Apps are where you interface with people in the digital world. Apps are the place that people are already at, the public places for gathering. To get the connection we’ve been blessed with from the internet, you’re forced to sign up and play by the rules of various third party app platforms. The good part is that you get to learn about friends and meet new people in these digital spaces. The bad part is that the incentives of the app platforms and individuals are completely misaligned. Under all current financial structures for social consumer apps, they want you to spend as much time as possible in their walled garden. However, as an individual, you only want to the use the app for the time where you are finding actual intimate connection and building relationships. Ideally, from an individual’s perspective, you’d be able to meet everyone where they are (this is another complication in that people you are close to can be active only on a select few different apps) while having full control of your domain and content, so that 1) you can customize the entire feel and experience of sharing your data and 2) you can avoid all the design traps these apps leverage to get you to stay inside their covered space.
I caught up with Larry, an old friend from Square, recently, and he’s been off of all social media for over a year. Besides having a phone whose battery survives multiple days without charging or other shenaniganning, he feels more calm and in the moment. Meanwhile, in our infinite pool apps, every time we get sucked into the endless feed, we need to awaken from a sort of stupor to escape. We’re stuck between choosing a never-ending, always-on firehose of information and a void, empty and silent.
References and Ideation
social media apps are where people are at, easiest way to meet them, but their incentives are all around getting you to stay there as long as possible. This is contrary to your incentive which is to reach . The incentives are contrary to each other — it’s a paradox. Ideally, you’d be able to reach people where they are but bring them to your domain where you have full control of the experience.
- can you just post things on your website and then build a flow that automatically sends an update to different social media that you care about?
- or maybe just be like larry and dont care what anyone thinks.. but then you lose the spontaneity of encounter. That’s the beauty of the internet: the potential for discovery. nucleation sites for connection. You have to play the game to get that chance, but apps lock you into patterns that encourage use rather than what is best for you