Colin Charles
@bytebot
672 Following
699 Followers
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It is after all part of a flywheel.
People must find a reason to stay here. Brands like to reach good audiences. There is a certain type of audience here, and that audience mix is supposed to grow/change. Eventually, brands will want to be part of videos. Brands like to do support. Brands like ads.
I give you another good example: crisis management. Why did Air India choose X over anything else to communicate during their recent plane disaster? Imagine if they had chosen Threads, or Farcaster?
This is also why I think you see news orgs (brands) bet on networks. And that keeps consumers on said networks, because they get their news bites.
I consider @noiceapp a brand. It is on Farcaster, it has utility, and today it did an airdrop. Imagine Apple on Farcaster, offering an iPhone case to a certain number of qDAU? While I don't personally use cases, they can be useful. Apple example a bit far-fetched today, but let's go with Casetify (Hong Kong based, and the founder is definitely into crypto). Could be useful.
Or the brand that is Bryan Johnson and his Don't Die movement. qDAU getting access to some discounted olive oil? Useful... Heck, Coinbase - today we get to try coinbase wallet/TBD, but what about benefits for Farcaster network participants, maybe a little like what Backpack does for Mad Lads holders? Suddenly the network takes off, since you don't buy an expensive NFT.
So yeah, I think brands on the network are important. I do not want to focus on just crypto brands, I'm thinking all kinds of brands. See the brands that @elvi engages with on Instagram - those are the types that could totally be here. In fact it was @rileybeans at a coffee shop I visit often, touting the importance of Farcaster when the owner happened to have been there. That's a brand that could diversify here too (they are on Instagram and Threads, so far, but imagine qDAU discounts or even loyalty as a miniapp?).
I see brands on the network as very, very, valuable. 5 replies
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10,000 characters is anywhere between 1,500-2,000 words of content. That's what we all get here if you have Farcaster Pro.
This is article level content. Blog level content. In fact, most blogs are a lot longer. If you think about tumblr, they're like what your average cast limit is.
Which brings me to content. What do I actually post about? I'm a tech boffin, through and through - I've dabbled in tech since 1989, starting with an 8086. So software and hardware constantly interest me.
But beyond tech I have other interests. I like long walks on the beach (cliché, but this isn't a dating profile). I like long walks in general. I like to read a wide variety of non-fiction. I enjoy consuming magazines. And I think we only get better by reading a lot of newspapers. And blogs! I also enjoy making photos, eating good food, and watching the F1, especially with my Farcaster friends. The quality of your input, affects your output.
With AI, slop replies, etc. the better input you have, the higher the chance of you figuring out what is signal, rather than noise.
So I look at my Farcaster account as a place to channel all my interests, into a little stream of conscious feed. It turns out, I can also post to *channels*, which to me is topical, very much like Usenet newsgroups always have been.
Very much like what my blog used to be. But blogs lost their "distribution" the moment we lost Google Reader. Blogs are still great, but how often do people enjoy investing in RSS readers? I have a blog since January 2004 (WordPress) and before that I was writing in HTML, with a little rsync magic (no RSS).
On X, we see people like levelsio flat out say you should use X to blog. I will use Farcaster primarily to blog. I might also want to use X, who knows?
It is however becoming increasingly clear - you will want your stuff distributed everywhere. You might find an audience on Substack. You might still find an audience via RSS.
At the end of the day - people are going to have to follow you because you're interesting, a human, with multi-faceted interests and thoughts. This is something the average AI bot that creates slop content cannot compete with. You have memory, you have learnings, much unlike limited context windows that exceed token usage!
How does this all then surface? Algorithms. Whether we like it or not, we are serving our algorithmic overlords. Some will subscribe. Some will be "super notified". Some will have searches on keywords. But those are your power user outliers, maybe the 9-10% curators. The rest are just going to consume what the algorithm serves them.
Which is why you're going to see more algorithm bait. And algorithms change. So the best thing to do is keep up with those changes.
Hope you find interest in what I cast. Or post (if you happen to use coinbase wallet). The terms may change, since we are a sufficiently decentralised social network, but I reckon the aim is distribution, with sufficiently interesting content.
As Oscar Wilde once wrote, "be yourself, everyone else is already taken." Go forth and be your authentic self. I know I am. 0 reply
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