‘Making “Social” Social Again’ — Ev Williams Explains Mozi
Ev Williams, writing the backstory of, and raison d’être for Mozi:
And here we are, 20+ years later, with address books full of
partial, duplicate, and outdated information. Perhaps the reason
for this is that social networks (or the social network) solved
this problem — for a while. When Facebook was ubiquitous it was
probably a pretty good reflection of many people’s real-life
relationships. It told you where they lived, who you knew in
common, and all kinds of other details.
Another idea that seemed obvious was that, given how deeply social
humans are, social products would dominate the internet. Ten to
fifteen years ago, this seemed inevitable.
But something else happened instead.
Social networks became “social media,” which, at first, meant
receiving content from people you chose to hear from. But in the
quest to maximize engagement, the timeline of friends and people
you picked to follow turned into a free-for-all battle for
attention. And it turns out, for most people, your friends aren’t
as entertaining as (god forbid) influencers who spend their
waking hours making “content.”
In other words, social media became … media.
To tell you the truth, I think there are positive aspects of this
evolution (perhaps I’ll get into that in another post). But we
clearly lost something.
This whole piece is so good, so clear. This distinction between social networking and social media is obvious in hindsight, but only in hindsight. Williams posted it on Medium (natch), but Mozi’s website links directly to it for their “About” page. I’m excited about this. I think they’re on to something here. It’s even a great name.
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Ev Williams, writing the backstory of, and raison d’être for Mozi:
And here we are, 20+ years later, with address books full of
partial, duplicate, and outdated information. Perhaps the reason
for this is that social networks (or the social network) solved
this problem — for a while. When Facebook was ubiquitous it was
probably a pretty good reflection of many people’s real-life
relationships. It told you where they lived, who you knew in
common, and all kinds of other details.
Another idea that seemed obvious was that, given how deeply social
humans are, social products would dominate the internet. Ten to
fifteen years ago, this seemed inevitable.
But something else happened instead.
Social networks became “social media,” which, at first, meant
receiving content from people you chose to hear from. But in the
quest to maximize engagement, the timeline of friends and people
you picked to follow turned into a free-for-all battle for
attention. And it turns out, for most people, your friends aren’t
as entertaining as (god forbid) influencers who spend their
waking hours making “content.”
In other words, social media became … media.
To tell you the truth, I think there are positive aspects of this
evolution (perhaps I’ll get into that in another post). But we
clearly lost something.
This whole piece is so good, so clear. This distinction between social networking and social media is obvious in hindsight, but only in hindsight. Williams posted it on Medium (natch), but Mozi’s website links directly to it for their “About” page. I’m excited about this. I think they’re on to something here. It’s even a great name.