Media apps ("social" or otherwise) can only *effectively* compete in 1, and must fight every other player in that particular arena for a finite pool of attention.
Here's a theory that I think helps explain:
- How Instagram won the first attention war
- Why there will never be another mixed-format feed
- Why TikTok is so dominant
- Why Clubhouse has a huge advantage over Spaces
- How Spaces can still win, but why Fleets can't
🧵...
Media apps ("social" or otherwise) can only *effectively* compete in 1, and must fight every other player in that particular arena for a finite pool of attention.
Often we can look but not listen, other times we can listen but not look. And sometimes we can give our phones 100% of our sensory attention.
The best creators will invest in whatever platform offers the most attention to harvest into social capital.
If you can look but not listen, photos win.
If you can listen but not look, audio is the only format.
With no constraints, video wins.
IG quickly became the most engaging place on our phones. Until the 2nd war began.
TikTok executed perfectly. You can't even use it without sound-on.
Clubhouse is quickly building a supply of quality audio creators and becoming the most engaging option when you can only listen but not look.
They could carve out a modest (compared to IG) niche simply because text as a format selected for a very different type of successful creator.
There are so many ways Twitter could make better use of that real estate. On that note:
Listen-only is our default resting mode so push is especially powerful in this war.
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This is a pretty valiant attempt to defend the "Feminist Glaciology" article, which says conventional wisdom is wrong, and this is a solid piece of scholarship. I'll beg to differ, because I think Jeffery, here, is confusing scholarship with "saying things that seem right".
The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.
Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)
There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.
At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?
Imagine for a moment the most obscurantist, jargon-filled, po-mo article the politically correct academy might produce. Pure SJW nonsense. Got it? Chances are you're imagining something like the infamous "Feminist Glaciology" article from a few years back.https://t.co/NRaWNREBvR pic.twitter.com/qtSFBYY80S
— Jeffrey Sachs (@JeffreyASachs) October 13, 2018
The article is, at heart, deeply weird, even essentialist. Here, for example, is the claim that proposing climate engineering is a "man" thing. Also a "man" thing: attempting to get distance from a topic, approaching it in a disinterested fashion.
Also a "man" thing—physical courage. (I guess, not quite: physical courage "co-constitutes" masculinist glaciology along with nationalism and colonialism.)
There's criticism of a New York Times article that talks about glaciology adventures, which makes a similar point.
At the heart of this chunk is the claim that glaciology excludes women because of a narrative of scientific objectivity and physical adventure. This is a strong claim! It's not enough to say, hey, sure, sounds good. Is it true?