Apps, Exchanges, & Blogs
The future of social in the post-ad model, post-toxicity age, crypto crime and blogging
Happy Friday!! And here a few bits and bobs…
My favorite part of this article (which Howard suggested), on the next era of social apps:
But ritual apps should have a quality-over-quantity mindset that also prioritizes active over passive usage and consistency over intensity. Similarly, monetization should align platform and user incentives; this could mean more direct models (e.g. subscriptions, in-app purchases) since ad-based models want to maximize reach and time spent.
This from Money Stuff was funny:
At some point Bitzlato’s marketing director allegedly made a document called “Competitor Analysis” that described Bitzlato’s pros and cons:
Just perfect marketing, really, for a crime-friendly crypto exchange. The main pros are (1) it’s fine with crime and (2) you can deposit money easily. The main cons are (1) it’s fine with crime, (2) so crime will probably be done to you, and (3) it’s expensive to withdraw money.[7]
[7] A funny but *VERY RISKY* way to run a crime-friendly Bitcoin exchange would be to (1) lean heavily into advertising how crime-friendly you are, (2) accept deposits without KYC/AML, and (3) never give back the money. What are they gonna do, sue you for the money? The money is from crime. But of course if your business is stealing money from criminals, that … seems … bad … for non-legal reasons.
But on second thought Matt, maybe one could make the point that it seems a lot…less…bad than what most other crypto exchanges have done?…
for non-legal reasons, of course
ahaha
I loved what Max Read pulled out from this Washington Post profile:
“I will write again the next day”: As the profile reminds us, Yglesias has been writing posts for 21 years, day in, day out, regardless of political or economic or emotional conditions. “For two decades, Yglesias has been boring,” the profile’s author Dan Zak writes, riffing on the title of his subject’s Substack, “Slow Boring.” “A million boring posts, across many platforms, into many hard boards.”
And thanks for the advice ;)
But the key lesson, the thing I would impart to any aspiring bloggers, content creators, or newsletter proprietors, is that the cornerstone of internet success is not intelligence or novelty or outrageousness or even speed, but regularity.¹ There are all kinds of things you can do to develop and retain an audience -- break news, loudly talk about your own independence, make your Twitter avatar a photo of a cute girl -- but the single most important thing you can do is post regularly and never stop.
But most importantly, this demand is so insatiable that there is currently no real economic punishment for content overproduction. You will almost never lose money, followers, attention, or reach simply from posting too much.
Really needed someone to validate my thoughts
As Yglesias says, it's the best time there’s ever been to be somebody who can write something coherent quickly. Put things out. Let people yell at you. Write again the next day.
I resonated with this one a lot.
Hope you had fun with me today and have a great weekend :)
Angeline