Meanwhile, when it comes to digital distribution, incumbent banks are catching up. BBVA announced that between January and March nearly two-thirds of its sales were completed digitally, up from prior periods. Citigroup tripled the number of accounts it opened digitally in March compared with same month last year.
Today, most paid communities live on the outskirts of existing social platforms. But as they become normalized, paid communities are becoming a viable business model for smaller-scale social networks aiming to be both profitable and socially sustainable.
Software started out being specific — designed just for one person even — then expanded to a broader audience by trying to appeal to everyone and losing its identity in the process. In the wake of the uniform brand identity crisis in the tech industry, I believe we need to return to specificity in order to appeal to users more broadly.
Common needs represent large markets, but the needs are largely met, and competition between solutions is fierce. Long-tail needs are often unmet and come with much less competition, but individually represent markets too small to justify the expense of development.
Now we come back to the question from the start: Why do we not have more intellectually curious adults? The first reason is that people are intellectually lazy. This is not a novel observation but it explains part of the phenomenon. We need to keep in mind that when improving mental models, they get—at least at first—more complex. Things that seeme... See more