Social Media Tech firms are about to sh… soil the bed 🍿
Twitter already did it — more is yet to come. Facebook — and by extension Instagram and Whatsapp — are about to do it (I am not calling it/them Meta). Snap already did it (you may have not know about it).
Call the orderlies with clean sheets for this is about to get messy. And one can only hope that this crapfest is going to be limited social tech, and not spill over to the rest of the industry — both in the valley and beyond.
Curiously enough, sites that invested in blogging and newsletters seem like golden geese right about now. Substack et al. have a unique opportunity to capitalize on this moment and build as many features as they can that will leverage the network-effect (all without relying on ads).
Meanwhile, advertisers should be flocking to Substack et al., but who knows what they are up to — Apple really tweaked them hard, only to show misplaced ads to the rest of us, on our overpriced iPhones. Duck me.
Through it all though, i am here to watch the implosion of social media and what takes its place, with my popcorn and soda. 🍿🥤
It is really hard to feel sorry for these folks who have committed professional malpractice over, and over, and over again. They have just been talking, and talking and talking for the last 10 years; they have not been listening.
They did not pay attention to the threats of privacy lapses or security snafus or misinformation on their sites. They were just dishonest about damn near everything, but I never imagined that they would be lying to themselves.
New social media websites are showing up all the time and the cool kids are flocking to the latest and the fad-i-est. But none of them have figured out a revenue model that works while shunning ads and the whims of teenagers.
It’s been a good run. Be interesting to see what comes next. This federation thing looks marginally interesting, but it seems to be an animal of a different kind. And it does seem to bite. ::sigh::
— vijay, #microblogging through a rainy Sunday evening
