07:14:00
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Recent news of Bitcoin going over $4,300 has a lot of people talking. Blockchain disruption has seen a major shift this year in the eyes of the mainstream, from a weird basement project to something that they literally can't take their hands (and wallets) off of. People from all walks of life are getting involved either in buying cryptocurrency or supporting various blockchain projects (Ethereum, NEO, Bitcoin, Siacoin, and others) aimed at disrupting old, centralized industries.
One of those industries or business models ripe and primed for disruption is social networks themselves. The same small number of players have been at it for over a decade now, with only a few exceptions. The power and control is centralized in just a few hands.
One of the issues, which most people don't realize, is that social networks essentially own all of your photos, content, and data when you post to them. You, the user, get nothing and these social networks continue to get bigger and bigger by riding off the backs of users giving away rights to their content. They are centralized in every way, literally decide what you will see and not see through their algorithms on your feed, and completely lack transparency. To me, this sounds like something ripe for disruption.
Social networks are currently the opposite of decentralized. They are controlled from the top down by large companies and their CEOs. And in almost all cases, in addition to giving away the rights to your data, they are alsorecording every single keystroke you make anywhere on their platforms.
One example is Indorse, a new platform based on Ethereum, who are creating a truly decentralized professional social network. On this platform, you own all your data and get paid directly for contributions. This solves the two major issues surrounding social networks:
First, nobody wants to create amazing content only to essentially sign away their rights to the social networks. You want to instead own all of your data, and actually get paid for it. Indorse empowers you and allows you to retain your rights instead of taking away those rights as a content creator.
Secondly, Indorse (who is currently running itsICO) physically pays you in tokens for helping them build the platform, rather than giving you nothing. On a side note, it's actually quite incredible that up until this point nobody has stopped and questioned the fact that the social networks make all this money and you, the user, literally do all the work for nothing. Instead of paying users for their content and traffic, they literally charge you to run ads to your own audience that you built. When you think about it in this regard, it's clear why this needs disruption.
Does this make sense? You build the business for them, they own all your rights and data, and they make all the money. Clearly not. Now that a company like Indorse is coming along (and many more will follow), it solves these issues and puts the power back in the hands of the people. This is literally a picture-perfect business and industry primed for disruption through blockchain technology and the set of principles the community stands for.
On top of solving all of these major issues in the social-networking space, it will force some of the big players to adapt or fail miserably. The beauty of platforms that utilize blockchain is that it forces change the same way Uber forced the taxi industry to change or fail. At first, they tried to squash it and make it sound like some weird sci-fi alternate reality that was decades away, but then when it actually happened, they had to react or become obsolete. Many more companies that are coming into the social media space today are aiming to disrupt it via blockchain and the principles that follow it.
Before getting involved in any cryptocurrency or ICO, you should do your own research. Nothing in this article should be considered investment advice or an endorsement of any kind.
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