Imagine entering a vast, virtual city where every building is uniquely designed to cater to its visitors' specific tastes and preferences. In this digital metropolis, each individual has a personalized experience tailored to their interests and desires, with the city’s architecture continuously evolving and adapting to accommodate its diverse inhabitants.
We all know that today’s digital landscape is anything but that: websites and hardware are predominantly designed for mass consumption, aiming to provide a unified experience for users across the globe. This approach stems from the fact that monetization and success in the online world have historically been driven by mass adoption and network effects. However, the consequence of this approach is that the internet has turned into digital suburbia where one size fits all pages create one size fits all experiences for millions of users monetized for content.
NFTs and AI, when combined, can enable a paradigm shift from this generic one-size-fits-all experience to personalized, immersive digital journeys tailored to individual users or specific audiences. As we delve deeper into this exciting new era, we will explore how decentralized network effects, unique monetization opportunities, and the power of customization can lead us toward a more engaging and user-centric internet landscape.
The traditional network effect, a phenomenon in which a product or service gains additional value as more people use it, has long been a driving force behind the success of various internet platforms.
However, the advent of decentralized technologies, such as blockchain, is giving rise to a new concept: the decentralized network effect. In this section, we will explore how projects like LensProtocol leverage this idea to change how we engage with online networks, much like how the future virtual cityscape caters to diverse tastes and preferences, unlike today’s monotonous, cookie-cutter designs.
As we stated, the current internet landscape can be described as a sprawling city where every building looks the same – a homogenous, unexciting place with limited appeal. This uniformity stems from traditional platforms’ focus on mass adoption and broad appeal.
Decentralized social graphs like LensProtocol enable developers to transform this cityscape, ushering in a new era of decentralization that allows users to create custom interfaces for engaging with the graph without losing their audience. By building on-chain social graphs, LensProtocol enables a unified back-end that can be accessed and presented through customized front-ends, essentially breaking the barrier between different social media platforms, much like a city with a vibrant, interconnected architecture that embraces diversity.
As we embrace the power of decentralization and personalized experiences, we can envision a digital cityscape where each building or interface is uniquely designed to cater to its specific audience. This shift changes how we interact with the digital world and opens up new avenues for monetization, such as creating scarce, monetizable front ends for engaging with social media and AI applications. This new landscape offers many unique experiences that cater to diverse tastes and preferences, fostering creativity and innovation while breaking free from the monotony of the current internet.
This fundamental shift in how interfaces are designed and built brings a new focus to the development process. Instead of striving for broad appeal to engage everyone in the network, developers can now concentrate on catering to specific audiences, much like architects tailoring unique buildings for their inhabitants. Every street corner reveals an exciting new experience in our virtual city of the future, specifically crafted to engage and delight its intended audience.
Concept: Luxury software
In the near future, the most popular and sought after apps will be the ones you can't have.
A short thread 🧵
1/X pic.twitter.com/dN7z3GVFfG
— 0xDesigner (@0xDesigner) April 26, 2023
By creating tailored experiences, developers can build a strong connection with their target users, allowing them to use their preferred interfaces to engage with their followers and the larger network. In this new paradigm, the power of customization and personalization takes center stage, as users are no longer confined to the uniform experiences dictated by traditional platforms. Instead, they can explore diverse, unique, tailored experiences that cater to their specific interests and preferences, wandering through the ever-evolving digital cityscape and discovering the perfect destinations that truly resonate with them.
The decentralized network effect is like transforming a bland, monochromatic city into a vibrant, colorful metropolis filled with a rich tapestry of diverse experiences and opportunities for personalization, enabling users to immerse themselves in a world that feels theirs genuinely and fully.
Monetizing Unique Experiences
The shift towards decentralized network effects and custom interfaces changes how we interact with the digital world and opens up new avenues for monetization. Imagine a bustling marketplace in our vibrant virtual city, where each vendor offers a different product and an entirely distinct and immersive experience tailored to their target audience. This is the potential we see in the combination of decentralized network effects and custom interfaces.
We have implemented our thoughts on this new model in our project AI_Universe, which creates a spaceship journey with multiple GPT and Midjourney queries designed to create a structured but dynamic experience unique for every user who owns one of the available Captains.
[1/11] 🌌 Prepare for a monumental event in the Alliance of the Infinite Universe (#AIU) as we unveil "The Metamorphosis"!
But first, let's recap our project's unique attributes. #NFT #metamorphosis pic.twitter.com/atnKZ2N6sa
— AI-Universe (@AI_UniverseNFT) April 19, 2023
By encoding prompts as NFT metadata and building a shared state, AI_Universe allows users to contribute to and grow the narrative threads of its digital universe. With a limited number of users, the project can provide custom, API-intensive experiences to its audience, resulting in a truly unique and immersive digital landscape.
This concept of crafting unique experiences can be extended beyond AI-generated content to encompass various other applications, such as video games, healthcare, education, and more. By designing these experiences for smaller audiences, developers can monetize their creations in ways that go beyond the traditional microtransaction model. Imagine the different districts in our virtual city, each catering to a unique niche, offering experiences tailored to individual tastes and preferences.
The possibilities are endless as we move into a new era of the internet, characterized by the decline of liminal web pages and the rise of personalized, one-of-a-kind experiences. As more developers embrace this new model, we can expect to see a flourishing ecosystem of diverse, engaging digital landscapes that cater to users' unique preferences and interests worldwide. Like a futuristic cityscape, the internet will become a dynamic, ever-evolving space where individuality and customization reign supreme.
Beyond Microtransactions
As we journey through this vibrant virtual city, we can observe how public goods and post-scarcity concepts come to life. Developers can create parks, museums, and other shared spaces that enrich the community while generating revenue through innovative monetization models beyond traditional microtransactions.
This new approach significantly impacts video game design and other digital experiences. By focusing on specific interests and communities, developers can create games that truly resonate with their target audience, fostering more diverse, immersive, and innovative experiences.
This design evolution caters to users' unique preferences and paves the way for a more sustainable and equitable revenue model for creators. Instead of relying solely on microtransactions, which can sometimes result in exploitative practices or encourage gambling-like behaviors, developers can adopt a more balanced approach that includes various monetization options and revenue-sharing models that include the user as a recipient of the value created by the platform.
Embracing a New Era of the Internet: the Post-Post-Internet
As we venture into this new era of the internet, we stand on the precipice of a digital revolution fueled by personalized web experiences and the metaverse. Imagine the city of the future, where each building, park, and neighborhood is uniquely designed to cater to its inhabitants' diverse interests and preferences. This is the vision we hold for the future of the digital world.
Post-internet is a term first used to describe art created with an awareness of the internet’s impact on society, culture, and aesthetics. It often explores themes related to digital culture, online identity, and the interconnectedness of our lives through the internet. Post-internet art can be seen as an expression of what the internet could have been and what it will become with the new paradigm of decentralized technologies, AI, and NFTs.
In the early days of the internet, there was an idealistic vision of a digital utopia where information would be freely available, and people could express themselves without restrictions. However, as the internet evolved, it became increasingly centralized, commercialized, and controlled by a few powerful entities. Post-internet art often critiques this current state of the internet and imagines alternative possibilities.
Post-internet art reflects an idealistic vision of the internet and its potential for fostering creativity and self-expression. With the new paradigm of decentralized network effects, AI, and NFTs, the internet can transform into a more diverse, inclusive, and user-centric space, aligning with the ideals depicted in post-internet art. This transformation allows for greater customization, personalization, and creative expression, making the internet a more open and innovative environment, much like the vision post-internet art seeks to convey.
In this new era of the internet, the Post-post-internet, we envision a digital world where unique experiences abound, powered by the seamless integration of blockchain technology, AI, and the metaverse. Users will have access to an ever-growing range of custom front ends that cater to their specific interests and needs, resulting in a more personalized and immersive online experience.
This shift in focus paves the way for a more equitable and inclusive internet landscape, where smaller content creators and developers can find their audience and monetize their work without being overshadowed by larger, more established players. Additionally, users can discover and engage with content that resonates with their unique preferences, leading to more satisfying and meaningful online interactions.
The future internet will thrive in creativity and innovation as developers and content creators are empowered to experiment with novel ideas and engage with their audience meaningfully. This evolution will redefine the way we interact with the digital world, ushering in a new era of unparalleled diversity, excitement, and opportunity, much like the vibrant and diverse cityscape of our allegorical city of the future.
Conclusion
In summary, the combination of NFTs and AI has the potential to revolutionize web experiences and enable the true metaverse. By decentralizing the network effect and fostering the creation of unique, tailored experiences, this powerful synergy paves the way for an internet landscape where innovation and creativity flourish.
As we stand at the crossroads between the current internet - a liminal hellscape defined by uniformity and mass appeal - and the city of the future - a vibrant metropolis characterized by diversity and personalization - we must choose the path forward. We encourage developers, content creators, and users alike to explore further and adopt these technologies to create personalized, engaging digital experiences.
By collectively embracing this new era of the internet, we can look forward to a future where the digital world is more diverse, inclusive, and tailored to individual preferences, ultimately bringing us closer to realizing the true metaverse. This transformation will replace today's internet's monotonous, cookie-cutter landscape with a rich, dynamic cityscape teeming with diverse and engaging experiences for all.