World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) welcomes Snake Nation into its membership as the first recipient of a Grant for the Web inclusion grant

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Grant for the Web welcome new W3C member Snake Nation whose social media platform offers Web monetization and greater access to the web for diverse voices.

The World Wide Web Consortium develops global Web standards that help ensure access for all, with a vision for one, interoperable World Wide Web for all humanity. In early 2021 the Web Consortium announced its collaboration with Grant for the Web, a program of the Interledger Foundation. Together the organizations aim to ensure that the proposals, grantees, and community of the Grant for the Web program will shape the emerging Web Monetization ecosystem so that it supports scalable, global, and open standardization.

Snake Nation awarded first W3C Grant for the Web inclusion grant

W3C and Grant for the Web are also working together to identify geographic areas of growth,  target programs and development opportunities for these regions, as well as Inclusion Grants to underwrite new W3C memberships in lower income countries. Snake Nation joins the Web Consortium today as the first of these new members.

Snake Nation is a mission-driven, culture, content and technology company based in Cape Town, South Africa and Atlanta, USA. The company’s mission is to enable equity in the creative economy for diverse creators by giving them the tools to own their individual narrative. The company does so via a new kind of social media platform, SnakeNation.io where members are incentivized for engaging with content like posting, flame-ups, comments and shares and can earn digital currency. By linking creative and economic freedom and tapping into the intersection of culture and technology, millennials now have at their fingertips a powerful means of alleviating youth unemployment and poverty.

Their new media platform and digital currency launched recently in South Africa and aims to target creatives across this African country. Snake Nation has already founded creative college societies with access to an audience of over 8-million Multicultural Millennial creators and consumers. Snake Nation also drives awareness and participation in Southern Africa on 52 campuses and reaches 600k students.

Incorporating diverse perspectives from across the globe

“We’re excited to welcome Snake Nation as our first recipient of the W3C & Grant for the Web Membership scholarship,” says Dominique Hazael-Massieux, W3C Developer Relations Lead. “We believe passionately that to ensure that the Web achieves its role as a universal platform for humanity, its design needs to incorporate diverse perspectives from across the globe. Participation by organizations like Snake Nation is vital to W3C’s and Grant for the Web’s vision – we will have more creativity, more innovation and ultimately, a better web for everybody.“

“Media consumption has changed, and so has the world,” says SnakeNation.io CEO and Tech Visionary, Karl Carter.  “Millennials watch what they want, when they want and how they want. They have the buying power to move the needle and their diverse stories are not reflected in traditional media. We are thankful and excited to be recognized by W3C and Grant for The Web for our work to create a more just and equitable internet. We know that in our mission to create more equity in the creative economy, web monetization is a major tool that can create massive change for those creators and youth who use the web to earn a living. Having access to the world class tools, network and community of W3C and GFTW will help propel our collective missions forward.“

“Snake Nation’s unique approach to tackling a number of key issues immediately grabbed our attention,” says Chris Lawrence, Senior Program Manager from Grant for the Web. “Their unique take on the platform addresses key issues like community via social media to promote creators, equity by monetizing the web via crypto and education by ensuring equal access to all.“