In this fascinating post from CoinTelegraph, author Iyke Aru explains how blockchain will eventually shift the way social media works. By keeping an immutable ledger of interactions, it can help one better understand the true depth of your social network. For instance, we often note that we haven't built our twitter following aggressively, but we do know that our tweets are retweeted by others with very big followings. At present, there is no way to track that, but weaving in blockchain technology could then provide information on how the tweet ultimately got distributed. Ditto with interactions on Facebook and LinkedIn. It even goes on to propose that users of the social media might participate in the revenue from advertising generated by helping to drive traffic. Having spent a "few decades" in media, we have to say - uh, maybe - but two thoughts. One, that line of thinking could cause users to repost non-stop leading to overload (and peer "caca" posts) on the network, and two, don't look for Facebook to be sending you a check anytime soon. But even so, an interesting thought leadership piece.
(Cindy Taylor/Publisher)
"Blockchain technology continues to disrupt many major industries worldwide. By changing the way people interact and do business, Blockchain is leading us to a new “digital reality.”
Blockchain helps us connect
Social media is an important tool to staying connected. Blockchain is taking social media to the next level, by changing the means of content distribution, revenue generation and data security.
Melvin Petties, Blockchain evangelist, explains:
“Blockchain gives social media a new way to express social status and connection as a currency or tradeable asset.”
In much the same way as carbon credits work, we might eventually see a world in which social favors are tracked and referenced, then traded. He notes that platforms like LinkedIn could easily implement something like this to help people measure the true depth of their support network.
Blockchain enables privacy
Blockchain technology also offers privacy features. Internet and mobile users have been taught to expect constant privacy violations. However, Blockchain technology can be used to regain this lost privacy.
Jade Mulholland, Founder and Lead Developer of the social network alternative with advanced privacy Nexus, tells Cointelegraph:
“By decentralizing and encrypting all downloads and uploads, all [privacy] invasions that large companies and corporations are currently performing are eliminated, end-to-end encryption ensures that only the sender and receiver can read the messages between themselves.”