Intrigued by the promise of crypto and web3, I’ve taken the plunge to add some of my stories into this new realm. The first thing I found in moving into web3 was the focus on the cryptocurrencies or NFT parts which seem to fill the searches. Getting those searches down to blogs and similar writing sites led me to site which remained overwhelmingly filled with the technical aspects of the ongoing projects with a strong reward programs for the developer community. I used my first post here on t2 to express my initial thoughts on the usability of t2 and offer a general analysis of what I think is necessary for web3.
As a user/creator using places like Substack and Medium, it’s immediately obvious that coming into sites like t2 with a wallet as your id creates a large initial barrier to entry. For me, I’ve had many years of IT, so I find the change easier to manage. However, for general users with the web2 focus on email/passwords for site entry, use of wallets (even with creating an ease of use by adding browser extensions) is something I feel many potential users will bypass.
Beyond that initial thought, the actual implementations I’ve found with t2 appears to have an ease of use similar to web2 blogs. However, t2 doesn't have a feature like real time spell check. Time will tell me about the actual reach. I’ve set up my accounts on other platforms like Steemit, Peakd.com, and Mirror.xyz. Some of them show use of analytics back to the Web2 world (along with links).
As part of my initial research, I did a quick analysis of users coming from Google organically. Steemit is by far the leader with about 1.5million per month (but it’s nearly all crypto/drop focused from what I can see). The second seems to be Peakd.com. which gets over 220k per month in users. T2 averages roughly 225 per month Yes, only 225 users from Google while Mirror.xyz gets about 30k per month.
However, the proliferation of various sites and various platforms using multiple underlying crypto currency begs the following questions.
How do users find the platforms?
Which crypto is the best for their particular needs?
While I’m not a fan of Google, Bing, or others, the search directories are at least minimally useful to finding information about platforms/sites. So far, I’ve not stumbled upon any similar on Web3. However, I’m a relative newbie, so if you have a suggestion, I’d love to hear it.
Obviously, I’m looking at writing/publishing platforms for my stories/novels. Some of the information and implementation pushes strongly in using NFT. However, with the saturation of Bored Ape collection on places like Open Seas (not to mention their upcoming fun with the SEC), I don’t see how trying to place your novels/stories into an NFT can complete. In my mind, Web3 must carry over the familiar and successful traits of Web2. This would include a better search engine(s) and search functionality, along with specialized marketplace platforms.
I can see the immediate need to push areas of online marketing with searches to build new user confidence while maintaining the decentralized approach. Addressable.io has several case studies, but the focus appears to be on building and creating new ventures on-chain. It leads me to believe Web3 remains in the infancy stage similar to the Web2 years 1998-2002 (Google's rise to prominence).
To that end, I’m curious about finding whitepapers that focus on those areas of platform building/hosting across rather than the next iteration of another cryptocurrency which can knock off Bitcoin/Ethereum.
