Guest Editorial: Media Entrepreneurship and Web 3.0, the way passed, the way forward

Abstract

Media entrepreneurship in Web 3.0 is focused on the entrepreneurial activities of individual entrepreneurs and small media firms. Web 3.0 and social media platforms have provided a unique opportunity for start-ups and small businesses, which enables them to propose value to the demanding customers (Labafi and Williams, 2018). The Web 3.0 concept describes social communication platforms that adds the element of cooperation to the communication characteristics evident in Web 2.0 and the cognition characteristic evident in Web 1.0 (Fochs, 2017). Social media platforms enables media and technological start-ups to offer their innovations without market entry barriers. Today, social media platforms is a significant breeder of entrepreneurial pursuits.

The entrepreneurial possibilities created by web 3.0 has been of interest to researchers in the study of media entrepreneurship. The value proposition presented by social media platforms has led to a heightened interest in its utilization for entrepreneurial activities by creative individuals and small firms.. Hoag and compain (2006) were the first scholars who presented a definition for media entrepreneurship. Since then, several scholars have studied this subject. These scholars include, Hoag (2008), Achtenhagen (2008, 2017), Hang (2016), Will et al (2016), Khajeheian (2016, 2017), Price-Schultz and Jones (2017), and Hasenpusch and Baumann (2017). In most recent and comprehensive definition, Khajeheian (2017) defined media entrepreneurship as “ taking the risk to exploit opportunities (creation/ discovery) by innovative use of (radical/incremental/imitative) resources (ownership/control) in transform of an idea into activities to offer value (creation/delivery) in a media form (content/platform/user data) that meets the need of a specific portion of market (businesses or consumers), either in an individual effort or by creation of new venture or entrepreneurial managing of an existing organizational entity and to earn benefit (money/attention/favourite behaviour) from one of the sources that is willing to pay for (direct consumers, advertisers, data demanders or any customer of generated information of consumers).”

 The interest in this subject experienced a sharp growth in 2017. This signalled the growing importance of web platforms and social media to entrepreneurial activities. Within this time, there was also significant growth to social media start-ups and firms. They provided economic contribution via employment and innovation. Growth in these areas increased the importance of media entrepreneurship as an area of interest and as a field of study.