Can an app revive acquaintanceship?

Scheduled Zoom calls, utilitarian Slack threads, and endless email chains don’t capture the thrill of surprise or the joy of conversation that giddily revs up as people riff off each other’s ideas. But smart app developers are also realizing that spontaneity doesn’t mean constantly interrupting people’s life or workflow. They give people the power ... See more

Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out - The Atlantic

Home-based, phone-based culture has arguably solidified our closest and most distant connections, the inner ring of family and best friends (bound by blood and intimacy) and the outer ring of tribe (linked by shared affinities). But it’s wreaking havoc on the middle ring of “familiar but not intimate” relationships with the people who live around u... See more

Sudden shelter-in-place on a mass scale has created new emotional and social needs, which are rapidly thawing the inertia of our social media ice age. What we are finding — and what the next wave of social is already demonstrating — is that it is possible to create shared, intimate moments and experiences online that are no longer dismissed as “les... See more