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Later this summer Zoop It will debut as a place where fans can interact with celebrities and athletes using unique avatars. Zoop was founded by Tim Stokely and RJ Phillips of the previously highly successful (if pornographic) social media site OnlyFans. Inspired by the old-fashioned way of trading and buying baseball cards, it was brought into the blockchain era. Recently, Observer Editor-in-Chief James Leadbetter interviewed Philips. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Observer: Zoop is interesting because it occupies this kind of Web 2.0, Web 3.0 space where fans can interact. Please tell me how you came up with the idea.
Philips: We wanted to bring 3D avatars to life so that they would be of great use and users would be unavoidably involved based on technical know-how. This means that the barriers to entry are very low. But in the future, anyone who has or believes to have followers can come to Zoop, upload their ID, create a base avatar, and work on the theme. The idea is that you will be able to do it. Then drop these cool different additions of your avatar in different styles. And the market determines the price they want to pay them. They can go and do what they want to do with them: they want to collect them to receive rewards, they want to collect them to join the community, or they collect them. You can redeem directly for other avatars in our in-app game.
As I understand, what you just explained is a little further. At first, we’re a little more focused on celebrities and athletes.
We will launch what we call the Nova, people with up to 5-7 million followers. There are 100 in each set of the new star categories. And every week, new people are added. The first people we dropped in the first week will then release a second edition that week. From day one, people will be able to collect these avatars and join the community. And some of them are sponsor brands.
Who do you think your target users are? Who comes to Zoo and why?
That’s a really good question. I don’t really know, so I’m discussing a lot internally. One of the things we can tell from our past lives is where celebrities send their fans. You can clearly see that this relationship between celebrities and fans is strong. The celebrities we’re talking about also understand that the impractical, independent NFT projects are leaving fans with a bad taste, especially if they’re published at the top of the market. We have seen it happen over and over again. These fans are still holding something they can’t do anything about. So celebrities may like Japanese TikTokers or college baseball players about what we’re doing. They like that Zoop provides the utilities behind what we publish.
To be precise, what is a utility?
It is the participation of those communities. If you have that avatar, you will be automatically added to the community of celebrities you purchased. For example, you may be a fan who supports musicians, but not music labels or associations above them. We can offer direct and consumer relationships that they do not have today.
What is your business model? How does Zoop make money?
We charge a small fee to those who sell avatars to the secondary market. Then we also charge the brand to create a community around what we are doing.
These are NFTs and are blockchain based. I just wanted to be clear about it.
That’s a great question. thank you. The word NFT does not appear on our website or marketing. That’s because it blocks the users we’re targeting, right? We are a 3D collection and utilize NFT technology. (Fan) You don’t need to know the word to be able to interact with what we are building.
This interview was originally published in Creators, a newsletter about the people who drive the creator economy. Put it in your inbox before you go online.
