Unveiling Social Graphs: Exploring Key Players and Insights

Introduction

Social graphs have become an integral part of our digital landscape, shaping the way we connect, communicate, and interact with others online. At its core, the social graph is a global mapping of individuals,groups, and organizations, illustrating how they are interconnected within an online social network. It encompasses the relationships, interactions, and content shared among the nodes, forming a complex web of connections that define our online social experiences.

In today's digital era, social graphs play a crucial role in various platforms and applications, influencing the user experience and facilitating personalized interactions. By understanding the social graph,platforms can tailor content, recommendations, and advertisements to individual users' preferences and social connections. This customization enhances user engagement and satisfaction, as enables users to discover relevant content,connect with like-minded individuals, and participate in communities aligned with their interests. In this report, we delve into projects in the Web3 space that are transforming the landscape through their utilization of social graphs.

Lens Protocol

Lens Protocol is a Web3 social graph built on Polygon’s Proof-of-Stake Blockchain. It aims to empower creators by allowing them to own the links between themselves and their community, creating a fully composable and user-owned social graph. The protocol is designed with modularity in mind,enabling the addition of new features and fixes while ensuring the immutability of user-owned content and social relationships.

Unlike existing social media networks that operate onWeb2, Lens Protocol addresses major issues by offering a user-owned, opensocial graph that can be integrated into any application. With Lens Protocol,users have ownership of their data and can bring it to any application built on top of the protocol. This eliminates the risk of losing content, audience, and livelihood due to the algorithms and policies of individual platforms. Furthermore, each application using Lens Protocol contributes to the overall ecosystem,transforming the competition for attention into a collaborative environment.Developers can create meaningful social experiences without resorting totactics that lock in users' attention.

The main objective of the Lens Protocol is to empower creators and their communities to form a decentralized and fully compostable social graph. This is achieved through profile creation and interaction. Users Create profiles on the Lens Protocol hub, receiving sequentially ID'd profileNFTs that grant them control over their profiles. Profile owners can publish various types of content, including posts, comments, and mirrors. They can also set the profile's "follow module," which determines the logic executed when a wallet attempts to follow the profile. Additionally, profile owners can set the profile's image URI and define a dispatcher address that can act on behalf of the profile's owner.

Modularity is a key aspect of the Lens Protocol, enabling community expansion and the development of innovative features. Modules within the protocol are standalone, governance-whitelisted contracts that adhere to specific interfaces. These modules, including follow modules, collect modules,and reference modules, hold state and can have unlimited potential scope within the defined interfaces. This modular approach ensures flexibility and continuous growth of the protocol.

CyberConnect

CyberConnect is a decentralized social graph protocol that operates on EVM chains, aiming to empower users to own their social identities, content, and connections within a social network. It provides developers with a comprehensive set of tools to build applications with meaningful social experiences. The protocol addresses the need for a decentralized social graph due to several key reasons.

First, centralized control over social data leads to censorship, where a few large companies have the power to control the propagation of social opinions, ideas, and content. This can result in politically motivated suspensions, pressure from nation-states to censor content, or unexplained censorships such as shadow banning. By decentralizing the social graphs, CyberConnect enables users to have greater control over their content and opinions, reducing the risk of censorship.

Secondly, in Web2, content creators capture only a fraction of the value generated by their social media content. Cyber Connect recognizes the importance of creators and provides mechanisms for them to monetize their social data. By truly owning their social identities and connections,creators can capture a larger portion of the value they generate, leading to a more equitable ecosystem.

Another issue with centralized social media platforms is the siloing and redundancy of data. In Web2, social data and graphs are"walled gardens," making it difficult to move data between platforms and resulting in high switching costs for users. CyberConnect addresses this challenge by enabling users to seamlessly transfer their data and connections between applications. This reduces friction for users and allows them to build and declare connections more efficiently when onboarding new applications.

Furthermore, centralized data silos limit innovation.Independent developers are unable to access and explore the vast amount of data generated by users to build new and useful products. With CyberConnects decentralized social graph, developers gain access to a wider range of data,fostering innovation and enabling the creation of novel applications and experiences.

Cyber Connect’s protocol consists of generative smart contracts deployed on EVM-compatible chains such as Ethereum and Binance SmartChain. These contracts generate new smart contracts associated with dApps or users when they interact with the protocol. The main contracts used in the protocol are all compliant with the ERC721 standard.

DeSo

DeSo, short for "decentralized social," is a blockchain platform that aims to decentralize and revolutionize the social media landscape. Its goal is to create an internet that is creator-led, user-owned,and open to collaboration among millions of developers worldwide.

DeSo aims to fill this gap in social media by providing a blockchain infrastructure designed specifically to handle the unique requirements of social media at a massive scale. Traditional blockchains, with their focus on transaction processing, are ill-equipped to handle the storage and indexing demands of social media applications.

DeSo's role in the social graph ecosystem is to decentralize social media and empower users and creators. DeSo stores data and content on a public blockchain, which allows anyone to run a node and create their own feed. By leveraging open-source technology, players like DeSo can customize their user interfaces and algorithms to cater to their target customers.This approach promotes competition and empowers users with a wider range of choices for their social media experience.

One of the key advantages of DeSo is its ability to facilitate monetization for creators. Through features like social tokens, social NFTs, and social tipping, DeSo introduces new ways for creators to monetize their content on the internet. Additionally, the open and money-native nature of DeSo allows developers worldwide to experiment with innovative monetization models by building applications on top of the platform. This fosters a dynamic creator economy where new features and revenue streams can be quickly introduced and adopted.

Furthermore, DeSo's open protocol and money-native designenable the emergence of new signals that can be used to rank content effectively. For example, ranking comments based on the social token price ofthe commenter has shown promising results in reducing spam and improving engagement. With the entire world contributing to DeSo and building on its protocol,the possibilities for innovation and competition in social media are vast.

DeSo’s unique selling point is its design can remain decentralized in the long run. Creators have strong incentives to post directly to the blockchain, ensuring that their content remains accessible and they retain control. Developers have access to all the data on the blockchain,eliminating the risk of losing access or being cut off from important APIs.This stands in contrast to traditional social media platforms, which often start open but become more closed off once they have established their dominance.

The Importance of Social Graphs

One of the key benefits of the social graph is its ability to enhance social connections. Social media platforms leverage social graphs to facilitate communication and interaction between users. By mapping out the connections between individuals, these platforms enable users to stay connected with friends, family, and communities. The social graph allows users to discover new connections and communities based on shared interests,expanding their social network and fostering a sense of belonging.

Personalization and targeted advertising are also greatlyinfluenced by the social graph. Social media platforms utilize the data within the social graph to offer personalized experiences to users. By analyzing users' connections, interests, and activities, these platforms can tailor content, recommendations, and advertisements to individual preferences. This level of personalization enhances user engagement and satisfaction, as users are more likely to receive content that aligns with their interests and needs.

From a business perspective, the social graph has a significant impact on targeted advertising strategies. Advertisers and brands can leverage the social graph data to identify and target specific audiences that are more likely to be interested in their products or services. By analyzing users' social connections and behavioral patterns, advertisers can deliver relevant and customized ads to individuals, improving the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.

Insights and data analysis are other key areas where the social graph proves its importance. By extracting valuable insights from social graph data, researchers, marketers, and decision-makers can gain a deeper understanding of social dynamics, trends, and user behavior. Social graph analytics can be applied in various fields, such as social sciences, marketing research, and network analysis, providing valuable insights for improving products, services, and strategies.

However, it's important to acknowledge the challenges and problems associated with the current Web2 social graph. One significant issues the invasion of user privacy. Social media platforms collect and monetize user data, raising concerns about the extent of surveillance and control over individuals' personal information. Centralized data storage also poses risks of data leakage and potential misuse of user data, as demonstrated by past incidents of data breaches.

The introduction of the Web3 social graph, built on the principles of decentralization and data ownership, offers a potential solution to these problems. With Web3, users regain control over their data and can decide who has access to their social graph. Blockchain technology ensures transparent and secure storage of data, reducing the risks of data breaches and manipulation. Web3 social graphs also provide data portability, enabling seamless movement of data across different platforms without the need for rebuilding it in each step.

Conclusion

Social graphs are a vital component of today's digital landscape, enabling enhanced connections and personalized experiences. Players Such as Lens Protocol, CyberConnect, and DeSo, have played significant roles in advancing the social graph ecosystem. Looking ahead, social graphs hold immense potential to impact society, revolutionizing how we navigate the digital realm,representing a transformative force that shapes our digital future and offers boundless opportunities for connectivity and growth.