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To me, Urbit is DOA. The reason facebook and twitt...
# thinking-together
e
To me, Urbit is DOA. The reason facebook and twitter are so successful is that they stay up, and gradually improve their mostly free to use product. They use a pay-by-advertising model that is the accepted standard for all public media in the USA (Radio, Newspapers, TV, etc.). Their billions in revenue allows them the luxury of huge staffs which attend to all aspects of maintaining and growing their lead in their respective spaces. Urbit has no motor to drive it forward. And things don't move without a motor.
i
"pay-by-advertising model that is the accepted standard for all public media in the USA" What about movies and video games and books and theatre and streaming services?
What about the fact that Twitter isn't profitable, and is limping along on VC funding?
What about Mozilla, or Red Hat, or Cognitect, or Basecamp, and the like? They make software / tools / languages / frameworks that is well maintained and popular, released for free and open source, and sustain the development with lines of business that complement the free offering.
c
What doas DOA stand for?
I do think Facebook and Twitter are culturally dying. As twitter.com/naval argues all communication platforms gravitate towards open protocols because otherwise the platform uses its value proposition towards society
d
That is super interesting, i think it aligns with the “arrow of progress” i.e. the balance of power between “the state” and “the people” progresses in the long run towards the greater good, because of game theory, it is a more stable outcome with less steep gradients
i
@curious_reader DOA stands for "dead on arrival".
e
I meant 99% of broadcast media is supported by advertising. Even NPR is doing advertising now, and it used to be a donation only company when i was young, but not enough money in donations to keep going. And even video games below AAA titles often have an advertising component; either you sell an unlock of some feature or you sell eyeball time via advertising. In the case of Red Hat they sell consulting services and a "pro" version that has support, which is important to companies. Don't kid yourself, Twitter and Facebook are getting stronger by the second. I don't know what you mean by "culturally" dying. Their sales are increasing, company headcounts are going up, and their competitors are weaker. Their growth rates are tapering off, but that is because they have won their market and at this point it is just a matter of pushing out to all the countries and doing the hard work of localizing/evangelizing in 100 countries. I don't like Facebook's tactics one bit, but along with Uber, ruthlessness has won (again).
I am of the Nintendo school, which tries to sell entertainment in return for a cash price. They use a durable cartridge system, which allows people to gift, trade and sell their used games, which is a great consumer benefit, to be able to transfer their license cleanly without hindrance. Unfortunately there is a communistic attitude among modern consumers, and the market is gradually moving to a subscription model for everything, which i loathe. It isn't clean, doesn't allow third parties to participate, and shortchanges the creators because when you sell things in bulk by the pound, an individual creation is not particularly valued, nor compensated. Due to piracy, the CD business imploded, but the streaming model has been disastrous for the average musician, and i read recently that 60% of all revenue in the music biz is earned by less than 1% of the people, an unheard of concentration of income. People have resuscitated vinyl partly as a reaction to this, trying to recreate the golden years of music in the 1970's. I believe that creative work, regardless of its tangibility, should be compensated, but I am unfortunately in the minority, as there is now a prevailing attitude in software that due to the near zero cost of copying, that everything created in that domain should be free.
c
Hi Edward thanks for replying. I'm not used to slack so I sometimes don't "get messages". As soon as they are created. " Don't kid yourself, Twitter and Facebook are getting stronger by the second. I don't know what you mean by "culturally" dying" I think we are actually progressing slowly away from the web 2.0 and advertising model
@Edward de Jong / Beads Project Efforts like this: https://medium.com/streamrblog/crowdselling-your-personal-data-through-firefox-c4f8bf9b8a96 or ocean protocol are showing the changing perspective https://twitter.com/BrucePon/status/1127648158803218432
Juan Benet has a good intro into what web3 is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l44z35vabvA▾

such fundamental paradigm shifts are taking their time but they are happening. this podcast touches also on the subject
now regarding my comment on "culturally dying" : more and more users are frustrated with their experience with facebook and twitter because of many issues like: the new algorith isn't transparent, the service maybe free but still value is created, but only because it is extracted from the user data. because of the closed model and also because of advertising these social networks create so much hate and disengagement that is really becomes painful for the users
@Edward de Jong / Beads Project " I believe that creative work, regardless of its tangibility" you are absolutely NOT in the minority! Besides all the usual Blockchain hype (explained in the podcast, if only in one sentence..) you can actually use these systems to achieve a kind provenance that is valuable for creators and society 🙂 here is an example of freaking William Shatner trying to do so: https://twitter.com/williamshatner/status/1126698809566744577?s=21
there is a better way, and people motivated are currently gathering in that space, hope to see you there 🙂
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