NFTs and a Thousand True Fans

1000 True Fans >>> 1 True Fan (The Story Of The $25k NFT) Here’s another change in the scaling factor. There are new types of products that creators can offer that allow you to scale yourself in completely new ways, and allow you to price discriminate among your audience as well so that you don’t need to just scale your reach and reach mor... See more

The thousand true fans thesis builds on the original ideals of the internet: users and creators globally connected, unconstrained by intermediaries, sharing ideas and economic upside. Incumbent social media platforms sidetracked this vision by locking creators into a bundle of distribution and monetization.

The real breakthroughs that enabled the revival of the 1,000 True Fans model are better understood as cultural. The rise in both online news paywalls and subscription video-streaming services trained users to be more comfortable paying à la carte for content. When you already shell out regular subscription fees for newyorker.com, Netflix, Peacock, ... See more

The recent history of the Internet, however, warns that we shouldn’t necessarily expect the endearingly homegrown nature of these 1,000 True Fans communities to persist. When viable new economic niches emerge online, venture-backed businesses, looking to extract their cut, are typically not far behind. Services such as Patreon and Kickstarter are j... See more

In his “1,000 True Fans” essay, Kelly explains that he wasn’t as excited about this new economic model as others seemed to be. “The long tail is famously good news for two classes of people: a few lucky aggregators, such as Amazon and Netflix, and 6 billion consumers,” he writes. “But the long tail is a decidedly mixed blessing for creators.” If yo... See more

Traditionally creators have monetized either through displaying ads or renting out access to content behind a paywall. NFTs create an entirely new paradigm where superfans can support an artist directly in return for ownership over a piece of their content. NFTs allow the producers of content to capture a higher percentage of the total willingness ... See more