Saved by Jilber Najem and
TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants
Communities are becoming stronger because technology is doing a better job directing us to people with shared identities and shared interests. On Facebook, we needed our real-world friend graphs to form the foundation for our feeds. TikTok doesn’t need to know our friends; its algorithm quickly hones in on what content and which creators will most ... See more
Rex Woodbury • The Decade of Internet Communities
How did an app designed by two guys in Shanghai managed to run circles around U.S. video apps from YouTube to Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat, becoming the most fertile source for meme origination, mutation, and dissemination in a culture so different from the one in which it was built?
Eugene Wei • TikTok and the Sorting Hat — Remains of the Day
Today it feels like we’re living through another important cultural shift—the decline of Twitter—and a new generation of networks is experimenting with new structures to try and capitalize on it. If we want to understand what’s next, it helps to ask: what caused the culture shift? What new structures would be better? And what will it feel like to u... See more