pay for digital social spaces
exploring a future of digital social spaces / networks where users pay
pay for digital social spaces
I wish more media / subscription products didn’t have auto-renew as an unchangeable default.
Any time I see that - even if it says “cancel at any time” - it deters me from taking action in that moment because I’m worried about forgetting to cancel it later, and then getting charged $19.99 or whatever.
A better approach would be: we’ll charge you $10
... See more
🧠 The puzzle of vanishing member dues - Part 2
Saumya Gupta • Build IRL Newsletter #19
from BuildIRL team; exploring challenges builders have w/ “dues”
The mistake of the 1.0 platforms was to optimize for engagement—likes, clicks, and shares. This was a successful short-term growth strategy, but at the long-term cost of sustainability. For engagement includes not only joy but rage, not only mirth but sadness. Incentivizing these things creates hellishness, driving people to disengage, to become di... See more
Ari Schulman • Why Speech Platforms Can Never Escape Politics | National Affairs
150 - Your Social Network
150.earth
First year is free, than $2/month
While Meta’s paid messaging tools brought in about $1 billion last year — peanuts compared to the whopping $132 billion the company earned from ads — paid messaging revenue is growing far faster than ad revenue and has more than doubled since early 2023.
Issie Lapowsky • How WhatsApp ate the world
It may be more likely to be pay-to-play. Design takes time and effort. Content creation takes time and effort. Everything that goes into a shiny digital footprint – website design, hosting, platform service subscriptions – costs money. Compare this to a random book club meet-up advertised through a single flyer made by hand and stapled to a few tel... See more
Elise Granata • What We Lose When Optimizing Community
an argument against “pay to play”
