Member-only story
Unlocking irl group interaction
Background
The book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community chronicles the dissolution of traditional social structures (bowling leagues, PTA, church, etc) across American communities in the 1990s. It’s an apt analogy for today’s societal and culture tilt toward toward real-world, small group gatherings.
Online social behavior has been shifting away from public broadcasting to private communication. This has happened alongside similar changes offline in how we live, work, and socialize. Services that cater to this shift in consumer behavior are well-positioned.
First, “Social 2.0" has been dominated by 1-many broadcast paradigms, starting with Facebook feed and now maximized with Instagram Stories. This world of true-identity profiles prioritized sharing and “connection” at all costs. This drive is perhaps most troublingly articulated by Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, one of Facebook’s longest-tenured execs:
“The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.”
But after the 2016 election, fake news, and Cambridge Analytica, the global town square that is FB newsfeed and Twitter…
