sari

Thankfully, the founders figured out a subtle shift in positioning around the time I joined that made a big difference. They kept all three core elements in place, but started pitching it as a newsletter platform rather than a paid publishing platform.

The evolution of human communication has been about removing whatever bottleneck is in this value chain. Before humans could write, information could only be conveyed orally; that meant that the creation, vocalization, delivery, and consumption of an idea were all one-and-the-same. Writing, though, unbundled consumption, increasing the number of pe... See more

MZ: I think at the end of the day, there’s going to be commerce, and I think commerce and ads are kind of closely related, because if there’s not any commerce, then there’s not much for people to advertise for. I think the first job that we need — well, I guess the first job is getting the foundational technology to work. Then after that, our next ... See more

I used to confuse “rational rumination” with intuition. I used to think a lot—a lot—about other people and their motivations, the many problems of the world, and myself and what kind of person I want to be. I thought I was being productive by thinking through these things with the clinical seriousness of a chemist. The reality is that I was working... See more

When The Huffington Post looked to grow participation on their platform in 2010, they introduced the behavior of badging. Seemingly simple, badging was responsible for the growth of The Huffington Post over any other participatory tool or tactic because the intrinsic benefits tied to the community’s status and identity encouraged engagement on plat... See more

The answer, I think, is what it almost always is: that inventors are simply extremely rare. People can have all the incentives, all the materials, all the mechanical skills, and even all the right general notions of how things work. As we’ve seen, even Savery himself was apparently inspired by the same ancient experiment as everyone else who worked... See more