The Current Social Landscape is split into two major user bases, which are those that continue using Centralized Social Platforms and another that are exploring Decentralized Social Platforms. Within each sector we have the Content Creators and the Regular Users which each has certain wants and needs which influences their behaviors.

Each user base (consisting of content creators and regular users) have their pain points and certain tendencies, however, to summarize, those in Centralized Platforms tend to be risk averse, seeking convenience and familiarity. Whereas those in Decentralized Platforms tend to be more “explorative” in nature, and thus also have the tendency to leave to try out other platforms.

The fragmentation of the user base and content creators from the already small amount of people on decentralized social networks is a problem. Social Networks are for us to connect to more people, and not break down the existing connections further. This problem is not unique to decentralized social networks, as an example, Twitter and Facebook do not share their social graph, and are not interoperable. However, with the upcoming integration of ActivityPub among popular platforms, we can see that centralized social networks are attempting to resolve these issues too.

For both Decentralized and Centralized Social Networks, we have poor recommendation systems due to a lack of customization for the Centralized side, and a lack of standard as well as development on the Decentralized side. On the other hand, the tagging system is also not utilized efficiently and to its full potential.

Decentralized Social Networks has its own set of problems, however, is convenience and familiarity a good enough reason to stick to Centralized Socials? The recent changes in Twitter has led to many users trying out Decentralized Platforms. However, we can see that although users are trying out these platforms, few of them are actually staying and using these platforms.

When looking at the overall landscape, there are certainly more pros than cons when comparing Decentralized Socials to Centralized Socials.

Therefore, there are those that have made the switch to Decentralized Social Platforms, but because of certain bad experiences, this has led to some users returning to Centralized Platforms, as they feel the pros have not outweighed the inconvenience caused.

The Diagram above describes the current (dotted) cycle, and the future cycle (our vision) with Tako Protocol.

As you can see, we are currently in a vicious cycle, where certain users feel “stuck” on Centralized Platforms. Tako Protocol aims to target and enhance the good experiences when using Decentralized Social Platforms, to retain as much of the user base as possible.