Q&A with Web3 Marketing Network Founder & CEO, Dan Barry

Dibbs:  Hello, can you please tell our readers and our viewers a little bit about yourself and who you are? 

Dan: My name is Dan Barry. I'm based in Los Angeles and a marketing enthusiast and I'm a technology enthusiast. The theme today for Web3 – I'm deep into Web3 marketing and currently I have a consulting firm and primarily working with companies that are in the Web3 space. Most recently, I was a global president for an international digital marketing company, and my entire career has been either starting businesses where marketing has been a really huge factor. I think every business, marketing is really important. At this particular point in my life, I'm very deep into the Web3 space and enjoying every minute.

Dibbs: Can you describe how you initially got into Web3 and blockchain? 

Dan: In 2017, I was based in Singapore. I was CEO of Insider TV and Insider TV at the time was the largest producer of travel video content in Asia-Pacific. I got a call from a friend of mine. And this friend I had actually helped him get his business started in China. He was like, "Dan, I'm in the process of getting started with this project where it's going to be marketing for ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings)."

And he says," I'd love it if you could join me on that." And I'm like, "You mean IPOs, right?" And he goes like, "No, ICOs." And I'm like, "What the heck is that?" Like most people entering Web3 space, I had to do everything I could to just learn about the space.

Dibbs: You've said in the past that "Web3 is tech that actually serves a greater purpose." How do you think that Web3 is gonna transform the future? 

Dan: For my lifetime, I think the major tech shifts that I've seen are the computer, internet and probably mobile phone, and then mobile phone then becoming smartphone. With Web3, this is probably going to be the last major tech shift that I'm going to see in my lifetime. I think that's what makes it even more exciting. Earlier in your life you have these things and you enjoy them and you get involved with them. Now it's like, "Wow, this is going to be the last one." Web3 is new architecture and the internet was like new architecture. And whenever you have a new architecture, it gives businesses and industries the ability to completely revolutionize how they are doing business. We're in this state right now where you've got the early movers who understand this, and they're starting to get involved in terms of making those changes. And then you've got other companies who are kind of denying it. It's like, "Oh, it's not a big deal, blah, blah, blah." And then you've got all these different layers – you've got tokenization, you've got NFTs, you've got the Metaverse, you've got holograms, VR, AR. This is just so exciting from a marketing standpoint, which is what I'm in.

Dibbs: You mentioned that accounting with the introduction of the personal computer was a huge paradigm shift in recent history. Now, we have blockchain technology, which acts as a trustless, public and transparent authentication for transacting tokens. Many non-Web3 native people are really skeptical of it, but we need mass adoption in order for this technology to succeed. How do you think we can mitigate this skepticism?

Dan: It's going to take time, like early on with the internet. To answer your specific question, what is it gonna take for Web3 to become popular, to get mass adoption? It's really going to be making it much easier. That's going to be what causes it to get used, and then having a reason for people to want to do it.

Every technology is going to have this scenario where it's difficult in the beginning and it just keeps getting easier and easier and then more people will adopt it. I hear people talking about, "Wallets are so difficult to set up." I'm not sure if it was all that much more difficult than dealing with dial-up back in the day with the internet! And even if you go back to the first days of the computer, in the beginning with computers, there was no graphical user interface. Every technology is difficult; it gets easier and then more people will jump into it. It's the user experience at the end of the day.

Dibbs: Talking a little bit more about your role here in Web3, you're obviously a marketer through and through, and that's what's closest to your heart. Without blowing up your spot too much, would you be able to give the readers a little taste of what brands can do to invest in their Web3 strategies for an optimal return at this point? 

Dan: I really feel that we're in this Web2.5 space, where we're probably five to 10 years away from really having a true Web3 experience. Different brands are going to be trying different things that are going to have Web3 components. Nike is selling digital shoes on Roblox. So NFTs – the digital shoes, in fact, are a Web3 component. Roblox, it's a metaverse type of environment, so it's kind of a Web3 type of environment. What Nike is doing is Web2.5: they're doing some Web3 stuff in a Web2 environment.

You've got true Web3 companies, like DeFi, et cetera. At the end of the day, it really kind of depends on what the brand is, what their goals are. You've got some companies that are just doing NFTs just to ensure supply chains, so every company has to kind of look at " What makes our industry unique? How is Web3 really going to affect our industry?" I think travel will be really good for the Metaverse. You can maybe do  a 15 minute virtual trip somewhere and it's like, "This is awesome. I wanna actually go and travel there." My recommendation would be to know your business. Are there any other companies within their particular industry that are doing some interesting things in the Web3 space?

The really cool thing about Web3 right now is that it's so collaborative. Whenever I go to Web3 conferences, everybody's trying to help everybody. Even if you have a competitor that's in the space, they would love to collaborate. It's this time to be in Web3 where it's just so much fun and very collaborative.

Nobody really knows where Web3 is going to be in 10 years. We all have our guesses. It was interesting. The CEO of Polygon yesterday is saying, "Avalanche and Solana and all of these other layer one projects, they're all just gonna disappear." Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong. But there's so many different people in this space that have their opinions in terms of what's gonna happen in five to 10 years. Truth be told, nobody really knows. 

Dibbs: What possibilities or opportunities do you see Web3 opening up for the brands that you love and use?

Dan: The space itself is so exciting. If you look at the Metaverse angle, the metaverse is perfect for any company that has a lot of content. I have a lot of eyes on Disney and Bob Iger in terms of seeing what they're going to do.

But the fact that you've got all of these different elements like AI, VR, AR, tokenization, blockchain - there's just so many elements that are all kind of growing together. Web3 isn't just one. It's not just the metaverse, it's not just VR, it's not just AR, it's kind of everything. We're still in the early, early stages. To answer your question in terms of where everything's going and my feeling about that is, just keep watching and seeing what's happening in Web3 cuz it's changing every day.

There are new brands that are kind of getting involved in it every day. eBay is getting really big into NFTs. Amazon is doing like a metaverse for eSports. Amazon to me, the whole immersive shopping is going to become really huge, as well.

To me, what would really be important for brands is just to get started as soon as possible because you don't wanna be in a situation where other brands and competitors have been experimenting, understanding where the space is at, where it's going, and if you jump in too late, your competitors are gonna have a huge head start and then you're in trouble. Start understanding, learning the space, even if it's not going to impact your business immediately from an ROI standpoint, from day one. It potentially could be the difference between staying in business and being successful in the future. 

Watch Dan's full interview now!