Stop trying to make social networks succeed
It’s my belief that the continued attempt to dominate the social networking space is related to predicted upcoming societal changes.<p>They are the hot glue underneath a AML&#x2F;KYC-based identity verification systems at scale and the sticky requirement for anyone looking to build such a system at scale. There is no better verification than social context for identity, and at core these are giant graph databases that have personal histories which can be leveraged for social credit and reputation applications.<p>Watching these oligarchs jockey to try to concentrate people into social platforms is clearly more than a casual priority, so that’s why I suspect multiple motives that exceed the intrinsic social value of the platforms. It’s been my learning that the really massive companies in Silicon Valley a often have a back door leverage-style data platform to try to build a monopolistic position at some future inflection point in addition to their “front and center” business.<p>I further suspect is a land grab to try to build the “WeChat of the West,” which explains quite clearly the relatively sky-high Twitter purchase (at least vs revenues) price as simply attaching a financial valuation to a portion of the initial userbase more than makes up for the purchase price.<p>People are very focused on the front side applications (the social network hook) but the true value of these businesses is in building the next generations of FICO.<p>When I read comments like, “<i>Our communities are worth a lot more than the underlying tool used at some point in time.</i>”, and “<i>We are selling them, we are transforming them into a simple commercial asset for the makers of the tool we are using, the tool which exploits us.</i>” I do wonder if people think as I do that it’s far more extensive than simple social networking companies. The approach to global finance is incredibly clear: social credit is the new core and communities are the oil of social credit.<p>In the end it’s all about financial inclusion, as is laid out in this WEF article that explains just why social credit applications are so important to financial inclusion and global growth:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.weforum.org&#x2F;agenda&#x2F;2021&#x2F;01&#x2F;this-new-approach-to-credit-scoring-is-accelerating-financial-inclusion&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.weforum.org&#x2F;agenda&#x2F;2021&#x2F;01&#x2F;this-new-approach-to-...</a><p>So, consider that niche social networks do not serve this purpose very well, and so there is little incentive to “build small” at this stage. I’d love to see more social network applications that are focused on quality connections myself, and for a while that was Reddit. But Reddit’a value was really just the aggregation of all the independent communities that used to exist in forums and similar into one website.