What Does The Web 3.0 Mean To You, Your Business & Customers?

This article is designed to hopefully explain some of the jargon associated with Web 3.0 and what it can practically mean for business, how it will create disruption for many, and of course the impact on our personal lives and digital behaviour as the 'internet' as we have come know it continues to evolve.

I have 'curated research' and provided input from a variety of sources, all of which I acknowledge below - some of this is based on my own experience, expertise, expert opinion, and my personal knowledge around the blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

"To better understand where we are going sometimes it's useful to understand where we have been"

We’re about to enter a new phase of the internet, according to many tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley who are busy building it. Today’s internet experience is?somewhat?decentralised, but a lot of our virtual experiences are funnelled through just a few institutions, like Google and Facebook.

This new internet — dubbed Web 3.0 or Web3 — is still being created so it’s hard to say?exactly?what it will look like or what it will do for us - even with or without 'Zucks' 'Meta'. However, there is one thing that nearly every tech entrepreneur agrees is a goal of Web 3.0: decentralisation.?

As brands grow, many of them fall into the trap of playing it safe, and they start to defend their businesses. They stop playing to win, become more cautious, and innovate less.

The focus shifts from inspiring to guarding, and this proves fatal in practically all cases. Customers in search of inspiration will move on to the next brand when the brands that previously inspired become passive or out of touch.

The result?

At first, growth rates falter, then brands stagnate, and then they decline fast.

INNOVATION:

What has Elvis Presley, Innovation, and Web 3.0 got in common? When innovation takes off and becomes a seamless part of our everyday life we take for granted the yet unknown impact.

We now know that 'Elvis Presley' changed the world of music for many and spurred into life the marketing sector we now term the ‘teenager’.

Elvis’s first hit “That’s Alright Mama” the one that ignited his career only happened because of an innovation designed to solve a completely different problem. The invention of the ‘transistor’ was a defining moment at the start of the digital age which led to technology making devices becoming personal.

Back in the day listening to the radio was a shared family experience (just like the TV) and was limited to just one appliance. Then came the symbiotic relationship that sparked a teenage music revolution.

In 1954 Bill Haggerty founder of ‘Texas Instruments’ spotted a huge market opportunity for this new innovation. At the time transistors were being sold to the military for $16 each - Haggerty challenged his engineers to find a way to make them so he could sell them for less than $3.

With this and amongst many other inventions Haggerty invented the transistor radio. Called the ‘Regency’ radio it came onto the market around the same time as ‘Elvis’ released his career launching song.

This affordable transistor radio energised every teenager to want their own device to listen in the bedroom, at the beach, or basement. Removing the parent from the decisions around what they were listening to & where they could do it.

So, from an invention designed for other purposes (military) the transistor planted the seed for a shift in perceptions for electronic technology - especially amongst the young.

According to the MIT Sloan Management Review, companies that have embraced digital transformation are 26% more profitable than their average industry competitors and see 12% higher market valuation. The above piece of research came out before the Covid catastrophe hit those businesses totally unprepared for the continued shift to online.

Pre-Internet;

The computer and the internet are among the most important innovations of our era, but few people know who created them. They were not conjured up in a garret or garage by solo inventors suitable to be singled out on magazine covers or put into a pantheon with Edison, Bell, and Morse. Instead, most of the innovations of the digital age were done collaboratively.

There were a lot of fascinating people involved, some ingenious and a few even geniuses.

It’s 1968 - A turbulent year that saw Robert Kennedy & Martin Luther King assassinated. It was also the year that Apollo 8 orbited the moon and ‘Intel’ was founded.

In December of the same year a small group of people (1k+) gathered at a computer conference in San Francisco and witnessed something that would change the entire world - forever!

It started with this statement:

“Imagine you’re in your office & you are supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly responsive to every action you have - how much value could you derive from that?”

‘Douglas Englebart’ was a pioneer in radar, and long before Steve Jobs or Bill Gates he envisioned (and demonstrated) a combination of technologies that we now take for granted.

Engelbart proceeded to demonstrate how to collaborate with distant (virtual) colleagues to create a document with different people making ‘live’ edits, adding graphics, changing layouts, he also built a map & added audio and visual elements - all in real time!

In short in 1968 he showed back then almost everything a networked computer can do today. source: The Innovators

Web 1.0 and 2.0

Who would have thought in early 90s that making an international money transfer, speaking to someone across borders or even video entertainment could be done by just one device, your phone!

Businesses are impacted first of all by a combination of external forces, mainly the customer who is responding to a nearest competitor as they seem to be able to better understand the 'why' than you do. They are also impacted by internal forces that are still trying to make what worked in the early days of the millenium slightly better, and for many prior to this crisis didn't really take the time to look at the changing 'behaviour' of the customers who once thought you were the brand to be with.

Long before FaceBook, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates 1971/2 saw several game changing digital innovations. One truth about the digital age is that the desire to communicate, connect, collaborate, and form community tends to create killer apps. Source 'Walter Isaacson 'The Innovators'

In 1971 ‘Ray Tomlinson’ an MIT engineer concocted a cool hack that allowed a user of a big central computer to send a message to the personal folder of another who was sharing the same computer. He took this one stage further and with his next hack changed the digital world of communication forever.

In order to instruct a message to go to the file folder of a user at a different site he used the @ sign to create an addressing system that today is commonplace username@hostname.

As a result he had created not only email but also the iconic symbol of the connected world.

Email did more than just facilitate messages between users, it led to the creation of virtual communities - known today as ‘social networking’

People all over the world are still changing things - For business to grow it must thrive on innovation.

We are now moving into the next key stage of the 'internet' - we are moving from Web 2.0 - to Web 3.0. source Freethink.com

Why? because the world and technology is now ready for its next big leap forwards.

There are enormous economic and social advantages that could be realized through Web 3.0 if it lives up to its potential.

A truly 'trustless' internet could put users in control of their data, build a new economy where money flows directly to the people who create value, and construct new ways of doing business.

We’ve seen the rise of mobile internet (good bye dial-up!), social media, and cloud storage. The internet now is accessible — you can set up a website without knowing how to code — and there are search protocols that make it easy for users to find your content.?

Web 2.0 was also when the internet really transitioned to being synonymous with social-media — we saw the rise of interactive experiences, and user-driven content.

Then, the internet got a whole lot more centralized.

Most of the services and value started coming through big companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google.?Some critics say this makes users, like small businesses or content creators, too reliant on a single corporation. For example, Twitter could decide to shut down your account — and with it, all of your data and followers.

Your business, and online identity, could take a major hit.

Web 3.0 could be a winning combination of the two former iterations.

If you are wondering why most luxury brands are engaging with the virtual world, it’s partly because there is some business to be made. But it's mostly because they are about storytelling and stories will be told very differently in the future.

Have you ever bought a counterfeit product unwittingly?

Today's consumer, especially Gen Z wants to be able to authenticate products and possibly re-sell them? Because?all transactions ?will take place on the blockchain, it’s impossible to forge or counterfeit.

This is what many proponents say is Web 3.0’s greatest feature: by running apps on the blockchain, it will greatly minimize the trust that’s required for global transactions.?

That matters because society could be run more efficiently by cutting out the fee-charging middlemen that are involved in many transactions today.?

The luxury industry (LVMH, Cartier, Prada, OTB, and likely more to come)?develops a consortium ?— called Aura — around blockchain technology to enable it.

The consumer spends a lot of time playing video games and shopping? Balenciaga delivers skins and hoodies for Fortnite fans while?Gucci offers limited edition accessories on Roblox .?source Jing Daily

What about the traditional banking sector, a sector that is rife with middlemen all taking their cut and slowing everything down - we use them because they are deemed as 'trusted' but in reality it's all a 'centralized' system designed for big institutions to control and make money, not you and me?

For most of us, the current internet works pretty well — it enables us to engage and interact and trade with each other in ways we never thought possible. And because of that, it?has unlocked trillions of dollars ?for the world economy.

With Web 2.0, we’re largely always online, thanks to mobile internet, and the content we consume is mostly user-generated, thanks to social media apps like Facebook and Instagram. And now, all of that data is mostly stored in massive data centers located around the world, called the cloud.?

“The bad news is that it became much harder for startups, creators, and other groups to grow their internet presence without worrying about centralized platforms changing the rules on them, taking away their audiences and profits. This in turn stifled innovation, making the internet less interesting and dynamic”?

A decentralized Web 3.0 could, in theory, allow us all to own and safeguard our private data, as well as encourage more innovation in the virtual world, outside the structure of the big tech firms.?

Apart from stifling innovation, many Web 3.0 proponents are also concerned about data privacy.?

Whoever controls the servers controls our data. So, anyone with access to the central server — whether the corporation itself, a government entity, or a hostile hacker — can access and potentially alter the information.?

Web 3.0 will be a system of apps that operate on a blockchain, like Etheruem — a decentralized network of computers that enables tools like cryptocurrencies, and smart contracts to operate on an open system.?

In crypto-lingo, this makes any transactions that occur on the apps?“trustless” — you don’t have to trust a third party entity (like a bank, or a server company, or another person) to act as an intermediary in the transaction.?

Instead, crypto-advocates trust the code or the system itself to verify transactions.

Bitcoin first hit the market in 2009 and was trading around a few cents to a dollar per coin by 2010. Flash forward, it reached an all-time high price of?more than $68k in November 2021 . That unfathomable jump happened in just about a decade—no asset class has ever seen such returns in such a timeframe.

Investing in crypto is not unlike investing in stock of public companies. Like ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft are disrupting the public transportation market, and rental platforms like Airbnb are disrupting the hospitality industry, and Amazon is disrupting the retail market, cryptocurrencies are disrupting the financial markets.?While it?could?fall flat, it could also keep forging forward.

New coins are cropping up all the time. This means that you’re spoiled for choice of crypto investment options to explore. Already, there are over 4,000 cryptocurrencies available on the market, ranging from decentralized finance (DeFi) to stable coin to NFTs, and more.source: Forbes.com

But why should any of this be of interest to you and me?

I was there at the start of the known eCommerce revolution when the retail (including mail order) sector I had already been involved with for some 20+ years told me it was a fad, this mindset included the Marketing Director of the largest 'Direct Home Shopping' company in the UK along with M&S, Boots and many others.

I was there and built an innovative 'MarComs' business at a time when data was sat in every consumer facing company waiting to be unlocked as a key asset just waiting to be leveraged.

As we now know it then became a liability because of marketings misuse and abuse of that data with the development of 'AdTech' platforms.

I was also there when interactive digital communications became personalised because we focused on the intelligence behind the message not the cost per thousand.

I was there when e-mail was nothing other than a 'customer service' tool. Back then my team built the 5th largest email company in the UK.

If you ever got an email from Nectar, Debenhams, Harrods, MFI, Argos, N Brown plc, Avon and many others they all came from my company along with the user behaviour data that informed each and every one of them.

Of course some have proven to be way ahead of their time and are now deemed as commonplace within the online space and some of have evolved as the 'internet' and consumer education, awareness, and availability became ubiquitous.

Like a lot of people I was initially sceptical about the world of ‘crypto’ especially when we get those intrusive DM’s about it. And like most people that scepticism was biased towards my aversion to what might be spam or scam combined with my superficial knowledge and ignorance about its potential - a bit like eCommerce was to retail some 25 years ago!

So this year I took the time to learn, research, understand, and get involved as I strongly believe this will be as common place an easy, secure, and global payment method as your credit card once was.

I have to say that not only has this one been such an amazing story (so far) the knowledge I’ve learnt about the potential of this currency and blockchain technology to change business forever has been one of the most rewarding ventures so far.

So, yes I’m delighted that we have achieved our Bitmart exchange listing approval for Jan 2022 and would also like to thank?Louis-James Davis ?and the global?VSolidus ?community for getting us where we are today.

Are you learning about 'blockchain' and 'cryptocurrencies' - or do you think this is just for the kids just like the internet and eCommerce was all those years ago?

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