Between ChatGPT and cryptocurrency, TikTok millionaires and real estate in the metaverse, much about the emerging internet economy seems daunting and new. But two very old forces are driving innovation and competition in the digital landscape: money and power. Forthcoming books look at the lives of content creators, the battle for supremacy between digital platforms, and the cutting-edge technologies that promise to reshape work and money itself—asking who will win in this new business environment, who will lose, and how our lives might change as a result.
Under the influence
Social media is a central pillar of the internet economy: without images and videos to mindlessly scroll through, a huge swath of the tech industry’s revenue would dry up. That state of affairs has put power and money into the hands of content creators, a new class of entrepreneurs who serve as the focus of two forthcoming books.
“Online influence is the most powerful modern currency,” says Taylor Lorenz, a Washington Post technology reporter whose first book, Extremely Online, will be published by Simon & Schuster in October. The book traces the evolution of user-driven web content, from “mommy” blogs to viral TikTok videos, and examines how creators have shaped digital culture and forged new pathways to success. A career as an influencer, Lorenz adds, “provides access to endless power, fame, and money—you can use it to launch anything. Whoever wields power on the internet wields political power.”
Nevertheless, influencers and content creators are often belittled by the culture at large, says Portfolio editor Merry Sun. In June Portfolio will publish Glamour senior editor Stephanie McNeal’s Swipe up for More!, which PW called “an entertaining inquiry into the not-so-secret lives of social media celebrities.”
“So much of the commentary is about how they’re terrible and evil, they’re not doing real work,” Sun says. But “they’ve shifted the way we interact online. How we buy things—how trust works—in the digital marketplace.”
Lorenz points out that the media often focuses on the founders of social media platforms, when in reality those founders don’t quite know how their platforms will be used. It’s the power users, influencers, and content creators, she says, who end up defining both the nature and the long-term fate of a platform.
Platform wars
The question of who owns and controls digital platforms—and how contests for power over them affect our daily lives—is taken up in further titles that look at the heavy hitters of the internet economy, and at innovations that promise to reshape it.
Despite the outsize influence of content creators, some platforms are still beholden to the larger-than-life personalities at their helms. Breaking Twitter by Ben Mezrich (The Accidental Billionaires) tracks the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, who in his short time as CEO has implemented the tech shibboleth “move fast and break things” with a particular focus on the second part.
Grand Central will release Mezrich’s book in November, and executive editor Karyn Marcus says it’s part of a larger conversation about the tension between the decentralized potential of the internet and the struggle by executives and corporations to maintain control. “We’re in an interesting moment where the internet is becoming more and more pushed forward by corporations,” she explains. “What could be a more democratic force than the internet—but can it survive powerful corporate interests?”
A similar question is taken up by business journalist Jason del Rey’s Winner Sells All (HarperBusiness, June), which PW calls “an impressive account” of the retail wars between Walmart, a traditional retailer that had to become an e-tailer, and Amazon, an e-commerce pioneer that has built out a bricks-and-mortar footprint.
Del Rey’s book explores the potential perils of an economy in which Amazon and Walmart are the “two go-to suppliers of everything American consumers might buy,” he says. No one, he adds, “wants to wake up in a world where you have only two options. But in some communities, this is already a reality.”
At the same time, the postpandemic era has given a boost to some unexpected contenders. In The Phoenix Economy (Harper Business, May), Felix Salmon, Axios chief financial correspondent and host of the Slate Money podcast, examines “the new not normal” of post-Covid times and looks at platforms that rocketed in popularity during lockdown, including Zoom and Slack, by capitalizing on the sudden ubiquity of remote work.
The question of how work and consumer habits will change in the coming years—and which companies will win and which will lose out—is hard to answer, Salmon notes. “Shit is really fucking weird right now,” he says, “and will continue to be really fucking weird for a long time.”
Adding to the weirdness is the emergence of what’s often referred to as Web3, a nascent model of the World Wide Web in which blockchain technologies and digital currencies pave the way for a more distributed, decentralized internet that promises to transfer power from platforms to creators. In September Harper Business will publish Web3 by Alex Tapscott (coauthor of 2016’s Blockchain Revolution), which offers a deep dive into this new system and how it might afford users more control.
“This shift is a challenge to the status quo,” says Hollis Heimbouch, publisher of Harper Business. “It gives everyone the opportunity to play a role in creation.”
Show me the tokens
Inevitably, contests between platforms and the emergence of new technologies will have profound effects on our financial lives—how we earn money, how we spend it, and even what we consider “money” in the first place.
Web3 promises not only to democratize the internet but to give more ownership—and potentially economic power—to creators. In The Metaverse Economy (Kogan Page, Aug.), fintech experts Arun Krishnakumar and Theodora Lau explore decentralized finance, token-based economies, and the economic principles driving business in Web3. “In the new economic model that’s emerging,” Krishnakumar says, “if you create value for the ecosystem, you should accrue value from the ecosystem. Before, when people took your data, you got nothing in return. That won’t be the case anymore.”
Given Web3’s association with digital currencies, however, what creators get in return might not look like money as we know it today. Tokens (Verso, Oct.) by Rachel O’Dwyer, a lecturer at National College of Art and Design (Dublin), looks at digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Dogecoin and explores the ramifications of an economic system in which technology platforms operate as banks.
She cites as an example the Amazon-owned live-streaming service Twitch, on which users can buy “bits” to tip streamers. $1.40 worth of bits is cashed out by the streamer at $1, with Amazon keeping the rest. Such tokens are “money-ish things,” O’Dwyer says, “both more or less than money.” And platforms can use them to maximize their profits and to keep users in their thrall.
Echoing a concern raised by many people interviewed for this article, Metaverse Economy coauthor Lau cautions that human beings, not technology, will need to ensure equitable access to this new, rapidly evolving internet. “Web3 allows more people to participate in the new economy, but who is at the table?” she asks. “Who has a voice to lead it where it needs to go?”
Liz Scheier is a writer, editor, and product strategist living in Washington, D.C. She is the author of the memoir Never Simple.
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