Blockchain technology continues to disrupt many major industries worldwide. By changing the way people interact and do business, Blockchain is leading us to a new “digital reality.”

Blockchain helps us connect

Social media is an important tool to staying connected. Blockchain is taking social media to the next level, by changing the means of content distribution, revenue generation and data security.

Melvin Petties, Blockchain evangelist, explains:

“Blockchain gives social media a new way to express social status and connection as a currency or tradeable asset.”

In much the same way as carbon credits work, we might eventually see a world in which social favors are tracked and referenced, then traded. He notes that platforms like LinkedIn could easily implement something like this to help people measure the true depth of their support network.

Blockchain enables privacy

Blockchain technology also offers privacy features. Internet and mobile users have been taught to expect constant privacy violations. However, Blockchain technology can be used to regain this lost privacy.

Jade Mulholland, Founder and Lead Developer of the social network alternative with advanced privacy Nexus, tells Cointelegraph:

“By decentralizing and encrypting all downloads and uploads, all [privacy] invasions that large companies and corporations are currently performing are eliminated, end-to-end encryption ensures that only the sender and receiver can read the messages between themselves.”

Mulholland explains Blockchain enables the creation of such system without sacrificing the various benefits that exist within other networks such as posting, making comments, sharing of posts, tagging people and so on.

The emergence of digital reality

"Our reality is now digital,” says Derin Cag, Board Member at Humaniq.

Cag explains that there are new tools for mass communication and societal influence which are shifting the paradigm. In addition to “old media” such as newspapers, radio and TV, we now have social media. Digital platforms such as Facebook and Twitter provide nearly everybody to reach an international audience at a very low cost.

Cag says:

“Although the mainstream social media platforms make billions each year from advertising revenues, they do not reward their users financially. Blockchain technology is transforming this by paying people their fair-share to post things, such as in the case of Steem.it. The next frontier in terms of Blockchain technology developments in mass communications will most likely be in decentralization.”

Cag also explains that there will be a complete democratization of access to information with upcoming platforms on distributed ledgers. Such ledgers depend on Blockchain technology and cannot be interrupted, censored or impeded. No dictator, authoritarian regime or snoopy government will have the power to block such platforms without completely switching off the Internet.

Authenticity of data

Nawaf Abdullah, Founder at eBitcoinics believes that the immutability of data stored on the Blockchain is an essential benefit that the technology brings to the social media industry.

According to Nawaf:

“Any layman understands Blockchain basically as a ... path that can never be broken, whatever it is that we have on the Blockchain can never be altered and this establishes the concept of trust when it comes to data.”

He notes that social media is all about data and that Blockchain, therefore, improves security and trust by assuring users that content has not been manipulated.

Social media is just one area that the Blockchain is revolutionizing. As Blockchain continues to improve various industries, we are likely seeing the beginning of a digital reality. Further disruption appears inevitable.