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The tendency of young people to jump from platform to platform is partially an illusion caused by the fact they don’t remain young. You see this especially in d

The tendency of young people to jump from platform to platform is partially an illusion caused by the fact they don’t remain young. You see this especially in dating sites — people used to think OkCupid could never make money because it was dominated by 18-to-25-year-olds. Now it’s mostly people in their 30’s, and the prior king of 30-somethings, Match.com, is for people over 40. The same thing happened with Tinder, PlentyOfFish, etc. TikTok isn’t a dating site, but it’s certainly “flirty”. It has specific appeal to socially active teenagers and nearly all of the content shows off suitability for dating: looks, dancing, fashion, wit, etc. I could imagine adding paywalls to men contacting desirable women, or of course just padding the feeds of less valuable users with ads.

echelon 6y ago
> padding the feeds of less valuable users with ads This is horrifying when you consider this happens in every avenue of life and will only become better targeted as technology progresses.
- goodside 6y ago
  It’s less horrifying if you think of it as a treadmill — MySpace is sort of the logical extreme, where the owners realized its days were numbered and made the experience so ad-heavy that everyone left for other platforms. You sow growth for some number of years, then you reap. Sometimes it’s subscriptions, sometimes it’s sponsored full-page branding.
  - echelon 6y ago
    Sorry, I wasn't making the claim about a product. People that are more socially valuable are given a better experience and are treated better; kind of the social media "red carpet" treatment. Those that are less valuable are mined and exploited. I can imagine an insidious future where social networks assign an "intelligence score" to users and advertise snake oil to those with less capacity to evaluate risks. There might even be a market for those users. A number of companies in the mobile gaming space profit from exploiting "whales". Imagine buying and selling them as targets. Similarly, networks might evolve to give positive experiences to users that create content. We already have that in the form of monetization and karma. The economy rewards value creators. But imagine being algorithmically put in place. That gives me the creeps.
    - walterbell 6y ago
      What makes you think this hasn't already happened? Advertising can both create and meet demand. A large portion of social media advertising came from mobile gaming companies, relying on the targeted profiles available on social platform, to find people who could be converted into whales.

echelon 6y ago

> padding the feeds of less valuable users with ads This is horrifying when you consider this happens in every avenue of life and will only become better targeted as technology progresses.

goodside 6y ago
It’s less horrifying if you think of it as a treadmill — MySpace is sort of the logical extreme, where the owners realized its days were numbered and made the experience so ad-heavy that everyone left for other platforms. You sow growth for some number of years, then you reap. Sometimes it’s subscriptions, sometimes it’s sponsored full-page branding.
- echelon 6y ago
  Sorry, I wasn't making the claim about a product. People that are more socially valuable are given a better experience and are treated better; kind of the social media "red carpet" treatment. Those that are less valuable are mined and exploited. I can imagine an insidious future where social networks assign an "intelligence score" to users and advertise snake oil to those with less capacity to evaluate risks. There might even be a market for those users. A number of companies in the mobile gaming space profit from exploiting "whales". Imagine buying and selling them as targets. Similarly, networks might evolve to give positive experiences to users that create content. We already have that in the form of monetization and karma. The economy rewards value creators. But imagine being algorithmically put in place. That gives me the creeps.
  - walterbell 6y ago
    What makes you think this hasn't already happened? Advertising can both create and meet demand. A large portion of social media advertising came from mobile gaming companies, relying on the targeted profiles available on social platform, to find people who could be converted into whales.