Taking Business Personally: A Conversation With Charles Broskoski
Metadata
Highlights
- Let’s say, for the sake of this example, that it’s a social media network that lets you upload and share photos with your friends. You find this fun. You take photos of silly moments, moving moments, beautiful moments. The images spawn a culture unique to the platform. Memes become self-referential. More friends join, and so do extended family, celebrities, your favorite magazine. (View Highlight)
- I found my way to the platform on a friend’s recommendation when I needed a place to put all the weird and varied media that influenced my internet brain — TikToks, screenshots, PDFs. You can use Are.na to link all of your weird online stuff, my friend told me. You can organize it into channels and browse through other people’s weird online stuff. (View Highlight)
- I had been hanging out on the internet on a platform called del.icio.us,3 which was the first social bookmarking website.
You could save links. You see a timeline of your bookmarks, and get a sense of where you were ten days ago, and what it led into next. You could see who else had saved the things that you thought only you were interested in, and you could also see the trajectory of what they were thinking about.
Similar to Are.na in some ways. But unlike Are.na, there wasn’t a social, communication component, right?
Exactly. Like Are.na, Del.ici.ous was first and foremost a personal utility. You could tell if you would get along with someone or not based on what their perspective was pointed towards. And I made friends with someone named John Michael Boling. There wasn’t really a direct message function but we’d follow each other’s work. (View Highlight)
- Stuart wanted there to only be certain types of acceptable content. Not frivolous memes. He thought the platform would be better if we controlled what went into it, but we were the opposite. As people who were embedded in this world, we knew — you never know what will lead you into something good and serious. Sometimes you have to take weird, windy paths. We thought it would be better if we just attracted smart people to it. (View Highlight)
- I wouldn’t be running a business if it weren’t for Are.na. It’s a very personal business, meaning that it is something I want to see in the world; it is a tool that I would personally be devastated if it were to not exist.
I think we have so many examples of assholes starting businesses, and if they’re the majority of examples, we’re only going to have shitty businesses. I want to see people with very specific perspectives and opinions on how to manifest things into the world. More people should take business personally. (View Highlight)
- We’re pretty in-touch with people. If someone writes in to help, it’s either me or Daniel who’s answering the email. We have a Discord where people tell us about what’s going wrong. I run our social media accounts. All of this makes our surface area of being connected to people very large, and people can express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction easily. So we always have a gut feeling about whether things are going right or wrong. But also, the only metric we really pay attention to is revenue. For us, it’s the highest bar. It sounds crass, but if someone is willing to pay for Are.na, that’s huge. Sometimes, we also track page views. No demographic or location. We don’t have time for all that. (View Highlight)
- Having a strong point of view about this type of thing is a meaningful differentiator. A lot of other platforms are diluted; their ethics do not translate to their product choices. People who discover Are.na are like, wow, finally, something with a different perspective than Facebook. I’m old enough to remember when the internet was like school, when there were plenty of places that would help you think and grow. Even though Are.na has grown, the way that people are thinking on there is still so interesting. The places where people’s gazes are pointing to are fascinating. (View Highlight)
- Yeah, exactly. Why can’t there just be more normal, functioning small businesses on the internet? Why does it have to be this narrative of we’re going to be billionaires and start a dynasty of unhappiness? Why can’t we just keep our expectations at realistic, human-scale levels? (View Highlight)
title: “Taking Business Personally: A Conversation With Charles Broskoski”
author: “Kernel Magazine”
url: ”https://www.kernelmag.io/3/charles-broskoski-interview”
date: 2023-12-19
source: reader
tags: media/articles
Taking Business Personally: A Conversation With Charles Broskoski
Metadata
Highlights
- Let’s say, for the sake of this example, that it’s a social media network that lets you upload and share photos with your friends. You find this fun. You take photos of silly moments, moving moments, beautiful moments. The images spawn a culture unique to the platform. Memes become self-referential. More friends join, and so do extended family, celebrities, your favorite magazine. (View Highlight)
- I found my way to the platform on a friend’s recommendation when I needed a place to put all the weird and varied media that influenced my internet brain — TikToks, screenshots, PDFs. You can use Are.na to link all of your weird online stuff, my friend told me. You can organize it into channels and browse through other people’s weird online stuff. (View Highlight)
- I had been hanging out on the internet on a platform called del.icio.us,3 which was the first social bookmarking website.
You could save links. You see a timeline of your bookmarks, and get a sense of where you were ten days ago, and what it led into next. You could see who else had saved the things that you thought only you were interested in, and you could also see the trajectory of what they were thinking about.
Similar to Are.na in some ways. But unlike Are.na, there wasn’t a social, communication component, right?
Exactly. Like Are.na, Del.ici.ous was first and foremost a personal utility. You could tell if you would get along with someone or not based on what their perspective was pointed towards. And I made friends with someone named John Michael Boling. There wasn’t really a direct message function but we’d follow each other’s work. (View Highlight)
- Stuart wanted there to only be certain types of acceptable content. Not frivolous memes. He thought the platform would be better if we controlled what went into it, but we were the opposite. As people who were embedded in this world, we knew — you never know what will lead you into something good and serious. Sometimes you have to take weird, windy paths. We thought it would be better if we just attracted smart people to it. (View Highlight)
- I wouldn’t be running a business if it weren’t for Are.na. It’s a very personal business, meaning that it is something I want to see in the world; it is a tool that I would personally be devastated if it were to not exist.
I think we have so many examples of assholes starting businesses, and if they’re the majority of examples, we’re only going to have shitty businesses. I want to see people with very specific perspectives and opinions on how to manifest things into the world. More people should take business personally. (View Highlight)
- We’re pretty in-touch with people. If someone writes in to help, it’s either me or Daniel who’s answering the email. We have a Discord where people tell us about what’s going wrong. I run our social media accounts. All of this makes our surface area of being connected to people very large, and people can express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction easily. So we always have a gut feeling about whether things are going right or wrong. But also, the only metric we really pay attention to is revenue. For us, it’s the highest bar. It sounds crass, but if someone is willing to pay for Are.na, that’s huge. Sometimes, we also track page views. No demographic or location. We don’t have time for all that. (View Highlight)
- Having a strong point of view about this type of thing is a meaningful differentiator. A lot of other platforms are diluted; their ethics do not translate to their product choices. People who discover Are.na are like, wow, finally, something with a different perspective than Facebook. I’m old enough to remember when the internet was like school, when there were plenty of places that would help you think and grow. Even though Are.na has grown, the way that people are thinking on there is still so interesting. The places where people’s gazes are pointing to are fascinating. (View Highlight)
- Yeah, exactly. Why can’t there just be more normal, functioning small businesses on the internet? Why does it have to be this narrative of we’re going to be billionaires and start a dynasty of unhappiness? Why can’t we just keep our expectations at realistic, human-scale levels? (View Highlight)