While sharing your mission in explaining expectations for social spaces by the audience (I work for the Finnish PSB Yle), I admit to totally missing the rise of the Creator Economy. I was exploring business ways of using social tools, but did not see how these spaces would give rise to so many new businesses as the teenagers grew up and began to professionalize. Afterwards it seems evitable and something that could be expected!
Hi Tuija! There's so much I didn't see as well from channel 4. I'm not sure that would have made us do things differently, but I agree that the aspiration to make a living as a social media creator wasn't something we predicted back in 2007. Although I don't think any of us could have predicted that!
Very useful typology! It definitely feels like we're seeing a pull from people towards those more private "secret" and "group" spaces. I'm curious about how you would see sites like Reddit against this? It definitely it has some of the features of the "group" space but it works because it's public and pseudonymous. Is it an outlier or some other type of space?
I think Reddit is definitely a 'group' space, and probably the best example of how to maintain a group space without letting advertising or other business models kill it. It's grown hugely, but is more federated in structure - each subreddit can set their own house rules for their own communities. In fact, it's probably this federated structure that has stopped Reddit from becoming a total garbage fire. Although many parts of it have serious community problems, those problems don't seem to spread to other communities in the way they do on Facebook or Twitter.
Substack still feels like a pretty special place to me right now, and I hope that the constant push for more features doesn’t degrade its “purity.” Really thoughtful piece.
While sharing your mission in explaining expectations for social spaces by the audience (I work for the Finnish PSB Yle), I admit to totally missing the rise of the Creator Economy. I was exploring business ways of using social tools, but did not see how these spaces would give rise to so many new businesses as the teenagers grew up and began to professionalize. Afterwards it seems evitable and something that could be expected!
Hi Tuija! There's so much I didn't see as well from channel 4. I'm not sure that would have made us do things differently, but I agree that the aspiration to make a living as a social media creator wasn't something we predicted back in 2007. Although I don't think any of us could have predicted that!
Oh btw did you notice Richard Florida has just published a Creator Economy report? (I have a Google scholar alert for the term)
ace! i'll check it out.
Very useful typology! It definitely feels like we're seeing a pull from people towards those more private "secret" and "group" spaces. I'm curious about how you would see sites like Reddit against this? It definitely it has some of the features of the "group" space but it works because it's public and pseudonymous. Is it an outlier or some other type of space?
I think Reddit is definitely a 'group' space, and probably the best example of how to maintain a group space without letting advertising or other business models kill it. It's grown hugely, but is more federated in structure - each subreddit can set their own house rules for their own communities. In fact, it's probably this federated structure that has stopped Reddit from becoming a total garbage fire. Although many parts of it have serious community problems, those problems don't seem to spread to other communities in the way they do on Facebook or Twitter.
Substack still feels like a pretty special place to me right now, and I hope that the constant push for more features doesn’t degrade its “purity.” Really thoughtful piece.
thanks!