Blockchain technology, at its core decentralized, uses a distributed ledger for all user activities to be stored irreversibly and encrypted within its decentralized server network containing devices from each social media user, expanding data holding capacity exponentially as more users join it.
What is Blockchain Social Media?
All social media networks using Blockchain fall under the category of decentralized media. Decentralized social networks utilize a distributed ledger for data storage, unlike centralized social media, which stores it all on one central server.
This system lacks any central authority. Data is distributed evenly among nodes of the network, and users can take advantage of greater freedom, privacy, and control over their data.
A fediverse is an interconnected server network comprising various decentralized social networks and used for activities like web publishing and blogging, as well as cross-platform collaboration across platforms - Mastodon, Steemit, and other such decentralized services are examples of such networks.
Why Decentralized Over Centralized Social Networks?
Before we discuss centralized social media networks, let us first recognize their consequences. Centralization causes three main concerns in terms of social media:
(1) reduced control by users,
(2) lower quality content,
(3) increased costs.
- Advertisers are customers, while users are products on social media networks such as Facebook or similar centralized platforms. Facebook makes money from selling personal data belonging to its users to targeted marketers for use as advertising spots or targeted marketers targeting specific audiences.
- Social media platforms like Facebook can also help shape user perspectives about various societal issues.
- Hackers have demonstrated the ability to gain access to centralized services relatively easily.
Blockchain and DLT projects aim to mitigate some disadvantages associated with centralized systems. Social media often presents similar cases.
Let's consider some advantages of merging social media and blockchain technologies.
Blockchain social media holds three main advantages. These advantages are:
- Assessing the commercialization of user data
- Balancing freedom of expression and privacy rights
- Examining the reach of crowdfunding
1. Assessing the Commercialization of User Data
Data has become one of the world's most precious assets, used to influence thought patterns and behaviors within its producers. Social media platforms that centralize users can serve as valuable repositories of an individual's personal information.
Facebook, Instagram, and similar services rely on user data to deliver targeted ads for their clients. When someone clicks an Amazon product link, an advertisement for that item appears on Facebook or Instagram as soon as the click occurs.
Marketing-wise, such tactics may be commendable, yet their effects could have serious ramifications for those receiving them.
Distributed social media platforms, with their peer-to-peer networks, end-to-end encryption, and lack of third parties reduce risk related to user commodification. By doing this, they provide users with more control over their data.
For this to work effectively, private and public keys must be employed. User transactions can be initiated using their private key, and details are recorded into blocks on the blockchain for storage and verification by other members, data only accessible to intended recipients can be added.
Information stored as cryptographic hashes cannot be deciphered back into their original format because these algorithms work one way. Every hash is distinct, any unique piece of information results in its hash value. Any changes can cause this hash to change accordingly, making data on a blockchain unalterable.
2. Balancing Freedom of Expression and Privacy Rights
Moderators on these platforms have access to all interactions on social media, including private messages sent between users - this poses a severe danger to user's privacy, among other considerations.
Content posted to social networks is increasingly being leveraged for political gain and to quell dissent - an obvious barrier to democratic ideals such as freedom of expression and speech.
Blockchain social media platforms with decentralized consensus mechanisms and increased privacy empower users to exercise their right to free expression. The lack of regulations could pose even greater threats, which must be resolved if these platforms want to become as popular as social media behemoths like Facebook.
3. Examining The Reach Of Crowdfunding
Blockchain social media offers both materialistic and non-materialistic rewards.
Decentralized social networks frequently award their nodes with rewards in the form of cryptocurrency as they contribute content. Similar to most blockchain ecosystems, tips from decentralized social networks usually take the form of native cryptocurrency tokens.
Social media platforms allow users to conduct successful crowdfunding campaigns using processes similar to token sales while providing financial transactions between users using the native cryptocurrency.
How Does Blockchain Influence Social Media?
Blockchain's peer-to-peer architecture empowers users to become more accountable for their online activities. Users can only access decentralized spaces if they receive prior authorization from someone.
Blockchain social media networks make identity theft or data breaches nearly impossible. At the same time, decentralized networks help combat fake content and spambots more effectively than centralized ones. Blockchain challenges traditional social networks by restructuring data policies, sharing algorithms, and user authentication systems. One popular example is Steemit, others include Diaspora and SocialX.
Increased Transparency With Blockchain Technology for Social Media Marketing
Digital marketing has grown increasingly complex in recent years. Social media marketers are grappling with how best to validate their data amidst the increasing complexity of social marketing - one factor being third-party solutions like blockchain's ability for users to verify themselves, an effect known as first-party verification within social media marketing terms.
Blockchain on Social Media Allows for Direct-to-consumer Digital Marketing
Blockchain technology makes it virtually impossible to change or duplicate information, with data protected through a decentralized system that prioritizes search data privacy. Digital marketers will be amazed to discover that it eliminates middlemen. Social media marketing has undergone a radical transformation since these middlemen are no longer needed. Suppose you used Google search or logged into Facebook recently. In that case, your information is collected when doing either, and that's how both platforms make money - the Blockchain prioritizes search data privacy!
Blockchain Allows for the Creation of Profiles on Consumers Directly by Customers
This results in better targeting. All the data professionals need to track consumer behaviors can be found in one convenient location. Data decentralization leads to multiple sources of customer information, including digital assets, fostering more precise targeting capabilities and accuracy. As previously noted, more sources mean more sources for customer details that we need for effective targeting strategies.
Blockchain technology has influenced industries other than banking. Numerous industries remain affected by global economies; advertising campaigns have even been accused of lacking transparency.
Traditional marketing relies on bots or users clicking ads to boost statistics; due to inaccurate ads, revenue generated needs to meet expectations. Blockchain provides the solution here.
Blockchain-powered social media will offer direct marketing to consumers. Businesses use it to target potential clients directly for greater ROI because their advertising campaigns focus on reaching high-potential prospects.
Benefits to Social Media Business Owners
Companies can increase revenues by supporting blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies and publicly declaring they do. The hype around decentralized solutions like DeFi and NFTs has an immediate and tangible effect on investor and user perception.
Owners of social media websites typically make money by showing ads to users and selling the information collected about users to third-party service providers. Blockchain technology facilitates client profiles by combining data from multiple sources, encouraging users to share more, and delivering accurate, targeted ads more reliably.
Tokenized economies are key drivers of increased revenue in blockchain social media. Not only can tokens serve to pay for services or hold value, but they can also be leveraged as another monetization channel. Blockchain social networks use crypto assets as tokens to reward users who contribute with tickets. This leads to greater user engagement as well as value increases within the tokens themselves and drives up revenues for businesses by powering platform economies with increased spending power and creating additional monetization channels through embedding tickets with other functionality (like exclusive content or special functionality) creating additional revenues streams or revenue streams altogether.
Blockchain Social Networks: Pros
Blockchain social media offers an innovative solution that addresses all aspects of social media centralized. Here, we examine its major benefits.
- Protection against user commodification - Due to a lack of central authorities or companies, collecting personal data without consent would be impossible. Transactions encrypted using private and public keys ensure access is limited only to those involved and stored as immutable blocks, eliminating breaches, identity theft, and potential commodification risks.
- Freedom without censorship - Tech giants currently control content flow on social media platforms, which obfuscates users' freedom of expression. Decentralized social networks offer an alternative that restores this valuable freedom so users may freely express themselves to targeted audiences without fearing censorship, detention, or personal risk.
- Control and security enhanced - Blockchains and open-source social networks offer users more control and access over the algorithms powering features and functionality, including altering or self-hosting them on any platform for specific information delivery to reach target audiences using the same delivery methods.
Users have complete control of their feeds without relying on third parties for data management, as their files are hosted across decentralized servers with access only possible through authentication, guaranteeing maximum protection of sensitive user information.
- Social commerce boosted - Blockchain media can quickly create an advantageous environment for social exchange. Rewarding content creators with native cryptocurrency in digital wallet makes rewarding them simple; websites may even give cashback rewards as part of an affiliate marketing program - providing greater income potential to small-scale owners in the long run.
- Crowdfunding opportunities - It has always been challenging and safer to take part in crowdfunding campaigns with tokens on blockchain social networks; funds may even be transferred peer-to-peer. Furthermore, their high-security level assures users of using them as payment and transfer platforms.
Blockchain-powered crowdfunding has seen tremendous success over time. Numerous ICOs and STOs have amassed millions of dollars through token distributions; investors often receive rewards for their contribution, such as accessing governance or receiving proceeds from each user transaction on the blockchain network.
Blockchain Social Media: New Opportunities
Blockchain social networks present many possibilities. Although most decentralized social networks resemble existing social media websites, platforms like Ethereum enable unique applications to be developed on this decentralized social network.
Blockchain social media encourages a rewards-based business model where content creators are compensated for producing engaging pieces. Indorse, for instance, offers decentralized apps similar to LinkedIn that reward its members based on verified professional skills after authentication has taken place; its internal reward system uses tokens as incentives to encourage posting of posts by others and endorsement of others' posts by existing members.
Security token offerings and liquidity farms can both help applications raise money; some even sell advertising space to advertisers who purchase tokens as advertising space.
The Top Blockchain Social Networks
Decentralized blockchain applications, such as Twitter's planned Bluesky web ecosystem launch, will become the cornerstone for an improved social media landscape shortly.
Blockchain-based social networks that are decentralized provide a welcome alternative to traditional social media networks and can help alleviate many data-related worries. Users have complete control of their content while being offered monetary rewards to encourage engagement and participation to produce more engaging and personalized ads, thus making the social platform even more lucrative and valuable. Blockchain-powered social media provides numerous monetization options and revenue-generating channels. Users can contribute, promote, and monetize content using tokens; rewards may also be earned, which drives the tokenized economy of social networks, allowing business owners to increase revenues. At the same time, crowdfunding campaigns provide easy sources of additional income.
After discussing the necessity for decentralized social networks, we will look at several prominent ones powered by blockchain technology.
Diaspora
With millions of active users worldwide, Diaspora is an extremely popular social media platform built upon blockchain technology. Users are able to host pods of their choosing, interact with one another, join pods according to preference, and host and join pods within the Diaspora itself (known as its community ). Furthermore, everyone involved with the Diaspora or its "community," such as traditional social network platforms, can follow hashtags like before.
Related:- Blockchain and AI- Technologies that work so well together
Diaspora's structure and functionality are built upon three pillars.
Decentralization: "Pods" function as autonomous servers, owned and operated independently, promoting a decentralized platform that avoids central storage of information.
Freedom: Users do not have to reveal their real identities to join the Diaspora Community, although they may choose to disclose personal data like contact numbers if desired. Furthermore, this software allows users to interact however they please without incurring subscription plans or contract costs.
Privacy : With Aspect, Diaspora's exclusive feature for controlling and sharing user data at their discretion, users have total control and ownership over how it's utilized and shared - they do not sign away their rights to anyone other than themselves when signing up with Diaspora or any third-party app provider.
Minds
This revolutionary network offers zero censorship for user data and data privacy. Open-source and flexible features enable them to customize it according to their individual needs, such as Facebook-esque features. Despite these shortcomings, its growing user base now exceeds 2,000,000.
All.me
All. me is the world's first blockchain-powered social media platform offering a social network and revenue generation system in the form of digital currencies. Composed of four main components, All. me stands as an innovative multilayered app solution:
MeNetwork - All. Me's social media platform core allows for communication among its user base over an electronic distributed system, similar to Instagram or Pinterest in terms of content where users typically upload pictures.
MeMarket - It is a distributed market that allows users to purchase or sell items via newsfeed or profile using an ME token.
MePay - At the center of All.me Network lies its payment protocol - mePay. This payment solution allows users to transfer funds for commerce or any other reason quickly and safely.
MeToken - It is the native cryptocurrency of the MeTrust network and should be used by users when performing any transaction.
Steemit
Steemit, the social blockchain, has long been at the heart of creating online communities. Steem utilizes its native STEEM currency to power its decentralized social networking ecosystem - it even powers some of the most widely-known social networks worldwide.
Steemit is an online platform enabling users to earn cryptocurrency through curating and creating content. First released as a decentralized application (dApp) on Steem in 2016, Steemit remains active today as one of the oldest social media platforms based on blockchain.
It is an incentive-based peer-to-peer network and social media platform designed for content publishers to monetize and get paid using cryptos. Steemit rewards these content publishers through points earned for actions taken - for instance, publishing and voting content publishers can gain points by doing things such as:
- Content curation, publishing, and voting.
- Crypto exchanges allow buyers and sellers to acquire STEEM tokens in exchange for Bitcoin or Ethereum.
- Crypto social network: Unleashing its power
This crypto social media network implements an authentication procedure before permitting its members to register themselves as members.
D.tube was the pioneer blockchain-based video social network. Originally built using Steem and rewarding users with Steem tokens, later switched over to its blockchain called Avalon and adopted DTUBE coin tokens as its native cryptocurrency.
Dlive is a blockchain-based social media platform dedicated to video. Primarily targeting live-streaming, Dlive was originally part of Steem but has seen several ownership transitions, originally migrating from Lino Blockchain onto their current network.
Peepeth
Peepeth is a social media platform designed to be free from censorship using IPFS and Ethereum as storage and primarily developed for microblogging purposes.
Peepeth will be an ideal solution for anyone seeking an alternative to social networks dominated by advertising, violating user privacy, selling users' data to third parties for profit, spreading fake news and trolling campaigns, manipulating user feeds, or promoting stories that do not match reality. Peepeth boasts several key blockchain-native features.
- Blockchain stores accounts and posts (popularly referred to as "peeps") with associated accounts and posts (aka peeps).
- Posting or accessing data is possible without an intermediary.
- No edit or delete, transparency and spam resistant, supports alternate applications, accepting tips in cryptocurrency.
- Peepeth can integrate with smart contract systems to deliver decentralized services.
Sapien
Sapien is an Ethereum blockchain-powered social media platform designed for maximum customization and democratic control by users. Web3 social network rewards content creators while combating fake news and rewarding its members as it does so - ultimately giving users full power of decision.
Sapien's engine allows users to stake SPN tokens in exchange for tokenized rewards when commenting, voting for posts, and creating content on this decentralized social network. Users fully control their time and data on this decentralized social platform.
Earn
Earn coin base hosts this blockchain in a social media use case that enables users to earn bitcoin by completing small tasks.
Earn allows users to create profiles and join lists based on skill sets to receive paid messages. Earn uses a system of paid emails to maximize the chances of earning for its members. This platform can be likened to LinkedIn.
SocialX
SocialX is an online social network powered by its user community and powered by blockchain decentralization technology based on decentralized cryptocurrency rewards (SOCXs). Users are free to upload photos and videos for sharing purposes while keeping it decentralized and functioning similarly to popular social networks such as Facebook. Users who produce quality content will earn tokens in return for posting it - rewards of their choice that come back out into society as new SOCX tokens or in return for tickets from SocialX itself.
Indorse
Indorse rewards users who demonstrate and validate their abilities with decentralized verification processes, rewarding users using tokens as incentives for network activities.
Indorse adheres to protocols such as the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), BigchainDB, and others. Advertisers pay for space with IND Tokens that can be purchased on exchanges. Indorse then gives some tokens out as rewards to its members.
Sola
Unlike other decentralized platforms, Sola leverages artificial intelligence and blockchain technology to spread user content virally. Their business model features advertising revenue-sharing agreements between advertisers and users as well as payments by users through user payments or partnerships utilizing SOL crypto tokens.
As with many social networks, Sola also features mobile applications for iOS and Android smartphones, as well as an API that developers can leverage to build custom applications.
Vevue
Vevue, a social platform powered by blockchain technology, fosters users' creativity. VUE tokens are used as rewards for engaging content creation and participation - setting Vevue apart from traditional social media apps, which largely consist of fake or repetitive posts. Blockchain offers transparency and accessibility as a future form of social media where users receive payment for creating genuine videos.
Decentralized Social Media Networks for Bitcoin Cash
Bitcoin cash (BCH), though often considered a peer-to-peer (P2P) cryptocurrency, boasts other functionalities as part of the network that supports it. Bitcoin cash features its token economy powered by simple ledger protocols (SLP), along with having an incredible ecosystem centered on social media backed by blockchain technologies that provide social value creation projects using it, such as these:
Read. Cash
It allows readers and writers to interact freely. When signing up, you'll receive an on-chain Bitcoin cash wallet and when upvoting articles you send P2P Microtips or larger tips using the bitcoin cash protocol.
Memo.Cash
A decentralized network on mobile and desktop platforms, allows users to share visual content. Content can be searched using hashtags, while instead of likes it uses BCH tips as likes for each memo. A cash account is tied directly to an address of an active crypto wallet with posts visible across all blockchain nodes.
Member.Cash
Another blockchain social media network similar to Memo. Money lets users comment on posts and give them "hearts" tips with BCH and "re-member," similar to Twitter tweets.
Other Blockchains With Social Media Platforms
Even though many social networks operate on decentralized protocols, some projects within major blockchains, including financial institutions, have pioneered blockchain-based social media businesses. These developments should be duly noted by investors and observers alike.
LBRY
LBRY is an open blockchain-powered platform that rewards creators by awarding them "LBRY Credit," similar to YouTube but decentralized.
Subsocial
Subsocial is a decentralized social network powered by Polkadot and IPFS with built-in crypto monetization features such as tipping, smart contracts, and ads for crypto monetization. Subsocial has received grants and support from the Substrate Builders program and the Web3 foundation.
Torum
This decentralized social Network funded by crypto venture capitalists and situated on the Binance smart chain is designed to serve the cryptocurrency community. Among other features are non-fungible tokens for mining cryptocurrency projects, news updates about projects, and emoticons (or emoticons). Torum's ecosystem runs on an XTM BEP-20 token compatible with Ethereum via cross-chain exchange.
Is Decentralized Social Media The Future?
Blockchain-based decentralized social media bring with them exciting features and ways of engaging with technology and each other, including increased privacy protections, censorship resistance, and built-in monetization features that promote cryptocurrency social media network adoption. Their borderless nature fosters collaboration, openness, and engagement, resulting in an interconnected, collaborative global social media ecosystem.
Conclusion
Traditional social media has grown increasingly popular over time due to the enhanced marketing and entertainment experiences it affords its users. Concerns are mounting about data breaches and violations associated with these platforms. Yet, simultaneously, we are on the cusp of an exciting social media revolution driven by blockchain.
Decentralization remains far from the mainstream. Many innovations and technologies must yet be invented and deployed before large-scale decentralization can occur, breaking free from the grip of power by centralized social giants. Decentralized blockchain-backed social media offers an appealing alternative to many data concerns associated with traditional networks of social media.
Users enjoy complete control over their content while being financially rewarded for participation and engagement. Blockchain-powered social networks create more engaging, relevant content and advertisements that engage audiences more personally - increasing their worth as an advertising medium and revenue channel for businesses.
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Users can contribute, promote, and monetize content using tokens while receiving rewards in return - driving an economy centered around tokens, which allows business owners to make additional profit through crowdfunding campaigns or simply engaging more engaged investors directly
