Shiratechis in the Manufacturing Tech Industry

Shiratech

This is a redacted version of the by CEO David Smooke and COO Linh Smooke sent to 1.3k shareholders. Picture: HackerNoon Team in an All-Hands Meeting. HackerNoon shareholders' newsletter TL;DR Revenue is slightly down, traffic is slightly up, rate of product development is up, expenses are down, and AI is assisting us but is not replacing us anytime soon 🙂 How can you help? Referral, referral, referral: we recently experimented with a Business Blogging Sales Referral Program for a 12 or 52-credit pack. If you think you can help refer customers to publish their announcements, blog posts, or technical documentation with HackerNoon, we are more than happy to share the details of the Referral Program with you! Here are some high-level updates since our last shareholder letter, which was . We keep this update succinct, with lots of links sprinkled throughout, as we’ve actually written a throughout the year. sent on June 19, 2023 lot of mini-updates Read the full Blog Post below for full context. 📈 Traffic & Editorial in the Age of AI 📈 HackerNoon Readership & Traffic HackerNoon readership and traffic remain stronger than ever: 2023 (especially the latter half) was a great year for traffic. With for different types of and , simpler micro-engagement mechanisms for users ( , , ), we published 18,659 stories (compared to 13k in 2022), and on-boarded 29k new writers (compared to 22k in 2022). I think this is a huge testament to our human-first (we are documenting our protocol at , which is powered by the HackerNoon CMS). In a world where content is inundated by AI, HackerNoon remains one of the few places on the internet with , , and . simpler sign-up flows users actions open commenting for all published writers polls voting & commenting history for readers easy-peezy templates for aspiring writers editorial protocol EditingProtocol.com a Second Human Rule an AI & Plagiarism Detector 2-way communications between editors & writers Even more encouragingly, we continue to ride this tailwind into 2024 as well: Here’s a list of the top-performing HackerNoon stories/pages in 2023: Niche: by Programming 14 Patterns to Ace Any Coding Interview Question Fahim ul Haq Niche: , by , translated to 7 different languages, including Spanish Cybersecurity Cómo hackear cuentas de Facebook: 5 vulnerabilidades comunes original English version Jessica Truong Niche: by Media The Tom Holland Spider-Man Movies in Order of Release Date Jose Hernandez Niche: by Futurism Apple CarPlay Not Working [SOLVED] How to Fix Common Issues Khunshan Ahmad Niche: , published by Web3 How to Implement a Merkle Tree in Solidity Daniel Shvetsov ! HackerNoon Search And here’s a list of top performing HackerNoon stories/pages YTD in 2024: Niche: 任天堂、パルワールドで沈黙を破る, by , translated into 12 languages, including Japanese Gaming original English version Player Auctions Niche: by Programming How to Read Text File in Python? Srinivas Ramakrishna Niche: , published by Machine Learning Open-Source: The Next Step in AI Revolution MinIO Niche: , published by Product Management To Focus or Not Focus: How to Find the Right Product-Market Fit Denis Pushkin Niche: , published by Tech Companies Apple Customers Return Vision Pro By The Droves Allan Grain page! Why Publish on HackerNoon We’ve continued to scale up audiences via niche newsletter growth. Notably, which is an editor-written weekly commentary on our , has now passed 100 editions and 45k+ subscribers. Additionally, the 22 niche technology newsletters (one for each new category) have been growing steadily and now total 280k+ subscribers. In total, we send well over half a million emails a day (!) The Tech Company Brief, proprietary tech company ranking data AHREFs, the top SEO software, . This is a testament to building up our internet presence over the years, publishing more quality stories day after day and year after year, and the rest of the internet’s willingness to cite and talk about HackerNoon stories. For reference, here are some similarly ranked domains that historically carry much higher valuations, many of which are also community-driven technology education destinations: , , , , , , , , , , , and . Here’s a screenshot from 2/29/24: ranks HackerNoon.com as the 2,750th most valuable domain worldwide Kaggle at 2,802 Heroku at 2,824 Google Earth at 2,861 Delaware at 2,870 NextJS at 2,880 GQ at 2,881 Brown at 2,834 Seeking Alpha at 2,844 Hotels at 2,907 Snap at 2,993 Cal Tech at 2,999 1Password at 3,011 Since we started HackerNoon, we’ve outlived many tech sites and products that we’ve (mostly) admired: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and of course, . We don’t take joy in these (mostly) impactful businesses dying, but it is a reminder that HackerNoon keeps on blogging. Vice Artifact Protocol Future Apple EV InVision The Messenger, IRL (lol) Meta Portal Buzzfeed News Anki Google+ Microsoft’s Mixer Recur, HouseParty Essential The Outline Bodega Loon LG Phones Nuzzel Mandolin Fast Argo AI, Kite Kitty Hawk Udayy Blackberry (again), Telltale Games Revue Quibi 💰 Revenue & Business Development Net Income 📉amist & in tech & media bear markets mass layoffs Both revenue and expenses are down in 2023 YoY. We made in revenue in 2023, and spent about - a slight dip compared to 2022. Our net income remains level; however, we have some catching up to do in 2024. Our 2024 revenue projection is , and expenses project to be in 2024. We are determined to be profitable again in 2024, 2025, and beyond. redacted redacted redacted redacted Business Blogging We’ve fine-tuned our to include better returns for customers and better margins for HackerNoon. We built a , raised the prices per post and improved the performance per premium post by adding , , , and better customer service. In 2023, we onboarded 609 new businesses and published 1,624 , averaging a net income of /story (compared to 2022 net income of /story). Business Blogging self-service flow to request a business blogging trial 12 language translations multi-voice audio file creation managed paid social promotion good company stories redacted redacted Encouragingly, so far in 2024, we’ve made about half of our revenue in , surpassing both and . Not only is this good because content is at the heart of our business value prop, but also because this is a true unlimited inventory, independent of past or future traffic, we can always publish another blog post. Business Blogging Niche Ads Writing Contests Additionally, we’ve seen an increased demand to publish press releases from wire services, with customers such as , , , and . We’re building a custom technology press release solution that includes distribution across traditional press release sites in addition to business blogging’s default, social, audio, multi-lingual, email, and on-site distribution. ChainWire FinanceWire GamingWire BTCWire Business Database Scale Up with and Startups of the Year Evergreen Tech Company News Pages Startups of the Year 2023 concluded with ! The winners and nominees were excited, you can see a taste of their enthusiasm on , , and . Our evergreen news pages are up to covered (ranking S&P 500, public companies, and startups alike). Companies with a regular to an Evergreen Premium with more control over their internet presence. Our is also hosted on ( & ) and ! over 623k votes, 30k startups, and 1k+ winners Twitter/X J) LinkedIn around the web 12k+ total companies Evergreen Page can claim, edit and also upgrade their page unique dataset curating the news about these companies Hugging Face their CEO CTO commented reused by MongoDB Vertical Category Curation Diversifies Streams of Income We curated our entire library of 100k+ stories and into . This divides the library into 22 starting points, like , / , / , to name a few. Advertisers now buy entire categories to ensure across our site. We made combined in Niche Ads & Billboard ads in 2023, compared to the total in Billboard alone in 2022. That means each pageview on the page is worth 11% more! 50k tags 22 categories /ai cloud business content-relevant ad placements redacted redacted HR, Payroll Reduction, “trimming the fats” Both David & Linh have taken a payroll reduction in 2023 by 50%, and we will continue to cut our salaries significantly in 2024 until the company gets back on track. We’ve also reduced our staff by half. HackerNoon started 2023 with 40 staff members and started 2024 with only 20. Experiments with new inventories in 2023 and beyond We introduced with our European partner, . We learned in 2022 & 2023 that convert more advertisers & long-term business partners than our regular top-nav billboard ads. HackerNoon’s Job Board Jobbio targeted, niched and relevant ads We also launched the ! This is proof of concept for a docu-series on the future of the internet. It costs $2.99 and is a great way to spend 30 minutes of your time while supporting HackerNoon. HackerNoon Documentary In 2024, we are thoughtfully looking into programmatic ads to capitalize on our stable, quality traffic more efficiently. 🚀 Infrastructure Overhaul & Product Development HackerNoon 3.0 The great refactoring. As a platform that makes software completely in-house, we get to choose . Starting mid-2023, we’ve decided to migrate our backend database from Firestore/Google to Mongodb, our frontend tech from Vercel premium to a combination of Vercel/Svelkit, and our email host from Sendgrid to Elastic. Removing Firestore greatly reduces the number of reads we pay for, and removing SendGrid greatly reduces the cost per email sent.  Not only will these refactorings make HackerNoon lighter, simpler, and more efficient, but they will also help reduce our cost of production by an estimated 25-35%. which technology companies to partner with ( , ) HackerNoon Mobile App Apple Google Our mobile app officially and has gone through 9 iterations already since September 2023! We were briefly the in the US, Vietnam, Brazil, and Ukraine during launch month. (version ), users can , , , and any story to HackerNoon. And we added 12 additional languages to read our prime library of technology stories. This update is a commitment to helping technologists to not only more easily create content but also to reach and serve worldwide readers from their mobile devices. launched top 100 apps With the latest version 1.9 read write listen submit More mobile app release notes. Niche Technology Publication Network powered by the HackerNoon CMS (beta) In just a few clicks, a HackerNoon account can turn into a standalone site. This year, we are building a 500+ owned network of sites via the HackerNoon CMS with a focus on curating and distributing the world’s highest-quality open-source content. HackerNoon sites are now going live every week. Some WIP examples include: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and more coming soon! LearnRepo.com Memeology.tech HackerNoon.tech EditingProtocol.com Escholar.tech TextModels.tech Blog.DavidSmooke.Net HackerNoon.LinhDaoSmooke.com PublicDomain.tech LegalPDF.tech OpenDatasets.tech Roasts.tech CompanyBrief.tech StoryTemplates.tech SupportNoon.com UnknownAuthor.tech Noonion.tech HackerEvents.tech DearElon.tech Blog.Slogging.com CoinWikis.com Noonification.com HistoricalEmails.com Beautiful Landing Pages powered by the HackerNoon CMS We also started to host many pages in-house using our own page-builder as opposed to using 3rd party CMS like Squarespace, Wix, or Strikingly. Examples of some of these in-house landing pages using our own page builder Include: , , ( ,  # , # , # ), , , ( , , ), & . HackerNoon Mobile App Web 2.5 Why Publish Pages Content Startups AI Programming About Page Slogging.com Testimonial Pages Writers Customers Readers Writing Contests Technological Integration In order to make the content management system that powers HackerNoon best in class, we can’t build everything ourselves. Some of the recent notable CMS integrations include: We integrate a lot of best-in-class solutions and technologies. for all published writers. Username.HackerNoon namespaces minted on the blockchain via namespace.gg . AI-written submissions have gone through the roof, but unlike other blogging platforms, we do not blindly publish AI-created content. This cat-and-mouse game will continue to evolve! Originality.ai and other tools for AI Writing Detection (for those visitors currently logged into Google). This one is averaging about 850 new accounts per day 😀 Signup/Signin with Google for easier account creation and login and . This type of content portability increases our rate of publishing. Importing of text transcripts from Youtube Importing of full blog posts from RSS and other blogging platforms to make the site more fun. Added GIPHY to story editing and commenting New search discovery experience and renewed partnership with Algolia Yet another year of our mutually beneficial partnership (we pay them via in-kind ads!) Algolia helps beautifully index and discover our content, while we surface their Ad on & . our search page search bar Steering into the internet’s pixelated ethos and using open source design as an adoption channel are the 1,440 original icons used on HackerNoon, and now they are open sourced and available on , and as This builds on our open source release of the , which is up to Use of our icons and fonts in other sites and apps are subtle endorsements of HackerNoon’s way of publishing, and our network of owned CMS sites will scale up this usage. The Pixel Icon Library GitHub Figma (1.6k users), an NPMjs package. 2.0 version of the HackerNoon font 3k downloads on DaFont. Helping Technologists to Market Themselves HackerNoon and expertise in the technology industry. In addition to (links to your portfolio, newsletter, jobs, or wherever), , and , we now also empower users to and (shipped this week, ). validates contributions entering Call to Actions updating your social media profiles filling out your short and long-form bios flaunt their work and job history rank top writers by technology categories it has writers very excited 💁 How can you help? we recently experimented with a Business Blogging Sales Referral Program for (base value of $4,788 and $15,548 respectively). If you think you can help refer customers to publish their announcements, blog posts, or technical documentation with HackerNoon, we are more than happy to share the details of the Referral Program with you! Referral, referral, referral: a 12 or 52-credit pack Kind Regards, CEO and COO , David Smooke Linh Dao Smooke HackerNoon If seeking more regular updates from HackerNoon, I recommend subscribing to the , , and/or . P.S. #hackernoon-product tag hackernoon.tech the #hackernoon tag Here are some recent news coverage about HackerNoon around the web: P.P.S. , #2 Blogging Platform for Developers by Perplexity AI ( Meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh full remarks) , Yale Entrepreneurship Mentor Series , Best AI/ML Blog for Community Engagement by Hosting Advice ( ), AI Time Journal CEO Interview with contextual links ( ), Web3 Founder Interview with contextual links , Financial Interview with Vietcetera , KingsCrowd Empowering Technologists Interview , SuperbCrew Startups Interview , HustleFund Interview about Startup Storytelling , Our Favorite Tweet/Posts on Twitter/X , #14 Crypto Media Source by StealthEx , Stratechery Sharp Tech Podcast Mention , Recommended Tech Blog for Engineers , Unchained Podcast Mention , ROIquant Conference Fireside Chat , #6 AI Blog to Follow by Analytics Insights , #7 Blog for Product Management , Professor Rymel Adding HackerNoon to Her Curriculum , Top Startup Resource by Faster Capital , Top Crypto Blog by Crypto Economy , Must Follow Tech Blog by Xpheno , #3 Programming Blog by Blogging Idol , #6 Layperson-Friendly Resources For Tech News by Forbes : , , . And Testimonials Readers Writers and Businesses

State of the Noonion 2024: HackerNoon Keeps on Blogging

নুনিয়ন 2024 এর অবস্থা: হ্যাকারনুন ব্লগিং চালিয়ে যায়

Stand der Noonion 2024: HackerNoon bloggt weiter

Estado del mediodía 2024: HackerNoon sigue blogueando

State of the Noonion 2024 : HackerNoon continue de bloguer

नूनियन 2024 की स्थिति: हैकरनून ब्लॉगिंग जारी रखता है

2024 年の正午の様子: HackerNoon はブログを書き続ける

2024년 정오 현황: HackerNoon이 계속 블로깅을 하고 있습니다.

State of the Noonion 2024: HackerNoon continua blogando

Состояние полудня 2024 года: HackerNoon продолжает вести блог

Öğlen Durumu 2024: HackerNoon Bloglamaya Devam Ediyor

Trạng thái buổi trưa 2024: HackerNoon tiếp tục viết blog

2024 年 Noonion 状态：HackerNoon 继续写博客

While everyone is focusing on the hot news about Microsoft's acqui-hiring Inflection AI in disguise and the shakeup at Stability AI, we'd like to concentrate on the exciting developments unfolding in the world of model architectures. For the hot news, check the Usual Suspects © section below. – a new architecture that rivals the famous Transformer-based models. Mamba's innovations address significant challenges in processing long sequences, a problem that has limited traditional models. Now, let's talk about Mamba Mamba leverages state-space models (SSMs)*, particularly excelling with its incorporation of Structured State Space (S4) models into a large language model (LLM) framework. This integration allows Mamba to achieve linear complexity scaling with sequence length, marking a significant advancement over the quadratic scaling seen in traditional Transformer-based models. So what is it? Its streamlined architecture incorporates selective SSM layers, enhancing both efficiency and flexibility. As a result, Additionally, Mamba efficiently processes extremely long sequences, surpassing earlier models in performance. it benefits from hardware-aware optimizations, maximizing the potential of contemporary GPU architectures. This means you can process much longer sequences without hitting memory or compute bottlenecks. Think about applications like genomic analysis, long-form content generation, and complex multi-modal data processing, all becoming more feasible with Mamba's power. *State-space models are mathematical frameworks that describe a system's dynamics in terms of its state variables and observations, capturing the evolution and uncertainty of processes over time.  SSMs are known for efficiency with long sequences. Mamba's ability to efficiently process long sequences while maintaining competitive performance has fueled research interest in adapting and extending the architecture for various domains. It seems Mamba’s architecture is getting more attention (Attention is all you need ;) – last week, three papers showcased exciting developments. The paper, , makes Mamba more suitable for deployment on resource-constrained devices by introducing an efficient 2D scanning method and a dual-pathway module for balanced global-local feature extraction. Results show a significant reduction in FLOPs while maintaining strong accuracy. EfficientVMamba: Atrous Selective Scan for Light Weight Visual Mamba The paper, , extends Mamba to be a multi-modal large language model capable of jointly reasoning over vision and language. Experiments demonstrate competitive performance on vision-language tasks with faster inference speeds compared to Transformer-based models. Cobra: Extending Mamba to Multi-Modal Large Language Model for Efficient Inference The paper, , presents a simplified Mamba-based architecture that addresses stability issues when scaling Mamba to larger sizes. The key innovation is EinFFT, a novel channel mixing technique that ensures stable optimization. SiMBA shows strong results on vision tasks and multivariate time series forecasting, closing the gap with state-of-the-art Transformers. SiMBA: Simplified Mamba-based Architecture for Vision and Multivariate Time series These three papers highlight the architectural flexibility and potential of the Mamba model, which is promising for future advancements in context window size and data type support. If you want to move beyond Transformers, that might be the way to go. You can find the Mamba repository here: https://github.com/state-spaces/mamba News From The Usual Suspects © https://x.com/emollick/status/1770289508589707625?s=20&embedable=true Microsoft Is Hungry Microsoft basically owns OpenAI ( — from Elon Musk’s against OpenAI). “Indeed, as the November 2023 drama was unfolding, Microsoft’s CEO boasted that it would not matter “[i]f OpenAI disappeared tomorrow.” He explained that “[w]e have all the IP rights and all the capability.” “We have the people, we have the compute, we have the data, we have everything.” “We are below them, above them, around them.” lawsuit Last February, Microsoft in Mistral and brought its newest AI model, Mistral Large, to Azure. invested Last week, Microsoft basically Inflection AI’s team, including two of its co-founders: Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan. Eric Newcomer at Microsoft’s creativity in non-acquisition strategies, such as partnering with and investing in companies like Inflection and OpenAI without formal acquisitions, sidestepping antitrust reviews. The Stratechery why many aspects of Inflection and its rapid ascent to Unicorn status were odd from the very beginning. Soma Somasegar from Madrona VC that Microsoft partners with Inflection.ai to innovate AI for consumers, aiming to transform its presence in the consumer market. acqui-hired points out explains thinks Stability AI Evokes Many Jokes About Instability This January, we published with the subtitle: “Investigating the Thin Line Between Genuine Innovation and Strategic Exaggeration in AI”. On March 23, after too many exaggerations Emad Mostaque from his position as CEO of Stability AI. According to him, he to concentrate on decentralized AI. What does it mean exactly — no one knows. Stability AI profile resigns wants OpenAI https://x.com/gdb/status/1772334028009652415?s=20&embedable=true Hugging Face announces the release of , the largest public domain dataset designed for training (LLMs. Encompassing 500 billion words across multiple languages including English, French, Dutch, Spanish, German, and Italian, it’s a multilingual collection sourced from diverse cultural heritage initiatives. This release aims to demonstrate the feasibility of developing open LLMs using copyright-free materials, supported by an international collaboration with organizations dedicated to open science in AI. Common Corpus Sam Altman Is Open-Sourcing His Orb The Worldcoin Foundation the Orb’s software (Orb is a device that scans irises to create unique digital IDs) open-source, aiming to enhance privacy and security in proving humanness online. The software, available under MIT/Apache 2.0 licenses on GitHub, supports World ID verification by processing images locally and ensuring data privacy through secure transfers. has made Enjoyed This Story? I write a weekly analysis of the AI world in the newsletter. We aim to equip you with comprehensive knowledge and historical insights so you can make informed decisions about AI and ML. Turing Post

Mamba Architecture: What Is It and Can It Beat Transformers?

Like many organizations before it, Intuit has recently been releasing a series of security notices warning QuickBooks users against . When it comes to the phishing vehicles used, the level of sophistication isn’t mind-blowing or novel. The phishing emails come from cybersquatting domains, such as intuit-solution[.]com, fucaxcapital[.]com and alpha-invest[.]net. sophisticated phishing attacks They bank on the appeal of legitimate businesses to lure in victims, which is seen daily on the Domain Name System (DNS). In our 2022 Business Impersonation Landscape Report, where we analyzed the domain footprint of 29 Fortune 500 companies and 20 top CEOs, we found more than 49,000 highly targeted cybersquatting properties added in the past year. An alarming 12.32% of the properties have been flagged as malicious. You may view the detailed findings by downloading the from our website or check an overview of the results in this post. white paper Sophisticated Business Impersonation in the DNS Highly targeted cybersquatting properties, in this context, do not only refer to threat actors impersonating companies via look-alike domains but also include the use of text strings that increase their chances of reeling victims in. We determined three types of business impersonation properties, namely: : This pertains to digital properties that use the names of company executives. In September 2021, we studied the and found several that turned out to be malicious, including sundarpichai[.]com, brianmoynihan[.]com, and kevinjmurphy[.]com. There remain some suspicious findings this year, although not as many as the previous year, consistent with a report that business email compromise (BEC) attacks impersonating internal employees have decreased from 60% of all attacks in 2021 to 48% in the first half of 2022. CEO impersonation domain footprint of the top 100 CEOs recent This is signified by domains and subdomains potentially imitating critical departments or functions of an organization, such as marketing, support, finance, security, and recruitment. Some examples would include csamazonsupport[.]com or jpmorgan-finance[.]com, both of which figured in malware or phishing campaigns. Company department impersonation comprised 22% of the total number of web properties in the study and about 21% of the malicious domains and subdomains. Company department or function impersonation: In this type of business impersonation, threat actors use keywords that induce urgency in the victims, alongside the target companies’ names. These strings include “recovery,” “verify,” “sale,” “pay,” “login,” “sign in,” “register,” “update,” and “auth.” Urgency-based impersonation made up 79% of the total number of malicious domains found in the study. Examples of the malicious properties include ca-amazon-recovery[.]com, wells-fargo-login-notice[.]com, tesla-presale[.]net and verifiercompte-netflix[.]com. Urgency-based impersonation: The chart below shows the breakdown of malicious cybersquatting properties based on the text strings identified above. Fortune 500 Impersonators: Connections and Content We analyzed the WHOIS records and DNS connections of the cybersquatting domains and found: The active DNS connections and registrant countries mostly pointed to the U.S. The other countries accounting for most of the domain registrations and resolutions include Canada, the Netherlands, the U.K., Germany, and France. Location: PDR Ltd. managed the bulk of the properties, accounting for 38% of the domain registrations. The rest of the top 10 registrars include GoDaddy, Mark Monitor, Namecheap, Network Solutions, NameSilo, Amazon, CoCCA Registry Services, and REGRU. Registrar: The leading ISP was Amazon (27%), with Cloudflare, Google, HYAS, DigitalOcean, Microsoft, Linode, Sharktech, Fastly, and OVH completing the top 10. According to Spamhaus, some of these ISPs account for the highest number of spam and botnet infections as of 9 June 2022. Internet service provider (ISP): Our screenshot analysis revealed questionable content hosted on the cybersquatting properties, including login pages, such as those shown below. Web content: Business impersonation continues to harm organizations’ reputations and regular Internet users. While detecting the threat in emails, text messages, and social media posts can help, proactively seeking out cybersquatting domains as soon as they get added to the DNS can give companies an edge. If you’re interested in checking the full results of this study and learning more about the cybersquatting domains identified, feel free to . We are also available to discuss research collaboration ideas. contact us

DNS Business Impersonation: What’s the Landscape Like in 2022

In January 1996, Bill Gates what would go on to become one of the classic essays of the early internet. In it, he describes the very characteristics of the internet that would lay the foundation for the Creator Economy. published “One of the exciting things about the internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they create,” he writes. While Gates’s essay is remembered for its prescience about the direction the internet would take, what’s less well-remembered is that he also sounded a warning: “For the internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work,” he writes. “The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term.” Gates’s analysis was ahead of its time. While it’s true that the internet has made it possible for virtually anyone to publish content online, it’s also true that, a quarter of century after “Content is King” was published, earning meaningful income as a content creator has proven elusive. The lived experiences of creators tell the story: 90% of streaming royalties on Spotify go to the top 1.4% of musicians. The top 1% of all streamers earn more than half of all revenue on Twitch. 1% of podcasters claim the majority of podcast ad revenue. “To me, we’re not in a period of expansion,” one musician , speaking about earnings from streams on Spotify. “From an individual perspective of musicians, it has just been a downward trend of the rewards for our labor.” told The New York Times This isn’t inevitable, and it’s not unique to fledgling artists—it affects 99% of all creators, including famous names with millions of fans. When even struggle to make a basic living online, something is artificially holding them back. they The internet was supposed to usher in a Golden Age of media—a world of infinite abundance where anyone can create whatever they want, and everyone can find whatever they’re interested in. But while Gates’ prediction that there was money to be made online through content has proven true, much of that money has the creators that produce the content, landing instead in the pockets of the platforms that aggregate it. bypassed This is the story of how the web2 internet the business model of media, and how the advent of web3 signals a disruption to that business model that tilts the scales in favor of creators. broke Without native monetization methods built into the web2 internet, the predominant business models were opaque, advertising-based, and dependent on closed-garden networks, which gave an outsized advantage to platforms. On the horizon, new business models and technologies hold promise to unlock the kind of economic opportunity and control that will lead to a true creative Golden Age for artists and creators. Subscribe The Attention Economy and the Internet’s Original Sin At the heart of the story of how the internet broke the media business model is the simple fact that the internet was not built to facilitate the flow of money. Payments weren’t built into the internet’s infrastructure—it was considered too risky. Marc Andreessen this “the original sin of the internet.” called The lack of payment infrastructure is the reason why so much of the internet is monetized via advertising. Rather than requiring users to pull out a credit card and type their information into a website, users could be monetized frictionlessly and indirectly, paying not with their money but with a different asset: their attention. That precipitated a shift in power from the old gatekeepers of media who controlled content creation and distribution—the publishers, record labels, and movie studios—to those who amassed consumer attention at scale. Ben Thompson of Stratechery has written extensively about how the platforms, which he calls “ ,” have won the battle for consumer attention and achieve outsized revenue—and outsized power—by aggregating demand. YouTube has more than 2 billion monthly active users. aggregators Facebook has almost 3 billion. Spotify has 365 million. With those mega-sized audience numbers come mega-sized ad revenues. In fact, Google and Facebook alone accounted for of the digital ad revenue generated in 2020. more than half The business model of advertising has profoundly shaped how platforms design their products. Platforms funnel traffic to content they already know will be successful in holding user attention, creating a power law in creator success. Data about user preferences and behavior is the platforms’ most valuable asset, so they close off their ecosystems and lock users into their networks to amass the largest corpus of proprietary data. The ad-based revenue model has enormous implications for content creators, as well. Creators are compelled to seek the broadest possible audiences and to create content that attracts advertisers. This business model—or lack thereof—has a profound impact on which creators can make a living and what they create (incentivizing viral, attention-grabbing, and aspirational content, while disincentivizing niche, in-depth content). The biggest impact of the web2 internet may be the creators who don’t exist and the creations that were never made because they have no viable business model. From the Attention Economy to the Ownership Economy The platform-centric, advertising-powered economy may have won the web2 era, but its victory is not inevitable or final. We’ve written before that creators’ patience with the platforms is wearing thin in a burgeoning —they are starting to question the platforms’ right to exert such outsized control over their work, their relationship with fans, and how they’re rewarded for it. legitimacy crisis Meanwhile, a new generation of technologies is emerging with the promise to change the balance of power in the creator economy. If the pre-internet/web1 era favored publishers, and the web2 era favored the platforms, the next generation of innovations—collectively known as web3—is all about tilting the scales of power and ownership back toward creators and users. There are four main ways that that will happen: By introducing digital scarcity and restoring pricing power to creators By making supporting creators an act of investment, not just altruism By introducing new programmable economic models that spread wealth across the creator landscape Most importantly, by creating pathways for creators to own not just the content they produce, but the platforms themselves Taken together, these four shifts are converging to produce a new era, one where new incentives reward new behaviors, giving the internet the opportunity to collectively hit the “reset” button and move towards a more just distribution of value. Let’s cover each in turn. 1. NFTs and the Introduction of Digital Scarcity Scarcity gets a bad rap, but it is about more than just lack of consumer choice: it’s about producer power—in this case, the ability of creators to derive meaningful income from their creations. In our current world of infinite, platform-mediated content, scarcity does not exist. On social platforms, content is endlessly commoditized—one video is more or less the same as the next video, one song is the same as the next song, and content can be easily duplicated across the internet. Scarcity is sometimes approximated by creators via memberships or digital purchases (e.g. selling e-books, albums, or content subscriptions), but the underlying content can be endlessly reproduced and replicated. That lack of scarcity leads to issues with creators’ content being illegally reproduced and distributed -- undermining attempts at direct monetization. One reason NFTs ( ) are exciting as a technology is that they give creators the ability to regain control over their own content and re-introduce scarcity dynamics that contribute to monetization. In tokenizing their work as an NFT, creators create a verifiable on-chain record of a piece of media’s ownership and provenance. non-fungible tokens The end result is a unique digital asset that traces back to the artist. Fans who are passionate about the creator’s work are willing to pay more for this canonical piece of media, enabling creators to better capture fans’ full willingness to pay. The end impact cannot be understated: content creators no longer need millions of fans to make a living, but can survive on the contributions of a . passionate few The burgeoning music NFT market showcases this effect in action. On streaming platforms,  each stream of a song contributes the same amount of revenue (approximately $0.004 per stream on Spotify), regardless of that fan’s particular intensity of affinity towards the artist. In contrast, on platforms like or , superfans are purchasing NFT music for , with creators earning what previously would have required tens of millions of plays. Brett Shear, an NFT collector who owns 45 songs from Catalog, told Time magazine: “In the same way that you buy art that you want to put in your apartment, I want to listen to this music and enjoy it—and it’s a different feeling to own it.” Catalog Sound thousands of dollars each Purchasing an NFT is akin to collecting real-world merchandise, enabling fans to feel closer to the artist and own something rare, akin to a “ .” Digital scarcity and uniqueness—which had been missing from the web2 internet—is enabled by the blockchain, leading to a new business model for creators that lessens the economic control of platforms. non-fungible super-like Excitingly, the introduction of scarcity through NFTs doesn’t mean that access to the underlying media is limited, as it would be with paywalls or paid digital downloads. The actual media underpinning NFTs can remain , available to be consumed by anyone at no cost. Those who think this undermines the scarcity of NFTs (“right-click and save”) fundamentally miss the point. public goods 2. Patronage+: Supporting Creators Becomes an Investment, Not Just an Act of Altruism In , I described that creators could tap into fans’ to monetize at higher price points. By delivering substantive value and results, creators could more effectively monetize and make a living from fewer fans: 100 True Fans self-interest This represents a move away from the traditional donation model—in which users pay to benefit the —to a model, in which users are willing to pay more for something that benefits . creator value themselves Web3 takes this idea to the next level, because all tokens are investments that not only fund the creator, but also could benefit the if the value appreciates. Jesse Walden defines “ ” as patronage with the possibility of profit, a phenomenon that is introduced through tokenized ownership. holder patronage+ That investment element was an impossibility in web2 without an on-chain record of ownership like an NFT or a (imagine trying to resell a TikTok video that was downloaded from the app). social token What’s an example of patronage+ in action? Earlier this year, Mario Gabriele of The Generalist for a group of analysts to create a deep-dive on Coinbase, as well as to commission artwork to accompany the essay. crowdfunded 20 ETH Crowdfunders received proportional stakes in the briefing and artwork, all of which were minted as NFTs. In total, the NFT sales earned 28.6 ETH, leading to a return of 43% to crowdfunders in just a few weeks. Another benefit beyond patronage and investment is membership to a like-minded group of individuals. Many successful crowdfunds and NFT sales in the crypto space have been driven by users’ desire to belong to a community, which are gated by ownership of tokens. This echoes a phenomenon I wrote about in 100 True Fans: “People are willing to pay high prices for exclusive, differentiated content and access to a network of like-minded individuals.” For fans, the possibility of profit amplifies their incentive to support a creator. Interestingly, it also introduces an entirely new segment into the creator’s orbit that had never existed before in web2: . speculators Importantly, all of these users—by virtue of becoming owners of an asset that is aligned with the creator’s success—have an incentive to help amplify the creator’s work. 3. New Programmable Economic Models A truth of the creator economy is that creation is often a collaborative act. YouTube creators star in each others’ videos. Musicians sample from and are inspired by each other’s work. A TikTok video is, more often than not, made up of the (often unseen) work of multiple creators: a soundtrack from one creator, choreography from another. Unfortunately, web2 systems are not set up to reward or track this collaborativity. In the winner-take-all world of algorithmic platforms, too often the value only flows to the creators that go viral, leaving out everyone else involved in the creation of the work. This has led to and discontent among creators who feel that their contributions go unrecognized and uncredited. strikes In web3, the promise of tokenization means that it’s possible to build in royalties such that the entire chain of attribution is able to profit from a collaborative work. Early examples of this include and ’s splits functionality, which automatically routes earnings to various Ethereum addresses that contributed to a project. Mirror Foundation Down the line, it’s conceivable that any digital work could utilize elements from a universal media library, with revenue splits and attribution automatically accounted for. Nir Kabessa wrote about the “ ,” in which ideas that get remixed and propagated on the internet could become the basis of value creation: meme economy The famous meme GIF is linked to the address of the NFT so when someone shares the original NFT in their article, they can pull the on-chain address. This is powerful for memes because it allows them to maintain attribution and context in every platform. So any action on a meme NFT is accessible, readable, and usable on almost all platforms. Every bid, swap, and transaction is added to the metadata of that specific NFT. Beyond memes, if every piece of creative work is linked to an on-chain record of its provenance, it becomes possible to trace that work across the internet and for creators to monetize subsequent use of their work. 4. DAOs and Community Ownership We’ve argued in this essay that a root cause of inequality in the creator landscape is the outsized control that platforms exert over creators and their work through the ownership of the means of production and distribution of content. The most direct way to challenge that control is to change who owns the means of production. DAOs ( ) and other mechanisms of collective ownership create a pathway to disrupt the centralized hold that the platforms have over the creator landscape by making it possible for creators to work collaboratively an external mediator dictating the terms of engagement. decentralized autonomous organizations without In a DAO, governance systems are decided by the members, and there are no external shareholders pressuring for profit extraction. Instead, in a creator DAO, the owners are the participants: those who make the content, distribute it, and consume and value it. An early example of a creator platform that progressively decentralized is , an NFT marketplace that to its artists and collectors, who will govern curation, the DAO treasury, and future product direction. SuperRare distributed tokens Other organizations start community- and token-first: is a community of 42 musicians, visual artists, developers and strategists, who developed an interactive choose-your-own-adventure web3 game with music at its core. provides photographers with commissions to produce their envisioned projects, a community, grant opportunities, and educational resources to help them explore NFT photography. ElektraDAO ObscuraDAO The promise of DAOs is alignment of incentives through stakeholder primacy and a removal of the need to value. The result: a democratized, disintermediated content landscape where creators have control over their work, how it’s distributed—and how it’s valued. extract Beyond DAOs, the inherent interoperability of web3 makes platform lock-in likely to be a much less pernicious problem than it is in web2. The atomic unit of web3 is the account, which users control with their key pair and can be used across any app or protocol. Because all smart contracts are transparent and publicly inspectable, opaque and arbitrary back-room deals are harder to pull off. Though in its infancy, the web3 world is evolving towards a more open and standards-based philosophy, which benefits creators and users. Power—and Ownership—to the Creators For as long as the internet has existed, thinkers and philosophers have painted utopian visions of what it would make possible—particularly in media. That utopian vision has not come to pass. At least, not yet. In the past, I’ve called ownership the from which all else flows. Ownership determines incentives. It determines opportunities. It determines how wealth is created—and for whom. original system condition For the last decade, we’ve lived in a period in which ownership has been concentrated among a few centralized technology platforms, which owned the data, end-user relationships, and the means of distributing and monetizing content. While user-generated content creation exploded during this period, it also caused reliance on a handful of new gatekeepers, widespread burnout, and economic unsustainability for the vast majority of creators. Fortunately, there are new developments on the horizon that represent a shift in the balance of power towards creators. With key new capabilities enabled by web3—digital scarcity, patronage that doubles as investment, programmable business models, and community ownership—we are on the cusp of a new creative renaissance on the internet. I believe web3 has the potential to unlock incredible opportunities for everyone who contributes and creates on the internet: a true Golden Age of content that we’ve all been looking forward to. By Li Jin and Katie Parrott for . Every You can collect this post as an NFT on Mirror . here

The Golden Age of Web3

La edad de oro de la Web3

L'âge d'or du Web3

Web3 का स्वर्ण युग

Web3 の黄金時代

A Era de Ouro da Web3

Thời đại hoàng kim của web3

Web3 的黄金时代

APIs have some fascinating implications for how companies are built and where value is created. We compiled a list of the best places to get the most impactful information on APIs. Summary (TL;DR) Rank Website 1. Not Boring https://www.notboring.co/ 2. Stratechery https://stratechery.com/ 3. The API Economy https://www.apifirst.tech/ 4. API Evangelist https://apievangelist.com/ 5. Nordic APIs https://nordicapis.com/blog/ 6. Postman Blog https://blog.postman.com/ 7. API Developer Weekly https://apideveloperweekly.com/ 8. r/programming https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/ 9. MuleSoft Blog https://blogs.mulesoft.com/bloghome/ 10. Programmable Web https://www.programmableweb.com/ API-first companies can be confusing to explain because many of them offer both API products and traditional SaaS products. Their customers run the gamut, from large platforms like Shopify and Uber all the way down to individuals who want to accept payments online, and everything in between. To put it simply “APIs give their customers superpowers.” That’s the phrase you see most often when researching the space and talking to people in it, but APIs obviously go much deeper. Here’s a list if you’re interested in learning anything and everything in the wonderful world of APIs. The List Not Boring Not Boring is the most fun way to learn about what’s going on in business and the strategy behind the decisions companies make. If Ben Thompson and Bill Simmons had a baby, it would look like Not Boring. The Not Boring community is  almost 100,000+ strong and growing, full of smart, curious people from the worlds of tech, finance, real estate, design, and beyond. has a lot of fun writing this, and I think you’ll have a lot of fun reading it. Join our growing community by subscribing. Packy M Notable API focused writings include: — an essay going down the API-First Ecosystem Rabbit Hole with Shopify, Stripe, Twilio, and more. APIs All the Way Down — an essay announcing the Newest API-First Unicorn Saving the Internet Stytch: Kill the Password — A Not Boring x Collab on Moon Math, Privacy, and Hype Zero Knowledge Jill Carlson Bull & Bear: Agora, the API Powering Clubhouse https://www.notboring.co/ 2. Stratechery Stratechery provides an analysis of the strategy and business side of technology and media and the impact of technology on society. Written by , perhaps the world's most distinguished tech writer, the blog’s content does not miss. Ben Thompson Recommended by The New York Times as “one of the most interesting sources of analysis on any subject”, Stratechery has subscribers from over 85 different countries, including executives in both technology and industries impacted by technology, venture capitalists and investors, and thousands of other people interested in understanding how and why the Internet is changing everything. Notable API focused writings include: Stripe: Platform of Platforms From Products to Platforms Cloudflare’s Disruption The Cost of Developers https://stratechery.com/ 3. The API Economy While the likes of Stripe, Twilio, Plaid, and Cloudflare have all built some of the biggest companies in SaaS by leveraging an API-first approach — few understand the groundbreaking shift we’re experiencing with APIs. In this monthly newsletter, the aim of writer is to: Peter Schroeder Research the trends regarding APIs (starting in Saas, but bridging to the mainstream economy). Break down modern companies that are pushing the boundaries of API capabilities. Teach people more about how to either: a. Build an API-first company. b. Start to pivot/decouple at their current company to become API-first. Notable API focused writings include: — why Shopify's platform continues to thrive from a business & technical perspective. Shopify: The Entrepreneur's Platform — breaking down the company on a journey to connect one API to the entire world of SaaS. Merge: One API To Rule Them All https://www.apifirst.tech/ 4. API Evangelist The API Evangelist is about making sense of the world of application programming interfaces, or simple APIs. APIs have become part of every layer of our Internet-connected world over the last 20 years, and this their my research project into understanding what is happening. As of 2019 the author of the API Evangelist, is also the Chief Evangelist for Postman, but he still uses this site in the same way he has since 2010, as a workbench for what he is working on each day. Providing him with a very public way to work through his projects, while helping others see the world of APIs in different ways, and hopefully learn more about how APIs are being applied across our world. Kin Lane https://apievangelist.com/ 5. Nordic APIs Nordic APIs is a series of conferences and events held throughout Scandinavia that provide knowledge and information designed to help organizations become more efficient, automated, and programmable through the use of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Every year, a multi-day event is held in one of the Nordic capitals, and smaller events are run throughout the region all year long. https://nordicapis.com/ 6. Postman Blog Postman is an API platform for building and using APIs. Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs—faster. Their blog is a treasure trove of information covering all corners of what APIs have to offer. https://blog.postman.com/ 7. API Developer Weekly API Developer Weekly is a weekly newsletter hyper-focused on the business, design, development, and deployment of APIs for web and mobile apps. The newsletter is hand-curated and designed to keep you updated on the latest news, practices, and trends in the web-based API industry. https://apideveloperweekly.com/ 8. (Programming subreddit) r/programming You’ll have to look for API-specific content, but how could we not include Reddit? ;) https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/ 9. MuleSoft Blog Over a decade ago, founder created a short string of text that pioneered a simple, powerful idea: why crank out custom code over and over when it's faster and more efficient to assemble the right components? This led to the creation of MuleSoft, a platform to help you Ross Mason create seamless digital experiences, products, and services — with the #1 platform for integration, APIs, and automation Fun fact, the "mule" in their name comes from the drudgery, or "donkey work," of data integration that our platform was created to escape. Check out all things APIs on their blog. https://blogs.mulesoft.com/bloghome/ 10. Programmable Web As the world's leading source of news and information about Internet-based application programming interfaces (APIs), is known as the Web's defacto journal of the API economy. Since it was founded in 2005, ProgrammableWeb has been chronicling the daily evolution of the global API economy while amassing the Web's most relied-on directory when it comes to discovering and searching for APIs to use in Web and mobile applications. ProgrammableWeb.com In the past, Gartner identified ProgrammableWeb as one of several “Cool Vendors” in Information Innovation. ProgrammableWeb is also the most widely-cited source of data when it comes to the inclusion of API-related statistics in the mainstream media, conferences, whitepapers, and other forms of research. Written by who works with APIs and AVs at Ford Motor Company, this is one of the best blogs in the world to learn from. John Musser https://www.programmableweb.com/ Bonus: The API Design Blog The #1 source of tips and tricks for building quality APIs with a Design-First Approach Merge API’s Blog Merge is the unified API of the future. They help you integrate your product once with Merge and connect to all Payroll, Recruiting, HR, and Accounting API platforms automatically. Merge’s founding team worked at different startups but ran into the same issue: time-consuming customer-facing integrations. Developer time spent crafting and maintaining those integrations takes time, money, and focus away from the company’s core product roadmap. Their team of builders and problem solvers are motivated to not just make integrations incredibly accessible, but also delightful to implement. Their blog helps show you how all of it is possible from some of the smartest people in the world. https://www.merge.dev/blog For more API-related topics, subscribe to and . The API Economy follow me on Twitter Subscribe

All The Best API Related Blogs and Newsletters

The world has new masters. Ones that do not dictate your destination, but choose your path anyway. We might own our homes, our cars, even our identities, but we certainly don’t own our opinion. We do not even own the spectacles that show us the world. Can we remember the first time we started believing what we did? Or what did we originally believe in and why? carries information to its veins to anybody and everybody that is connected to it. But there are few who dictate the nature of information, the quality, and correctness. There are very few who dictate how and for what we use the amazing machinery of Web 2.0.
The world has chosen democracy.
The world needs a bigger decision to achieve this choice. will be the long tunnel leading to that door.
With the promise of , Web 3.0 promises a new world order. Web 2.0 Web 3.0 open, trustless, permissionless internet How Will Life Change? Power To Many With and post the dot com bubble some companies could be now called digital gatekeepers.
By virtue of the digital layer they serve, or the eyes they have accumulated, FAANG and Twitter together hold the deciding power to the number of eyes on a piece of digital content. The digital gatekeepers not only control the power to show you what they want but also the ability to erase your voice off the internet. The of power between the gatekeepers and the rest of the internet is fairly large and ever-increasing. disparity Decentralized internet will lay the power of the Internet in the hands of the people. Innovation Acceleration depend on what Android decides developers could develop on and 2.8 million on IOS. How much value, the millions of applications could provide to its users, is controlled by just a few minds? 5.9 million people The number of developers in the world exceeds 40 million. A trusting community of developers pushing together towards the sole goal of technological advancement obviously has a huge potential. Decentralized networks will generate a consistent stream of “Sparks Of Innovation”. I however would like to add a tinge to my brand of pessimism. Whether big groups of innovators and developers can achieve big things without the guidance and leadership provided by bigger organizations remains to be seen. Decentralized systems tend to move towards low entropy centralization. A new group of developers will choose a leader. A newly formed country immediately chooses a leader. Internet Democracy Our own personal data fuels the Free Internet today. We know all there is to know about is already known. Sometimes it feels like a violation. But so what? Google owns the best Email, and Maps and not to mention the Search. Facebook owns Facebook, Instagram, and even WhatsApp. We, the general consumers, are not in the best bargaining position. We take what they give, and give what our Tech Giants take. The open internet lures us with the promise of a stream of products, one better than the next. Maybe we . get to choose But… An army of proactive developers working towards the common goal of “Value Creation” to humans is not without its problems. The problems of decision paralysis, selection, and the problem of plenty. If there are twenty products doing what Facebook is doing today, ten search engines, and too many browsers to count, it can not be good news. Not everyone is equipped to handle this kind of decision-making. I am sure you can relate to spending hours on Netflix just looking for something to watch. And then repeat for other platforms. Today, I forage for news in the morning. I visit all my usual News sites, then Twitter feed, then . Techmeme Imagine there being tens of thousands of products to select from. Not the most ideal use of time, or our attention. Options aren’t bad, the absence of a sane selection mechanism is. The marginal utility each new Product will add will tend to Null. The World, Like Always, Will Adapt… By virtue of the presence of only a few selected Gatekeepers, we are both protected (privacy) and robbed (privacy).
The current authority that makes the rules of the internet — the has its chairs filled with people worried about their own pockets and business models. Assuming that the problem of privacy and trust, which pose the bigger roadblock, is won, the next focus will be on User Experience. World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) As Ben Thompson ’s on illustrates, the availability of the internet removes the constraint of limited distribution channels, making User Experience the foremost point of differentiation for any product. Aggregation Theory Stratechery The Trend will do nothing but continue. With millions of more developers openly collaborating to redefine the terms of the internet, adding innovation on the decentralized network at a break-neck speed, distribution of content is simple and ample. With a high supply of objects on the internet (content, products, etc.) and a superfluous availability of a way to distribute them, all the more emphasis has to be on the User Experience. How do you and I maintain sanity with decisions to be made every waking moment of the day? Humans, intelligent as we might be, are not equipped to do that. AGGREGATION 2.0 and The Era Of Uber-Personalized User Experience The notion of User Experience per product will undergo a paradigm shift. Every organization today makes immense investments to ensure that the “Experience of Users” interacting with “their Product” is delightful and flawless. The next new “Unit Of Care” could be “User Experience per User” What do I mean by it? It just means that we would be moving from “User Experience of a Product” to “User Experience of Every User” on the web. The new question becomes “How do I experience the Web?” The need for an added layer of aggregation comes directly as a result of the increased supply in the Supply chain. The contributing community can retain control of what's and wheres on the internet, but the end-user deserves the control of what they see and how they see it. They also need to be able to control aspects of privacy like who they share their data to, how much data, and for how long. The three facets of personalization of the new user system will be: Personalized User Experience Personalized content, and Centralized user-controlled Privacy settings And the power to control residing with the end-user. Uber-Personalized User Experience (UX 2.0) The world doesn’t look the same to all of us. Why should a Product? User choices vary. People respond to an experience differently. We currently design our User Experiences by studying and focusing on a chosen segment of users. i.e. We build for the masses? Or niche. But can we target to build for everyone? Both Decentralized networks and decentralization of power aim to give more power in the hands of individuals. A consumer of the internet will be no different. A user should be able to determine and eventually customize the experience that works for them. Every user will be able to decide What and How they use the internet Personalized Content With the number of objects (Apps, Content, News, etc.) floating around the internet freely, the problem of selection will become all the more apparent and critical to solve. Users need ways to determine what deserves their attention. Currently the big players hold an important role in determining what to put in front of the eyes of the users. And they do it well, but with selfish objectives in mind. Unfortunately, that leaves low to no choice to the user to be able to fairly pick and choose what they want to. Awareness is a strong problem. With Decentralization and explosion in the debris floating around the web, it will become all the more critical to provide users the control they deserve. The future will add more control to the users to be able to determine the content they decide to interact with. There would be a need for a personalization bubble that takes into account only a user’s choices and fetches the desired information off of the web. Whoever builds the Personalization bubble leaves the race behind User-Controlled Privacy Facebook knows what we do when better than we ourselves know. So does Google. Big Tech invests a lot of money in trying to predict what we are interested in at any given moment. Business models thrive on putting the correct content in front of a user in a way to maximizes the probability of intended interaction. And users have low to no control over what information and when these data points are needed to form the judgment. has taken the first step already in the right direction of providing users control with who they share their data. But new players could rise in no time to on the decentralized networks. Apple provide this service Final Thoughts The movement to Web 3.0 may be slow but inevitable. Tech is long overdue for another disruption. Organizations — both big and small have a foot in the present but eyes on the future. Companies focusing on defending their current Business Models will never survive. In the race to Web 3.0 companies innovating for the future will win the race leaving behind a wide majority of carcasses who won’t even reach the finish line. If the Future of Technology excites you, Share with me your thoughts about this article. Connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on . Twitter

The Web 3.0 Race for Internet Democracy Can Only Be Won With UX 2.0

Welcome to part two of the vanilla JavaScript adventure! If you missed part one and would like to give it a try, click here. for the starter code to part two, if you didn't complete part one or don't have the code anymore. Click here Why CSS? HTML and CSS are the peanut butter and jelly of the web development world; they always go hand in hand. Since the basis of part one was using JavaScript in lieu of HTML, learning how to use JavaScript in lieu of CSS seems like a logical next step. If you know basic HTML and basic JavaScript, chances are you have come in contact with CSS as well. CSS (short for Cascading Style Sheets) essentially controls the stylistic/visual component of the elements on the webpage: colors, fonts, text decoration, animations (sometimes), and more. If you need a more thorough explanation of CSS . check out this MDN article Let's continue where we left off with our part one code, and take a look at how to use CSS within JavaScript. Using CSS in your JavaScript file As explained in previous articles, having separate files for HTML and CSS as well as many different files for different JavaScript components of your project is standard practice, and for good reason. Adhering to the principle of allows for clearer organization of code, as well as reducing the chances of breaking changes occurring in the whole project because of a single faulty edit in one module. As in part one, we will still be using our `index.js` file for all of our CSS, to immerse fully into the JavaScript experience. However, please remember that 99% of projects you work on will not follow this practice, we are only doing it for the sake of learning how! separation of concerns The general principle of styling in JavaScript is actually quite simple. The majority of this part of the tutorial will just be learning the most essential style features that you will probably need. The basic pattern of styling in JavaScript is: <element to be styled>.style.<style property> = "desired outcome"; That wasn't very well-explained. Let me give you a more concrete example to demonstrate; the next line of code will result in my turning green: header header.style.color = "green"; That looks better. In that example, is the element being acted upon, is usually the keyword for accessing style properties, is the style property that is being accessed, and is the new desired color. header style color green With our basic pattern of styling elements in mind, let's segue into our first CSS essential: color. CSS Essential #1: Color Color is one of the most important style elements in visual design. As such, there is substantial functionality built into CSS to support color; however, covering every aspect of using color in your styling could be an entire tutorial series by itself, so we will only be exploring a few basics. Let's start by taking the example from the previous section and applying it here: change the color of your . Use my code above, but instead of you can select any basic color you like. Think color wheel/kindergarten colors, not the wackiest color you remember from the crayon box you used to have. For example: header green header.style.color = "orange"; Your display should now look something like this, depending on what color you chose: Nicely done. The property can be applied to text, backgrounds, borders, and pretty much any element on your webpage that you can think of. color Before we move on, go ahead and apply that same color you chose to your and elements. text1 text2 Cool, now let's think about background color. White background is cool and all, but let's decide on something a little more exciting. Use this code to modify your background color (you can substitute my color for a color of your choosing), then read on for an explanation: document.body.style.backgroundColor = "red"; Good! Although this might seem quite different from changing the color of our header, it still follows our same basic pattern: <element to be styled>.style.<style property> = "desired outcome"; For our background color styling, is the element to be styled, the keyword is still used, is the style attribute we are modifying, and is my desired outcome. document.body style backgroundColor red One important distinction between CSS and JavaScript styling becomes relevant when modifying styling attributes that are more than one word (such as background color). In CSS, the syntax for such attributes is kebab-case (i.e. ). For JavaScript, the syntax is camelCase (i.e. ). background-color backgroundColor Now then, with my choice of orange text and red background, my example looks like this: Bleh. That is not an attractive color combination, but more importantly it is quite difficult to read, even for users with standard vision. For users with vision impairments, this would be extremely difficult if not impossible to read. Always keep in mind when selecting color combinations! There are several tools ( ) that help web developers/designers select color combinations that are appropriate for users of all vision levels. web accessibility standards like this one With that in mind, I'm going to change my background color to something that will contrast the bright orange a little better. document.body.style.backgroundColor = "black"; Much better! We can use more colors than just the primary ones, however. To be precise, we have (although some may argue that because of transparency options, ). 16,777,216 color options we actually have a great deal more than that There are three ways to specify color in web design: 1. Keyword 2. RGB value 3. Hex code In the interest of brevity, click on any of the three items above to learn more. The "Keyword" link leads to a list of all keywords that can be used in your color styling. The "RGB value" and "Hex code" links lead to respective explanations of the concepts, if you are unfamiliar. Here are a couple examples of how each approach would look syntactically. Keyword: header.style.color = ;
text1.style.color = ;
text2.style.color = ; .body.style.backgroundColor = ; "cornflowerblue" "chartreuse" "lightsalmon" document "dimgray" RGB: header.style.color = ;
text1.style.color = ;
text2.style.color = ; .body.style.backgroundColor = ; "rgb(100, 149, 237)" "rgb(127, 255, 0)" "rgb(255, 160, 122)" document "rgb(105, 105, 105)" Hex code: header.style.color = ;
text1.style.color = ;
text2.style.color = ; .body.style.backgroundColor = ; "#6495ed" "#7fff00" "#ffa07a" document "#696969" These three examples are visually identical, and should all display like this: This wraps up our color section, but you will continue to get practice with it along with other style elements. CSS Essential #2a: background-color In the previous section, we learned that we can modify the background color of the page with . There is another important tidbit to know about the background color property, which is that it can be applied to individual elements as well. For example: document.body.style.backgroundColor = "color_goes_here"; header = .createElement( );
header.textContent = ;
header.style.backgroundColor = ; .body.appendChild(header); text1 = .createElement( );
text1.textContent = ;
text1.style.backgroundColor = ; .body.appendChild(text1); text2 = .createElement( );
text2.textContent = ;
text2.style.backgroundColor = ; .body.appendChild(text2); const document 'h1' 'Vanilla JS practice' "red" document const document 'p' 'Go hang a salami, I\'m a lasagna hog.' "yellow" document const document 'p' 'Read the previous sentence backwards.' "green" document CSS Essential #2b: background-image In addition to a solid color, we can use images as backgrounds as well. Say, for example, we wanted to use this yummy-looking lasagna as a background image: We can use this image as our background one of two ways. 1. Image file saved to local filesystem .body.style.backgroundImage = ; document 'url("lasagna.jpg")' 2. Image file is online .body.style.backgroundImage = ; document 'url("https://imgur.com/TUQLNdi.jpg")' CSS Essential #2c: background-repeat Oftentimes our background image does not perfectly match the size of the display. Therefore, we often have to stretch or repeat the image to make the background look complete. The two main style properties that affect this are and . background-repeat background-size has four options: background-repeat 1. (image renders one time, default location is top left corner) no-repeat .body.style.backgroundImage = ; .body.style.backgroundRepeat = ; document "url('https://biologydictionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Walrus-1.jpg')" document "no-repeat" 2. (image repeats horizontally across the screen) repeat-x .body.style.backgroundImage = ; .body.style.backgroundRepeat = ; document "url('https://biologydictionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Walrus-1.jpg')" document "repeat-x" 3. (image repeats vertically across the screen) repeat-y .body.style.backgroundImage = ; .body.style.backgroundRepeat = ; document "url('https://biologydictionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Walrus-1.jpg')" document "repeat-y" 4. (default behavior; image repeats horizontally and vertically to fill the entire screen) repeat .body.style.backgroundImage = ; .body.style.backgroundRepeat = ; document "url('https://biologydictionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Walrus-1.jpg')" document "repeat" CSS Essential #2d: background-size has two main options: background-size 1. (default behavior; image renders at its original size) auto .body.style.backgroundImage = ; .body.style.backgroundRepeat = ; .body.style.backgroundSize = ; document "url('https://biologydictionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Walrus-1.jpg')" document "no-repeat" document "auto" 2. (a single image stretches to cover the entire screen) cover .body.style.backgroundImage = ; .body.style.backgroundRepeat = ; .body.style.backgroundSize = ; document "url('https://biologydictionary.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Walrus-1.jpg')" document "no-repeat" document "cover" CSS Essential #3: Text emphasis The main types of text/typographical emphasis include , , and underline. bold italic To make text , set the property to the value "bold". bold font-weight text1.style.fontWeight = ; "bold" To make text , set the property to the value "italic". italic font-style text2.style.fontStyle = ; "italic" To make text underlined, set the property to the value "underline". text-decoration In addition to underlined text, the property can also overline and strikethrough text. text-decoration header.textContent = ;
header.style.textDecoration = ;

text1.textContent = ;
text1.style.fontWeight = ;
text1.style.textDecoration = ;

text2.textContent = ;
text2.style.fontStyle = ;
text2.style.textDecoration = ; 'Vanilla JS practice' "underline" 'Go hang a salami, I\'m a lasagna hog.' "bold" "overline" 'Read the previous sentence backwards.' "italic" "line-through" CSS Essential #4: Borders Borders have several properties, which can be set and modified individually. However, in my experience most developers use the shorthand property, which combines the , , and properties. Instead of writing three lines of code... border border-width border-style border-color header.style.borderWidth = ;
header.style.borderStyle = ;
header.style.borderColor = ; "5px" "dotted" "salmon" ...one could write one line of code: header.style.border = ; "5px dotted salmon" When using the property, the only parameter that is required is . and are optional, and default to 3px and black respectively. border border-style border-width border-color As with color, borders are a big topic with lots of different options for customization and specification. Rather than explain and show all the options in this tutorial, . click here if you wish to learn more about CSS border properties and options Try it yourself – Task Congrats on getting this far! To try to synthesize the information presented in this tutorial, try this task on your own. Of course, if you need to refer back to earlier parts of this article for information, you are encouraged to do so! : Make a square on the screen, below your text.</span> This is very open-ended, and there are nearly limitless ways to do this. Your task : If you complete this task, try to complete it one or two MORE times using different approaches. Extra credit Before you get started, you should do some independent Google research on CSS and properties. I didn't cover those properties in this tutorial, but you may need them now. height width If you get stuck, scroll down for a few hints, and down to the next section for a couple sample answers. Good luck! : The first step to completing this task is to create a new element, likely a . From there, you can use a combination of the style properties you learned in this tutorial to make a square. Hint #1 <div> : Have you looked up the and properties yet? You may need to set those properties on your new element to give it a defined area. Hint #2 height width : If you can't get a square to appear on the screen, re-check the basic stuff: Hint #3 - Have you used ? document.body.appendChild(YOUR_SQUARE_HERE) - Have you given your square some sort of style feature that makes it visible? Double-check your syntax for every line. Try it yourself – Example solutions I hope you were able to make a square! If you were not, or if you want to see some more ways to do it, check out some example solutions: 1. Using the property: border newSquare = .createElement( );
newSquare.style.border = ;
newSquare.style.height = ;
newSquare.style.width = ; .body.appendChild(newSquare); const document 'div' "solid" "200px" "200px" document 2. Using the property: background-color newSquare = .createElement( );
newSquare.style.backgroundColor = ;
newSquare.style.height = ;
newSquare.style.width = ; .body.appendChild(newSquare); const document 'div' "red" "200px" "200px" document 3. Using the property: background-image newSquare = .createElement( );
newSquare.style.backgroundImage = newSquare.style.height = ;
newSquare.style.width = ; .body.appendChild(newSquare); const document 'div' "url('purple-square.png')" "200px" "200px" document Conclusion That was but a introduction to all that CSS has to offer, and how to implement it in JavaScript. I hope you learned a lot that you can apply in your own projects! Be sure to check out the third part of this tutorial, which will (I think) cover modals in JavaScript. brief Attributions: Peanut butter and jelly image by Freddy G, linked from Unsplash Colorful festival image by Robert Katzki, linked from Unsplash Lasagna image by sunorwind, linked from Unsplash Horseback rider image by Mikayla Storms, linked from Unsplash Patrick Star gif is the property of ViacomCBS, Inc. Linked from GIPHY Previously published at https://shinetechnicallywrites.netlify.app/blog/vanilla-js-tutorial-part-two/

A Simple Guide To Vanilla JavaScript: How To Set CSS Styles [Part 2]

Chances are, the words you are reading right now are white, and the background behind them is black. It’s not like you don’t have a choice in the matter. There is all manner of tools that allow you to view webpages in dark mode as a default (like ). If you are reading this article on , the sun/moon icon up in the top navigation bar allows you to toggle between light and dark mode with a single click. You probably just switched over to light mode out of curiosity, and then immediately switched it back to dark mode. this one my website How am I doing so far? Am I way off base? Or am I so uncannily on-point that you’re nervously glancing over your shoulder? Survey says... Predicting that you prefer dark mode over light mode is hardly much of a party trick, although I’m happy to take credit for any amazement you might have felt. An overwhelming majority of survey respondents expressed a preference for dark mode over light mode. with reported that of the 2,514 users who responded to a survey, . Developer conducted an informal survey of contrast polarity preference through Twitter, and the results to the poll referenced above. Jimmy Westenberg Android Authority Android Authority over 80% use dark mode on their phones, apps, and wherever it is available Thomas Steiner are very similar Android Authority According to these results and others, the consensus seems to be a preference for dark mode, although one could argue that respondents of an internet survey . tend to skew younger, wealthier, and more educated than a general sample of the population So dark mode wins, right? Not so fast. One of the oft-cited reasons for preferring dark mode over light mode is that dark mode is easier on your eyes. However, even a should be enough to cast doubt on this assertion. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but UX/UI designers know better than to base their designs on what users say. I think Jakob Nielsen when he opined that good user design is in no way predicated on what users say – observing what they do is much more reliable and accurate. cursory Google search said it best As someone who spends a majority of my working hours in front of a computer screen (not to mention a fair amount of leisure time in front of other screens), the health and wellness aspect of this issue of screen contrast polarity is of particular interest to me. Although I have recently found dark themes to be my aesthetic preference, my even more recent realization that dark mode provides nearly no research-backed benefit to the reading comfort and eye health of average users was surprising to me and provided the motivation to write this article. The case for light mode Opinions aside, the majority of actual evidence-based, rigorous research seems to point to light mode being more advantageous for both eye health and legibility. Researchers with the Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society published a study in 2013 that found that the use of positive polarity (light mode) led to an . Another study in 2017 found that readers reading with positive polarity could read accurately with greater speed and ease . Interestingly, the same study found that these results were even more pronounced under dark ambient illumination, meaning that reading dark mode legibly in low-light situations is even harder than in high-light situations. improved perception of detail than they could with negative polarity (dark mode) wrote a of research findings on this issue. The results seem to indicate light mode leading to superior results in tasks across the board, both for visual acuity and proofreading. However, her summary did contain some points in favor of dark that are worth considering as well. Raluca Budiu thorough summary Few things in life are absolute Although indicates that light mode wins across the board in terms of legibility and efficiency in reading. That contrast polarity had no significant impact on eye fatigue; there are still [a couple] reasons to consider sticking with dark mode. A 2018 study found that the way that the eye behaves when reading positive polarity . The suggested remedy to offset this effect is, naturally, to use dark mode. Budiu’s summary may lead to myopia (nearsightedness) in the long term As far as I can tell, this study is the only published academic study that supports this conclusion. One of the core tenets of proper research is replicability, so although I cannot dismiss this study’s findings, more research supporting this conclusion is needed to affirm the findings (in my opinion). Conclusion Although I will keep checking the research to see if any more published studies corroborate the 2018 myopia study’s findings, I feel that the great majority of research into the effect of contrast polarity on eyes indicates that light mode is the way to go. So, although dark themes are cool and trendy, I’m switching back to light all the way (I’m typing this article in a light-theme VSC. It is so weird…). What will you do? Join the dark side or turn towards the light? Whatever you choose, make sure you understand the risks and benefits of your options. : Attributions Baby Yoda at window image by Victor Serban (UnSplash) Stormtrooper Batman image by Daniel Cheung (UnSplash) Red lightsaber in cave image by Cade Roberts (UnSplash) Darth Vader image by Tommy van Kessel (UnSplash) Obi Wan gif linked from Giphy Black and white coffee image by Alex (UnSplash) Previously published at https://shinetechnicallywrites.netlify.app/posts/in-defense-of-light-mode/

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