Ian Vanagas
@ianvanagas
Writing about internet communities, products, creation, and crypto.
Ian Vanagas
All the mental energy that you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one, seemingly impossible way out of your current mess.
Ben Horowitz • Nobody Cares | Andreessen Horowitz
"I watch the data all day long… I see every uptick or downtick. I put a video out, I watch how it trends. And then I'll make another video and see if that trends similarly." Then, she privates the videos that don't do well. She estimates she's made more than 20,000 TikToks, only a third of which are still public.
Elizabeth de Luna • The business of being Victoria Paris
Choice architecture (described as “Libertarian Paternalism” by its advocates) seems to merely dress up authoritarian high-modernism with a thin coat of caution and empirical experimentation. The basic and dangerous “I am more scientific/rational than thou” paternalism is still the central dogma.
Venkatesh Rao • A Big Little Idea Called Legibility
Group chats where people spend time with their friends online, and so this is where the experiences should happen. Playing a game, watching a trailer, or reading an article with friends should be as easy as sending a message to them. Experiences should build on the group chat, not move away from it.
Ian Vanagas • The Group Chat Could Be So Much More
Ideas are alien life forms with an agency and intelligence independent of any mind or substrate which they inhabit.
Roger's Bacon • Ideas are Alive and You are Dead
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.
Ian Vanagas • Always Be Onboarding: Creating Community Arcades
The stories create demand and the NFTs provide the scarcity. Scarcity helps enable status.
Ian Vanagas • NFTs Are All About Access
As a writer, looking for evidence of readership and engagement on Twitter makes you into the drunk looking for your lost keys under the street light.
Robin Sloan • The Lost Thread
The next time you are attending a formal presentation at a conference, ask yourself these questions: Is this better than all of those Zoom calls I am turning down? Is this better than the next best YouTube clip I might be watching? For most people, the answers are obvious. Conference organizers need to be willing to pull the trigger and usher the... See more