Decentralized Social Media

The main challenge with decentralized social media is that building any new and successful social media platform is inherently difficult. New social media apps often struggle to gain traction. For instance, Bluesky, backed by Jack Dorsey (the former founder of Twitter), has amassed approximately 2.4M downloads since its launch in February 2023. In contrast, by the end of 2023, Twitter had 354M users on its platform.

Successful social media platforms usually need to innovate and introduce a new form of posting and engaging with content, which encourages users to experiment and explore. Recent examples include Snapchat, TikTok, and BeReal, which each cater to a new niche distinct from microblogging or image-based posts, which are predominantly dominated by Instagram and Twitter. friend.tech was successful to a large extent because it offered a new social media experience. Being able to buy and sell keys to interact with different users was novel, and attracted users who were intrigued by exploring a new way of posting and sharing.

The platform also did well because it incentivized participation through points and the promise of an airdrop. One challenge that comes with points is organic traction, albeit this is an issue that all crypto platforms face. Points can hinder organic growth by encouraging fake accounts and extensive bot usage. With friend.tech, this issue emerged at a later stage as the platform required a certain level of volume for point distribution, to some extent limiting the proliferation of fake accounts. However, this isn't the case for platforms like Lens Protocol, where the absence of such limitations facilitates artificial growth.

Both Lens and Farcaster fit strongly into the ethos of decentralization. Both platforms encourage others to build on top of them, which is a strong shift away from current social media platforms (such as Reddit and Twitter) who have recently introduced more restrictions on API access and privacy.

Lens offers more composability, as more actions on the platform are performed onchain. Users who create a profile on the platform can use it across multiple platforms, which offer different content and posting forms (i.e. one profile can be used across multiple microblogging, video sharing and newsletter platforms). 

In comparison, Farcaster’s “sufficient decentralization” prevents it from being as composable as Lens, as there’s no profileNFT to move around. Nevertheless, compared to traditional alternatives, the platform is still a level above in terms of composability and openness, since it encourages multiple competing clients, as well as other services to be built on top of it.

Overall, both platforms are strong alternatives to traditional social media. The issue is that non crypto-native users have little to no reason to onboard. At the end of the day, many users are not particularly interested in decentralization, privacy and owning their own social media profile or account, especially if it comes with additional friction. Furthermore, even many crypto-native users do not use these platforms, opting instead to use Twitter or Instagram, because that is where the majority of discussion and users are. One benefit that Farcaster has over Lens in this regard is that it indirectly acknowledges that regular users are not interested in decentralization. Instead of trying to encourage a large sect of the population,  the platform has curated a user base composed of a small and niche group of people who are developers, VC's, researchers engaged in crypto and tech, through a more strict referral process. The approach will not lead to Farcaster becoming an alternative to traditional social media platforms, but it has made the platform vastly more enjoyable to use, compared to Lens.