Dan Romero on Warpcast

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ted (not lasso) pfp

ted (not lasso)

half-baked* hot take: wei's status-as-a-service is a boomer theory that is becoming increasingly outdated *not high, just writing stream of consciousness yes, status-seeking behavior will always play a role in social media but it should not be the foundation upon which we build the future. as we grasp social media's psychological impact (a la haidt re: mental health issues, addictions, misinformation, etc), user behaviors and motivations will evolve against it. they already are. there's growing preference for intentional disconnection (opal, ~40% of users take digital detoxes), niche community platforms (substack, tyb), ephemeral content (bereal, stories), and private forms of sharing (locket, snapchat; dark social makes up 80% of outbound sharing). 88% of social users cite connecting with friends as their top motivation. what's the top reason for internet friendship? shared interests. and what matters far more than likes or followers in shared interest communities? quality and depth of content. wdyt?

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Dan Romero pfp

> 88% of social users cite connecting with friends as their top motivation. is citing the same as stating, because...

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ted (not lasso)

the original draft had “something something stated vs revealed” right after that stat but had to cut due to character constraints and now i regret that point is that status seeking will still exist among friendships and shared interest communities, but that type of status isn’t likes and follows Eugene referenced (which makes sense in a theory about general social media dynamics, but not internet communities) for instance, research found that in certain niche tech communities on twitter, the quality and technical depth of someone's tweets were more important status indicators and that in some subreddits, users with lower karma but who provided unique, valuable contributions were often more respected than those with high karma. ideal world is merging both the status seeking behavior and the community behavior; if your ML can translate likes / follows / algos to the more nuanced, context-dependent “status signals” aforementioned but focusing only on likes / follows is a losing strategy (imo)

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Dan Romero pfp

friendships = messaging apps, a bit of instagram stories interests = ...?

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ted (not lasso)

can you be more explicit about the question that you’re asking or the point that you’re making? i don’t want to assume and reply to the wrong premise

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Dan Romero pfp

My point is different networks play different games. Broadcast networks are almost always about status, followed by monetization (indirect or direct). So if you think status is dumb / not a game worth playing, then you should design / build products that don't play those games.

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ted (not lasso)

let me repeat: “yes, status seeking will always play a role… ideal world is merging both the status seeking behavior and the community behavior” do you think it is possible to start as community network and evolve into broadcast network or vice versa?

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Instagram started as friends and moved to broadcast (thus stories). Twitter sort of (SF tech people) to what it is now. But both were riding the social primitive (microblogging and photo sharing) growth. Harder in 2024 without a social primitive.

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Jonny Mack pfp

is this a fair summary: one-to-one (friend to friend) and one-to-few (friend to friend group) is more about authentic connection and belonging than one-to-many because one-to-many is broadcast, its inherently status seeking the form factor of the former is group chats and intentionally small/cozy digital spaces, like what path was the form factor of the later is a platform like twitter, ig, etc. megaphones, wherein the game is to become as big and loud as possible fc's origin was the former, but the goal has always been to become the later, hence the disconnect wrt to product and strategy

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Challenge is we haven't been able to figure out anything that is social network based that drives growth.

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ted (not lasso) pfp

ted (not lasso)

my original cast wasn't subcasting warpcast / farcaster but understand why your response may be through that lens

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Dan Romero pfp

I didn't take it that way. If you want to massively scale something fast in consumer, then probably needs to map to a seven deadly sin. If slow burn, maybe make friends on the network works. But then you have the challenge of keeping users, builders, core team motivated for a long time. A lot of opportunity cost.

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so—broadcast + status + deadly sin + new primitive = the thing merkle needs to create next

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Dan Romero pfp

yeah, easy peasy :)

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