Social Evolution

Technological Evolution of Social Networking

Social interaction is a fundamental human need. From primitive tribal language exchanges to modern global online interactions, technology has always been the engine driving the evolution of social methods. Early forums and blogs (BBS, Blog) marked the first digital social experiments. Web2, riding the wave of mobile internet, ushered in a golden age of social platforms—Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and others built social networks connecting the globe, greatly enriching forms of content expression and user interaction.

However, behind improved efficiency, structural issues have emerged. Data is held in the hands of platforms; algorithms driven by profit dictate content feeds; creators are marginalized; and users have become the “product.” Technology has indeed made socializing “faster,” but not necessarily made connections “better.”

Three Stages of Social Technology Evolution

Pre-Digital Era Characteristics

• Core Technologies: Language/Writing/Printing
• Social Forms:
  • Asynchronous communication based on physical media
  • Strong geographically limited acquaintance networks
• Key Limitations:
  • Information spread speed measured in days/months
  • Social radius not exceeding 50 kilometers

Web1.0-Web2.0 Era Breakthroughs

Web3 Social Revolution

Technology Triangle Support:

• Blockchain: Data sovereignty return (DID decentralized identity)

• AI: Interactive experience upgrade (intelligent social agents)

• Edge Computing: Real-time scenario implementation (latency less than 50ms)

Paradigm Innovation:

• From "platform commission" to "protocol profit-sharing"

• From "attention economy" to "value internet"

The Trend of Returning to True Social Value

Truly valuable social interaction should be a process of building deep connections and trust, supporting individual expression, emotional exchange, and the unleashing of creativity. As people grow more aware of data rights and freedom of expression, and as new digital technologies proliferate, a user-centered, disintermediated social paradigm is rapidly taking shape. The convergence of Web3 and AI is providing the technical support and imaginative possibilities for this new paradigm.

Synergistic Effects of AI and Web3

Intelligent Agent Layer:

• Personal AI assistants automatically handle 80% of routine social interactions

• Emotional computing engines optimize communication quality

Value Capture Layer:

• AIGC content rights confirmed through NFTs

• Model training data rights tokenized and distributed

Experience Enhancement Layer:

• Cross-language real-time social interaction (latency less than 0.5 seconds)

• 3D social spaces in metaverse scenarios

Predicament of Web2 Social

Structural Monopoly of Data and Privacy

Traditional social platforms build business closed loops through centralized architectures, forming a "data-traffic-advertising" monetization triangle. Social graphs, behavioral trajectories, interest preferences, and other data generated by users on platforms are collected unilaterally by platforms and processed by algorithms to become high-value digital assets. Taking Meta as an example, its 2022 financial report shows that advertising revenue accounts for 97.6%, while users do not receive any direct revenue sharing.

The essence of this structural monopoly is the failure of the Coase Theorem—under the zero transaction cost assumption, data property rights should reach optimal allocation through market negotiation, but platforms forcibly separate data control rights and revenue rights through unilateral authorization in user agreements. The practice of the EU GDPR shows that even if users have data portability rights, due to data format barriers and migration costs between platforms, users still find it difficult to achieve true data sovereignty. More seriously, the Cambridge Analytica incident revealed that centralized data pools have become hotbeds for political manipulation and commercial abuse.

Misaligned Value for Content Creators

Web2 platforms may have vibrant content ecosystems on the surface, but revenue distribution is severely imbalanced. Platforms, as traffic distributors, dominate the revenue, while content creators struggle to receive transparent and fair incentives due to opaque algorithms. This “platform predator” ecosystem stifles sustained supply of quality content and dampens creative enthusiasm.

Lack of User Participation and Sense of Belonging

Although users are the main producers and consumers of platform content, they have weak voice in community governance and platform development. Decision-making power is highly concentrated on the platform side, creating structural alienation between users and platforms.

From the perspective of principal-agent theory, there is a fundamental interest divergence between platforms and users. Twitter's "governance voting" experiment shows that despite 90% of users supporting the edit button feature, decisions are still subject to shareholder interests. This participation deficit has given rise to the "ghost user" phenomenon—Pew research shows that 64% of Generation Z users jump between multiple platforms but refuse to deeply participate in any community. The "board dictatorship" model of platform governance has reduced users to digital laborers; as Habermas said, communicative rationality has been completely suppressed by instrumental rationality. The Reddit API fee controversy proves that when platforms unilaterally change rules, users lose even the defensive means of "voting with their feet" due to the sedimentation of social assets.

This one-way dominant model ultimately erodes user stickiness and community vitality.

The Need for Catalytic Change

The above contradictions are essentially the fetters of Web2 production relations: platform capital monopolizes the means of production (servers/algorithms), and users only get the minimum digital living space needed for labor force reproduction. According to Gartner's technology maturity curve, social 3.0 has shifted from the bubble trough period to the climbing period in 2023, with the monthly active growth rate of decentralized social graphs like Lens Protocol reaching 300%. The core driving forces for this change come from three aspects: verifiable identity (DID) implemented by blockchain, value automatic distribution guaranteed by smart contracts (such as Mirror's content NFT), and governance participation channels provided by DAOs. As demonstrated by the Web3 social protocol Farcaster, when users control data ownership (stored on their own servers), participate in rule-making (through governance tokens), and directly receive benefits (protocol-level sharing), the structural contradictions of traditional platforms will meet paradigm-level solutions.

While Web2 social has achieved phased results, it has also exposed the fundamental contradictions in its growth model and incentive mechanism. Against this background, Web3 social, with core concepts of user rights, value return, and community co-governance, is beginning to become a new exploration direction.

Value Reshaping of Web3 Social

Returning Data Sovereignty to Users

Web3, based on blockchain technology, allows users to truly own and control their data through decentralized identity (DID), encrypted storage, and other mechanisms. User identity, social relationships, and content assets can all be encrypted on-chain, not to be read or transferred without authorization. This sovereign autonomous model avoids the abuse of data by platform centralization and frees users from the risks of "account disappearance" and "data being locked."

Reconstructing the Content Value Chain

Web3 builds an incentive system with content as assets. Content can be confirmed as NFTs or traded and tipped in token form, allowing creators to establish value connections directly with fans without relying on platform commissions. Incentive rules are transparently executed through smart contracts, and behaviors such as likes, shares, and comments can all be quantified as economic incentives, forming a truly creator-centered value closed loop.

Community Co-governance and Self-evolving Rules

The DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) mechanism allows users to participate in platform rule-making and resource allocation. Unlike Web2's "one-man show," Web3 social platforms achieve true community co-governance. Users are no longer just consumers of content or users of tools, but participants and governors in platform development.

ITRIX's Differentiated Positioning

Among many Web3 social explorations, ITRIX takes "AI-driven digital twins" as its entry point, building multi-dimensional interactive relationships between humans and AI, humans and humans, AI and AI, forming deep connection experiences and continuous content production capabilities distinct from traditional platforms.

Real Bottlenecks of Web3 Social

Despite the theoretical advantages of Web3 social, its development is still in the early stages, with the following key challenges:

High Barriers, Poor Experience

Most current Web3 applications still require users to configure crypto wallets and manage private keys, which is extremely unfriendly to ordinary users. Coupled with slow on-chain operation responses and high fees, the user experience is difficult to match Web2, becoming an important obstacle to mainstream promotion.

Network Effects Not Yet Formed

The core value of social platforms depends on user activity and content ecosystem. Web3 social currently has a small user base, scarce content, difficult cold start, and network effects have not yet formed.

Content Governance and Compliance Gaps

Decentralization lowers the threshold for content publishing but also brings risks of spreading false information and inappropriate speech. Lack of effective governance will affect platform reputation and long-term development. Establishing a content management mechanism based on community self-governance and AI-assisted review is a proposition that must be solved in the future.

Technology Maturity and Security Risks

Public chain scaling limitations, insufficient interaction performance, poor cross-chain compatibility, and other issues still constrain the expansion of Web3 social product forms. At the same time, frequent security incidents such as smart contract vulnerabilities and asset loss further exacerbate user distrust.

Insufficient Market Awareness and High Trust Costs

The public still has understanding barriers to Web3, and the speculative impression of past projects has not dissipated, exacerbating external market doubts about its "bubble" label. Breaking cognitive barriers requires gradually building trust through mature product experiences and long-term stable operations.

AI Empowering Social

AIGC Releasing Content Creation Dividends

Generative AI (AIGC) has become an important engine for social content production. AI can quickly generate high-quality text, images, and videos, greatly lowering creation thresholds and stimulating users' desire for expression.

AI Social Partners: Personalization and Companionship Coexist

AI is no longer just a tool but becomes a companion for users. AI virtual images can interact with users in real-time, respond to emotions, generate dialogues, and even provide continuous companionship in the form of "digital companions." ITRIX's "digital twin" function is a frontier product of this social evolution, serving both as an identity carrier and an intelligent social assistant.

New Breakthroughs in Multimodal and Immersive Experiences

Integrating voice, image, emotion recognition, and AR/VR technologies, AI is driving social towards visualization and immersion. In the future on ITRIX, users can achieve cross-platform, multi-scenario, multimodal interaction through digital twins, building a new social experience paradigm.

Web3+AI, Fusion Evolution

The combination of Web3 and AI is not a simple addition but a deep integration of production relations and productive forces. AI provides efficiency and intelligent expression, solving problems of "creation difficulty" and "communication fatigue"; Web3 provides rights confirmation and fair incentives, solving problems of "weak rights" and "non-transparent rules." This combination makes "human-AI co-creation" and "human-community co-governance" possible, driving social platforms from content carriers to "value networks" and "relationship autonomous bodies."