Saw this tweet the other day laying out how Zuck thinks about launching products at Meta. He simplifies it in a way that makes sense:

People underestimate the desire for consumers to buy into products & experiences that are unpredictable. A lot of it has to do with a craving to be entertained. You don’t want to know the ending to a movie and you fucking hate spoilers. When you see a concert, you don’t want to know the set list beforehand. You chase songs that are rare (real g’s know), and you’re lucky if another artist sits in at your show. When you see your team play, you hope they win. Sometimes they lose. You get that feeling. It’s still worth it.

the crypto space has been talking about decentralized social (DeSo) for a while now. for an industry that challenges skeuomorphism, i think WE (myself included) have been too literal in envisioning & developing what this looks like. crypto is inherently transactional. crypto is meant to be interoperable. the mechanisms of web2 social platforms are the exact opposite-- most are free and most will do anything to keep you locked inside. and while we’ve seen attempts from social networks to incorporate crypto (libra to diem), it doesn’t work if the decision is made by the platform itself but rather the participants who decide what should be valued from the outside in.

there will be many hot takes on what is going on in crypto land. people love it. people hate it. like everything in today’s world there is no middle. but regardless of how you are observing the memecoin markets (valued now at > $60Billy), you know about it through media-- the tweets, the memes, the namesakes and soon, the Sphere.

the internet has become boring. we spend more time than ever before on it, but our ability to seek or be surprised or get excited feels less and less. it’s almost as if we’ve gone from a place of wonder (what new shit could be built on the internet?) to a place of expectation (i use this because i have to.). Maybe it was meant to be boring all along, and as it became more critical to our every day lives it lost that new car smell. Still, that kinda sucks.

If you were a GenX kid with even a small amount of tech familiarity, you almost certainly had the following experience: Sometime around 1995, an older relative or friend would come to you and ask for help ‘getting online.’ They would explain that they had heard about this amazing new technology called e-mail (or gopher, message boards, or if they were a little too honest, chat). And they had suddenly realized they needed to be \*there.\* There was a place where you could do these specific amazing things with information, without which they would be at a disadvantage. They needed to be 'online.'

Recently I’ve been excited about the opportunity for NFTs to unlock direct-to-consumer \*everything\* in ways that can bridge a tighter relationship between two parties. Where I’ve landed is that the value doesn’t rest solely on paid NFTs (“I pay to be a part of this”) but through free NFTs as well (“I am welcomed and asked to join this”). Time will tell but my hypothesis is the latter will be more effective in terms of fostering meaningful relationships. And can also help build a way bigger business. 

This piece was originally published on May 28, 2020.

When you think about crypto or web3 or \[insert fabulous marketing term here], you think about tokens. Tokens have been the foundation of each evolution and cycle of crypto, serving as the floorboards for everything to build on top of. But in this process, we’ve yet to take a breath and ask ourselves whether our attention — and intention — is going to the right place.