The Power of Smart Brevity: The End of Social Media

The Power of Smart Brevity: The End of Social Media

In today's fast-paced world, attention spans are shrinking, and reader habits are shifting. We find ourselves overwhelmed, constantly checking messages 70-400 times a day, yet still feeling under-informed and missing critical context. Long, impenetrable updates frustrate us, and we only spend an average of 26 seconds reading any given content. It's clear that we need a more efficient way to communicate and consume information.

When we encounter new content, our brains have two immediate questions: What is this about? And is this relevant to me? If we can't answer these questions in about 17 milliseconds, we move on. This is where the power of Smart Brevity comes in. By incorporating a winning mix of white space, bolding, and bullets, we can break through the haze and capture readers' attention. This technique has been developed through insights from eye-tracking labs and years of testing, resulting in 50% shorter read times, on average. It is a strategy that works for any form of communication.

But what about social media? It seems that the era of social media dominance may be coming to an end. Platforms like TikTok and YouTube have shifted their focus away from friends and social graphs, instead offering carefully curated, algorithmic experiences that match the perfect content with the right people at the perfect time. This is what we call recommendation media, and it is quickly becoming the new standard for content distribution on the internet.

In social media, creators have the power to program their content, making it a competition based on popularity rather than quality. The bigger the following, the bigger the potential for distribution and influence. However, this also means that problematic content can spread just as easily as good-natured content. Furthermore, social media platforms tend to create echo chambers of groupthink, as content is primarily distributed within clusters of connected people. Diversity of thought is at a disadvantage in social networks.

Recommendation media, on the other hand, is a competition based on the absolute best content. Content distribution is optimized for engagement, resulting in highly efficient consumption patterns. Platforms like TikTok have excelled in exploiting the weaknesses of social media and have popularized algorithmic content distribution. The best content for each consumer wins in recommendation media, and the algorithm is the final decision maker.

Interestingly, creators can drive their engagement in recommendation media by utilizing existing social media platforms. They can share their content to networks where they already have audiences, maximizing their reach. Social networks, however, are no longer defensible due to the commoditization of the underlying data that powers them—the social graph. In recommendation media, the platform with the best machine learning capabilities wins. To achieve this, platforms need an ocean of content, including extremely niche content for every individual on the planet. The only way to have such a vast amount of content is to be an open creation platform, where users can create and curate content.