Lessons from Forbes’ digital transformation to Web3, NFTs and the metaverse

It’s not every day you hear about a 105-year-old exploring the Web3 and experimenting with NFTs. But for the American business news magazine Forbes, it’s just another day at the office.

This week at VentureBeat’s Transform 2022 event, Forbes CTO Vadim Supitskiy detailed insights from the media company’s digital transformation efforts — including its early steps into metaverse-style engagement.

Capturing and engaging a digital audience

As a large legacy publisher, Forbes doesn’t have to worry about gaining readership. It reports an average readership of more than 150 million a month combined across platforms. Instead, the company aims at how to keep that core element of the business and mission actively engaged.

“We try to engage the audience in all these domains: the traditional ones, the video, the audio and the storytelling on the website,” Supitskiy said. “Now with Web3, we’re trying to do the same in the metaverse. The world is changing, and we want to be where the audience is and want to present information in the most convenient and fun way.”

Arguably, nothing has changed the way news is consumed more than the internet in the 20th century and the gateway to the creation of social media in the early 2000s. Forbes was an early adopter of both — the site came online in 1996 and the publication followed suit, joining its social media peers as it flourished around 2005.

Not one to shy away from new technologies, the company also embraced streaming and in 2019 launched its own service, called Forbes8, which was described as “Netflix for entrepreneurs.” The effort quickly evolved to become part of Forbes’ regular news content as a dedicated section aimed at “inspiring entrepreneurs”.

Given the company’s tech-forward mentality, it’s not surprising that it’s already taking steps to engage with readers in a way that aligns with the next iteration of emerging web technology: NFTs, the metaverse, and Web3.

Last year, in a first for the publishing industry, Forbes auctioned one of its magazine covers as an NFT – which sold for $333,333. The profits were donated to the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Women’s Media Foundation.

This year, it went a step further, expanding this effort to engage the public by selling a collection of fictional billionaire NFTs – each linked interactively to an imaginary stock market portfolio. Each day, based on the real-world performance of the New York Stock Exchange, your Forbes NFT grades move up or down in rankings – just like an evolving Forbes list.

“We have an extremely large and engaged audience around Web3, blockchain and crypto … It’s important for us to engage our audience there with something we’re known for like the Forbes lists,” Supitskiy said. “In general, we want to continue building in that area. We want to bring more benefit. We want to engage our users with Web3, Web2 and the metaverse and really create that environment. We are definitely early in the journey, but we will be doing more and more there.

Availability meets responsibility

One of the criticisms about the metaverse, Web3 and NFT is their lack of accessibility. Experts say these technologies will ultimately work to democratize the digital world and information, but for now, it can be expensive for the average person to start dabbling in these new spaces and technologies. Even with the recent cooling of the NFT market, one still costs around $2,000 on average, according to Bloomberg research.

Not long ago, in 2019, nearly 40% of US adults reported that they could not afford a surprise, $400 emergency — so the NFT market as an entryway into the metaverse may not be attainable for everyone, even at the lowest price.

Although many Forbes readers tend to be in a good position financially — as many are C-suite executives and business leaders — accessibility to these new technologies is something the company is still thinking about as it continues to evolve, Supitskiy said.

“I want to make sure that we in the industry ourselves make it easy and frictionless. Right now, it’s obviously not as easy for everyone to access it, he said. “You need to get a wallet, buy crypto, you need to join the marketplace and buy NFT or join one of the many metaverses. While we wait for it to become frictionless, we will help to do that and will work in that area as well [while we] engage the audience there.”

A Transform audience asked Supitskiy what Forbes is doing from a social responsibility perspective to help educate marginalized communities about these new technologies and level the playing field.

He said the company has a team of reporters focused on covering stories specifically about Web3, crypto, NFT and blockchain, as well as how these innovations are now and will continue to impact different communities.

“Our goal is to educate around the whole technology, but also how it affects society as well,” Supitskiy said.