Danica Swanson pfp
Danica Swanson
@danicaswanson
I've been thinking about this stubborn how-to-get-writers-sustainably-funded problem for a long time, since it pre-dates crypto. It's actually become one of my main intellectual interests over the years. Without getting too far into the weeds, here are a few thoughts: What if Paragraph were to zoom out and focus more on the social layer from a systems perspective -- i.e., think of context, curation, and conversation as the primary paths to value creation, rather than individual writers? Could Paragraph help writers collectively build thriving creative scenes with network effects accruing to the contributors -- writers, editors, curators, preservers, and readers? One of the things that drew me to Paragraph in the first place was the quote-highlight feature, for example. Could Paragraph give contributors places to preserve quotes and respond to them in ways that might help draw others into an ongoing conversation around the work? Maybe in a mini-app?
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BrightFutureGuy 🎩↑Ⓜ️ pfp
BrightFutureGuy 🎩↑Ⓜ️
@bfg
many good points in this thread - will come back to it. Quick thoughts before calls: Monetizing something that's free to get (here writing) is always hard. If it's not free it doesn't get reach. There're three angles I see: 1/ your writing has value inside then that's what can be monetized (think data nobody else has), probably not us, some companies possible or very good analytical work of individuals. 2/ your writing just creates "better app experience" for everyone - because it sparks conversation or provides something to read - then it's public goods and can only be rewarded by the network 3/ your writing has a community that values "You" and your journey and they're willing to pay you for sharing your journey with them - sounds great but is actually limiting, because you need to be very focused (clear to read for folks - what do you offer), if you write about broad topics and don't offer people "progression towards something" with their own life, then this model doesn't work
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Danica Swanson pfp
Danica Swanson
@danicaswanson
Thanks for the thoughtful input. I do think your #2 above could open paths to long-term sustainability for writers, at least in theory. But public goods funding is... challenging, to put it mildly. CLPs (conversational liquidity providers) whose work sparks good convos are significantly underfunded right now, and that's a systems-level issue, not a Paragraph-specific one. (Moxie tried to address this with everyday rewards, but ran into a number of issues). I like the way @vengist frames the problem: "Storytelling in general creates much network value, but only marketing styles have clear financialization paths. Many stories go untold, and/or the tellers of stories left without resources to continue." https://warpcast.com/vengist/0x43a2054c Another thing I keep returning to is the idea of mutualizing returns from relational work, as described in this piece on "post-cognitive income." https://www.combinationsmag.com/post-cognitive-income/ Anyway, just a few thoughts.
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