This was expected.
We are seeing a massive shift in the world of entertainment, information, and broadcasting. A great deal of this is due to technological advancements. At the same time, there is the normal course of business.
Web 2.0 is, in my view, under attack from Web 3.0. This is not going to be evident for some time. Like most disruptions, it is only evident when the process is well underway. Many miss what is going on as it is hard to see in the early days.
For example, most are aware of the retail apocalypse caused by online shopping, notably Amazon. This is something I realized a little more than a decade ago. That said, I was late to the game in regards to what was happening. The masses started to pick up on it around 2015 when the media started to mention it.
That said, the disruption was underway long before that. We were seeing the evidence, clearly, as early back as 2010. Hindsight is always 2020.
We are seeing some things taking place within the traditional social media and broadcasting world that is showing how things are changing.
Source
X Going After YouTube
Elon Musk was clear about the focus of the X platform (formerly Twitter) and the "Everything App". They are in the process of becoming a money transmitter which will allow them to take on PayPal. However, before that, X is still a social media platform.
Part of the move towards growth is to offer more to the userbase. This appears to be coming with the string of paying for the monthly subscription.
When Twitter merged into X Corp. in April, Musk voiced plans to turn the social media platform into an “everything app.” So far, ideas for the one-stop-shop app include dating, job-hunting, banking, audio and video calls, live streaming, and more.
The latest move is to target some of the biggest YouTube influencers. Ultimately, that means the likes of MrBeast.
Earlier this week, Jimmy Donaldson — better known as MrBeast, one of YouTube’s most popular personalities — posted a 16-minute video on X called “$1 Car vs $100,000,000 Car!”
“I’m curious how much ad revenue a video on X would make so I’m reuploading this to test it,” Donaldson said in the post, adding that he’d share the figures Next week.
It is unclear if X is paying MrBeast at this time although there are discussions about financial incentives being offered to creators like this.
YouTube is the entity that basically brought the world social video. This is having an impact.
Television Down
Traditional broadcast and cable television are under attack. Here we see a shift that started about 15 years ago.
Cord-cutting is a term that most in the west are familiar with. This was the decision by consumers to forgo cable television. Instead, most opted for the Internet and ended up getting services such as Netflix through there. As streaming became more prevalent, this starting to have a huge impact.
It is a fact showing up in the numbers.
That’s according to data from Nielsen, which released its monthly breakdown of viewership. From a percentage perspective, cable hit a low of 28.2%, dipping below the 29% to 30% mark it had held for most of the year (peaking at 36.5% in May). A year ago, cable represented 30.9% of the total viewership. The Firm noted, however, that total cable viewing did rise 1.3% from November, helped by the NFL and NCAA Men’s Football.
Cable wasn’t the only one to see a decline. Broadcast and streaming each saw declines in their share of viewership. The only category to see an increase was “other,” which encompasses gaming, audio streaming, and even playing DVDs or Blu-Ray. Its percentage nearly tripled from November.
These are obviously the United States numbers yet the trend is likely elsewhere. The reality is that viewership for cable television is declining. What is interesting is the supposed golden goose for media companies, streaming, also took a hit.
Where are the eyeballs heading? Here is where the attention economy idea enters. We have to realize how each minute counts.
Let us take a look at MrBeast.
The single video mentioned in the above article had 211 million views on YouTube and 43 million on X. That is a combined total of 254 million. With a video that is 16 minutes long, we are talking about over 4 billion minutes (or 67 million hours) of viewing it received.
Naturally, not everyone watched the video in its entirety and many of the "views" is simply the video placed in front of someone. Nevertheless, even if we remove 90% and say this video received 6.7 million hours, that is time taking from elsewhere.
The Web 3.0 Opportunity
This is the key to the attention economy. It is also imperative that Web 3.0 understand this.
Each minute that someone spends on a Web 3.0 application, that is one taken from Web 2.0. Traditional television is suffering because social media is taking over. The quality of content is sufficient enough to have people watching. If their eyeballs are elsewhere, it has a compounding effect.
Elon going after the other Web 2.0 players was predicted. I stated after his takeover of X that he would dominate that arena. It appears his first target is YouTube.
From my perspective, this is nothing more than switching chairs around on theTitanic. Web 2.0 is done. Sure, it appears strong right now. In 2004, people thought the merging of Sears and Kmart was a good idea. Many did not realize the threat Walmart was posing. Even fewer understood that Amazon was lurking in the shadows.
Again, the disruption is underway long before it is evident to the masses.
The attention economy is about attention. That seems obvious yet is it to most. Where is one's attention being spent?
This is where the Web 2.0 business model is going to kill it. Companies like Facebook and Google are locked in due to their ownership by Wall Street. This means the users are not the owners.
Web 3.0 is about ownership. Here is the difference. Would someone prefer to utilize something they own, and can financially benefit, or a platform that makes other rich?
So far, the answer is the latter. However, as Web 3.0 develops, we are going to see a shift. This is happening in small numbers now. Again, every minute spent on a Web 2.0 platform removes one from Web 3.0.
Change is in the air. We can see how the battle is already taking shape. Fortunately, the focus will be upon the Web 2.0 companies which are going to try to cannibalize each other.
Web 3.0 is in keeping with history.
There is a premise within networking which can be expanded upon. It essentially looks like this:
Information has to be transferred by what is effectively "communities of agents". Since there is a limit to how much energy and time can fit into a certain area of space, this needs to be spread out. It is why the internet, in spite of being siloed, has a more robust open source community.
Web 3.0 is aligned with this. Each piece of data that is posted on a public network can easily be repurposed. This bring exponentiality into it.
MrBeast is following this concept by posting the video on X as well as YouTube. With Web 3.0, this can happen automatically. A single post can end up on 5 URLs.
The shift in the attention economy is going to happen one minute at a time.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha