Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Understand the economics of any internet industry better than anyone in the world and suggest where budding entrepreneurs might build.
Packy McCormick • Stripe: The Internet's Most Undervalued Company
Algorithmic taste, in Peter’s case as a consumer, was both boring and alienating. On the creator side, by contrast, ubiquity can be profitable.
Kyle Chayka • Filterworld
As with other social networks that grow, Instagram broadened its formats early on to head off several format-based asymptotes. Non-square photos and videos with gradually lengthening time limits have broadened the use cases and, more importantly, removed some level of production friction.
Eugene Wei • Invisible Asymptotes
How did an app designed by two guys in Shanghai managed to run circles around U.S. video apps from YouTube to Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat, becoming the most fertile source for meme origination, mutation, and dissemination in a culture so different from the one in which it was built?
Eugene Wei • TikTok and the Sorting Hat — Remains of the Day
But what if there was a way to build an interest graph for you without you having to follow anyone?
Eugene Wei • And You Will Know Us by the Company We Keep
Social networks aren’t just the interface, or the algorithm, they’re also about the people in them. When I wrote “The Network’s the Thing” I meant it; the graph is inextricable from the identity of a social media service. Change the inputs of such a system and you change the system itself.
How to Blow Up a Timeline
The second wave of social is about having people be more conscious about building a graph that best matches the needs of what they want to get from that graph. Initially, importing from your contact/address book made sense. But now we can say that was a mistake. You don't need to follow all people you know on all services.