Fandom Is the New Collaboration— Why "Subscribe and Like" Is a Business Strategy in the AI Era

AI Skills / Future Readiness · Series 10/12

Fandom Is the New Collaboration
— Why "Subscribe and Like" Is a Business Strategy in the AI Era

GoodTech AI March 2, 2026 8 min read

Table of Contents

1. What Is the Fandom Economy? — The Business Logic Behind Likes and Subscriptions
2. Why Naver Webtoon Made It to NASDAQ — Ecosystem Collaboration in Action
3. How Frozen Kimbap Cracked the US Market — Designing Cross-Industry Collaboration
4. How AI Is Reshaping the Collaboration Ecosystem
5. What You Can Start Doing Right Now
6. FAQ

Ask most experts what the most important collaboration skill is in the AI era, and they'll say "AI literacy" or "data analysis." But Professor Jaebeung Choi of Sungkyunkwan University — author of AI Sapiens — gives a different answer: "The ability to earn subscriptions and likes."

That sounds strange at first. Aren't subscriptions and likes the language of YouTube and Instagram? But look closely at how Taylor Swift's tour generated $5.7 billion in economic impact, how a Korean cartoonist became a core asset of a NASDAQ-listed company, and how frozen kimbap from a small Korean city became a bestseller at major US retail chains — and you begin to see: subscriptions and likes are the new language of collaboration.

This post analyzes the shift in collaboration paradigms in the AI era through concrete, real-world examples.

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What Is the Fandom Economy? — The Business Logic Behind Likes and Subscriptions

In 2023, Taylor Swift's "The Eras Tour" swept across the United States. The average fan spent $1,300 per concert visit — 4.3 times more than a typical concert. The US Travel Association reported direct economic effects of approximately $5.7 billion, with indirect effects pushing the total toward $11.8 billion. The term "Swiftonomics" was coined, and the American business world began seriously studying the fandom economy.

The key insight: Taylor Swift ran no advertising campaigns. Fans moved on their own. They shared, lined up for hours, and recommended the experience to friends. This is what Professor Choi calls the logic of the "meta world."

"All you have to do is give people a great experience, and they'll become passionate advocates who pull in their friends, creating a massive wave of economic force. Subscriptions and likes determine whether a business wins or loses."
— Prof. Jaebeung Choi, Sungkyunkwan University

From a business collaboration lens: fans sharing videos is unpaid marketing; leaving comments is unpaid feedback; standing in line is unpaid promotion. Subscriptions and likes aren't just consumer behavior — they represent a collaborative relationship between a brand and its audience.

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Why Naver Webtoon Made It to NASDAQ — Ecosystem Collaboration in Action

In June 2024, Naver Webtoon listed on NASDAQ at a market cap of approximately $2.8 billion — a historic moment for the Korean comics industry on the American stock exchange.

The old comics market was dominated by established publishers and veteran artists. Breaking in required years in a well-known studio or connections to the right publisher. Then Naver Webtoon changed one rule: rankings are decided solely by view counts. And view counts are driven by subscriptions and likes.

The numbers tell the story: the top 100 creators earned an average of approximately $1.05 million annually; cumulative payouts to creators from 2017 to 2023 totaled approximately $2.9 billion; over 900 IPs were adapted into secondary content (100 dramas, 70 games).

The Shift in Content Collaboration

Category	Legacy Model	Fandom Economy Model
Success Criteria	Publisher or broadcaster selection	Subscriptions and views (chosen by fans)
Entry Conditions	Industry connections, studio experience	Content quality alone
Revenue Model	Fixed page-rate fees	View-based royalties + IP licensing
Market Reach	Domestic publishing market	Global digital platforms
Collaboration Structure	Publisher–artist, linear relationship	Creator–platform–drama–game–fan ecosystem

Professor Choi calls this a "paradigm shift in world-view." A Korean cartoonist is no longer just a local artist — they can be a global creator. The foundation is the collaborative ecosystem that fandom builds.

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How Frozen Kimbap Cracked the US Market — Designing Cross-Industry Collaboration

A small frozen kimbap company from Gumi, a mid-sized Korean city, had failed to break into Korean convenience store chains — there was simply no market for frozen kimbap domestically.

Then the Netflix series "The Glory" — which ranked third globally in the first half of 2023 — featured a kimbap scene. The TikTok hashtag #kimbap accumulated 1.3 billion views. A Trader Joe's buyer flew to a Korean K-food expo and placed an order for 230 tonnes. The result: a record-breaking annual sales figure for a single product at GS25 convenience stores.

"If you're now developing frozen tteokbokki (rice cakes), who should you start planning with? A drama writer. A webtoon author. When a drama features tteokbokki, TikTokers worldwide post with that hashtag, big-data analysis maps the response by region, and retailers come calling. That entire chain is one collaborative ecosystem."
— Prof. Jaebeung Choi, Sungkyunkwan University

A manufacturing manager sitting down to co-create with a drama screenwriter. That is the new form of business collaboration in the fandom economy era.

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How AI Is Reshaping the Collaboration Ecosystem

At a chess tournament, a team of two amateur players with a laptop defeated the world champion playing with a supercomputer. Professor Jooho Kim of KAIST explains why: "It comes down to how you design the collaboration process."

The core of AI-era collaboration isn't AI capability — it's collaboration design. Goldman Sachs projects that generative AI will lift global GDP by 7%, and estimates that 10% or more of the work done by 80% of the US workforce will be affected by large language models.

4 Patterns of AI Collaboration Design

Pattern	Description	Best For
AI Suggests → Human Decides	AI presents options; human picks the best	High-stakes decisions
AI Drafts → Human Refines	AI writes the first draft; human polishes	Documents, reports
AI Guides → Human Executes	AI sets direction; human takes action	Creative work, learning
Human–AI Iterative Loop	Back-and-forth exchange to refine results	Complex, multi-stage projects

Professor Choi describes how AI accelerates fandom collaboration: drama writers use AI instead of assistant writers, video editing time drops from 180 minutes to 10, and AI maps hashtag trends by region. "When they collaborate this way, results multiply tenfold and risk shrinks to one-tenth."

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What You Can Start Doing Right Now

The Wonsooju case offers a useful hint. Korean rapper Jay Park assembled five specialists — an influencer, a marketer, a manufacturer, a salesperson, and a fandom strategist — and launched a soju brand through contract manufacturing, without buying a distillery. A pop-up event led to 25,000 bottles selling out online in 35 seconds, which led to a record-breaking annual sales figure for a single product at GS25. Five people. One fandom-powered collaboration.

In an AI-era collaboration skills survey (AI Times, 2025), Korean workers ranked "creativity and innovation" first (37.1%), followed by "communication and collaboration" (34.9%), and "AI utilization skills" (34.3%). It's telling that collaboration ability ranked higher than AI skills.

What you can start right now is simple: find one person who genuinely cares about your project — your first "subscriber." That is where fandom collaboration begins, and where AI-era collaboration starts.

Steve Jobs' insight still holds: "Technology alone is not enough. It's technology married to liberal arts, married to humanities, that yields results that make the heart sing." In an era where AI amplifies the speed and precision of collaboration, the most important skill is designing experiences that move people.

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FAQ

Q. Is the fandom economy only relevant for B2C? Can B2B companies apply it too?

Prof. Choi says building "subscribers" — passionate supporters — is just as critical in B2B. Companies that earn trust and loyalty from partners, internal teams, and industry communities gain the upper hand in collaborative ecosystems. Open-source AI communities and internal AI champion groups already operate on exactly this model.

Q. Can someone without AI literacy still participate in fandom collaboration?

KAIST Prof. Jooho Kim emphasizes that the key skill is designing collaboration with AI — not developing AI yourself. The starting point is designing experiences in your area of expertise that genuinely move people, and then assigning AI a supporting role in that process.

Q. Do I have to be active on social media to build a fandom?

Fandom is created by the quality of experience, not the platform. The frozen kimbap founder's R&D standard was: "until a child says this is the best kimbap I've ever had." Getting your product, service, or project to genuinely move people comes first. Social media is just the channel that carries that experience outward.

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