Just a moment...

as with everything, the internet is unbundling and then re-bundling. We unbundled songs from CDs and rebundled on playlists. We unbundled articles from newspapers and rebundled them on social feeds. And now like it or not we’re doing that to core societal institutions like dating and marriage. We basically just unbundled all pair mating relationshi... See more

The rise of Web 2.0 was heralded as an advancement by not just allowing people to read and write content and do transactions but to connect with each other in new ways. That gave rise, eventually, to Facebook and other social networks, along with a raft of “sharing economy” companies that peddled a fantasy of building community at the heart of busi... See more

-Networks: access to communities that support the individual

“We are in uncharted territory” when it comes to Tinder et al., says Justin Garcia, a research scientist at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. “There have been two major transitions” in heterosexual mating “in the last four million years,” he says. “The first was around 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, i... See more

- Now that there are billions of people online, it’s much easier to connect with individuals who share your same interests

Perhaps the demise of traditional retail and media can be explained by the Internet offering better alternatives for curating your own community of like-minded people/products and removing most of the friction around connecting.

While some of these organizations may have started with purely financial motivations, I suspect that most of their founders aspire to build communities that can replace some of the social capital that America’s waning institutions once provided.