Web3 is the new gold mine digital technology investors are now looking into in 2022. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the Metaverse, and other blockchain products are currently in existence due to the innovative decentralized technology beneath blockchain. As a result, different sectors now look into how they can maximize blockchain to transform their traditional business models.
An instance is what happens in the publishing industry. Recently, Pearson revealed that they would start tracking digital textbook sales using NFTs. This will help them know the revenue lost in the secondary market. Aside from other technological benefits from NFTs, publishing firms want to leverage Web3 for its community engagement possibilities.
Web3 and a Content Owner Community
Although it is unimaginable for top magazine publishers like Time to have an NFT gallery, they keep leveraging NFTs since their advantages are known. For instance, Time has about 30,000 NFTs released, and more than 15,000 wallet addresses of wallets such as AABB Wallet collected them and can be used to collect them. And more than 45% are linked to Time.com to eliminate the barricade that makes payment easy without providing personal information.
Meanwhile, the TIMEPiece community is growing and has some 50,000 individuals. Time advanced into the decentralized space by launching a Web3 community, a digital gallery space on OpenSea. This initiative is known as TIMEPieces and has about 90 artists, musicians, and photographers. These artists include Baege, Cath Simard, and Diana Sinclair.
As much as leveraging NFT is vital for publishing companies, it is crucial to recognize the significant factor contributing to the entire project’s growth. That factor is recognizing the difference between audiences and communities. That’s because Web3 presents firms with the edge since they are willing to explore the oversight.
This explains why an audience will temporarily engage content, but a community will share your values and constantly engage your content. Meanwhile, having a healthy community gives you the protection not to allow competition to disrupt the entire ecosystem. In the long term, this enables you to create a stable community. But that requires a lot of energy to nurture for a long-term purpose.
Web3 and Its Global Community Reverence
With NFTs, brands now have the opportunity to engage with their customers every time. This single reason is why more publishing firms want to leverage NFTs. An instance is a three-century-old Dutch printing company—Royal Joh Enschede—using Web3 to provide clients with crypto stamps via an NFT platform. As a result, this opens them up to global expansion across borders.
Although there has been a series of an in-depth evaluation of how to maximize the benefits associated with NFTs, the first point of application for the Dutch printing company was crypto stamps. That’s because of the utility and the market potential it presents. Aside from owning a unique NFT, it provides owners with extra security for any physical products owned.
Another option publishing firms explore is using notables to enhance their online promotions across the Web3 community. With notables, users can make payments in the Metaverse. This helps them bring together a collectors’ community wherein they interact while using the platform. Likewise, you can link more applications to it. That is, you can link notes to events such as Formula 1.
Web3 as a Tool Against Fake News
In another light, independent news organizations are now using Web3 tech to resolve persistent challenges in the media industry. The most common challenge in this industry is fake news. Daily, fake news is published to incite different activities within society.
To tackle this, Bywire launched a decentralized platform where artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and machine learning are used to determine fake news or misleading information. The CEO of Bywire, Michael O’Sullivan, revealed that the platform uses a “trust or not” algorithm. This makes the content trustworthy and holds the content producers accountable for the information.
The AI technology can read an article in seconds and determine how trustworthy the content is before publishing it on the platform. As soon as the content is published, the algorithm recommends the content and states the reasons. With this, consumers know the intentions behind the content production.
Meanwhile, O’Sullivan’s innovative platform will help content aggregators present their content to thousands of readers in a month. Likewise, they have a community of readers that receive incentives for reading the news content on the platform.
Will Web3 Help the Publishing Industry Edge?
The above question is a one-billion-dollar question that the publishing industry will keep asking before leveraging NFTs. That’s because firms within the industry seek clarity to understand how blockchain works, and you can leverage it as a publishing firm. That’s because most organizations do not have much importance attached to NFTs at the moment. But NFTs and Web3 technologies will be the norm in the future.
As many advantages are associated with NFTs, it is high time participants and users start engaging NFTs from a fresh perspective. This includes understanding the true meaning of NFTs and how they can help consumers interact with brands with a good experience via NFTs. And education is essential in this regard to make the public understand how well they can bring utility to NFTs.
