DeBox: Solving the "Position Chat" demand

3. Challenges Facing Web3 Social

Despite the continuous emergence of Web3 social projects, they still face some challenges:

1. The Trade-off Between Decentralization and User Experience
2. The switching cost of social products is very high
3. The sustainability of data value benefiting users
4. The overlap between the target users of social platforms and the user profile of Web3 is relatively low.

4. The Evolution of Business Models in Social Media

The business model of social products has gone through the following stages:

1. Web1.0: Primarily based on advertising and membership fee revenue
2. Web2.0: Centered around advertising display and user data collection
3. Web3.0: Attempting new models such as data value feedback, token economy, and NFTization of data assets.

The business model of current Web3 social projects is still in the exploration and validation stage.

5. The Collision of Web3 Social and the AI Wave

AI and Web3, as two trends of the new era, each have their own characteristics in the social field:

• AI primarily focuses on emotional companionship and support.
• Web3 primarily focuses on the value feedback of data and censorship resistance.

Both have begun to appear in complementary and collaborative roles in social products, such as projects like Myshell and Siya.AI.

6. Conclusion

Although Web3 social is currently still facing challenges and has not yet seen large-scale applications, it has brought about revolutionary changes in data value feedback and censorship resistance. In the future, efforts can be made from aspects such as community attributes, and intersecting with other areas like gaming may spark new ideas. Despite being relatively quiet at the moment, the development prospects of Web3 social are still highly anticipated, with new projects and technologies continuously driving this field forward.