Consumer Social

Introducing a Rocks, Sand, and Water Framework for Attention

We always talk about consumers’ attention as being finite, but how is it divided?

I imagine consumers as dividing their attention in a given day across three different types of “events” or modes: Events that span bigger blocks of contiguous time (“Rocks”), micro events that take advantage... See more

One thing that complicates people’s willingness to devote their energy to vibrancy is context collapse, a term that Alice Marwick and I coined long ago. When a social media site grows slow and steady, it starts out for each user as a coherent context. Things get dicy over time as people struggle to figure out how to navigate divergent networks. But... See more

Gotta say, it feels like we missed an opportunity to reinvent social. Can you tell them apart?

Modern ‘Social Apps’ look more and more like consumable fashion vs. enduring networks…. It isn’t just downloads, engagement alone is no longer enough.