How can Friend.tech make social a new generation of "online luxury"?

Written by Hill

Compiled by Qianwen, ChainCatcher

This article is not intended to be Friend.tech hype, and I don't think the product will replace Twitter in its current form (perhaps it wasn't). But it does give a shot in the arm to social media that is luxurious, and has the potential to inspire a new generation of online luxury experiences.

What is Friend.tech?

There is already a lot to explain how Friend.tech works, but this article will only cover some common misconceptions that I have seen in the community.

Myth 1: Friend.tech is an exclusive content platform – it looks that way, but it's not the best use case for this. In addition to ongoing subscription revenue, it can be challenging to maintain exclusive content in other ways. Long-term growth requires the constant production of new, high-quality content. To minimize information arbitrage, it is essential to maintain a unified user cost. Friend.tech does not provide ongoing subscription revenue for creators, instead, it only allows revenue through transaction fees.

Myth 2: Friend.tech is a platform for creators to gain popularity — yes, creators can be on the "hot" or "trending" list. However, as the price of keys increases, fewer users can afford them, so creators can reach fewer users with their content and cannot expand their user base.

To figure out what exactly Friend.tech is, I want to start with the biggest difference between Friend.tech users and regular social media users. It is worth noting that Friend.tech users consider the capital investment to purchase the key as an investment rather than an expense. However, when they invest money, they feel like they're supporting creators with the full amount invested, rather than just using the actual 5% processing fee.

Therefore, I think Friend.tech is a social platform with luxury attributes where users can invest in the opportunity to deeply communicate with creators.

! [Friend.tech How can social be made a new generation of "online luxury"?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-65bb13b592-dd1a6f-69ad2a.webp)

Luxury properties

The definition of luxury varies, and some define it from the perspective of luxury products: the demand for luxury goods increases as their price rises. Others refer to it as "Weberon goods" (also known as "veblen goods"), which has similar attributes to the former and affects the social status that comes with owning/using the item. A very interesting phenomenon that we see in luxury goods is that the price paid by the user is much higher than the pure utility of the product. Designer bags can hold a lot of things like regular bags, but the former's premium comes from its practicality, which highlights an identity. Friend.tech illustrates this very well. The cost of buying a key is high, and when one's key is getting more expensive, there will be more buyers chasing profits. It's a status symbol. Creators will compare the price of their keys with each other, and the more expensive the key, the more bragging capital. People will feel like they paid the full amount for the key, but in reality, they only spent 5% of the fee, which is far less than the entire investment amount of the key.

Social attributes

Friend.tech is an interesting social platform. Creators and users can communicate with each other only if the user holds the creator's key. Users cannot communicate directly with other users. Creators can talk to all users. Users and creators are not in an equal position, on the contrary, creators are at the top and have access to all information, while users have access to limited information posted by creators.

Investment properties

Instead of investing X dollars one-time/monthly, users invest 100 times X dollars. This amount is much larger and the user's interests are tied to the content he/she invests in. This symbolizes a trust that users can also reduce the actual cost of using the platform if the investment makes money.

An opportunity to have an in-depth conversation with the creator

Connecting with creators is not difficult. Users can message creators on Twitter or leave a message under their Twitter. However, building deep connections with creators can be a challenge. Because there's no 100% guarantee that when a user sends a message to a creator, the creator will see and respond to it.

Friend.tech created such a platform. This is not the first platform to "pay for authors' time". If users want to attract the attention of creators, Patreon and OnlyFans are great platforms. It's just that Patreon and OnlyFans aren't a marketplace, and creators don't have an easy way to set the "right" barrier to entry, and they often set prices arbitrarily and can't reach the right crowd. Friend.tech set the barrier to entry with the price of the key. A user's priority is judged by the price of the key, which measures the intensity of their intent to talk to the creator. The ownership of the key represents an exchangeable item that opens the right to dialogue with the creator.

To sum up, we can see the first example of creating a market based on personal social connections. The key that represents this social relationship is a luxury and an investable tool.

Implications for social apps

Certain content in the social sphere is investable.

Economic activity on social or content platforms has always been a simple expense, such as paying for YouTube Premium, WhatsApp, OnlyFans, SuperLikes on Tinder. None of them allow users to "invest" or "trade" a right or item. In Friend.tech, users can invest in social connections and trade them. This results in a market-based pricing mechanism that allows for more efficient price discovery.

Social connections can also have luxury properties.

Friend.tech products have high-quality qualities at the social level, representing a high status, and as the price rises, the attractiveness increases, and users feel that they are not only paying for pure practicality, but also paying for the premium of social attributes. Essentially, spending money for creators is an investment act. This kind of spending is just a consumer behavior on Web2 platforms such as Patreon or OnlyFans.

The trust between creators and users is publicly demonstrated.

The most important thing about the financialization of this luxury experience compared Friend.tech to Twitter is that the social graph can now be priced on the open market. On Twitter, the social graph is the same for different users. Creators don't know which user is more enthusiastic than others. And in Friend.tech, creators can easily see who is the earliest (buy at a low price in the early stage), the most "heavyweight" (buy at a high price later), and the most loyal supporters (staunch holders). This creates a new sense of trust between issuers and purchasers/holders.

The buyer is essentially depositing its own funds in a pool that is extremely influenced by the issuer, thus creating an intersection of interests between the two parties. This deep relationship of trust is only evident when there is a benefit connection between creators and users. It's even more exciting to be priced in an open market.

If you're building a social app in Web3, from a product perspective, here's what you can learn from Friend.tech:

Trust is a scarce resource that is underestimated/non-existent in Web2 social applications.

Luxury goods can improve social status, which in turn drives adoption by high-value user segments.

Fundamentally, investment behavior is well suited to the Web3 environment, so it is necessary to operate in a decentralized and trustless environment.

! [Friend.tech How can social be made a new generation of "online luxury"?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-b37f1a90d6-dd1a6f-69ad2a.webp)

For ease of understanding, here are a few examples:

If you're building Spotify for Web3, you'd better be able to offer curated, exclusive access to music to differentiate you from other providers. In order to get the best curation, but also to make the platform more engaging and interesting, you may need to motivate members to help the platform curate and let them earn money in planning, so that individual and group incentives can work best. To find the best curators, you can track and reward specific behaviors on the platform that demonstrate breadth and depth of knowledge.

Marine Snow allows members to participate in the platform with their monthly and annual plans, helps curate for the world's best music and music artists, and has DCA ownership of the platform itself. Spotify's music curation used to be a consumer act: users spent time listening to music. Now, it's an investment act, with users paying monthly for songs and musicians.

! [Friend.tech How can social be made a new generation of "online luxury"?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-36eb464e5f-dd1a6f-69ad2a.webp)

If you're building the deluxe version of Bumble, paying $5 for more matchmaking may not be ideal. Instead, a better option is to ask users to top up according to the bonding curve of lucky points, the higher the number of points, the more people matched, and the higher the quality.

Mercurius Club, for example, is building a new way of socializing with strangers, in which the process of sending and receiving every message is financialized. Users are rewarded according to the proportion of messages received/sent and invested in social status projects. Essentially, users are not spending money to connect with other users, it is a consumer behavior. Instead, users invest time and energy in meaningful conversations. As the conversation progresses, users are better able to invest rewards in social status programs, resulting in more "conversation investment opportunities."

! [Friend.tech How can social be made a new generation of "online luxury"?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-f129834be6-dd1a6f-69ad2a.webp)

If you're building a Web3 advertising platform that requires users to spend time watching an ad and waiting for a conversion rate, it won't be better than Twitter Ads. Instead, giving users a meaningful expected return and investing time watching ads could be a unique Web3 way to boost Web3 customer acquisition.

For example, Vessel is a platform that allows users to collect NFTs from any content branded on the platform. This includes minting coins from branded articles or events. Instead of just spending time reading content, users "spend time" on "time investment" that invests their time in "collecting" content and may subsequently reap the rewards of upscaling interactions with brands. This makes it really meaningful to watch ads.

! [Friend.tech How can social be made a new generation of "online luxury"?] ](https://img-cdn.gateio.im/webp-social/moments-69a80767fe-82f5f9a6c3-dd1a6f-69ad2a.webp)

All of these cases can transform consumer behavior into investment behavior. This helps build trust through ownership and builds social status through holding luxury goods.

Friend.tech results are a lot of inspiration for us and we expect to see more innovation in online/on-chain luxury experiences.

Note: Contributors to this article include friends and key holders of the author on Friend.Tech, as well as Siddharth of Superscrypt, Hongyu of Mercurius Club, Tony of Marine Snow, and Steph of VESSEL.