“For You” Is Dead. Prompts Will Kill the Feed. Groups Are The Social Graph.
Here's a rambling of thoughts that I've been thinking about for a while, just observing and listening to how people use the internet...
Prompts are replacing posts.
A prompt makes a video.
A song. An agent.
Soon, an entire app.
Prompts are becoming the new content type. And new content types are what create new networks. Microblogging, disappearing photos, 6-second videos, karaoke with friends, live streaming with/ hearts, 10-second AI videos, an AI song, the list goes on...
The prompt graph is replacing the algo graph and the follow graph.
When you see something like Sora, you realize what’s coming.
You can prompt to control the mood of your feed.
The tone. The style. The people who appear.
You’ll even control how others use your content and likeness.
Every person in the world will have a different feed.
People will create personalized algorithms one prompt at a time.
They’ll create their own content the same way. We will see new content types at the rate of new filters on our photos in the past.
This explosion will change what people want to see in an instant. If prompts can change the algo and distribution follows content types, the question becomes what network will actually have staying power?
The feed and the creator become one and the same.
It sounds great—until you think about it.
Everyone gets their own feed.
Perfectly personalized.
Perfectly isolated.
Each person trapped in their own private TV channel.
The algorithm isn’t dividing us.
We are.
If we think the algorithm is dividing us today, who knows what this is going to do for the world?
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Social feeds aren’t dead.
They’re just not social anymore.
Feeds became TV.
We scroll. We watch. We don’t talk. We scream. Like people do at a TV.
Algorithms turned friends into programming.
The follow graph used to mean something.
It was your tribe.
Now it’s just a number.
Status without connection. Yelling into a void.
Nobody I know is excited about getting new followers on a new platform. No one.
Follow graphs are exhausting.
People are burnt out on the game.
Something different is happening.
Sora launches with no graph and is #1 in the App Store instantly. But I don’t want another follower graph. People do like the new content type.
What makes an app sticky if it’s not followers? That is the question.
The follow graphs that are happening are because people are trying to escape the one they are already in. For many different reasons, primarily political. The problem is that without something really different or a new content type, the energy quickly runs out. Passion to leave has a shelf life, unlike innovative new products.
When we think about building social today,
I don't think it's about starting with followers. It's about starting with the prompt. Or something we can't see yet.
The follow graph innovation is 20 years old, it's time for something new. The follower fed our egos; whatever replaces the follower better also feed the ego.
Innovator's Dilemma tells us to think smaller to find disruption.
I keep thinking about consent. The "who can message me" graph feels like it could be the next social graph. But instead of being owned by a company or a network, it's owned at the group level, private to the user.
Smaller groups.
Smaller tribes.
More of them.
And making sure they stay private—
not mapped publicly between each other—
is the critical nuance.
We don’t need another social graph that Zuck owns, mapping my every move across four different apps.
Each group is a social graph, and I should own it.
Because that’s where people actually live now.
Group chats.
Private threads.
Micro-worlds with their own jokes, rituals, economies, and rules.
Every group is a social network.
Every group is an economy.
Every group can be its own app.
Every group has a culture.
Heck, after watching Nepal, every group can be its own country.
That’s the real graph now.
Soon, each group will have a key.
The key will own the group, not the app.
You’ll take it anywhere.
New apps. New agents. New countries.
Your group, your data, your choice.
That’s the future of social:
Portable. Private. Owned.
Groups are the social graph. You own it. You can take it anywhere. New app innovations will allow you to plug your group into it, not the other way around.
But more than anything, groups are people you care about. As the internet becomes increasingly populated with fake content created by strangers, people will likely become more protective of those who truly matter to them in their lives.
The graph that matters in the future is the one that includes the people who matter. As content types change by the day, the people who matter to us change the least.
This will become the stickiest social graph. And we will fight like hell to protect it.
Let's talk "Consent"
Consent might be the next big shift.
Who can message me?
Who can’t?
That’s a new kind of graph too—the consent graph.
It protects attention and keeps communication clean.
Maybe that’s the real “friend request” of the future. Except that you can't request it from me, I give you my consent. The request box needs a reboot.
If I had to bet on where a new network mechanism will come from, one as impactful as the friend or the follower, I think it's going to come from this area.
Messaging is eating social. While social is eating TV.
Because messaging is social, and social is television.
To win at social means creating an engine to generate new content types as quickly as possible and innovating the prompt feed.
To win at messaging means ensuring that the people I care about are there, I own the group, and I can do things with them that I could never do before.
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I’m not sure where this all takes us, but I hope it’s somewhere different than where it got us today.