Social media is mainstream. This is a place to discuss social media's design and impact. /social is the place for the intelligent and globally informed conversation about social media we've always been looking for.

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Farcaster

The good news is that doing social media algorithms is *hard*, so no one really should be faulting Merkle.

I'm sure you've seen the complaints on X (so much so they released their algorithm, never updated it, and now claim to be Grok LLM powered). You've seen the complaints here on Farcaster. 

There are complaints on Threads too!

We once had only "following", which I guess many did get used to (the Facebook timeline/news feed). We were told algorithms would be better for us, but even facebook hasn't solved this since 2006!

Maybe the only people that cracked algorithmic discovery so far has been TikTok. And no, we haven't seen an update to Monolith since they talked about it. https://github.com/bytedance/monolith

hypothesis: text/image feed algos are "bad" because of a lack of preference revealing signals the algos have to determine what you like. the only reliable signals you can get from these feeds are explicit engagement (reactions/clicks/shares)

watch time is a very strong "interestingness" signal

I think I have an affinity with text-centric apps explicitly because the content lacks context

You can judge and be judged solely on your ideas without needing to be pretty or well spoken

It’s a marketplace of elevator pitches

First class video support is a must have for any social app today. You can see that in the convergence on short videos in every large social app today

I suspect it’s because text-centric apps don’t facilitate as much virality as video-centric ones? Text does serve communities better though e.g. Reddit/facebook

they're nuking big accounts on X again (infofi targets?)

quick, everyone flee to the safety of farcaster

The gmgn and ai16z accounts were likely suspended due to data scraping via Twitter’s third-party API. The reason for pumpfun’s suspension is unclear. 

If it’s API-related, there’s a more open social network where devs can easily build. Either way, everyone can set up a backup account here.

I'm ready to say welcome to friends who just joined or returned to Farcaster!
https://x.com/0xottoman/status/1934705884355285467

still likely related to X API usage. Shaw cited his ban was API-related, PumpFun and GMGN were probably similar.

fantasy.top and ethos.network are rely on X’s social graph, which is costly. As the user base grows here, building SocialFi/InfoFi apps on an open social graph would be a better choice for builders.

Pulse check: how many of you know about the Strava trend on tik tok? Can we make it spread on here too?

this is kinda cool actually

I never use TikTok but things that are trending there is cool 🚴‍♀️ 🏃

youtube is experimenting with ai generated summaries on videos

do u think this is a good feature or nah?

cos for me it kinda feels like a spoiler

something ive been obsessed with lately are these micro dramas / short form content. reelshort and a ton of these micro dramas that acquire users on tiktok are doing a tremendous amounts in revenue. if you annualize their jan 2025 numbers, reelshort did ~$375m in gross revenue !!!!

most of these "production companies" are based in china. i think not along before a US-based entertainment company tries to do what quibi was not able to. 

would love to chat with any companies building here. specifically, working with creators, using micropayments on stablecoin rails. 

fwiw, i think it could be a super interesting @farcaster client.

https://x.com/nnnnicholas/status/1937586504680796283

getting increasingly bearish on the idea of client diversity as a means of effective decentralization

key assumptions:
1. communities are very likely to use the same client
2. you're unlikely to migrate clients

if you get nerfed that client, your ability to move clients doesn't actually help the situation unless your audience on that client also moves with you

potential half-solution: separate the feed building layer from the client layer?

not a bulletproof solution because no guarantee that you won't just get filtered at the client level anyway

next level: encrypted feed building?

Very tough to overcome but important to remember that "normal people" used to use MySpace, Friendster, LiveJournal, Facebook, and a bunch of others before "ig/tiktok/yt" came along

Not only were ElizaOS and Shawn’s accounts suspended, but X also took down the account of memecoin platform gmgn.ai, its founder, and many Chinese memecoin KOLs. The reason remains unclear.

That said, welcome to a sufficient decentralized, open, permissionless, programmable, composable, crypto-native social network.

The gmgn and ai16z accounts were likely suspended due to data scraping via Twitter’s third-party API. The reason for pumpfun’s suspension is unclear. 

If it’s API-related, there’s a more open social network where devs can easily build. Either way, everyone can set up a backup account here.

I'm ready to say welcome to friends who just joined or returned to Farcaster!

IT'S NOT JUST PUMP FUN! 🚨

Major CT suspensions (Ongoing Tracker) 

Here's what we’ve got so far 👇🏼

GMGN-Linked Accounts
@gmgnai 
@haze0x — Founder
@arthur_gmgn — Co-founder
@Ga__ke — Affiliate (?)
@brc20niubi — Affiliate
@Wolfy_XBT — Affiliate
@0xcryptowizard — Affiliate https://t.co/u5WbYP3rJD

Superlocal got acquired by Foursquare

Curious if FSQ will use the acquisition to try to slingshot them back to relevance

Meanwhile Amo just launched Places in Bump in their bid to become the de facto social maps app of 2025

Exciting to see this space heat up!

i’m excited to share some big news!

- superlocal has been acquired by foursquare!
- we’re also shipping a full redesign of superlocal today!

more details below… https://t.co/HsYXoE3Gax

Superlocal got acquired by Foursquare

Curious if FSQ will use the acquisition to try to slingshot them back to relevance

Meanwhile Amo just launched Places in Bump in their bid to become the de facto social maps app of 2025

Exciting to see this space heat up!

https://x.com/alexkehr/status/1934653464661119217?s=46b

New quick share UI I noticed if you tap and hold the share button on Instagram