What today’s social apps can learn from Web 2.0, the social network revolution from 15 years ago at andrewchen

As Web 2.0 companies began to deeply understand the powerful potential of their innovations — the game-ish reaction buttons, the follower graph, the algorithmic ‘newsfeed’ — they became adept at a clever stratagem. Rather than committing to perpetual openness, they could offer new user tools or developer APIs and encourage the community to use them... See more

In Lanier’s telling, this digital landscape shifted once the success of Google’s ad program revealed that you could make a lot of money on user-generated creative output, which led to the rise of social-media companies such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Initially, these companies emphasized their simple, elegant-looking interfaces and their ... See more