Whenever an article or blogpost is published, readers primarily talk about it on social media. Hot takes get shared on Twitter, in-depth discussion occurs on Hacker News, and video responses get posted on YouTube and TikTok.
Rarely does all discussion occur on the article itself. It’s much easier for readers to converse using tools they’re already using, with an audience they already engage with regularly.
Because of this decentralized nature of discussion, it’s challenging for authors to keep track of (and respond to!) all engagement they’re receiving. It’s also difficult for readers to dive deeper and get a holistic overview of all discussion on a piece of content. Lastly, the reputation and status you accrue on a single platform is entirely tied to that platform - you can’t export your Twitter followers or tweets and immediately make use of them on Facebook, for example.
Developers of web2 writing platforms could try to pull in all discussion from social media and display it on the article itself, but social media companies offer no (or limited) APIs to grant access to this functionality. Twitter, for example, limits the number of tweets you can query per month, and charge an exorbitant amount for access. These platforms aren’t incentivized to extend these limits or provide ways to make their audience portable, since they’d naturally prefer if all discussion happens on their own platform within the constraints of their own walled garden.
Web3 improves upon this greatly via permissionless, global access to data. No longer does data need to be silo’d and exposed via API - now, data can be used permissionlessly via sufficiently decentralized protocols. No longer is there a risk of API access getting limited or shut off - this is impossible at a protocol-level.
At Paragraph, this type of permissionless data access & portability is why we’re so excited about sufficiently decentralized social networks. We believe your content & your audience should be owned by you; and developers should always be able to build on top of it. No one should be able to change this - these rules should be enforced via code.
That’s why we’re excited to announce the very first integration with one such protocol - Farcaster.
Starting today, whenever a Paragraph post URL is shared on Farcaster, the comments & associated discussion are permissionlessly displayed on the post itself. This allows authors and readers to get a holistic view of all discussion, giving writers a chance to respond and readers a chance to dive deeper.
We believe web3 social networks like Farcaster and Lens will unlock new ways to create, consume, curate & distribute content, and we’re excited to continue experimenting and building on top of these protocols.
Interested in your own Paragraph newsletter? Connect your wallet and get started in seconds. (We’re also pretty active on Discord).
Want to join Farcaster? Send Dan a DM on Twitter.
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