I’ve only ever asked one question:
How do people become fans of things?
After 25 years, I’ve trained a machine to ask it of your world.
Matt Hart
In 2014 we designed this. We just could not build it.
The method was already twelve years old. A crazy talented designer friend drew the whole product we imagined would truly serve our clients: the Cone as a live dashboard of real-time-ish data, fan segments bleeding into each other, pulling quote cards to showcase real people, and the machine written report.
It was right and it was unbuildable. What changed since is not the idea. What changed is the technology capability now able to deliver it.
Twenty five years as a fandom pioneer.
At Radio 1 in 2001 to 2005 the method added five million fans. At Spotify it inspired new innovations that helped add 100 million new fans. At American Idol it helped understand the biggest voted moments in television history.
At Sony Music, Warner Music, the BBC, Cisco, Unicef and dozens more, it found the people who would carry each artist, brand, and campaign forward by giving them something worth belonging to. Twenty five years. The same truth, proven in a different context every time.
Fandom beats customers. Belonging beats transaction. Depth beats reach.
Keep it in the room, or open it.
At some point in those twenty five years a choice appeared. Keep going project by project. High fees, a short list of clients we love working with. Great work, real impact, and permanently out of reach for almost everyone who needs it.
Or crack it open? Take the method, the frameworks, the twenty five years of cases and mistakes and proof, and the actual intelligence used on real client work. Package it so clearly that anyone building for fans can pick it up and go. Or anyone wanting to!
That is why Superfandom exists.
Participation, then co-creation, then ownership.
Fandom is heading somewhere. Toward fans who do not just belong to a world, but hold a real share of the one they helped build.
The protocol is FAN. The income idea inside it is Universal Fan Income. It is research and it is a vision. It is not an offer. It is published in the open, for the people who want to help build what comes next.
Read The Future of Fandom