Social Media in Web 3.0 – Pden

In first half of last decade very few people could have imagined the scope of what was then a nascent industry of Social Media. It was one of the best innovations of the 21st century when suddenly a large number of humans felt a lot more connected. The social media platforms reduced the disconnect faced by people in continuing their relationships. These platforms slowly became central to our lives. Most of the users of these platforms, instead of looking at these platforms as a service viewed them as an extension of their personality.

There were multiple players in this space but the major ones were Orkut and Facebook. The social media space has gone through multiple modifications and continues to mutate into a variety of applications focusing on niche audiences. The advent of multiple platforms established social media as a credible business segment and suddenly it became a race to grab user attention to ensure that the revenues kept growing.

It is this race that has now led to some of the problems faced by this all-encompassing industry. The importance of advertising has overtaken the need for user privacy and protection of user data. Adding to the agony is the relentless pursuit of harvesting user attention which has resulted in companies adopting design choices contrary to user expectations.

The growing discontent amongst the users and the advent of blockchain technology las led to the creation of a breeding ground for new age social media applications. These new age social media apps have decentralized network and user ownership of their data at their core. One such new app is Pden. Pden is a social app on the Blockstack platform. It allows the user to move their identity and data to other applications if they wish to.

Pden encourages meaningful conversations. To enhance meaningful conversation, it has ensured the absence of vanity metrics. A user on the platform will not be able to see follower counts or retweet/share counts and no reputation metric. Lack of these vanity metrics, tone down the sensationalization and promote genuine sharing of thoughts and ideas. It ensures that users respond to thoughts and ideas of other users rather than to the image of the person which is a mix of their follower count or celebrity status in real life.

As a platform Pden wants the users to make the best of the conversations they have and hence plans to not interfere with the user feeds in any way. It presents the feed of the users in an unbiased manner. A special focus has been laid on nurturing conversations amongst users. Pden has been cognizant of the negative effects of herd mentality. The conversations between users will not be public until both the users or the participants want it to be. Mutual consent is essential for making any content public in a conversation.

Pden believes that all these innovations will make it a force to reckon with in the web 3.0 era and provide users with a social media that values them.