Sublime

Relying on creatives or niche experts (e.g., wine or book editors) is not a novel concept, though I do think we’re leaning on them more heavily as an antidote to algorithmic recommendations, and I know they’re working harder to produce differentiated suggestions.

In a speech delivered years ago, Ev Williams used agriculture as a metaphor to understand what’s possible on the Internet.

Agriculture was a tremendous invention – it got people fed and freed them to do many things. But agriculture – taken to the extreme in the pursuit of profit leads to a sick and obese population and industrialized farms with lit... See more

While social platforms are proving effective at pressure testing and gauging the customer response for new ideas, sometimes the general public isn’t the best curator for what’s next. It’s not just about the critical mass (how many people like something), it’s also about the credible mass ( who likes something). As algorithms mature, I suspect socia... See more

That meant there were three strategies available to media companies looking to survive on the Internet. First, cater to Google. This meant a heavy emphasis on both speed and SEO, and an investment in anticipating and creating content to answer consumer questions. Or you could cater to Facebook, which meant a heavy emphasis on click-bait and human i... See more

This doesn't stop social apps from trying to fix the problem. Reduced traffic to the feed is existential for many social apps. Instead of fixing the root problem of the graph design, however, most apps opt instead to patch the problem. The most popular method is to switch to an algorithmic, rather than chronological, feed. The algorithm is tasked w... See more