We need a radical change for creator ecosystems that allows for direct-to-fan interactions. Only then can creators capture a holistic picture of a fan’s contribution and loyalty across platforms.
I am writing this brief article under the assumption that it is crucial for creators (community owners) to identify the superfans in their community. They are the ones creating network effects for the creator and are a sustainable source of income, which is especially relevant for smaller and newer creators.
I will illustrate what I believe is broken about today's fan ecosystems using a simplified example of Peggy Gou, a music producer, DJ, and fashion designer.
Touchpoints of music producer Peggy Gou and her fans
Peggy has touchpoints with her fans across different platforms, each of which serves a different purpose - from fan communication to online shops and event platforms. Like separate islands without any connection, these platforms and the fans interacting with them exist in isolation.
Island 1: Peggy is active on social media, especially Instagram, where she mostly shares updates and communicates with her fans. It is also the platform where fans not only support Peggy's content with comments, likes and reposts but also proactively create fan content, such as fan pages for news, Peggy's fashion style, etc. Fans both remix her content and create their own.
Who is creating fan art? How many new eyeballs and fans do their fan art generate for me?
Island 2: Peggy's music is available across Spotify, Soundcloud, YouTube, and other streaming platforms. These are where other producers, including Peggy’s fans, create and upload remixes of her songs. Their remixes help Peggy's songs be discovered, too. The same is true for visual fan art.
Who listened to my new release and how often? Who liked it most? Who remixed it? Whose remix had the widest reach and highest impact?
Island 3: Peggy has collaborated with a range of brands and participated in a Lacoste campaign (pictured above). Collaborations or partnerships are typically carried out with the goal of tapping into a new audience. If the partnership were successful, it would heighten the awareness of Lacoste fans about Peggy, resulting in new followers, listeners, etc.
Who are the new people attracted by the campaign? How much value do they add to my ecosystem?
Island 4: Under her fashion brand, Peggy Goods, the artist sells a mix of tour merchandise and original fashion designs. This means designs change frequently, and new designs become available when new music drops. Peggy sometimes makes surprise visits to different locations, where she makes new announcements and distributes her latest merch.
Who buys my merchandise/collections? Are they the same people who came all the way to my pop up in London, ran three fan pages, and travelled hundreds of miles to my concerts?
As long as Peggy and other community owners don't have
1.) A direct channel of interaction and transaction with their fans,
2.) A universal fan profile to identify their contribution cross-platforms, and
3.) An infrastructure connecting digital and physical economies
it will be impossible for them to create a holistic picture of a fan’s contribution and loyalty across platforms. The door for mutually-rewarding relationships stays shut.
As you may have noticed, I was primarily speaking from a creator's perspective. Nonetheless, their interests align: fans express their community identity and status across platforms, IRL and URL, for convenience and social purposes.
How we aim to close the gap
My Unik team and I have designed an infrastructure for direct relationships between creators and their fans. The infrastructure is built around a fan community identity that allows for reputation tracking on the creator, and reputation signalling on the fan side. This opens doors for new, community-specific interactions that take place seamlessly across IRL and URL.
Highly simplified:
We're in the early stages of building out the infrastructure, our team, and our community, where we're test the infrastructure mechanics first-hand.
Thanks for reading!
Chances are you have been a fan or a creator before. Share your experiences with me! DC me, Pauline-unik, or post into the /uniklabs channel (where I cook) on Warpcast.
⚡️
These topics could be next:
What will fan economies look like in the future?
How can creators link their physical and digital assets to their community graph?
Will there be a rise of creator-owned platforms on protocols like Farcaster (eg. a dedicated Nouns ecosystem app)?
