Web3 Amplified: New Models for Fan Engagement with Stephanie Pereira

Watch this: Lori H. Schwartz in Conversation With Stephanie Pereira

In this episode of Web3 Amplified, Lori H. Schwartz chats with Stephanie Pereira about creating new models for fan engagement. They also discuss how the blockchain will change users’ experience of digital ownership and creators’ ability to monetize their content.

Pereira is vice president of operations at Tellie, which offers a no-code Web3 starter kit including tools for funding, community building, and storytelling. Before joining Tellie, Pereira was vice president of creator success at Rally, a Web3 resource for minting tokens and NFTs.

Beyond her Web3 experience, Pereira was director of New Museum’s NEW INC, where she co-founded extended reality studio and accelerator, ONX Studio; and was an early hire at Kickstarter, heading up creator outreach, international partnerships, and creator education.

Tellie’s Role in the Web3 Transition

At Tellie, ‟We think that people deserve to capture the value they’re creating,” Pereira explains.

However, she notes that the ‟current system,” which is centered on third-party platforms, such as TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, offers ‟incredibly exciting and powerful” opportunities for creators to have huge followings. But there’s a hitch: Web2’s social media companies don’t allow creators to own or control their audiences, which affects their bottom line.

‟I think the future of the creator economy hinges on responding to that problem,” Pereira says.

Tellie seeks to contribute to that solution via its toolkit, which creates both Web2 and Web3 websites. It utilizes ‟the traditional Web2 [tech] stack” and includes ‟easy copy+paste embed tools” to feature ‟any kind of content” online. But because it’s built on the blockchain — Tellie currently supports Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche (C-Chain), and Binance Smart Chain token — users ‟can mint and sell NFTs, and then you can also create token gated content or content that’s accessible only to people who either hold your NFT or social token,” Pereira explains.

What’s Different in Web3

‟I think that Web3 feels like a way to… shift paradigm and shift the narrative,” Pereira says.

One major feature of Web3 is decentralization.

In a Web2 internet, ‟your identity is really, truly spread across the web. Right? It might [be] on a number of social platforms [or] it might live within specific media content… that you create.” However, in Web3, creators host their content on the blockchain, which means their creations are ‟distributed and programmable” rather than tied to one website or platform.

In Web3, Pereira says, ‟Anywhere that you can connect a blockchain wallet, you can create access and opportunity for people.”

Blockchain Wallets

‟The wallet is critical” for Web3, Pereira says. (So understanding how it works is too.)

Today, in 2023, ‟You go to YouTube, you log in, and that’s how you sort of open the door to all the videos that you’ve watched, all the likes that you’ve done, like, all the subs that you have, all the comments that you’ve left,” Pereira says. ‟They’re all sort of accessed through that login.”

Web3 flips that script on its head. In the future, users will own their own data (what they’ve watched, liked, subscribed to and shared) and store that information in their wallet. So a hypothetical future visit to YouTube would require not a login but connecting your wallet, and that temporary access to your information will be how YouTube’s algorithm will decide which videos to show you.

In the interim, some companies are utilizing a custodial wallet model, which enables people to purchase NFTs or acquire POAPs without having their own wallet and learning a lot about crypto.

This is ideal for creators, Pereira says, because ‟[t]hey just need to sell the digital good, and then if the fan decides to take advantage of the blockchain aspects of the good they can, but they don’t have to if they don’t wish.”

POAPs

Here’s another term to know: POAP, which refers to a proof of participation token. These tokens can be used to unlock or access certain content or even real world merchandise.

A POAP might act like ‟a 21st century business card,” representing a person’s identity. It could be given out when you meet someone, Pereira suggests. And because you’ve collected this POAP and proven you have a relationship with this creator, you may be able to see content that’s gated or purchase a product that otherwise wouldn’t be available.

This is another instance of how Web3 is different. Pereira explains, ‟the relationships live between people rather than people intermediated by platforms.”

Play to Earn

‟The POAP idea is very closely related to an idea of play to earn.” Essentially, the more you engaged with a brand or a creator, you would start to ‟acquire tokens that represent your investment of time or what you’ve unlocked or specific activities.” This may or may not have an aspect that is gamified.

‟It’s actually a really, a powerful way to track fan participation and reward people for deeper engagement in a ecosystem,” Pereira says.

Pereira and Schwartz noted that the ‟Taylor Swift debacle” could have been avoided or at least mitigated with a more robust fan loyalty reward system.

‟I think the other really powerful use case [for play to earn] is around digital goods,” Pereira says.

Remember, ‟Things that you acquire in the metaverse can be bought and sold peer-to-peer rather than just directly platform to platform, and then also can live outside of that platform.”

Pereira notes that the ability to truly own your digital goods ‟really changes the narrative, this sort of closed-loop narrative that exists around gaming.”

But what happens when you do choose to move that digital object from Roblox to… Minecraft?

‟On the blockchain, the data is universal” and ‟universally acceptable,” Pereira explains. However, ‟how that data is rendered or treated is different” depending on the environment. The data, the input is constant, but how it’s interpreted varies.

To explain, Pereira uses the example of emoji. ‟Emoji are universally understood bits of data. But as we know, if you go on Twitter, your emoji looks very different than in your Gmail inbox. And that’s just because how they render that data looks different.”

You can connect with Stephanie Pereira on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter at @happeness.