At Showtime, we strive to provide creators with innovative social experiences in web3. Starting in 2021, we introduced the first “web3 social network” to let anyone discover and showcase digital art. Last summer, we launched Free NFTs (now called free drops) for creators to distribute virtual collectibles without a price tag:

Removing the financial aspect out of collectibles changed the game. Since each collector is counted as a follower on Showtime, creators began to use drops to grow their audience on Showtime. Collectors can showcase their taste on their Showtime profile and any app that displays your collectibles like Instagram, OpenSea and Rainbow.

To our own surprise, we noticed the sudden rise of AI art creators happen at the same time of our launch: thanks to tools like MidJourney and Stable Diffusion, we collected artworks from creators such as Lazul, Sunset (read her Showtime story here), ghosty and many more. Some created new drops every day and attracted dozens of thousands of followers in a just a few months – way above their other social network performance. For AI artists, Showtime is a home to experiment their craft without the pressure from “selling” to marketplaces.

Five months later, over 1 million free drops have been collected on Showtime. (source: Dune Analytics).

After interviewing hundreds creators, we realized most were excited to grow their audience in web3 with consistency, instead of dropping a paid NFT every now and then. On Showtime, many creators started to create new drops every day (sometimes called drop “series”) to increase their follower count, where collectors compete for the longest collection “streak”. How many drops you have determines how much of a fan you are of a particular creator. We quickly realized the need to formalize the strong connection to a creator and their most engaged fans was starting to surface. Creators want to get to know their community deeper and reward them for their loyalty. Organically, we noticed creators used Showtime drops to have collectors follow them on Instagram, buy their (paid!) NFTs on marketplaces, join their Telegram groupchat and more.

By the end of January, free drops will be replaced by Superfans drops: collectibles for your top fans.

This change will let people prove they’re your top fans. Those collectibles will be labels that they can take anywhere to prove they are one of your biggest supporters.

Note for current Showtime creators: nothing is needed from your side!

• Creators will still be able to post daily on Showtime, via Posts. Posts are not collectibles – simply the old regular social media post type you know and love, that people can add to their collection.

• By adding a post to their collection, creators will still earn followers, just like free drops you know and love. Each new collector becomes a follower of yours.

There are three types of superfan drops:

• Music Drop: save or pre-save a song on Spotify to earn a free collectible

• Event Drop: mark yourself present at a live event to earn a free collectible

• Private Drop: fill out a password (given away by an artist at their discretion) to earn a free collectible.

We believe this change will enable you to get to know who most loyal fans are and engage with them in a more intimate way. Soon, we will build for you to reach out to your top fans.

So if you're a creator looking to connect with your top fans, or a fan looking to support your favorite artist in a more meaningful way, stay tuned for our future releases, and come try us out at showtime.xyz to start collecting drops today!

With superfan love,
The Showtime team ✦