Lens Protocol just announced its latest development: the Lens Network. It is an ambitious infrastructure building plan aiming at revolutionising the future of online social spaces. Through this effort, Lens aims to break the "walled garden", a troubling issue that plagues current social media networks, and make the future social spaces more open and fairer for billions of users online.
What does this mean for creators?
Long story short: creator economy enters a new stage of growth.
Currently, content creators manage their creative journeys like playing one-man baseball games, moving between platforms and risking audience loss, time, data security, and missed opportunities, all while aiming for a perfect swing. With Lens Network, this journey transforms and puts the creator as the centre, like the sun in a solar system where creators hold ultimate power and control. The creator's activities are distributed through the network to their audience, and the value they create is captured by different applications, ready to be harvested and re-distributed by the creator.
My work and connection belong to me, 100%
Creators will gain unprecedented control over their content and connections. The Lens Network's decentralised nature means that data will not be stored in one company's server, forcing creators to stay and build their audience only on one platform. Instead, data will follow creators wherever they travel, enabling them to have more notable ownership rights over what they have created. This ownership can also lead to more direct monetisation opportunities free from traditional platform constraints.
Never fear of missing out
Remember a time where you had to jump from platform to platform to announce your latest short story, so that you didn't miss out on reaching any potential audience? Leave it in the past. In the future, creators will be able to maintain their identities and connections across platforms, which will drastically reduce the friction associated with engaging audiences on multiple platforms. Creators could leverage this to build and maintain a cohesive and expansive digital presence more efficiently and effortlessly. You can focus on the craft, and let the network do the rest.
Be free to create
No creators like to see their work deleted without consent for ridiculous reasons or hidden due to the algorithm. In the future, creators will benefit from an infrastructure less susceptible to central control and censorship, encouraging a more vibrant exchange of ideas. Using Lens Network, creators can ensure their content is preserved without fear of arbitrary bans as seen in centralised platforms. This not only enhances creative freedom but also supports a fairer distribution of power within digital ecosystems.
Leverage new models for creation and distribution
With the Lens Network’s emphasis on scalable, decentralised infrastructure, we will see new forms of content creation and distribution emerge. Because applications builder will no longer have the need to focus on how to get more of your data and sell them to another business. Instead, they will have the mind-space and capacity to work on what is important: finding better and novel ways for creators to interact with audience and for content to be discovered and monetised.
To summarise, this implementation is more than a technology improvement, it is a movement toward an open and creator-centric internet. It represents pivotal shift towards a more interconnected and fluid content creation ecosystem where creators can take back control of their online social identities, content, and monetisation power from the tech giants.
How do I get involved?
Within the Lens ecosystem, there are plenty of applications for you to experiment with, including and not limited to text, images, music, video or livestream. Hundreds of creators have found their audience and grown their communities on Lens using different applications.
Need evidence? Check out some of the active creators on Lens: Eduard🌹, Benoit.Tokyo, Cristina Spinei, Pan Winyl and Refraction.
Writing and reading on t2.world
As the home of publishing within the Lens ecosystem, t2 will incorporate its infrastructure with Lens Network.
This means as a writer on t2, you are part of this movement. t2.world offers a compelling suite of features that are designed to put writers in control of their content, connections, and monetisation opportunities. The integration with Lens Network ensures that t2.world is not just a writing platform, but a part of a revolution in how social and creative work is produced, shared, and monetised in the digital world.
At the moment writers who connects their Lens handles to t2 can already distribute their work through the entire Lens ecosystem with one hit of a button and can engage with their readers applications seamlessly. In the near future, t2 will introduce more diver features to elevate millions of writers in the new creator economy.
The dance floor is now open to all, welcome to the new era of the creator economy! Have fun and be responsible.