GM, this is Posty from Mail3 team. This morning I saw that Twitter will shut down its newsletter service 'Revue' in Q1 2023. As an independent newsletter writer, I want to take a moment to discuss my thoughts on the independent creator and something our team has been working on — Web3 Subscription.

In this post, I cover the following:

• The Creator's Dilemma

• Difference between Web3 Subscription and Web2 Social Media

• What can Web3 Subscription do for creators?

The Creator's Dilemma

Social media provides creators with subscribers and revenue, but some important problems still need to be solved.

From the perspective of revenue model and content distribution, Web2's social media platforms can be divided into two categories. YouTube represents the category of advertising revenue + algorithm distribution, and Substack represents the category of subscription revenue + subscription distribution. No matter which social media creators choose, they seem to face the dilemma of creation and living.

YouTube's Problem: Advertising Bidding Model

The dominant revenue for platforms such as YouTube is advertising, which primarily guides creators' direction of creation. In order to earn advertising revenue, their content must have high numbers of clicks, views, engagement, leads, and other indicators. In this situation, they are misled to a certain degree. In addition, these platforms have enough monetary incentives to optimize algorithms and push content with high indicators to more users, earning a big bag of profits by accurately pushing advertisements. In the end, these platforms are flooded with a large amount of profit-making-driven content, while those niche and professional content are rarely paid attention to by users.

Some might argue that the rise of independent creators is a counterexample of the advertising bidding model. These independent creators are less subject to commercial interests like most mainstream creators, and their content is sharper, more professional, and more popular with users. They are creators capable of more independent, alternative voices. On the one hand, they are indeed more flexible, but they have less impact and smaller audiences, resulting in further reduced revenue and greater vulnerability. It is challenging to rely on one or a few people to maintain the long-term operation of creation. If such a creation is to flourish and last, it needs a support system to provide editorial, operational, financial, and other assistance. And such a system has not yet appeared.

Substack‘s Problem: Pricing

Some people will use Substack as an example to refute that abandoning the advertising bidding model and promoting charge between writers and readers is another type of successful creator business model. Substack directly links creators and subscribers, allowing creators to monetize, and takes a part of the commission from the charge between creators and subscribers. It seems like this is a win-win situation for creator platforms, creators, and subscribers. But is this the truth?

Substack builds the infrastructure and a bridge between creators and subscribers. Understandably, Substack draws a commission. The crux of the problem is that Substack has the right to determine the commission ratio and pricing policy, and creators have little or no say in this. Whether the 10% commission is reasonable and applies to all creators is a lack of discussion.

Difference between Web3 Subscription and Web2 Social Media

Web3 Subscription is built based on the blockchain's decentralized technology, and the core is the "smart contract" built on the blockchain. It makes the blockchain a machine for creating trust. The most significant feature is that anyone can read and write permissionless, and everything is open and transparent.

Pricing customization

Through smart contracts, creators set definable revenue distribution mechanism, allowing more parties to participate in the creative process. For example, a mechanism could be that the revenue generated through content citations will be divided between creators and subscribers in half. This brand-new distribution mechanism could motivate the behavior of subscribers to a certain extent and try to solve the income problem of creators, to get rid of the dependence on unhealthy advertising revenue. The focus of creation will shift from eye-catching to professionalism and quality.

Subscriber Community

This is a critical step to support independent creators for long-term creation. Web3 Subscription will link creators and subscribers through Web3 tokens such as SBT and .bit subdomain, supporting the long-term operation of content creation through community co-construction.

What can Web3 Subscription do for creators?

Build Infrastructure

• User experience comparable to Web2 social media, helps creators and subscribers switch to Web3 Subscription smoothly.

• Build platform and channel, eliminating the tedious process of creators building websites, purchasing domain names, etc.

• Support all browsers and does not require a specific app to read content.

• Support multiple media types, video and audio will be supported in the future.

Bridging Web2 and Web3 Subscription

Subscription itself is not an exclusive only need of Web3 users. A large number of users exist on Web2 social media. Web3 Subscription can rapidly expand the Web3 user base and provide new value for Web2 users.

Subscriber Community

• Creators and subscribers, subscribers and subscribers form a close social bond through SBT, .bit subdomain, and other web3 tokens.

• Creators can maintain and operate this community, and the community can also develop itself, which was not possible in previous generation of subscription products.

Open Interoperability Platform

• The characteristics of Web3 are permissionless and trustless. Any third-party application can use data and social relationships on chain from Web3 Subscription to provide value for creators and subscribers.

• 0xEcho enables Web3 Subscription with the functions of commenting, liking and tipping.

• .bit enables community subdomains and paid subscriptions.

• More third-party Web3 services will be integrated with Web3 Subscription.

Censorship Resistance and Permanent Storage

• Any creator or subscriber can directly establish a private connection with one another without being monitored and censored.

• Private data, social relationship, etc., is stored distributedly and permanently.

Feel free to reply to this post, DM me on Twitter, and share your thoughts and questions with me.