Reddit has open sourced the database of their most valuable users

Yes, I am talking about the collectible avatars represented on a public blockchain. Let me explain.

For most web2 companies, the most valuable thing they own is their user table. This is the core of their business and literally everything is tied to it. It drives all parts of the company and most of the business is focused around growing and protecting this data. It goes without saying that this data is proprietary and secret since it is basically priceless. The list of the most valuable companies on the planet is dominated by who has the largest and most developed user tables.

Now Reddit comes along and breaks the mold by making their most valuable user data public. This is actually an incredible risky move. If you were a Reddit competitor, you now have a list of users that you could target for your platform.

But I think this is actually genius and will paradoxically make Reddit far more valuable than it already is. You can draw parallels to how companies used to think about internet content in the AOL days. They would try to keep it all locked in a walled garden and trap the user there. Turns out that a website with zero content that only linked to outside websites (search engine) was far more valuable than the walled gardens. We are about to go through a similar shift in respect to user data and social media. Facebook is the equivalent of AOL with their user data walled garden and even their approach of buying up adjacent properties to keep users's trapped is similar.

What this open data will do in practice is create an environment where a startup can growth-hack their user data by piggy-backing on top of Reddit. They can bypass one of the most difficult parts of starting a new company which is acquiring users. The implications of this will not be immediately noticeable, but over a longer period of time, this will completely change the existing web2 landscape. This can go the other way as well of course as Reddit can start importing valuable things from the blockchain to make their systems more interesting.

From a user perspective, this also creates a subtle but important shift as well. It makes your Reddit identity more valuable because it can now useful for other things. You are more likely to invest time and resources into that identity as opposed to other closed platforms.

But SavageX, aren't we just talking about Jpegs here? Why is this such a big deal? No, the Jpeg is just one piece of the user data, we can program in as much data to that token as we want. We are just looking at the tip of the iceberg.

This is the kind of process that starts slow, then starts snowballing, and eventually forces everyone to join. This may sound preposterous, but I would say that the companies who refuse to open their data will eventually become irrelevant in the face of their more open competitors.

Of course, what we are talking about here is ultimately web3. New business models for digital companies. Welcome to the future!