Our New Social Norms
The Sociology of Social Media in 2021
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Today, we’re talking about the current social media landscape and what the sociology behind the current trends tells us about humanity, especially since Covid.
✨ At the end of this post, you’ll find the best links from this week in tech —> ICYMI.
Alright, let’s jump in.
Resurgence in new social media apps
For better or worse, 2020 solidified a “new normal.”
With 2020 officially in hindsight, we can safely say, a lot has changed. But also, there are many things that surprisingly stayed the same. And finally, there are, of course, things that are still up in the air.
New social media apps have been in the spotlight for the last several months, after almost a decade of relatively little attention.
Remember: it’s been nine (!) years since Facebook bought Instagram. Yet, in the last ~nine months, there seems to be a Cambrian explosion in attention towards new social apps.
We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.
- Satya Nadella, CEO Microsoft
So much has shifted in terms of the technology landscape, because of the second order effects from Covid.
Consumer blurred into business
I’ve been working at Zoom since December of 2019 (first, as a consultant, and now full-time). I have have been able to watch first-hand, the speed in which people adopted video, over in-person, in the business setting. Folks within education and government, all the way down to the more agile companies in the technology sector.
But Zoom, among many other companies, also started supporting individual consumers, for the first time ever. I got married in September and we had a Zoom stream, for those who couldn’t be there in person. For a couple months in the spring, my friends and I did a weekly hang-out on Zoom. I had a family reunion on Zoom. And I’m sure you are no different.
Online ≠ IRL
Hanging out on Zoom will never be the same as hanging out in-person. There are too many subtleties in how humans interact. Micro-expressions that can’t be seen on a little box on a computer screen. Social cues. Touch. The list goes on.
In fact, there are many arguments that talk about how physical spaces will come roaring back, bigger than ever, once the vaccine is widely distributed. This includes events like conferences, concerts, travel and other IRL experiences. But there are a lot of habits that will stick around. Some companies will double-down on in-person as an advantage. But most companies will stay remote, in some capacity, forever. There’s no going back.
Today’s post will primarily focus on social apps in the consumer space, as opposed to in the business-to-business realm. But, for what it’s worth, I subscribe to the idea that B2B trends follow B2C trends, just ten years delayed. So look for the follow-up piece in 2031.
Back to our roots
Dispo
Dispo is a “retro photo-sharing app” co-founded by YouTube star David Dobrik, that recently raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Spark Capital at a valuation of about $200 million. And this week, it jumped to the number two spot on the App Store Chart.
Dispo is an example of intentionally going against the technology trends of today. Instant gratification? Nope. You have to wait until 9am the next day to see that picture you just took. Huge inner-connected network? Nope. You only let certain people follow certain “rolls” you take.
Despite starting that way, apps like Instagram and Snapchat have become sophisticated tools for broadcasting polished content.
It seems we are leaning back towards a focus on “in the moment,” “authentic” and/or “serendipitous.”
We are trying to replicate the IRL world, with our online behavior.
Clubhouse
Clubhouse is another great example that proves: what is technically possible may not be what we actually want. Could we all get on a Zoom and see each other? Sure. But that would be chaos. And there is a certain weightlessness—a lack of pressure—to the voice-only format of Clubhouse. The founder, Paul, does a great job building the narrative around the importance of voice, given that it was humans earliest way of communicating. There is something evolutionary about this fact. But something practical too.
In the article, Clubhouse Is the Anti-Twitter, Will Oremus states: “The hot new social app has found success by replicating real-world social structures rather than exploding them.” He goes on to say:
The promise and peril of Twitter is that it can explode boundaries and social structures that exist offline — for example, the boundary between celebrity and fan, and perhaps even more than that, the boundary between celebrity and hater. In some ways, then, the promise and peril of Clubhouse is that it restores those offline boundaries and social structures, creating spaces that feel both more familiar and, ultimately, less disruptive — for better and worse.
And in this article, The Clubhouse App and the Rise of Oral Psychodynamics, Zeynep Tufekci again reiterates the point: “it’s the latest encroachment of oral culture back into the public sphere.” She goes on to reference a post from ten years ago, talking about Twitter, but tying it to the discussion around Clubhouse today: “Orality, on the other hand, is perhaps the most human of our characteristics, and ironically, the comeback of which into the public sphere is the one Keller is lamenting while worrying about losing our human characteristics. What he seems to actually mean is that, with the advent of writing and printing, we acquired these new cognitive tools and novel psychodynamic [and I should note that they never took that much root in most recesses of culture and thus remain fragile] and they are threatened by social media which re-introduces older forms which, of course, never died out but receded from public importance.”
We want to evolve. But we don’t want to lose our past selves either. It’s in that tension that social media apps live.
Reddit
The “Wall Street Bets” Subreddit, as silly as it may sound, is a great example of a community of people who found something in common, and now regularly—digitally—“hang out” together and discuss that commonality.
It’s actually become a cliche in the techsphere, to talk about “building a community.” But that’s exactly what this is about—it’s what it’s always been about for humans.
Here’s a quote from Kevin Roose, on an early experience using Clubhouse, from his article, Can Clubhouse move fast without breaking things?
Two hours later, my ice cream fully liquefied, I emerged from the car with the feeling that I had just experienced something special. It was all fascinating, surprising and a little surreal, like peeking into the windows of interesting strangers’ houses. And it gave me a flashback to a similar euphoria I felt years ago, when celebrities and creative weirdos started showing up on Facebook and Twitter.
Twitter
This month, Twitter announced a competitive product to Clubhouse, called “Spaces.” They also announced SuperFollows. And last month, they acquired a Substack competitor called Revue, which lets you talk directly to your audience, like I’m doing with you, here. :)
These trends all point back to micro-communities, as opposed to broadcasting widely.
One could argue, this is all based on the social concept popularized by Kevin Rose (not to be confused with Kevin Roose) in his non-famous article: 1,000 True Fans.
That leads us to our final idea: consumers owning the platforms in the future.
NFTs
NFTs and a Thousand True Fans, by Chris Dixon.
Kelly’s vision was that the internet was the ultimate matchmaker, enabling 21st century patronage. Creators, no matter how seemingly niche, could now discover their true fans, who would in turn demonstrate their enthusiasm through direct financial support.
But the internet took a detour. Centralized social platforms became the dominant way for creators and fans to connect. The platforms used this power to become the new intermediaries — inserting ads and algorithmic recommendations between creators and users while keeping most of the revenue for themselves.
…The good news is that the internet is trending back to Kelly’s vision.
Crypto, and specifically NFTs (non-fungible tokens), can accelerate the trend of creators monetizing directly with their fans. Social platforms will continue to be useful for building audiences (although these too should probably be replaced with superior decentralized alternatives), but creators can increasingly rely on other methods including NFTs and crypto-enabled economies to make money.
Mirror.xyz is an example of a platform that is owned by the creators. It’s community-based. And technically supported on-chain. Today, it’s clunky and feels wildly niche. But so did Twitter when Jack Dorsey sent out the first ever tweet.
And as our friend Chris Dixon said many years ago, “the next big thing will start out looking like a toy.”
Why we’re fascinated by the latest social media apps
We are social creatures.
We long for connection, however that manifests itself.
We have evolved from ancestors who used social information to increase their likelihood of survival. Today, we still long to have social connection. In fact, having social connections literally increases our lifespans. And if we’re really honest with ourselves, many people want to climb the social ladder. Some of us have that desire more than others. But we all have it a little bit. Even if it’s climbing within your family or friend group. You want to be liked by people. It’s natural. You want to be seen as valuable. And social media is one form of publicly displaying your “like-ability.” You can literally have a number next to your name that quantifies how many people “follow” you. That is wild. And also, this cannot be healthy.
The End ∞ The Beginning
Another fascinating component to consider is the “manufactured serendipity” of the most recent batch of social media apps and products.
From a technical perspective, we have the ability to record and re-listen to conversations online. And yet, we are choosing to create apps where you have to be on them at the same time. That real-time rush gives a sense of “I have something that you don’t have.” I’ve felt it first-hand. “Oh you missed that CH Room last night? It was amazing.” I have something that is valuable, that the other person missed out on.
In the end, we are striving to be close to each other, even if we are not allowed to be physically within six feet of each other (for now). These technologies give us a glimpse into what human-nature wants deep down. They just happen to expose these desires at a scale that was never before possible.
As for me, I’m super excited to see how we continue to evolve and integrate technology into our new social norms.
ICYMI
Nasdaq had its biggest sell-off since October
- Dropping 3.5%
- Bitcoin also dropped 25% this weekCoinbase filed their S1
- Mind-blowing annual profit of $322M and $1.2B in revenue in 2020
- Special shout-out to Satoshi Nakamoto
- “Address not applicable” for their now-remote office
- One open question: why does Coinbase only have $130M in Bitcoin on their balance sheet?The censorship debate continues, with Amazon banning certain books
- My favorite Tweet from the debate, by Paul Graham
More words
• Two Worlds: So Much Prosperity, So Much Skepticism, by Morgan Housel [**Highly Recommend**]
• The Sure Thing — How entrepreneurs really succeed, by Malcolm Gladwell | The New Yorker
• Startups Sometimes Stretch the Truth, by Matt Levine | Bloomberg
• Shared (un)Realities, by Om Malik
• Rise of the 10X Class, by Dror Poleg
Question I’ve been pondering
What is something that you believe with high conviction, that very few others believe?
Shoot me a note back on what you though of this week’s post. Good, bad or ugly. I can take it!
See y’all next week!
PS- My friend Luke published a rad little video this week. It captures the magic of the rolling hills, on a perfect sunny day, when we headed north over the golden gate bridge. In honor of Dispo, enjoy the vintage vibesss.
Cheers,
Brendan J Short
[Written while listening to Daft Punk, who announced this week, they’re splitting up.]