Maven Is a New Social Network That Eliminates Followers—and Hopefully Stress

“We specifically designed the experience to move against hierarchy in many different ways. There are no likes, no followers. It isn’t an infinite scroll. There are no profiles, so there’s no way to see those types of statistics,” says head of design Annika Hansteen-Izora. “What does it look like if you have a social media app that isn’t working wit... See more

For all the debate over whether our current social networks are good for society, I prefer to focus on the potential we've yet to realize. We have the miracle of Wikipedia, yes, but aren't there more types of mass scale collaboration to be enabled?

But what if there was a way to build an interest graph for you without you having to follow anyone?

-AI may be the solution to serendipity. AI-driven feeds untether the social graph from our offline connections: instead of hanging out online with the people you went to college with, you can forge new friendships and uncover new content creators. Bytedance’s suite of AI products—including TikTok outside of China—are the most successful AI-powered ... See more

I can’t remember the last time I logged into any social media app and felt happier afterward.  Frankly, I’m not sure it’s a solvable problem, but I have enjoyed my time touring the invite-only app Somewhere Good. Developed by the team behind Ethel’s Club—a work and social club for people of color that recently evolved into a wellness platform—... See more

Social as a model works when people have about as much to offer as they want to receive along a given axis. But no trait is distributed uniformly; there are are outliers in the nice-to-look-at, nice-to-listen-to, nice-to-read, nice-to-get-stock-tips from axes, there's a population that can offer a respectable performance with these traits, and ther... See more