As long as I can remember, I’ve always been interested in:
technology and its future
humans and our future
good experience design
relationships
content creators and social tech platforms
I recently quit my job as Chief of Staff to the CEO of Getty Images to help build the future of social.
things I’m thinking about:
bettering social and interest graphs
data ownership and portability
decentralized or distributed networks and protocols
social proof primitives
emerging social tech players in web2: Saturday, Partiful, Geneva, Discord, BeReal and web3: Lens Protocol, Blueskye, Mastadon, BitClout, etc.
the quick growth experienced by apps based around novel social interactions pr habit rituals
community and communication platforms emerging synonymously rather than being more one than the other (Geneva, Saturday)
the entire current content creator experience (my thinking on the Creator Economy)
the splintering of our digital identities into parts and provenances (identity/reputation attestations)
the need for better discoverability mechanisms for indexing and discovery
How’d I get here?
My dad gave me my first macbook computer when I turned 6, this was it:
I was 1998 and I realized that the CDs music came on looked the same as the CDs I put into my computer in order to play games. So when I got the next Britney album, I put the CD into my computer to see what would happen. Sure enough, a one-file folder popped up that contained the iconic hit me baby music video, only otherwise available to see through MTV on TV.
I swear it was seeing sexual britney in this school vid that accelerated my sexuality 😭 I remember typing the world “sex” into Google search before Google Images existed, and then did it again when it did in 2001.*
I got the newest apple product for every birthday or christmas. While extremely privileged, yes, you can almost see it romantically because my father, and my father’s father, were equally captivated by emerging tech as I find myself today to be (e.g. I own every quest).
I played Nanosaur and Bugdom and Zoombinis—the OG PC computer games—and played web app games like Neopets and Bubble Trouble.
On xbox, I played Tony Hawk (4 had the best soundtrack), Halo (hang em high, rocket launchers), Fusion Frenzy (let’s go samson), and every iteration of garage band.
I had AIM throughout middle school and graduated having used all of the early communication types (T-9, BBM).**
I was a part of the first social networks, retiring my xanga for a myspace and my myspace for facebook, which I became a member of in 7th grade thanks to the technicality of having an email that ended in “.org.”
I’ve watched the relationship between society and a woman’s body, now for the first time ever, digital and online. I remember girls getting expelled from middle school for having their privacy violated. I’ve observed the success of female creators on Only Fans and on Only Fans only.
I have filmed myself periodically using photobooth for the past 12 years and have them all to this day. I have kicked myself countless times for “not just posting,” which I finally did on TikTok in 2020, quickly amassing followers because like with any emerging social tech landgrab, if you post consistently you quickly spike in follower growth. By 2021 I had stopped, and I watched all of those who didn’t become TikTok’s most followed accounts today.
I watched the internet’s first videos on ebaumsworld, and then I watched YouTube disrupt it. My whole life has been observing the evolution of technologies that replace the thing that was there first: taxis for ubers, facebook for instagram, hotels for airbnbs, dating apps for the college campus bar.
I saw how a handful of social tech companies gained incredible power and global influence in under a decade. I saw the success of these companies turn many men into billionaires. Which is more powerful, money or a person’s data? Why not both?
I have imagined and been writing about the same vision of the future since 2012 - one in which you own your digital identity and footprint, where your social graph and data follow you, where it’s easy to find and make meaningful connections, where on and offline experiences are complementary.
I’m now turning my passion for social tech into building a business called Sister Sister.
pumped for the future :)
frankyoulater@gmail.com
* I saw the first images of sex to ever exist online lmaoooooo - like who were those tech-savvy early 2000 people??
**to this day, little compares to the excitement I’d feel when a crush came online