To: Six (screenshotessays.eth)
Congrats on getting your first 100 unique collectors!
Over the last 6 weeks, it's been awesome to see your journey of posting & minting screenshot essays.
To me, the coolest part about screenshot essays is that it gives off early internet blogging vibes. Similar to the folks in the '90s like Justin Hall and Dave Winer who were quickly posting their thoughts and having fun with it.
Simply put, visiting your Zora page gives off this raw, nostalgic energy: white background, black text, and daily entries.
And just as these early internet pioneers were toying around with online blogging, you're experimenting with this nascent idea of onchain blogging.
What's interesting about your approach is that if you think of Screenshotessays as an experiment, it's like you're keeping the writing and publishing as controlled variables. No catchy titles, marketing, newsletter platforms, etc.
Instead, you're testing a new variable that will define the next era of content on the internet: minting. Just plain text directly uploaded onto Zora.
In 37 posts, you've already hit 100 unique collectors. That means there are a 100 people who discovered, purchased, & now own your writing forever. It sounds simple but is honestly absurd. To quote one of your own essays:
Minting is an energy transfer between a creator and a collector. The commitment of money sent over a peer-to-peer network imbues meaning into the work and the creator-collector relationship.
Today, it's a small group of people in our crypto circles that are treating this concept like a fun experiment. In a few decades from now, the hope is that it'll be weird for anyone to think that people didn't own the content they wanted to on the internet.
So, what's my point?
Well, as you continue to publish your essays, grow your collectors, and hit your 100th post, I'm excited to see what insights we'll learn from the experiment. More specifically, the insights from the wallets that interact with your work:
What do these wallets have in common?
What else are your collectors doing onchain?
Is there a single thread shared amongst all your collectors that leads to a community that would have never formed otherwise?
What does the graph of your collectors look like?
I'm curious to observe how you find your 1000 true fans through onchain content. Is the process expedited? Kevin Kelly wrote that post back in 2008 - watching your journey and other early onchain creators might require us to update that post.
Not that any of these questions I've proposed above are novel. But to me, they particularly stand out with what you're doing because you've stripped away a lot of the gimmicks with digital publishing. It's simply posting & collecting. This makes it clear and fun for anyone watching to see the onchain aspect of your project.
One thing to note however would be that you do post some of your essays on Warpcast, X, or both. It might be worth making a note in your essays on the ones you do just for tracking purposes.
That's all for now. I'll be reading & collecting from my side and hopefully this letter encourages other to take notice of your project and do so as well.
- YB
