Translating Web3 Assets for Global Market Reach
In eCommerce, effective global reach requires carefully coordinating countless details. But when the medium fundamentally changes, companies must suddenly take a 10,000-foot view. How will a changing digital infrastructure alter how customers shop and engage with online brands? That's what Web3 invites us to consider, especially regarding the most fundamental medium of exchange: language.
Communication Drives eCommerce (Technology Just Keeps Up)
When the French mail order Minitel provided the first glimpse of a national eCommerce platform in the 1980s, it blazed a lonely and forgotten trail. Only later did an entirely new telecommunications network fully tread that path and expand commercial boundaries internationally.
By contrast, the more primitive Minitel remained insular, never expanding beyond its original scope. It's even been held as an example of when an emerging technology stalls rather than accelerates global market integration. The World Wide Web has undoubtedly expanded global market reach. However, its ability to develop further may have reached a limit better surpassed by a new network model.
Having thoroughly increased global trade, Web 2.0 has become a double-edged sword for economic prosperity and restriction, depending on who you ask. While it's undoubtedly increased the sum-total trade of goods and services, the internet has also made it easy for policymakers to enact increasing barriers to digital services, including:
Payment systems
Electronic transactions
Intellectual property rights
Digital public infrastructure
Today, many are placing their hopes in Web3 to help overcome these barriers. Much of its attention is on the new types of products, services, and business strategies presented by Web3.
More than anything, companies gunning for global market reach should focus on how translating their digital properties into a Web3-friendly form can carry their brand's message far into the next digital frontier. It wouldn't be the first time peer-to-peer and peer-to-many networking transformed the global economy.
Reflections of the Past
To avoid as much Web3 hype (or derision) as possible, we'll restrict our view to the technical possibilities of Web3. Such a view will ground (but not stunt) expectations of "Web 3.0," however ubiquitous it may or may not become with global internet usage.
That perspective proved most useful throughout Web 2.0's turbulent history. Then, a company's primary survival mechanism was its ability to find tangible economic value amidst grandiose claims and counterclaims. To the extent the same can happen here, that will reveal Web3's essential utility in the global marketplace.
For instance, dot-com-era speculation fueled what became the backbone of modern eCommerce, but only after risking a significant economic depression. At the turn of the millennium, a zeal for expansion simultaneously:
Normalized eCommerce, and
Devalued itself by 78% just two years after fueling record NASDAQ figures
Those who rode out the dot-com storm adapted to rapidly changing conditions. Then, they found themselves capable of setting the conditions of eCommerce today. Tapping into global markets with Web3 will undoubtedly involve similar victories and losses—likely with even more dramatic flair.
Adjusting Your Sails Accordingly
Companies willing to invest in today's equally uncertain digital landscape will face similar market elasticity. What's more insightful, though, is how the most enduring dot-com winners of the past relied on free market activity that's nearly impossible to fake: customer engagement.
More specifically, customer-driven engagement kept the likes of eBay afloat. Companies like Pets.com and Worldcom relied on the sheer mass-marketing force. Their target markets proved unwilling to justify attempts at staking it all on mass-market appeal. By contrast, eBay gave voice to their users.
They encouraged customers to engage with the platform and each other in pursuit of the best deals. Of course, it only spawned yet another iteration of self-limiting eCommerce success. At first, customers just had a taste of true peer-to-peer global eCommerce. Now, they're practically demanding it.
Charting New Terrain
These predictable shifts (because what customer will tolerate barriers if they don't have to?) have steadily raised interest in Web3. For some, it's the final economic and technological disruption to global commercial hegemony, the antidote to digital intermediaries everywhere. To whatever extent that's true, it's essential to consider if it has equal potential for disrupting world trade.
Blockchain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) won't become a panacea to top-down regulatory control as we've seen with Bitcoin. Without widespread adoption of an open source and private-by-design alternative, blockchain can be an unbreakable consolidation of digital assets, both financial and purely informational. Add to it the possibility of blockchain contracts, asset securitization, and medical records; it is another tool to be used or misused.
So what's different? Web3's core is its ability to exchange digital data and quickly verify it was received strictly as intended. Major venture capital firms see enough reason to plant a stake in it, to whatever extent they have sophisticated plans or are merely jockeying for position. However, what should interest most mid-market or small enterprises is how intrinsically valuable Web3 is as a communications medium.
Build More | Deconstruct Less
Disruption doesn't mean destroying. It can just as readily mean harnessing what's been made and amplifying its benefits. Entire sub-industries will likely emerge to facilitate digital asset migrations to Web3, with varying degrees of success. At its best, there will be no appreciable loss in what's already been created with Web 2.0.
As companies gradually get a handle on omnichannel presence and SaaS-based business tool integrations, for example, they'll be eager to maintain the gains already made. Web3 may fundamentally alter how the internet functions. But it won't simply erase the hard-won techniques developed with the traditional World Wide Web. Lightning-fast transactions and direct P2P communications are just as possible, and more so, with Web3.
Breaking communication barriers will make what's already working more readily available. The market will operate independently of many digital gatekeepers who have shown a desire to restrict availability. In the end, a company's success in expanding its reach to global markets will likely hinge on its skill at translation and quality of service. In a peer-to-peer environment, why press your marketing goals at every turn?
Only the crowd's wisdom, when not interfered with, can most efficiently decide which brands are worthy of continued success. Simply scale your public exposure up. Then, watch them dictate the rise and fall of Web3 fortunes better than any stock valuation. For global markets, the true measure of success will be mass acceptance first and investor activity second.
This was almost true even before the World Wide Web became as consolidated as it is now. However, the allure of fast, guaranteed ROIs proved more attractive than the possibility of a limitless global economy (at least digitally). Now, companies have a chance to choose again. More importantly, so will their customers.
Translating Insights Into Functioning Global Technologies
Web3 marks a significant turning point in how digital assets can be shared between almost any two points of the globe. In such a world, rapid translation will be essential in facilitating the movement of blockchain-backed data, including finances and trade. If the regulatory obstacles don't grow disproportionately to the benefits, as they did with Web 2.0, Web3 may render consolidated controls of the world's economic and information-sharing mechanisms obsolete.
In a changing world, closing the gaps between research and application in the sectors most significantly impacting your trade or business is essential.