The past generation of social apps won the market through a playbook

building big networks with feeds for discovery
creating a followers/status competition for engagement
bringing together creators and audiences
monetizing with ads
supporting photo, text, video

The next generation of social is necessarily a reactionary movement

small networks or algo-driven big ones
creating real connection with people
letting creators own their audiences
monetizing directly with subs, NFTs, etc
evolving media format towards interactivity

Today, too many connections is bad. Maintaining which of 1000s of high school friends and employers have access to which content, is quite simply a chore. Small chat groups simplify this. Algo-driven feeds also simplify by just showing you the best stuff. More will be invented to solve the problem of maintaining connections.

Today, creators are looking for more, and new apps can cater. A lot of the Creator Economy, of course, is a reaction to pre-existing platforms that get between a creator and their audience.

NFTs, subscription, ecommerce, and other biz models now exist for creators.

the “back office” will become an important battleground.

new platforms will emerge that let people author 3D content more easily — and maybe put it into a game. Or interactive content. Or NFTs. And of course audio. All of these new forms of media will probably look like toys at first, but they may catch on in a big way.

In a world where uploading a video was hard, it made sense that Youtube was the first type of app to be built. Social status and competition is an easy engagement hook.

Web 2.0 was about a lot of things. There was big UX breakthroughs, like tagging, profiles, feeds, photos, and everything else in user generated content.

one of the hardest lessons we learned from that period: It wasn’t enough to build the app, you needed to also grow a critical mass of users.

Low engagement would lead to more low engagement.

It’s still better to focus on a single community, gain saturation, before adding adjacent networks. Viral loops are still a thing that can be constructed, measured, and optimized.

Today’s resurgence is comparable in scope, but with a larger maret, built on the supercomputer in our pockets