1. Social Graph Value
The social graph is a mapping of personal social relationships, reflecting the people users know through various means: family members, work colleagues, school classmates, etc. Facebook CEO Zuckerberg introduced the concept of the social graph at the first Facebook F8 Developer Conference, where it was used to explain how the newly launched Facebook platform would leverage personal relationships to provide a more friendly online experience.
Today, the social graph has become the core value of every social platform. When users register and log in to a social platform, the platform will search for people they might know based on their registration information, understand their preferences by recommending topics they are interested in, record all the content they have browsed on the platform, their interactions with others, and form a user-centered social graph based on this information. In other words, this graph will contain your interpersonal relationships, interests, and living habits, and the platform can roughly outline your user profile based on this data.
So, what is the use of this? Let’s first take a look at a set of data:
This is the financial report released by Facebook in Q3 of 2021. According to the report, Facebook’s total revenue in the past year was about 209 billion US dollars, of which advertising revenue was 205 billion US dollars, accounting for more than 90%. Because the core profit model of most Web 2.0 applications is to provide free services to users and obtain user data, and to obtain advertising revenue through advertisers. Taking Facebook as an example, personalized advertising recommendations and content recommendations can bring in hundreds of billions of US dollars in revenue each year, which are actually monetized based on user behavior data.
02 Casual Discussion on the Pain Points of Web2.0 Social Graphs
Due to the characteristics of the Web2.0 application architecture, which stores all data in a centralized database, the social graph data formed by each user on the social platform is controlled by the company that owns the platform. Moreover, when users register for a social application or any application, they need to sign the “User Service Agreement” and “Privacy Policy”, which means you agree that the ownership of your data belongs to the platform, and the interpretation rights also belong to the platform. Even when users make inappropriate remarks, they may face the risk of being banned. Therefore, for users, their social behavior creates value for this platform, but the value will not be distributed to them, and what they have is only the right to experience the product.
Moreover, the platform constantly monitors all user behavior trajectories and collects user data. Many data may not have a specific purpose when collected. However, with the increasing maturity of big data technology, privacy data leakage incidents frequently occur, even leading to serious social issues. A large number of fraud cases in areas such as pensions, medical care, and charity are caused by information leaks. Facebook user information was once leaked and utilized by the data company Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook has also faced multiple lawsuits and accusations for infringing on user data privacy issues.
In addition, in the Web 2.0 world, user data is like a series of isolated islands, making it difficult for them to communicate with each other. This is because social media giants, in an effort to retain users and increase user stickiness, are willing to spend a lot of money to build moats. Once a user jumps to another application, they need to abandon the social graph they have built. Therefore, every time a user registers a social account, they need to repeatedly verify their identity information and start building their social relationships from scratch on a new platform, which is very costly to migrate.
03 Exploring the Web3.0 Social Graph
The purpose of Web3.0 projects is to return data ownership to users. Based on blockchain technology, user data is highly transparent. Information such as the number of transactions you have made and the DeFi projects you have participated in mining are all hidden in your wallet address. A single address can log in to countless applications, and the behaviors within each application are clearly recorded. By mining and analyzing this data, a complete user profile of each address can be depicted. The social graph protocol is organizing and presenting users’ on-chain profiles and behaviors in different ways.
Looking at the current Web 3.0 social ecosystem, it can be roughly divided from bottom to top into the underlying public chain application carrier, decentralized data storage, decentralized identity layer that presents the identity and relationships of users on the chain, upper-level social application products, and tools and plugins for user access. Among them, the social graph is an important component for capturing and accumulating data on the relationships between users on the chain, and it is an important part of building the Web 3.0 decentralized identity infrastructure.
However, the current construction of decentralized social identity is not yet perfect, and it is still in the early stages due to issues such as technical barriers and application promotion. No one knows what Web 3.0 will be like, and most Web 3.0 users do not know what they want, but one thing is certain: cultivating users’ decentralized identity is very important, but this process will not happen overnight.
As Foresight said, the accumulation of high-quality relationships and network effects needs to reach a critical point to lead to a qualitative change, and we will always remain optimistic about this!
Our company maintains a neutral stance on the statements, viewpoints, and judgments expressed or reproduced in the above content, and does not provide any explicit or implied guarantees for the accuracy, reliability, or completeness of the included content. Readers are advised to use the information as a reference only and to assume responsibility for their own actions.
