👋 On time for your weekend: a round-up of this week's most remarkable stories at the intersection of #ecosystem #innovation and #platform #organisation.
Has the Internet Reached Peak Clickability?
It’s already happening. Legacy media won’t tell you this because they’re losers in this paradigm shift. They still have the McDonald’s mindset. As they shrink, they chase clicks more aggressively. And the more they chase clicks, the more they lose genuine engagement. Perhaps that’s not really a surprise, because the old school media outlets have been shrinking for a long time. The strange new factor is that the huge web platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok—are now making the same mistake. This is a signal that we have reached the endgame stage. And a new game is beginning with totally different recipes for success.
📉 The end of a century-long mindset (?) - by Ted Gioia
Please stop calling it the ‘newsletter economy’
The trend that Substack is part of is not a newsletter trend, or even the much-hyped creator economy. We are part of a seismic shift in the media economy that is all about writer and creator ownership and independence. When writers are in charge, they can do the work they believe is most important, have a direct relationship with their readers, and have the potential to make far more money than they could get from being an employee who produces content for others to own and disseminate. Our fellow travelers in this trend are not email service providers or legacy news organizations, but the likes of Shopify, Twitch, Patreon, OnlyFans, and Discord. This subset of the media economy is thriving. It is entirely different to what some people think of when they talk about a “newsletter economy.”
🔮Let's agree the shift is even bigger than an economy - by Hamish McKenzie
A year of Read Max
Not to be a freak about it, but having 900 people pay actual money to read my bullshit is not something I take lightly, especially since I’ve spent most of my career writing to the huge audiences that can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and Google, which range in attitude from “mostly disinterested” to “actively hostile.” What’s most important to me is that the pleasure I get in writing in this semi-unalienated way -- for an audience that wants to hear what I have to say, even when I’m just writing about some weirdo Linux occultist’s demonological artifact or whatever -- is matched by the pleasure felt by readers at encountering writing that isn’t forced awkwardly into the strictures of institutional or advertising-based digital news production.
✔️❌ Do's and Dont's in starting a newsletter on the internet - by Max Read
📺 Nic Law: Deep Simplicity - Designing our Way Out of Complexity
When I think about life centricity and I think about the customer, I think about their relationship with the medium, and I think about how the internet has changed that relationship. We talk about product-centricity as a way to look at the business - if you build they’ll come - and the thing about being product-centric is that it was particularly relevant before the internet. Before the internet we didn’t have a lot of knowledge about how the customers are making their decisions, how they buy stuff, how they are using a product… Now it makes sense to be customer-centric when we have got the internet. But the internet has become such a complete part of our lives. An insight in life centricity is that it’s very difficult to separate us buying a product from everything else that’s connected with that. Maybe 10% of the things we do through an interface is about buying and using a product. The other 90% is about everything else. So to understand the customer’s relationship with products and services, you have to understand how the customer relates to that product, but you also have to understand that they are relating to that product in the middle of this crazy chaotic world that we live in.
If you like this digest, you might appreciate the sister newsletter at the intersection of #technology, #business, #design, and #culture as well. This week's edition is all about Creative Superhumans!
Please, feel free to send tips, comments, and ideas for the next digest by replying to this post. Or, send them directly to 📭 hello@futuring-architectures.com
Comments