Peter Hagen

One of the best ways to build the confidence to get started and enter the exploratory process of finding a solution is to set as well-defined a search space as you can: outline the "hard edges". Setting this defined space gives you constraints to comfortably work within, almost like a cozy room with padded walls where we've got the freedom to... See more

Part of Google's perceived aura (IMHO) when they started was that they seemed to be like the nebulous group of pre-Web Internet-savvy techies. Which were a smart group, tending towards altruistic and egalitarian, and wanting to bring Internet goodness to people, and onboard people into Internet culture. What seemed like one sign of this was times... See more

With nothing more than an idea and a passion for making things happen, I started a new group on meetup.com called We Make the Internet, and began promoting the first social event at one of my favorite Cleveland breweries, Noble Beast. It was clear that the community was hungry for this kind of thing: about 40 people showed up to that first event.

Substack co-founder, Hamish McKenzie, implied that his company’s business model would largely obviate the need for content moderation. “We give communities on Substack the tools to establish their own norms and set their own terms of engagement rather than have all that handed down to them by a central authority,” he wrote. But even a platform that... See more

Platforms only work for creators when you can limit the number of creators on it . The platforms don't care, of course, because they make money of the total revenue, so Facebook wants as many things as possible. But for individual creators, it's not a very good idea.

When the level of abundance gets too high, the solution, as hard as it may sound,... See more

social media will never be the impetus for real social change. He compared Twitter unfavorably to the civil rights movement. The Woolworth’s lunch counter protesters had strong social ties with each other; social media, on the other hand, breeds weak ties. Meaningful change comes from strong ties, very little is achieved through weak ones.