The internet has created opportunities for global connections among people. With increasing broadband speeds, everyone has embraced the online world, particularly in the realm of social networking.
Today, a substantial amount of socializing and content consumption happens online. It's fair to predict that, over time, humans will predominantly engage in most of their social interactions online.
Many of the early internet social apps became primary venues for socialization. As more people came online and harnessed the power of connectivity, these apps evolved into super apps. These super apps offered a myriad of services or features under one roof, outcompeting offerings or experiences that lacked equally robust networks. They even extinguished some promising apps by duplicating their features.
In web2, the app is the network, and in web3, the open network becomes the super network. Open networks, such as Lens, ensure that social networking nodes, the connections we create, and the signals we send and consume are guaranteed onchain.
Web3 social media has a strong foundation, but for the upcoming year, we need to focus on accessibility. This includes consumer-friendly user experiences, novel ideas to stimulate our minds, user choice for algorithms, graph quality/reputation, and most importantly, more affordable blockspace.
The more accessible web3 becomes, the more people will join onchain. As more people join onchain, the social super network’s power will grow. Onchain creation, collaboration, consumption, and monetization will flourish.
These super networks will contribute to everything happening onchain, from verifying news to providing social proof against any onchain action, reducing fraud, bot activity, and even spam.
Super networks are still in their infancy. Lens Protocol still has its training wheels on, and we are still learning until we achieve a true permissionless onchain super network that benefits everyone onchain.
Cheers to everyone who has truly been onchain during 2023, and we wish you all a super networking 2024 with Lens!