sari

On twitter, anybody who can think up a snarky 140 characters retort can contribute to the "conversation." In the blogosphere, you had to create your own blog and write up your thoughts in long-form. For this reason, blog debates were simply more intelligent than today's twitter debates.

Some signs your product might be too complicated: you’ve launched a bunch of features and haven’t killed any of them. You’re running out of literal surface area to put new features. Users aren’t clear about what to do with the product.

Both the physical and the electronic isolation from people we disagree with allow the forces of confirmation bias, groupthink, and tribalism to push us still further apart

Historically there was no way to separate the “owner” of a digital artwork from someone who just saved a copy to their desktop. Markets can’t operate without clear property rights: Before someone can buy a good, it has to be clear who has the right to sell it, and once someone does buy, you need to be able to transfer ownership from the seller to... See more

For the first time, we can prove who owns something digitally, and transfer that ownership in a traceable way.

If subscriptions work, they allow companies to consolidate market share and drive out competitors before loyalty wears thin, the impotence of voice becomes apparent, and customers head for the exit. If this approach succeeds, as examples like Amazon suggest, customers might find that when their loyalty finally fades, there’s nowhere else to go.