Ian Vanagas

Nearly every big platform hits escape velocity by helping people make more money.

What do people actually want from their interactive experiences? The first insight from the pandemic era is that most formal presentations should simply be abolished. The sad reality is that hardly anyone is listening, or for that matter should be.

Communities should think hard about their onboarding process for new and returning users. They should understand what information is shared and needed to engage with the community, and what path those users are going on. They should think about how to summarize context to be more consumable for both new and returning users.

An accurate definition of an internet “creator” would have to be: someone whose income is determined by a platform’s algorithms.

I should be able to scroll through the history of my browsing as an enormous branching graph that I can annotate, travel around, share with others, and version.

For instance, I have been to conferences that have “speed dating” sessions (without the date part, to be clear, and with vaccine and testing requirements) where you meet many people for say two minutes and then move on to the next meeting. This should become a more regular practice. 

We are in the age of hyper-competition. Being a big spender is a seductive way to make you feel like you belong.