Baba Diallo, Director of Creator Relations at Calaxy discusses emerging growth trends surrounding today’s digital creator economy:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Baba, tell us about yourself and more about the Calaxy platform…

I’m Baba Diallo and I am the Director of Creator Relations at Calaxy. I’m responsible for drawing the top talent of the creator industry to Calaxy, particularly celebrity influencers who want to harness the power of the new creator economy to monetize their communities and develop more meaningful relationships with their fans.

Calaxy is a next-generation social platform redefining the creator-fan relationship. Calaxy does this by providing a more direct and personalized way for fans and creators to connect. It’s a gateway for creators to onramp into Web3, while still maintaining the Web2 feel, and access new methods of monetization, finally receiving the true value for the content they create – something that is currently overshadowed by Web2 social media incumbents.

Before I stepped into this role, and into the Web3 field more generally, I spent a number of years recruiting professional sports talent in basketball and developing teams across the United States alongside Danny Manning, former No.1 NBA basketball coach, and Dave Leitao, former ACC coach of the year and current head coach of City Reapers. Working with high-level athletes allowed me to segue into the world of entertainment and the creator economy due to their symbiotic relationship. As part of my position at Calaxy, I leverage the skills I learn from working with these contemporary influencers to build trust and foster a collaborative relationship within the community.

How are you seeing the creator economy evolve in today’s ecosystem and what type of features/technologies do you feel will become more dominant across this space over the years?

Without a doubt, the creator economy has evolved considerably over the past few years, now representing a fundamental, and essentially unmissable opportunity for creators. The most prolific shift that has taken place in the space is the move toward decentralization. While this economy has proven very popular in the Web2 world, with social media giants such as Instagram and Tiktok playing a large part in pioneering these frameworks, creators and fans have always been limited in the ways they can connect.

Web3 strives to change this by bringing neoteric touch points into the ecosystem, for example, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), digital collectibles, online metaverse events, and direct-to-fan social layers. I expect that these technologies will become even more relevant within the creator economy in the years to come.

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Can you throw light on some innovative technologies that you’ve seen in the recent past add value to the typical fan-follower-creator relationship? How do you feel these type of tools will grow in future in terms of capabilities and demand?

One of the most interesting technologies that I’ve seen introduced to the ecosystem, as a result of the Web3 movement, has been the creation of verifiable and authenticated digital identities. Creating an irrefutable link between a product and the creator prompts a more trusting system and ultimately gives rise to an immersive experience for creators and fans alike. Influencers can tie their digital identity to their content, and in a similar light, fans can link their community identity to their personal profile, deepening the sense of loyalty and belonging within these communities, and bolstering communication between fans. I suspect that the employment of digital identities within the creator economy will act as a key growth driver, especially as the applications of digital NFTs and ‘phygital’ collectibles become more diversified and widely utilized by influencers and brands.

What do you feel brands need to do more of to engage with their online communities/fans as digital marketplaces take up more prominence across industries?

I believe that the most organic and powerful way for brands to grow their online community is to shift the control of that community into the hands of their fans and consumers. Members of the community should be placed at the center of the action, with active opportunities to manage the direction of the brand and offer their ideas for improving the brand’s products and services.

Brands need to utilize discussion forums, online polls, and community-steered events, to garner honest feedback and forge a medium where the community feels that they can truly contribute to the brand’s success.

A few thoughts on the impact of AI across these tools/the creator market that you’d like to comment on? 

While it is impossible to predict the exact impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the creator market, I suspect that AI will carve a new path for creators to diversify their audiences. For example, AI could be used to translate content into different languages, allowing creators to access markets that were previously closed to them. To the same tune, AI could improve creator discoverability, recommending creators to relevant individuals on the social network, based on their online social brands and digital presences.

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A few common misconceptions about the modern creator economy you’d like to dispel?

One of the most salient misconceptions that comes up in conversations around the modern creator economy is that it is reserved exclusively for pre-established influencers who already have a pronounced profile and fan following in the industry. This is wholly untrue;  there is no pre-set number of followers that defines how successful a creator will be in this economy. As a matter of fact, broadening the creator market to push promising influencers and upcoming creators into the space is one of the core objectives of this new paradigm. By empowering individuals to access new revenue streams for their content, the creator economy enables inchoate creators to bolster their personal brands and existing communities, without the need to obtain support from expensive and selective intermediaries.