cdixon - Page 2

Usability/monetization death spirals

Certain categories of web2 websites and apps fall into a usability-monetization death spiral. 🧵 Relying on ads and monetizing at low CPMs, the incentive is to add ever more intrusive ads to increase click rates. User experience degrades, requiring more intrusive ads, in a downward cycle. News sites, cooking sites, games, music, Q&A, travel, and many other web2 categories that didn’t figure out subscriptions or high-CPM business models fall into this trap. This isn’t the fault of the sites or... Read more

What’s next in web3

What’s next in web3? 🧵 First, where are we today? Let’s start with some anecdotes. We have an awesome games team led by @Tocelot that invests in founders out of top game studios like Riot, Epic, Blizzard etc. Almost 100% of founders they've met with recently are exploring NFTs in some way, or are already building NFTs into their games... Read more

Composability is to software as compounding interest is to finance

Composability is to software as compounding interest is to finance 🧵 A very high percentage of the software in the world is open source. Most datacenter software is open source, mobile phones OSs make heavy use of open source, most next-gen devices like self-driving cars, drones, and embedded computers run mostly open source software... Read more

How open lost to closed in web2

How open lost to closed in Web 2 — and how Web 3 can bring open back 🧵 As @alexismadrigal wrote in this excellent essay, back in 2007 it looked like open services would dominate the internet going forward... Read more

The web3 playbook: using token incentives to bootstrap new networks

The Web 3 playbook: using token incentives to bootstrap new networks. 🧵 The killer app of the internet is networks. The web and email are networks. Social apps like Instagram and Twitter are networks... Read more

Why web3 matters

Why Web 3 matters 🧵 Web 1 (roughly 1990-2005) was about open protocols that were decentralized and community-governed. Most of the value accrued to the edges of the network — users and builders. Web 2 (roughly 2005-2020) was about siloed, centralized services run by corporations... Read more

The internet treats bad business models as defects and routes around them

1/ Topic: The internet treats bad business models as defects and routes around them. 2/ Let’s start with this fascinating chart (from https://matthewball.vc) which raises the question: why has the video game industry grown alongside new technologies, while the music industry has not? 3/ For a long time, video games and music had the same, straightforward business model: charge money for a perpetual license to the base content — the game or music itself. 4/ When the internet came along, video games evolved rapidly... Read more

A few common ways new technologies can be misunderstood

1/ New technologies often arrive with flaws: toy-like, expensive, janky, lacking clear applications, etc. To predict how they’ll develop, it’s important to dig deeper. Here are a few common ways new technologies can be misunderstood. 2/ “It’s just a toy.” This was the mistake made early on about breakthrough technologies like the telephone, personal computers, and social media... Read more

Turning networks into economies

1/ Topic: Turning networks into economies 🧵 2/ We spent the last 20 years building networks on the internet. Social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Discord are networks... Read more

Going from Web 2 to Web 3 - “Your take rate is my opportunity”

1/ Topic: Going from Web 2 to Web 3 - “Your take rate is my opportunity” 🧵 2/ Jeff Bezos famously said "your margin is my opportunity" referring to the way Amazon took market share... Read more

Blockchains are the new app stores

1/ Topic: Blockchains are the new app stores 🧵 2/ If you were an ambitious, risk-seeking founder in the mobile golden age circa 2009-12, you built a new mobile app... Read more

Tokens are a new digital primitive, analogous to the website

1/ Tokens are a new digital primitive, analogous to the website 🧵 2/ Major computing waves generally have two eras: the skeuomorphic era and the native era... Read more

Written by cdixon.eth