Increasingly, consumers (Gen Z’s especially) are seemingly ditching Bumble, Hinge, and Tinder in favor of apps that better cater to their preferences and behaviors. In the last 18 months or so, a new paradigm of dating apps has emerged, many of which draw upon growing behaviors around gaming, live and short-form video (Curtn, Lolly, Snack, Filter O... See more

Still, as Baszucki made clear, the goal is still actual social networking: surely that will always be better than interacting with an AI! Or will it? It seems to me that perhaps the most important constraint on the web — to actually interact with people as if they are, well, people — disappeared a long time ago.

The rise of Grid Zero has prompted Meta to turn its focus to DMs, and one of their new features is an AI assistant to “help” send messages. It’s a horrifying concept to me. The app already mediates our existence, reducing it to branding, professionalism, activism or some combination of those three. One of the few pleasures left are the semi-private... See more