The Era of Participatory Social

Taking a step back, the first era of social — Friendster, MySpace, Facebook — started out more like 99% read / 1% write.

So my belief and hope is: participation as the core interactive model will be the wedge that a new social experience uses to disrupt Facebook Inc. I look for this in new social startups, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the biggest threat to Facebook Inc will be something that started looking like a game.

As Facebook evolved, adding comments, the newsfeed, the like button and then emoji reactions, Facebook intentionally pushed to increase the “write” side of the ratio in its base interaction model, but it was and always will be pushing against a rope. The atomic unit of content is predominately skewed towards an individual sharing something from the... See more

One of the core needs of humans is a sense of belonging. For centuries, religion, our tribes, our communities, our families have given us that sense, but modern culture, catalyzed by the internet, has broken down a lot of these connective tissues. And so we look desperately for other places for belonging, places where we can participate in some way... See more

Facebook has never felt more vulnerable to me, and yet, the grip Facebook Inc has — with Instagram, WhatsApp, and of course Big Blue, is still as strong as it ever was. Still, when I look at products like Discord, Fortnite, Minecraft, TikTok, or Roblox, I can’t help but believe that there is an opening for a new era of social — what I’ll call parti... See more

You’d go to someone’s profile, view their content. You might comment on someone’s post or wall or video, but the interaction model was almost entirely predicated on a passive consumption of someone else’s content.

And it’s not just Facebook. So much of the digital experiences we spend time on have this passivity ingrained. Instagram, Netflix, YouTube. The result? We know from Facebook’s own research that passive experiences leave people feeling worse. It’s when people interact with each other — when they actively participate in the digital forum — that they ... See more