All about social networks

This brings anyone in the social media game an important lesson: enabling and preserving a path from newcomer to middle class is crucial for maintaining a moat. When it becomes too hard to “make it” in established channels, the door opens for new channels to take off.

From 2002-2006, social media companies emerged with the explicit mission of "connecting the world," but the introduction of the feed and the like, plus the switch from friends to " followers " indicated a different pitch: "now, even you can a star."

And there was something else to look at what urban planner William White calls triangulation. You don't have to directly engage with other people who are here. You can both be looking at the fire. You're having a nice time. You're warm, you're feeling good. And over the course of sitting for a while, there's opportunity to strike up a conversation... See more

The difference becomes clear in how the feed responds to your behavior. Let’s say you click on a note about climate policy. In the old two-tower system, this single interaction would contribute minimally to your overall profile, especially if climate wasn’t already one of your core subscription topics. The model’s simplistic averaging approach... See more

This sounds spectacularly self-centered: that you can only quit a thing, or modify your usage of it, when it fails to serve you. But if we think of our phones and social media as addictive products, which they certainly are, then the classic addiction model makes sense: you only consider quitting when the negative impacts (the dead feeling of the... See more

The vast interconnection enabled by digital platforms has ended up creating more of a sense of sameness than diversity. Users are subtly guided toward the same subsets of topics, urged on by recommendations that are designed not to serve their interests but to create profitable attention fodder to sell to advertisers. Instagram doesn’t care that... See more

For example, since TikTok leans heavily on an algorithm to determine views for a video, your absolute follower count is less valuable than it might be on another platform where the follow graph is a stronger input to your success. On TikTok you’re only as good as your next video whereas on another platform your aggregate follower count might serve... See more