The WOM Protocol Is Aligned with Digital Transformation
When we started YEAY in 2016, who knew it would become the leading social space for Generation Z to find and film honest recommendation videos and be rewarded. We learned a lot about GenZ entrepreneurship, video-native creatives and the future of social media itself.
The Online Global Community is Growing
We know today that 60% of the 3.7 billion people active on social media are accessing it through their smartphones. We know that we live in an era of digital transformation where “GenZ”, those born after 1995 are the digital natives who in many respects govern the future of word-of-mouth and influencer marketing.
Snapchat Stories went viral as a content form in 2018. Ironically this is happening on Instagram, WhatsApp and Tik Tok, among other channels. Facebook itself believes “Stories” will replace the regular feed in terms of engagement in the coming year.
Depending on where we live, we spend an average of 2 hours and 15 minutes on social media each day according to Neil Patel, which accounts for one-third of our online time, and twice as much as any other activity. This means we are in the prime-time of digital transformation.
The WOM Protocol
What we are setting out to do with WOM is really quite different and in tune with the GenZ digital native entrepreneurship movement that we witnessed in the YEAY app.
The WOM dApp will enable brands to access authentic word-of-mouth content by contributing towards a general rewards pool for creators. This empowers content creators to share content with friends online about any brand they love, and, following validation from other members of the community, get rewarded for their word-of-mouth recommendations.
We are uniting blockchain with the future of influencer marketing in an organic way that will be based on honesty, fairplay and authenticity. WOM creates a win-win for both creators and brands.
What we are seeing is distributed ledger technology helping to shape better online user experiences. Quality will be prioritized over ads in the future, as peer-to-peer, word-of-mouth and influencer marketing continue to evolve with blockchain. This is equally beneficial for platforms looking for a more user-friendly revenue model.
Living in an Era of Digital Transformation
We’re all impacted by the rise of mobile and with 5G coming this will mean ubiquitous video of everything. An estimated 2.1 billion product recommendations are made online each and every day, and with video consumption on the rise we’re as a civilization communicating in new ways.
It’s the era of YouTube, live-streaming and niche micro video apps that seem to be making the most headway. Stories have rejuvenated Instagram and viral video has catapulted new apps such as Tik Tok into the spotlight. However, there’s room for not just new apps but new paradigms of how audiences, curators, validators and creators are incentivized online.
Young people online are behaving far more like digital entrepreneurs than ever before and it’s reshaping how we see the future of content. GenZ are far more experiential in how they create content online with shorter attention spans and a greater reliance on peers as opposed to brands. Young Millennials and GenZ also represent a gigantic cohort, especially in places like India and China. If there were 2.46 billion social media users in 2017, that number hit 2.62 billion in 2018, and will eclipse 3 billion by 2021!
Digital transformation is the very foundation of the evolution of social media and increasingly we are seeing its implications for an influencer marketing global market that will easily eclipse $10 Billion by 2020. Word-of-mouth content seen by peers is the best way to reach young people and 20-something consumers today.
Generation Z will drive the future of influencer marketing in ways that in 2018 we only just started to see. Attracting them, giving them incredible user experiences and facilitating their journey becomes of paramount importance. Retail brands, e-commerce and advertisers understand this clearly, but don’t necessarily see how blockchain and dApps will impact the space. With WOM, that’s exactly what we are building.
GenZ as the Backbone of Digital Transformation
- Live video and micro video will continue to be the avenue of choice for GenZ and valuable young consumers.
- Word of mouth is entering a new paradigm that will marry video content with blockchain that stimulates digital entrepreneurship and creativity.
- According to the latest statistics, 80% of the total global internet traffic will soon be attributed by videos this coming 2020.
- WOM is building a protocol on the blockchain that is aligned with digital transformation.
If 70 per cent of Gen Zers influence their family’s spending, according to a 2017 report from International Business Machines Corp. and the National Retail Federation, these post-Millennials bring something new to our online communities and the future of content itself. It’s our responsibility to listen to them and give them a solution built for their preferences and allowing them even better digital experiences.
GenZ are pragmatic optimists who learned from their Millennial brethren that side hustles and passive income streams are desirable in facing the uncertainty of today’s economic realities. WOM seeks to empower them, while tokenizing the spirit of the oldest form of viral sharing — word of mouth.
According to Larry Kim, by 2021 it’s expected the video streaming market will reach $70.5 billion. What if GenZ creators and not just ad-platforms had better access to the traffic and revenue generated? What if blockchain tech enabled a more robust and transparent relationship between influencers and brands? Digital transformation won’t just provide us with new online experiences, but new sources of revenue.
If influencers are the fastest growing social channel for brands to reach their target audiences, they need mechanisms that are geared to them, where real people can benefit as they augment their personal brands. The WOM Protocol is looking to build such a solution, where digital transformation can sync with the transparency and trustworthiness of the blockchain and the authenticity that GenZ creators and more ad-resistant audiences represent.
