Last Weekend I ported my cafe blog over to lens! Here’s a quick deep dive into what I learned and what there is to be excited about.
First, a brief introduction to lens. Lens is an open social graph for developers building social apps. Users own their lens identity, including data like posts & followers, which they can take with them from platform to platform. Because it’s decentralized (built on polygon) anyone can access, build on, and extend the protocol.
When I look at a company I like to think about what world they create. The world lens is creating is one where the social internet is owned by and built for users, made up of a rich a diverse ecosystem of social experiences.
The modern state of social is rather dystopian. Companies build social media to be addictive and extract data on our habits. Our attention is quite literally being sold to the highest bidder, adulterating the pure human experience of connecting with one another.
Lens changes the incentives by 1) making users the owners of their social graph and 2) making it really easy for builders to make their own apps. As a content creator 1 makes me really excited; as a developer 2 makes me really excited; so let's jump in!
Own your social graph
Our digital identity is complex, but roughly a function of the content we publish and the people we engage with. Lens puts these two variables in your hands through your crypto wallet. You can now take this identity freely across all lens apps.
Developer friendly
Being developer-friendly means that an ecosystem of apps can flourish. With current social media, we’ve already seen a diverse set of communities pop up with their own sets of values and aesthetics. With lens, these communities can have their own social platforms that users can seamlessly flow through depending on their own choice. This opens up the potential for value-optimized platforms that focus on providing a high-quality experience to a certain community.
A quick example…
A current example I’m familiar with is Ravelry. It’s a social platform for knitters, with an aesthetic and feature set catered perfectly to their community. Many of their users cross-post on Facebook and Instagram because most people aren’t on this niche platform. Most people aren’t on this niche platform because why would they sign up just to satisfy whimsical queries into the knitting world. A lens-powered Ravelry solves both of these issues. Yarn experts could live with their community, on Ravelry, while still reaching people in other communities. And non-knitters could easily hop in and explore, taking their identity and relationships with them.