Content is the essence of the Internet and it comes in many different forms that the current Internet iteration of Web2 supports: text, audio, video, or a combination of all three. However, the content is not a free resource. It is content creators who are now becoming thought leaders, influencers, and the cornerstones of many of the critical services businesses depend on, such as advertising, marketing, and PR management.
The need for content and its fight for independence, embodied by thousands of independent bloggers and artists, has spawned a huge online economy that exchanges talent and often generates sales volumes that many high-end artists would salivate over. This economy has been called the creator economy: a financial framework that allows freelancers to earn from their self-expression by feeding audiences the kind of content they are willing to pay to consume.
A growing force
The creator economy is a tremendous force: a unique online phenomenon that surpassed the market size threshold of $104 billion at the end of 2021. Given the increasing demand for new content on popular platforms, such as TikTok, that empower independent artists and performers, experts are hesitant to make forecasts on the potential size of the market of the creative economy. in the near future.
The reason for the lack of tangible predictions is that the creator economy is an extremely young phenomenon that began with the COVID-19 pandemic. The lockdowns evoked a wave of talent among those confined indoors, resulting in a release of creativity that others sharing the confinement were eager to consume as much-needed entertainment.
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Bearing in mind that creative microentrepreneurs are closely related to influencer marketing, which places around $13.8 billion in market size, it is possible to understand the prospects that a further expansion of the phenomenon can generate. More importantly, experts believe that the transition to a new technological medium will allow content creators to overwhelm markets and industries with new opportunities for the promotion of products and services.
Decentralizing talent
More than 50 million creators drive their own talent economy, attracting over $800 million in venture capital. Such figures are only a shadow of what they may become later on, as new locations rapidly become available.
The development of blockchain technologies has resulted in a radical revolution in financial markets, empowering individuals rather than institutions and channeling ownership of data and funds to their holders. The qualities of blockchain โ immutability, full transparency, and the trustless nature of operations โ have permeated many industries, blurring the balance of business orientation from centralized corporate trust to decentralization. This change in the basic concepts that govern the relationships between the participants of the transactions, facilitated by smart contracts, has not gone unnoticed in the creator economy.
With the decentralized finance and GameFi sectors bundling their respective industries and taking many users away from conventional banking and gaming approaches, it was only a matter of time before influencers and content creators decided to shift the paradigm in their operating environments. The content creation model has been forever altered with the addition of blockchain technologies that allow users to incentivize content creators, while creators can monetize their talent without having to share profits with hosting platforms. centralized and often unfair.
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going metaverse
The development of metaverses, fully digital environments powered by blockchain in Web3 and virtual reality, will herald a new era in content creation. Never before has talent had access to such an advanced set of tools to embellish even the bravest ideas at the threshold of the real and digital worlds.
Metaverses allow creators to visualize in stunning graphic detail anything from an opera concert in the vacuum of space against a backdrop of nebulae to a blog stream on a desert island. Anything that creativity can imagine can be implemented in the metaverse for the benefit of all parties involved. By relying on the unlimited opportunities of the metaverse in its incorporation of virtual reality, content creators will be able to unleash their creativity and let it roam free. Such promises of invisible content quality can only be described as honeysuckle to an eager audience of viewers who crave more variety in the types of content consumed and, more importantly, new experiences.
The blockchain foundation of the metaverse offers even more benefits to content creators by allowing them to employ various mechanisms to monetize their content through the versatile nature of internal cryptocurrencies. Users can stake their digital assets on specific creators, encouraging them to release more content of a certain type. Others may pay to access special content, while others may simply reward their favorite creators with donations. Monetization avenues are numerous, and content creators can always be sure that their talent will be paid for and no hosting platform can rob them of their earnings.
Even more lucrative are the prospects for companies in terms of penetrating the content-creating economy in the metaverse. Marketing, advertising, and general promotion get a new evolutionary opportunity with content that can be adapted in an infinite variety of ways and seamlessly integrated into the channels of select creators. The metaverse gives businesses a whole new frontier for implementation and audience reach, and creators are the launch pads that can showcase products and services to their followers, for a price.
In digital hindsight
The metaverse is the next iteration of the Internet we know today: a fully user-centric environment that serves the purpose of elevating creativity to a new level. However, audiences will not be the only sources of revenue for content creators, as companies are eager to tap into this lucrative niche and take advantage of the possibilities offered by highly versatile, organic, native ad integrations in VR content. .
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should do their own research when making a decision. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph. johnny lyu is the CEO of KuCoin, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, which was launched in 2017. Before joining KuCoin, he had accumulated abundant experience in the e-commerce, automobile, and luxury industries.
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