Category Archives: Products

The internet is broken. In many ways, it has lost its humanity. We interact with platforms and content, rather than people. We control little of our data, massive companies control it for us. Even our identity isn’t ours. A glitch, ban, or shutdown can erase what defines our being online. The platforms we spend ourContinue reading “Rebuild the Internet (or Why You Should Care About Urbit)”

BeReal has become one of the biggest social apps of the last few years. From the outside, it doesn’t seem particularly different from Snapchat or Instagram, you take photos and share them with your friends, yet it has topped the app store charts for much of 2022 and has grown to 10 million daily activeContinue reading “How Does BeReal Do It?”

The untapped potential of the group chat is massive. It is how groups of friends hang out online but doesn’t come close to how they hang out in-person. No one ever plans to hang out on a group chat because there are fewer experiences to have together. The group chat doesn’t have the same feelingContinue reading “The Group Chat Could Be So Much More”

Nothing anyone says on Clubhouse matters. The whole point of Clubhouse is to be seen. It doesn’t matter who speaks or what they say. It matters that they are seen as high status people. Clubhouse rose to prominence when no one could be seen in person. Everyone was stuck in their homes. Someone with aContinue reading “Clubhouse Is a Cargo Cult”

Writing is hard, competitive, and readers do not want to pay for it. Sounds like an unappealing market right? Against all odds, Substack is one of the most hyped companies at the moment. Their competitive advantage, growing and monetizing newsletters simply, is also a weakness. Writers can just as easily leave with a list SubstackContinue reading “How To Keep Big Writers On Substack”

What you notice on social media is that people copy each other a lot. We do this in all aspects of life, but within the constraints of social media, it is especially noticeable. Most social media gives you a format to do what you want with. We naturally copy each other. Social networks want youContinue reading “TikTok Succeeds by Making Copying Easy”

YouTube has been the undisputed home of video on the internet for a long time, but that title is eroding. YouTube is a successful bundle of internet video services and categories that are being unbundled by new entrants. Understanding YouTube’s bundle, where it has been unbundled, and further opportunities for unbundling provide insights into theContinue reading “Unbundling YouTube”

TikTok is a viral video machine. It has blown up over the past year and now I see videos from the platform everywhere. I notice them because they are distinct. Videos on other platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, even IGTV) all look the same. TikTok videos on other platforms stand out, and that is a keyContinue reading “TikTok’s Viral Video Growth Machine”