The irony of social media
There is an irony to social media and that is that it doesn’t show us what we want to see. In fact, social media show us only what our “friends” want to publish. The reality is that we are using social media to satisfy someone else’s need to express herself? There is nothing wrong with it, but what have I been missing elsewhere in the things I’m really interested in?
This realisation is why we now have medium.com, why we have created phlow.com and marks a coming change in social media and how it works.
“The ethos of Medium is inherently democratic; it seeks to give a voice to people who have something interesting to say, even if they don’t have thousands of Twitter followers, an active blog or friends in the right places. Medium is built to reward content for its quality, not for the pedigree or popularity of the author” | Kiss Metrics
How social media is today
The main issue with social media is that it’s like a box of chocolates, “you never know what you’re gonna get”. Sometimes opening Facebook I will find the most compelling and interesting stories, many other days I will just shake my head as I scroll though page after page of pointless posts that I am not really interested.
My friends are posting what they are passionate about, but not necessarily what I am passionate about.
For the time being, this is how social media works. For the good or for the bad, this is the way the platforms are structured.
But a fundamental change in the way we consume digital media is coming.
Making ripples in your social circles
Facebook is now more than 12 years old, and although it has changed significantly during that time, the original logic still stands — it connects people.
It is widely known however that Google, Facebook and Twitter are investing vast amounts of money in R&D to try and anticipate our needs and customise our newsfeeds with sophisticated AI. But this is still limited by who we know and who we are connected with.
Think of it like throwing a stone into the water, watching it ripple outwards from the centre and gradually fade and disappear — bigger stones make bigger ripples. The content you see and the content you publish is restricted by how far those ripples can travel and unless you are the “big stone”, that won’t be very far.
Our idea is that the next evolution of social media won’t put our friends centre stage, but instead the topics we are passionate about. Finding great content should not be dependant on who we follow or befriend nor should it be dependent on how big a stone we are.
More social, less artificial
If we think about it, social media does not make it easy to connect with people you don’t already know. But imagine being able to find and connect with people who are similar to me online, who share my interests and passions. I would be able to start amazing discussions on things that matter to us both, regardless of who or where they are in the world.
Context matters. What I love, what I like to see in my feed defines who I am.
Cutting through the noise
We can not deny that social media has revolutionised the way we spend our time online, communicating and absorbing information. However now is the time to re-revolutionise and change the way we are served our content.
Let’s imagine a system capable of cutting through the noise provided by our current social networks. Capable of providing us with distraction free, beautiful and inspiring content based our our passions and not the passions of our friends. Let’s revolutionise the visual world around us.
phlow is our way of implementing this vision, and we hope you will join us by requesting an invite for early access of the phlow app.
