phil
@phil
I've been thinking a lot about Farcaster's growth. Disclaimer: I'm still working through it, and my thoughts will change, but here is my attempt to frame our current situation and some potential paths forward. Allow me to introduce The Network Axis.
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phil
@phil
Any digital network can be evaluated along these two axes. Blogs like Marginal Revolution or SSC are not social networks per se, but they compete with social networks for user's time and attention. In fact, Twitter was characterized for most of its life as a "microblogging service", not a social network.
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phil
@phil
So, what makes social networks unique? My answer: the social graph and growth. A fast-growing content source without a highly-connected social graph is a popular blog or newsletter. A social graph with good content but no growth is a forum. Fine for niche audiences, but not mass market.
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phil
@phil
For Farcaster to succeed as a protocol for building sufficiently decentralized social networks, we need a framework to think about growth. Today's growth is a function of yesterday's content. Social networks can coast for a while on their reputation, but need to continually nurture sources of high quality content.
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phil
@phil
"Good content" is slippery to define. To try and put it succinctly: "good" content has some amount of novel insight that is valuable to a large audience. This doesn't mean good content needs to be serious; memes are sneakily one of the best sources of consistently good content.
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Carsten ✈️
@cpoetter.eth
hm, not sure. while you correctly refer to FC as a protocol, you're describing an app built on it. as far as I understand FC, it's not necessarily a protocol for social networks but for any "social" web service. this can be a social network, but also a forum or any other small and specialized community with web3 rails.
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