NEAR a Social Network?

Not even Tom would be your friend… - Early 2000's insult

I'll never forget the day I first saw it; a black screen playing music, photos and random links strewn everywhere. "it's a website…" I thought. but it was also entertainment. There were comments and personal information about whoever that person on the screen in the top left corner was, along with a background littered with RockToons. "What's that?" I wanted to ask my fellow 11th grader, but didn't want to admit I still didn't have internet at that point… especially given that everyone I knew seemed to. I just kept staring, thinking I'd deduce the name or idea of what had hooked my attention like a fishing lure. It gave my Web-ignorant mind very little. No overt logo to search, no headers or banners to speak of really - not that I knew what any of that was to begin with. All I could see were tabs for videos, music, forums, groups. Then at the bottom, a friend's list preceded by a Top Friends section.

It was 2005, and I had just discovered MySpace.

Don't get me wrong, I've spent almost all my life in front of a monitor. In the years of my pre-adolescence however the brunt of that time was spent losing at chess, or Command & Conquer(yes also losing), or Space Cadet pinball. Linkin Park or various other artists I still enjoy would reverberate from the speakers or headphones, drowning out whatever noise I didn't find appealing. When I could manage to use someone's connection, it was usually AOL instant messenger for me. It was the one piece of software that could be ran on any system or net speed, which I gratefully accepted for any opportunity to reach out to those I could hardly ever see.

MySpace changed things, at least for me. For starters I had to spend hours on end making the profile fit who I thought I was at the time, while keeping track of everyone I cared about and whom they thought they were. A few years later I was at college and the name Facebook was dropped, and the process to an extent started all over again. With the increasing interconnectivity and value these destinations, came a slew of smaller/niche copies of the same: VampireFreaks, Google+, I'm sure you can name a couple of your own.

Now we have Web3, and I have a cell phone that allows me to almost never have to be unplugged from the signal unless I wish to. Given how long I'd been deprived of it, you can imagine how little and far between that is. These days I've all but given up on what is now known as social media, for reasons that aren't relevant to the journal entry. What is pertinent is that the next phase of that seeming trend has presented itself to my eyes: Web3/Blockchain based social media. This is all followed by my first exposure to the concept of NEAR Social. Don't worry, I won't bore you with the details you can already presume; it's like many other social media legacy sites, complete with feed and personal page where your contacts can find and interact with you.

So what's the difference here? The Chain of course. Like any Protocol(que the rimshot) on NEAR, Social uses tokens and the software we all know and love to run most kinds of ledger and content based activities. It takes small fractions of a users coins to log and register actions thereby making it as transparent and immutable as all blockchain based projects aspire to be. I haven't had much time to play with it, but I've already registered and added a few contacts within the ecosystem that I know. We will see what becomes of it all after that…

Short and sweet this week, don't worry though, I'll be back soon.

Signed,

Woodward Forest-Lich