Huge successful companies have already been built using community, finance, and data as competitive advantages. I am hopeful that we will see many more because Web 3.0 rails enable builders to build the same features with less capital.
Email is good for maintaining a direct relationship between readers and writers, but it kinda sucks as a place to read. When I’m checking my inbox I’m in a mode where I want to bat away everything as quickly as possible in order to get to inbox zero. I’m psychologically in a state where everything feels like a chore. Putting great writing there fro... See more
From Huya (game streaming) to Pinduoduo (cheap Taobao) to Dianping (Yelp for China) to Yinke, Yizhibo, Douyu, Bilibili, and Meipai (live streaming platforms) to Xiaohongshu (shopping reviews) to Duoyin (TikTok of China) to Weibo (Facebook of China), China is a rich, booming ecosystem for social. But beyond pure social, each of these aforementioned ... See more
Several individual publishers have experimented with removing ads as part of a larger subscription package. Talking Points Memo, for instance, offers an ad-free “Prime” membership for $100 a year. Some publishers like Slate promise “fewer ads” for paying subscribers. But for every publisher that offers an ad-free experience for subscribers, there a... See more
The questions are coming to gaming first, but it’s easy to imagine them cropping up elsewhere in the new economy. And when they do, platforms will be faced with a choice: shut it all down, as Steam did, and bet that the whole crypto craze will some day fall into the ocean; or be curious about it, the way Epic is, and see if there’s a way to channel... See more
In the months leading up to pub day, I sent approximately 8,613 emails out to friends, professional contacts, people I talked to once in a buffet line at a writing workshop 3 years ago, people who follow me on Twitter, and people who have never heard of me or my little book, offering them galleys and (in some cases!) directly begging them to cover ... See more
A bundled climate change product could be sold to enterprises including carbon offsets, carbon sequestration, solar installations, and other climate services.
It has become popular to say we live in the information age, and we need curation to help us sort through the mess. But thus far, the conversation around “curation” has been too focused on the content and not enough on the structure. We seem to have accepted the job of the curator as providing a product review, a list of links, a song recommendatio... See more