Go do stuff you like

So you have this glowy rectangle in your pocket, and you can do pretty much anything with it. Anything! Anything. You ask the rectangle for one job: you want to connect with friends, family, and colleagues. You want to meet new people. You want to feel safe, happy, and seen. You want to vibe.

And, okay, you’re given a handful of options, and none of them are good, because people are messy and the world is terrible. The contours of each trade-off are clear: public vs. private, serendipity vs. intentionality, convenience vs. size of social graph, safety vs. exposure.

We are all seeking the next thing. A new thing came out recently that got over 1 million downloads in an hour, the tech equivalent of appointment listening. This probably happened not because the new thing is good or cool, or because the new thing was released by a big company, but because we are all desperate to find something that allows us to exist in safety & right relationship. On the other side, we have ragtag groups of bandits who keep messing up key facets of the experience. And nobody really feels safe.

It is boggling to consider what is now table stakes for any sort of public communication tool. Safety must be addressed & practiced during a state of likely permanent war. Moderation must be continuous, and it is likely unscalable. And none of this matters if you don’t nail the first-run experience and make it so that people want to actually come back. Only a few companies are large enough to address all of these things at once, and an awful lot of people hate them.