After a decade From a handful of mainstream social media companies marketing what are essentially publishing tools in return for serving us all an endless deluge of ads, the winds of change are finally blowing – in several different directions at once.

Content creators (arguably a special echelon of influencers or anyone who posts online) are slowly siphoning off some of the power social media companies have wielded for years. Meanwhile, decentralization is sweeping away worlds like finance and art, threatening existing orders and pointing to a future defined by alternative currencies and digital collectibles. These trends are sure to converge sooner rather than later, and in some corners of the social internet this is already starting to show.

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 last week, Houseparty founder Ben Rubin, who is now working on a new company called Slashtalk, took a look at some of these intersections. Rubin created Meerkat, SXSW 2015’s beloved social app, which then morphed into a spontaneous video chat app known as Houseparty. Epic Games bought Houseparty in 2019, but Rubin’s foreknowledge of emerging social trends didn’t end there.

Nowadays, everyone seems to be interested in decentralization. As with any burgeoning tech trend on the horizon, a lot of jargon is thrown around. Within the DeFi (decentralized finance) and NFT (non-fungible token) communities, Web3 is the term of the day that captures the revolutionary potential that decentralized networks hold for the future of the Internet.