We're back with our weekly summary of what's new in web3 social. I'm gathering so much intel every week on what's happening in this little industry of ours and I thought it's probably helpful for others too. A lot has happened since our last web3 social round up!
Social Graph Ventures enters the room
Meet Social Graph Ventures, an investment DAO with a community-first approach dedicated to channeling capital into the application and middleware layers of web3 Social.
Social Graph Ventures (SGV) has announced an investment initiative focusing on the less-highlighted application and middleware layers of the web3 ecosystem. SGV's move represents a shift from the typical emphasis on infrastructure, directing funds towards startups that are innovating within the web3 social domain.
The investment DAO brings together seasoned professionals from the tech and blockchain sectors to provide not just capital but also guidance to the projects they invest in. SGV is currently seeking out new ventures in the web3 space that are poised to challenge the status quo of social digital interactions.
SGV's strategy reflects a confidence in the capability of the existing web3 infrastructure to support a new generation of social applications.
Trapped on Medium? New tool to go self-hosted via Ghost
Medium, the once great blogging platform, has devolved into a pay-to-play silo over the last couple of years. Many people have decided to move to other platforms like Mirror or go completely self-hosted with solutions like Ghost. Unfortunately to this day, Medium doesn't offer any official ways to export your existing content out of the platform.
Thankfully there are now a bunch of tools to export your content out of Medium, directly into a self-hosted solution like Ghost.
Medium2Ghost was just released last week.
But there's even an official migration CLI tool from the Ghost project itself.
Drawtech - a fully-onchain mobile game
Sharing yet another friendtech clone here because I just recently had exactly that idea myself recently while sitting around bored on a train.
Anyone remember http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com ?
The idea is simple: a shared canvas that anyone can draw on, with each pixel costing some $$ according to a bonding curve. Stupid or genius? 🤔 You decide for yourself!
IDEO CoLab Ventures & WE3 manifest the intention economy
IDEO CoLab Ventures has partnered with WE3 to incubate startups at the forefront of the emerging "intention economy." This collaboration aims to redefine the internet's trajectory away from the attention economy, which capitalizes on user engagement, towards a more purpose-driven model.
Refreshing to see an image that wasn't AI generated, isn't it
The intention economy concept challenges the status quo of internet users as commodities in the attention marketplace, where algorithms target and consume human attention. This new collaboration seeks to leverage the insights of the past two decades, the societal shifts prompted by the global pandemic, and the advent of new technologies to foster an internet that values intentional actions over passive consumption.
IDEO CoLab Ventures and WE3 are inviting early-stage ventures that align with this vision to join them. The alliance offers funding, design expertise, and a vibrant creative community to help these startups refine their products, branding, and customer engagement strategies.
Let me just mention that this is very dear to our heart at Common Ground. In fact, we've talked exactly about this paradigm shift in our original Whitepaper:
"The emergence of Web3 goes hand in hand with a tremendous paradigm shift: Conventional social media platforms are part of the ‘attention economy’. With metrics like ‘reach’, ‘impressions’, ‘view time’, they earn based on vague estimations of their users' attention. This includes paid advertisements based on assumptions and speculative conversion rates as well as radical populist algorithms, creating social dilemmas and discourse crises.
The real value of communication and social action does not lie in the quantity of communicative acts, but in their quality. The paradigm for web3 social media will be standing up to the promise of valuing what really matters, thus creating something one could label ‘the interaction economy’."
Working on a new onchain consumer crypto project?
If so, Dan Romero, founder of web3 social app Farcaster wants to hear from you. In a crypto tweet this week he said: "If you're working on a new onchain consumer crypto project launching in the next 4 weeks, send me a Twitter DM."
Network State Conference in Amsterdam
This week the first Network State Conference organized by Balaji Srinivasan happened in Amsterdam. From the looks of it it was a resounding success. Interesting speakers, a sold-out venue and lots of attention from the hivemind.
If you're interested, here's the entire playlist:
If you're interested in Network States and what it's all about, you should join us in the Network Society, where we're tracking most of what's happening in this new merging field.
Join the discussion
Read more & discuss over at Common Ground.
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