fastcompany.com

It had a founding CEO, Tina Sharkey, who was unabashedly trying to build a community in public, and got great press.

Talent will increasingly own their audience, with the rise of “channels of one” and community-as-a-service... Equivalents to Substack (where you build and monetize your own email list) will emerge in video, communities, branded products (like Borgo, still pre-launch) and other ways to build, manage, and monetize your audience. Some early breakouts ... See more

But increasingly, creators with loyal followings are creating their own independent offerings—ranging from paid courses to niche communities to vertical social networks—with the basis of competition shifting to curated content and community, trust in a particular creator, and alignment to specific topics.

Moving from audiences to communities. Memberships and subscriptions hold the promise of closing the gap between media brands and their audiences. When your audience is your customer, you tend to provide better services. The advent of tokens and decentralized autonomous organizations would seem to represent the next step. It is logical for a communi... See more

The best consumer platforms started as entertainment and scaled into new classes of work: streamers on Twitch, influencers on Instagram and retailers on Shopify.

After a decade of inaction, web2 platforms have finally woken up to the need to help their creators make money. This was instigated by TikTok’s $2B Creator Fund, but has resulted in dozens of similar funds and new features across Snap, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and even LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, web3 platforms are pioneering a new form of monetizat... See more