KFC Singapore is celebrating all things local this National Day with an exclusive streetwear capsule collection in collaboration with home-grown fashion designer Amos Yeo. Titled “STATE: ORIGINAL”, the collection draws inspiration from KFC’s “Always Original” brand positioning.
According to KFC, this marks the first partnership between a quick-service restaurant and local fashion designer in Singapore. The collection comprises 11 limited edition pieces of apparel and accessories, showcasing Amos Yeo’s interpretation of “the original state of self” in his signature design and style.
When a developer approaches a problem, they usually have a clear objective. Fix this bug, create that component, refactor this implementation. We’re very goal oriented by nature. We have an objective that we need to get to, and we have to try all the techniques we’ve learned in order to hit that mark. But something that I feel is less discussed is the mindset of a developer: the way we think, rather than what we think, in order to solve a coding problem. I want to share some thoughts on two specific mindsets that I realized I’ve been oscillating between…
TikTok has been named as the fastest growing social media platform of all time, making the shortlist as one of the most downloaded apps globally for the past two years.
The short-form video app saw rapid growth during the COVID pandemic, as many users found time to explore the platform and connect with their online audiences in new ways. In Q1 2020, TikTok set the record for the most downloads in a single quarter for a social app, at 315 million installs.
TikTok has 800 million active users worldwide. That makes TikTok 9th in terms of social network sites, ahead of LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat.
Putting this into perspective: it took Instagram six years from its launch to gain the same number of monthly active users that TikTok managed to achieve in under three years. And for Facebook to hit the same monthly active users mark, it took the best part of four years.
Marketers are drawn to TikTok as it reflects a key social media trend for creativity and collaboration amongst young audiences. Its fast-paced nature keeps users engaged for relatively long periods of time, with users spending an average of 52 minutes per day on the app.
TikTok began as an app called Musical.ly in 2014, a platform on which users created and shared short lip-sync videos. In 2016, Chinese tech company Bytedance launched a version of Musical.ly known as Douyin to the Chinese market before introducing it overseas as TikTok in 2017. Understanding the platform’s potential, particularly among young digital natives, Bytedance bought and incorporated Musical.ly and it became the version of TikTok we know today. Bytedance still operates Douyin separately in the Chinese market.
What is TikTok?
TikTok calls itself the “destination for short-form mobile videos.”
Users can create and upload a video—up to 15 seconds long (although you can string together four separate videos to create 60-second pieces)—incorporating music with filters and editing effects, or showing the user lip-synching or dancing to a song.
Its rapid video format is not just for dance challenges and lip-synching, although that is what it has become famous for. TikTok creators are using the platform to discuss complex subjects, campaign for change, and educate their audiences in subjects ranging from healthcare to accountancy.
For example, Taylor Price offers Generation Z finance advice to over 830K followers.
Who uses it?
TikTok is most popular with teenagers around the world, who are generally early adopters of new social media platforms. They figured out early on how to use and adapt the platform to their tastes and needs, and many have gathered thousands of followers over the past few years.
Millennials and Baby Boomers who join the platform may poke fun at themselves, in their clumsiness at using the app, or the content they produce. Many claim that they have been encouraged or inspired to use the app by teenaged family members.
For example, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey has attracted over 17M fans on TikTok (as of December 2020) after being taught how to use the platform for dance challenges with his Gen-Z-aged daughter, Tilly.
Even though TikTok very much appeals to young generations, it does seem to be retaining its audience as they age.
TikTok is available in 154 countries. Global Web Index stats from 2019 show that TikTok penetration is seemingly at its highest in Asia, where over one third of users aged 16-64 had an account. There’s not much to split the rest of the world, with penetration of between 12 percent (North America) and 10 percent (Latin America and Europe).
Global brands have recognized the importance of TikTok as a key way to engage with young audiences, encourage user-generated content, and partner with relevant influencers. TikTok has seen both paid and influencer campaigns on its app from Nike, Skittles, Fenty Beauty, Pepsi, Calvin Klein, Sony, and FIFA, to name a few.
TikTok has seen a huge increase in celebrity users, particularly during 2020 when many Hollywood stars and global musicians were looking for ways to stay relevant and connected to fans during the COVID pandemic: these have included Reese Witherspoon, Snoop Dogg, Dua Lipa, and Kendall Jenner.
Who are TikTokers?
It’s the native TikTokers who are the real stars – names that are less known in the wider media world but familiar to most 14-year-olds. Many of these influential stars have flocked to TikTok from other social media channels such as YouTube and Instagram, but have generated a large following after quickly getting to grips with the unique platform style of TikTok.
For example FitWaffle, a food influencer that started on Instagram, has generated over 600K followers and over 14 million likes (as of December 2020) on TikTok since launching in 2019. Its creator, Eloise Head, is one of the world’s most popular and fastest growing foodie content creators.
The title of most-followed TikTok account now lies with American singer and social media personality Loren Gray, who has over 49.8 million followers (December 2020) and outranks the official TikTok account itself which has 49 million followers.
There is also a huge community of creative influencers using TikTok to reach new global audiences, engage with like-minded communities, and work with brands to promote their products and services. The huge selection of beauty, fashion, food, dance and fitness influencers on TikTok offers brands the opportunity to reach younger audiences without having a presence on the app themselves. These influencers are well-versed in the functionality of TikTok, and can create reactive content that jumps on the most recent trends.
The app has fueled the rise in “content houses” or “collab houses” where groups of young social media influencers are housed together in mansions to create an impressive backdrop for their branded viral content. The high rental fees are covered by talent agents or managers who broker deals and contracts with brands. Rihanna’s beauty brand Fenty Beauty invested in a content house in 2020, with a group of five creators chosen by Rihanna. Unfortunately it had to end early, due to COVID, but content creators continued to promote the brand remotely.
In December 2019, 16-year-old TikTok influencer, Charlie D’Amelio, lived in an LA mansion known as Hype House where she was able to amass a following of over 100 million. She regularly collaborates with brands that reflect her personal interests and values, such as releasing products with beauty brand Morphe or promoting anti-bullying messages with UNICEF.
What is TikTok used for?
TikTok has cemented itself as a key destination to go to for content that entertains, as shown by its two most-used hashtags – #entertainment and #dance.
Other hugely popular categories on the app include pranks, fitness, home renovation, DIY, beauty and skincare, fashion, recipes and cooking, life hacks, advice, and pets.
tikTok is seeing an ever broader range of topics being discussed and covered on its platform including more personal and serious topics such as healthcare advice. Fertility doctor Lora Shahine and psychologist and physician Dr David Puder have both attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.
At-home hobbies such as gardening and cooking have seen a rise in popularity on the platform. Content which offers users inspiration, but also authenticity, tends to perform well. Many TikTok users prefer to see raw and truthful angles, unlike on Instagram where the style of most videos and images has evolved to be more perfectly polished, and, some might say, less authentic.
A great example of this is Garden Marcus who shares tips and stories to his 677K followers (December 2020) from his garden in Houston, Texas. The content is honest, positive, and inspirational.
TikTok has launched its own campaign #LearnonTikTok, which categorizes educational content around all kinds of topics, “from life hacks to science tutorials, makeup masterclasses and motivational tips, to quick cooks”.
That hashtag has had over 45 billion views and contains content from the BBC, Cambridge University, and Cosmopolitan Magazine.
How does TikTok work?
TikTok users can discover videos through the use of hashtags. Hashtags can be added to any video uploaded to TikTok in the caption, and this is how users are able to search through content.
When logged into the app, each user views an individually-curated home feed called the For You page. This is the best place to go to discover new content and users to follow.
TikTok places content here which it deems interesting for each individual user, based on signals picked up by its algorithm. The algorithm works on factors such as:
Your individual settings; country, language, device
Video information: hashtags, captions, sounds, genre
User interactions; the types of video you interact with, accounts you follow, who you engage with
Content has a good chance of going viral within TikTok, as the platform selects content it deems both interesting and highly engaging for each unique user, and places that content within the For You page. This is why challenges, pranks, and dance routines spread like wildfire within the app, as it’s fairly easy to gain visibility if you are using a popular hashtag or a trending sound.
How can marketers use TikTok?
TikTok offers a brilliant opportunity for marketers to reach younger audiences around the globe, in a highly creative and playful environment. Many social media memes begin on TikTok, and brands can boost their credibility by being at the forefront of these cutting-edge trends. TikTok does not require huge budgets for content creation either, as spontaneous content produced in ordinary surroundings has just as much as a chance of cutting through. Many TikTok videos have been filmed in bedrooms, car parks or gardens.
TikTok provides marketers with a level playing field when it comes to reach and engagement. Unlike social media platforms such as Instagram or YouTube, TikTok accounts with zero followers can get millions of views on a new video thanks to the viral nature of the algorithm. As long as the content appeals to the audience, the engagement will follow.
TikTok experiences higher engagement rates from the app’s followers than other social media platforms (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2019) – so marketers can achieve significant buzz with a carefully-planned campaign using content that appeals to the app’s audience.
There are four key ways that marketers can begin using TikTok:
Start a branded channel: Create a branded page and begin experimenting with content types. Content can be created relatively quickly and with no budget. The best thing to do is follow trending hashtags and get involved with the latest memes, and apply them to your brand. Utilize the app’s built-in filters, effects, soundbites, and editing tools to create and share authentic content. The organic reach on TikTok is huge, but impactful engagement is only derived if your content truly resonates with your audience and plays to the rules of the platform. Posting your corporate brand messaging here simply won’t work.
Collaborate with influencers: A smart way to utilize TikTok is to leverage influencer communities. Influencers who live and breathe TikTok have established highly engaged followings through posting high quality content which resonates. They understand TikTok and know how to use its tools, features, and trends to their advantage. Brands can approach and collaborate on campaigns which use these influencers’ skills and knowledge. TikTok has its own Creator Marketplace, designed to link up brands and creators.
Start a hashtag challenge: Creating a challenge for users to enter provides a great way for brands to start a cultural trend or meme. Top-performing challenges attract millions of users to create videos for the campaign. A great example is the E.l.f cosmetics #eyeslipsface campaign which saw over 4 billion views and 5 million video contributions, and has been stated as the most successful TikTok marketing campaign by AdWeek.
Run TikTok advertising: TikTok is one of the most exciting new advertising channels because it has the scale of other platforms such as Instagram, but it’s not yet saturated with advertisers. This means it can be more affordable to generate impressions and clicks.
Marketers can run in-feed adverts, sponsored hashtag challenges, and banner ads within the homepage of the app. As well as targeting age, location, and demographics, advertisers can target people who have viewed similar content to theirs. Advertisers can sign up to TikTok for Business to run self-serve advertising campaigns.
Who is using TikTok well?
Many marketers are beginning to explore the power of TikTok by running influencer marketing campaigns on the platform. There are countless examples of fashion and beauty brands enlisting the help of influencers to promote and review products, as well as getting involved with particular challenges that have been set by the brands.
1. Chipotle
One brand which has received regular praise for its understanding of TikTok as a platform is the fast casual restaurant brand Chipotle. In 2019, Chipotle’s GuacDance Challenge, which urged guacamole fans to show off dance moves dedicated to avocados, received 250,000 video submissions and 430 million video starts during a six-day run. It resulted in the brand’s largest amount of guacamole ordered on National Avocado Day.
In 2020, Chipotle launched a new “Chipotle Royalty” challenge giving TIkTok users a chance to win $10,000 by proving why their Chipotle order is the best among more than 4 million possible combinations. The campaign calls for videos to be created with the hashtag #ChipotleRoyalty. Chipotle will feature the three winning entries as an official menu item on its app and website for a limited time.
2. Gymshark Fitness wear brand Gymshark uses ambassadors on TikTok to gain maximum reach. The brand encourages user-generated content from its fans by enlisting their ambassadors to set fitness challenges and dance and fitness routines. This collaborative approach is performing well, as it fits with the communal mindset of Gen Z.
3. BBC Education
British broadcaster, the BBC, is using TikTok to directly engage with school-aged audiences through its BBC Bitesize account. Content about exams, revision, and STEM subjects are covered, with young presenters sharing ideas and useful tips.
4. The World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) launched a TikTok channel in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to share information and trustworthy health information, offer tips on staying safe, and to debunk myths that were spreading via social media.
The WHO also uses TikTok to share videos which provide critical health updates, enabling it to connect with the app’s younger audience base, and it makes the most of TikTok live videos to answer questions from the community.
What’s Next for TikTok in 2021
2021 is set to be an interesting year for TikTok. It’s predicted that the app will attract over one billion users over the course of the year, and could potentially attract 1.2 billion according to AppAnnie.
We will also see moves that will accelerate social commerce within the app. TikTok recently announced a partnership with leading ecommerce platform Shopify. According to reports, the collaboration will facilitate Shopify merchants’ reach on TikTok and help them boost sales. Analysts say the purchase process will also be streamlined on TikTok and consumers will also be able to carry out in-app shopping.
TikTok is reportedly working on an option for creators to film much longer videos, of up to three minutes, so we are set to see even more creativity from the platform. There will be many more examples of brands approaching TikTok to reach new audiences, from setting collaborative and creative challenges to utilizing the creative influencers thriving on the platform.
Bonus: How to create a TikTok video
TikTok offers a large amount of creative tools within the video editing section, so it is worth taking time to explore the options available.
To upload a new video, tap the ‘+’ button.
Once you tap in, your camera opens in selfie mode. You can change this by using the ‘Flip’ option on the top right hand side.
Under the record button, you’ll notice a toggle that includes video length options, templates, and Live. You can choose between 15 and 60 seconds long in length, or you can broadcast live within TikTok with the Live button.
Next to the record button, you will notice Effects. This is the vast menu of selfie filters, stickers, and special AR effects which you can add to your videos to make them unique, improve the quality and lighting, and make them stand out. It’s the fun part!
Down the right-hand side you will notice additional features such as a timer, filters, beauty, and flash. These will all help to enhance the quality of your video.
Once you have filmed a clip, you will be able to add text. Here you can edit the font, colors, and duration for text to appear on your screen.
Finally, it’s time to add the all-important music track! Remember to add your music by clicking Sounds, and here you can explore some of the trending tracks as well as TikTok’s extensive music library. This feature can really make or break the success of your video!
How do you create great TikTok content?
The main success of a TikTok video comes down to four key areas. These are:
An attention-grabbing video: featuring a person on your feed is the most engaging, and content which sparks engagement from your community such as reactions, collaborations, duets, and challenges tend to perform best on TikTok.
The song: Using a new, trending or popular track on TikTok can really help to promote your video further in the algorithm as well as help it to become trending.
The caption: You should use a short caption, with digestible and complimentary information. Users don’t want to read a lot of information.
The hashtags: Hashtags should relate directly to what is featured in your video and help to categorize your content, making it easier to discover.
It’s thought that videos which have a high completion rate do better within the TikTok algorithm: so keeping your video under 15 seconds can help to generate more views, as users will typically watch it to the end or even multiple times.
Nike is one of brands that have started exploring NFTs, Image source: Nike/SixfiguresSneakerhead
Ifyou’ve been online these days, you’ve probably come across some incessant buzz about something called non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Lindsay Lohan and YouTuber Logan Paul both created some sort of digital collectibles based on NFTs; Post Malone teamed up with a startup called Fyooz to launch a celebrity beer pong league using NFTs; and the first NFT artwork just went on sale at major auction house Christie’s.
So what exactly is a NFT? How do they work? Why are they suddenly everywhere? Looking beyond the intensifying hype and investment frenzy, is there something about NFTs that may actually be useful for brand marketing in the long run?
NFT 101
Non-fungible tokens are a special type of cryptographic token that represents a unique digital asset. It is based on blockchain technology and works similar to bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies), with networked computers racing each other to solve complex mathematical functions to encrypt a set of data and generate a private cryptographic key, except that they are non-fungible, meaning that the tokens are not mutually interchangeable.
Think about it this way: if bitcoin tokens are like blockchain-verified dollar bills, then NFTs are like blockchain-verified artworks. No one cares which particular five dollar bill they own, since all five dollar bills hold the same value and are therefore interchangeable, but we’d sure care which particular piece of artwork we own, since different artwork has drastically different value, both monetarily and artistically. So, during the encryption process, each NFT is assigned a digital hash that distinguishes it from every other NFT of its kind. They are like snowflakes, each one unique in its own way.
NFTs have been around since at least June 2017 when CryptoPunks, a collection for 10,000 unique digital characters, launched on Ethereum¹, but CryptoKitties, a virtual cat trading game, was the first project that made NFTs widely known among the crypto crowd when it went viral later that year. Since then, people have spent $174 million on NFTs. OpenSea, an NFT marketplace, has this detailed chronicle of NFT development if you wish to dive into its short yet storied history.
The brilliant thing about NFTs is that they turn the most popular use of blockchain on its head and use the cryptographic ledgers not for logging transactions, but for registering a particular piece of digital assets to a particular cryptographic token. NFTs are often created to represent image files in various formats (jpeg, gif, etc.), although they can also be attached to tweets, MP3s, or any other type of digital file. With NFTs, people can own and trade digital assets, which are typically, by design, easily copyable and widely shareable.
In a way, NFTs are like the serial numbers that a luxury brand would issue for each of their products to verify their authenticity². Except in the case of NFTs, there’s no central authority (aka, the luxury brands) issuing those serial numbers, just like there’s no central bank issuing new bitcoins. Instead, most NFTs in circulation today are built on Ethereum, and each NFT is created to represent a particular piece of digital asset and verified by the network. When people sell and buy NFTs, their unique identifier gets encrypted into the token to denote ownership. This is then encrypted and distributed throughout the entire network, meaning that everyone with access to the network can see the ownership information, but can’t access the NFTs without the cryptographic key that the owner has.
NFTs are like the serial numbers that a luxury brand would issue for each of their products to verify their authenticity.
For brand marketers, the rise of NFTs brings exciting new possibilities in the realms of digital goods, digital media distribution, and access management. Let’s look at the impact NFTs have on each of these domains one by one.
Creating Scarcity and Value for Digital Goods
Digital goods have been around for a while and are especially popular in video games. Fortnite, a free-to-play game, generated $1.8 billion in revenue in 2019, a big portion of which came from selling in-game items. Yet digital goods have not been seen as carrying much value to collectors because they can be easily copied, until now.
In short, NFTs make digital collectibles possible. In a digital world of abundance, where copies are easily created and distributed, NFTs make it possible to create digital scarcity. And scarcity, as the economic principle goes, creates value. An NFT also makes digital goods easily tradable, which, in turn, makes them more likely to accumulate value through trading. Interestingly, because the chain of ownership is also visible to everyone in the network, the value of NFTs may change depending on who previously owned them.
NFTs have started to break out of the crypto crowd and garner broader attention over the last year as more celebrities got into the space. Besides crypto ambassador Elon Musk, people such as Mark Cuban and Linkin Park guitarist Mike Shinoda started minting their own tokens for charity. At the beginning of this month, 70 artists sold a big stash of digital artwork for 9 million dollars via Hashmasks, a new Ethereum project. From BBC-branded Dr Who trading cards to NBA Top Shot collectible cards featuring videos of memorable moments, some media companies are getting in on the NFT hype by licensing their own content and IP to Ethereum projects to be minted into digital collectibles. Overall, NFT transactions tripled over last year, reaching about $250 million in total.
To date, most NFTs are attached to collectible items like digital art and virtual goods in video games, but they could expand to include more digital assets. Real estate, event ticketing, brand licensing, and even tokens of real-world assets are also all possible use cases being explored. Nike, for example, has patented shoes as NFTs called CryptoKicks in December³, which allows users to ‘breed’ different shoes to create custom sneakers that may then be manufactured in the real world. This implementation of NFTs smartly blurs the line between physical and virtual, yet capitalizing on monetization opportunities in both.
To date, most NFTs are attached to collectible items like digital art and virtual goods in video games, but they could expand to include more digital assets. Real estate, event ticketing, brand licensing, and even tokens of real-world assets are also all possible use cases being explored. Nike, for example, has patented shoes as NFTs called CryptoKicks in December³, which allows users to ‘breed’ different shoes to create custom sneakers that may then be manufactured in the real world. This implementation of NFTs smartly blurs the line between physical and virtual, yet capitalizing on monetization opportunities in both.
In our 2021 Outlook, we laid out how gaming technologies are laying the foundation for a new interactive layer for online platforms that would eventually evolve into the metaverse. And digital goods are a key ingredient of the metaverse. As gaming eats the world and more parts of our lives happen in these digital spaces, it is important for brands to start thinking about digital ownership and how to leverage NFTs to issue limited editions of brand assets and generate buzz.
Unlocking New Monetization Models for Digital Media
Another potentially revolutionary aspect of NFTs is that they could upend the way digital media is distributed and monetized. Right now, most digital content is being monetized via platforms, be it ad-supported ones like Facebook or podcasts or subscription-based ones like Netflix or OnlyFans. These platforms act as the middleman between content creators and consumers, and make a cut by the virtue of being the distributor. Although creators still own the copyright to their work, they relinquish part of their ownership and control over the said work to the platform owners and, in today’s meme culture, its consumers as soon as they upload it for distribution.
The rise of NFTs has renewed the chatter on developing a new media ownership model to make it more creator-centric. When I wrote about blockchain’s potential impact on the media industry in the summer of 2017, NFT was only a budding concept that few had heard of. But even then, some have envisioned that, with blockchain-powered smart contracts, a new distributed model of media ownership would be possible and allow creators of the digital assets to directly profit from them without intermediaries.
In media, NFTs make it possible for creators to retain ownership of their content, without limiting the propagation of their files across the internet. As a result, NFTs have the potential to invert the ownership model of media — offering creators, their audiences, and developers who build for them, a viable alternative to monetization.
Take the Lindsay Lohan NFT for example. Last week, the Mean Girls star minted an NFT on Rarible, a marketplace for digital assets. The token is attached to an image of herself with an earring featuring the word “LIGHTNING” in the shape of a lightning bolt⁴. As soon as the token was put on sale, it was bid on and bought by a user named “Loopify” for 10 ETH (the unit for Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies, which is worth about USD $1,922 per unit at the moment.). An hour later, it was sold to another bidder for 33 ETH ($63,447), and the trading continued from thereon. And because of the way that Rarible operates its marketplace, with each transaction, portions of resale value increase will go back to the actress, who has said she’ll donate it to charities.
Zora, another crypto art marketplace, has a similar structure for monetizing digital media. Instead of creating artificial scarcity by selling copies of digital goods, they make the original copy openly accessible to everyone no matter who owns it, and allow consumers to sell that original token over and over again. Each time the work is resold, the original creator gets a cut of the sale price. And logically, the more popular a piece of digital content becomes, the more people would bid to own it. This is why some investors would spend $35,000 on the ownership of an NBA-license video that everyone can watch on YouTube, and also why the Nyan Cat, a decade-old meme, is being sold as a one-of-a-kind digital art piece, despite its ubiquity around the internet.
Exploring this new distributed model for owning and monetizing digital media points to an interesting direction for the future of digital marketing. Right now, the value of a digital asset is measured not only against how many copies they sold, but also how many memes they inspired. Part of the value of digital assets comes from the fact that they are easily remixable. For example, the value of any particular TikTok video is not just measured against how many views they garner, but also how many copycat versions they inspired, each slightly different from the original as people put their unique spins on it. The more those meme’d versions pop up, the more popular and valuable the original version becomes.
This long-tail, collaborative creation is cool for user-generated content, but tends to scare off brands who are understandably more protective of their branded assets not being altered as they spread. What the NFTs bring to the table then is the ability to make branded digital assets both remix-able and non-fungible. This may seem paradoxical, but NFTs can verify brands as the rightful owner of their digital assets and therefore debunk other copies of the said assets as fan-made content. It allows brands to maintain complete control of their digital assets without limiting its spread, or fearing that a maliciously altered version, such as one manipulated with deep fake technologies, will be incorrectly attributed to the brands. Ownership entails responsibility, and NFT makes it possible for brands to be only responsible for the original content they put out without sacrificing the potential for it to go viral.
What the NFTs bring to the table then is the ability to make branded digital assets both remix-able and non-fungible.
Tokenizing Access to Services & Experiences
Beyond encrypting digital goods and media assets, another emerging use case for NFT is for authenticating access to digital experiences. Earlier this week, Microsoft launched a game that celebrates women in science and rewards players with NFTs that unlock secret games inside Minecraft. $RAC, a social token issued by recording artist RAC, grants token owners access to a private Discord group and gives them early access to merch drops. And because access has been tokenized with NFTs, they became something that fans can trade amongst themselves.
The Post Malone NFT, mentioned at the beginning of this article, provides an interesting example on how service brands may be able to use NFTs to market themselves. Teaming up with Fyooz, a platform that issues NFTs in the name of music and sports celebrities, Post Malone is dropping his own “Celebrity World Pong League” NFTs, named after the Facebook Watch series he has been doing since last fall. Fans who collected enough of those NFTs on Fyooz will be able to enter a beer pong match against Post Malone.
For brands, this use case opens up a new way to think about access management. Typically, digital tickets are easily transferable and interchangeable, since they all perform the same sole function of authenticating access to exclusive experiences and events, both online and offline. What NFTs add to the equation is that it makes each individual ticket unique in and of itself beyond their functional value, like a ticket stub autographed by a celebrity. Therefore, access itself becomes tokenized and commodified, free to be bought and sold without needing a third party to intermediate.
What’s Next for NFTs
As NFTs continue to garner mainstream attention, we expect to see more brands jump in and start to experiment with releasing digital collectibles based on IP to generate additional revenues and engage with core fanbase, or create exclusive experiences with tokenized access that may become sought-after collectible items, thus boosting the profile of the said experiences. New business models will be tested for digital media creators, helping them bypass platforms and monetize directly from their audiences.
Of course, NFTs alone are not going to bring digital collectibles into the mainstream; there are still plenty of questions to be answered in terms of how to transfer them across digital platforms, how to measure and offset the massive carbon footprint they generate, and how to properly display them both in virtual environments and in the real world.
Besides digital goods and tokenized access, new use cases of NFTs are also emerging in the form of “social tokens” that seek to tokenize more abstract concepts than digital goods. Reuben Bramanathan, who previously worked at Coinbase, tokenized his time where 1 $CSNL token equaled 1 hour of his time and was freely traded. Brooklyn Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie reportedly plans to release a digital token for others to invest in his contract, essentially creating NFTs for his future income.
Needless to say, the current laws and regulations have not been updated to reinforce the transaction of such abstract items as time or future income, and the sales are purely based on the goodwill of parties involved. After all, ownership is a social construct that only works when everyone involved all agrees to it. In the real world, we have laws and deeds to prove and protect the ownership of valuable assets; in the virtual world, we now have NFTs. Like most man-made objects, the value of NFTs ultimately derives from the number of people believing in its value and agreeing to uphold it.
In the real world, we have laws and deeds to prove and protect the ownership of valuable assets; in the virtual world, we now have NFTs.
Ethereum is the second-largest blockchain (after blockchain) and optimized for smart contracts that make NFTs possible.
NFTs are, in most cases, just tokens for proving ownership of digital assets, not the assets themselves. Just like knowing the unique serial number for a particular Rolex watch does not necessarily mean I am in possession of the said Rolex, if I buy a NFT for a piece of digital art, I don’t always get the original file of the said art, which may still belong to its creator. However, there are digital assets that are now being created on Ethereum projects, which means that their NFTs are more like encrypted files of the assets themselves that live natively on the blockchain. People can’t access them without using a dapp, because the assets themselves don’t exist outside the blockchain, unlike a traditional piece of digital asset.
Nike has yet to officially release any CryptoKicks sneakers, but the patent is there, whenever they are ready.
Some has speculated this is a reference to the Lightening Network, which is a network built on bitcoins to faciliate faster trascations.
Marginal cost is how much extra you’ll need to spend to serve one more customer.
The marginal cost of a hot dog is pretty low–if you don’t have to account for rent and labor and insurance and the rest, one more hot dog might only cost 15 cents to serve.
On the other hand, the marginal cost of a custom pair of shoes is pretty high, because the labor and materials are expensive.
The internet is transformative because so many things have a zero marginal cost. It doesn’t cost anything for WordPress to add one more user. And it doesn’t cost me anything to have one more person read this blog.
But…
When we factor in the magic of the network effect (things that work better when more people are using them) it turns out that the marginal cost isn’t zero. It’s actually negative. That means that it’s expensive for an online service to have fewer users.
Moving from expensive to cheap to free to “it’s a bonus to add one more person” changes our economy and our culture forever.
Child sexual abuse material is rampant online, despite considerable efforts by big tech companies and governments to curb it. And according to reports, it has only become more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic. This material is largely hosted on the anonymous part of the internet — the “darknet” – where perpetrators can share it with little fear of prosecution. There are currently a few platforms offering anonymous internet access, including i2p, FreeNet and Tor. Tor is by far the largest and presents the biggest conundrum. The open-source network and browser grants users anonymity by encrypting their information and letting them…
I remember the days when an 8-megapixel camera in a phone was a big deal — oh, how times have changed. 20 megapixels? Yawn. 50 megapixels? Whatevs. 100 megapixels? That’s fine, I guess. 200 megapixels is where it’s at. Samsung today announced its latest and greatest smartphone camera sensor, the Isocell HP1, a 200-megapixel beast that dwarfs even the highest-resolution professional cameras. For reference, that’s enough theoretical resolution to fill up each pixel in a 4K display… 24 times. The effective resolution will naturally be lower due to the quality of the lens and processing, but still — that’s a…
Making history has become the norm for poet and activist Amanda Gorman. In 2017, she was first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate. Last year, she became the youngest known poet to take part in a presidential inauguration. Now, she’s partnered with Est?e Lauder as the beauty brand’s first-ever Global Changemaker. As part of the partnership, Est?e…Read More
Welcome to another episode of Survivor: Brand, where brands and their C-suites out-maneuver themselves after inserting their feet into their mouths. In this week’s episode, Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman suggested in an Aug. 30 LinkedIn post that more than three in four Covid-19 hospitalizations are due to people being overweight or obese. As you can…Read More
Filmmaker Ewurakua Dawson-Amoah recently said that much of her work is dedicated to showing young Black creatives that there is room for them in their respective industries, noting “a lot of us grow up thinking there’s not a space for us at the table.” A recent partnership between Dawson-Amoah and Cricket Wireless in support of…Read More
