running notes on recent tech thoughts or observations, with my most recent at the top
- BeReal is dead (dod august, 2022)
- that tiktok about the Kardashians saying they love to take good pictures so that their kids can look back and know they had happy childhoods…..
- I’m just really interested in how content accidentally gives us a linear timeline of our lives. When I’m trying to figure out where I was during a specific time, I refer to my IG stories archive. My notes in my notes app during different periods of my life are illuminating. TikTok videos even from 2 years ago expose how I was thinking at the time that I now would have forgotten. How differently would I remember my life if I didn’t have these content sources as anchors? And when taken together, they actually provide a pretty colored context of someone’s life.
- the best apps are those that solve your individual need but also only get better as more people join (network effect)…buttttt there does seem to be a point where if too many people join it actually dilutes the experience.
- people with followings should have more data about their followers in order to better engage (and potentially monetize) those followers.
- what you, and your photos/videos, look like depends on the social media platform you’re using, which leads me to believe they’re probably somewhat competing on things like how users appear, and feel about that appearance, when using the app. Like I swear I look better on TikTok than I do IG (without any filters, obviously).
- something has gottttt tooo giveeeee with dating apps. It’s insane that hinge can get away with charging $34.99 a month (!!!!! netflix is $20) and then additionally charge $3.99 per rose (aka the mechanism that allows you to engage the people you actually want to talk to because the algorithm curates them into a group based on your preferences). There either needs to be new product innovation (e.g. forcing a scheduled time to FT that cuts off after a predetermined time), or someone needs to start experimenting irl with dating again — speed dating, singles parties but make them cool, experiment with drawing a boundary in a park saying that only single people can sit in there, etc.
- noticing when iOS or apps let you work across other apps—e.g. with the latest apple update, apple will let you copy a link and send it to the last person you were messaging with on IG. How does this work?
- Algorithms reduce people—their personalities and their preferences—down into increasingly small parts. If your goal is to amass a digital following, there is an expectation to niche yourself — to carve yourself into your most interesting pieces for commoditization and consumption. Many creators feel this pressure to niche as a paint-point, feeling not adequately represented as the dynamic person that they are, or experiencing backlash in the face of deviating from their norm. Shannon, of FluentyForward, although mostly focused on the celebrity sector, does a really good job commenting on a variety of things that interest her personally and has done so from the beginning. This balance of subject matter expertise and personality results in an interesting and different type of follower loyalty—there for Shannon, or for the celebrities, or both.
- “narcissism” is a frequently cited term when discussing social media and vanity, but more easily overlooked is how the very exercise of using social media lends itself to a self-centered mentality. Every time we scroll, we evaluate if the content in front of us is something we care about or like enough to give our attention to, which determines how long we stay, swipe, or save. I’ve noticed this in the increasingly entitled comments left by users on videos such as, “why do you think I’d care” or actual anger when creators deviate from their usual subject matter.
- a lot of product roadmaps are building for greater access to the creator—”know/tell/ask me more” (e.g. Sendit, NGL, and BeReal)
- I think we’re going to see communities being built off social media platforms so that creators can connect only with people who want to be there and support them. But I feel this will lead to further polarization and vacuums of thought, which feels dangerous. What do communities of only supportive fans look like? Will trolls always find a way in? If so, what does the future of trolling look like in spaces you have to pay to be present in?
- content platforms reward early user adoption. If you started producing content consistently in the early days of youtube, tiktok, podcasts — (less twitter, facebook, instagram or other closed networks) — then you easily and quickly amassed a large following.
- I miss the days when the internet felt like it was engaging in one conversation, like the early days of TikTok. It used to be that everyone’s FYP was at least somewhat similar, but now, due to the deluge of content constantly being created, your FYP is entirely different from your friend’s.
- people follow people.
- experiencing a problem with what to do next with the content I wish to save and refer back to later—where are we saving it?
- social media platforms are still making a disproportionate amount of money off of the content creators who helped build them. More thoughts on the creator economy here.
- spotify and the like need to have an “incognito mode” so that you can engage with the app but not tamper with your algorithms aka or your discover weekly
- BeReal is the latest and greatest, my expanded thoughts can be found here.