The little blurb people put beside their name in Twitter is usually far more comical than anything they ever post. This is one thing Jack Lincoln has noticed, scrolling through that social media time suck in his down time.
But then again, these sites all have their winning attributes. With LinkedIn, he likes the mayhem of their connection suggestions. At the top of their endless doom scroll, the first name is seemingly always someone you’ve never met nor heard of, followed by some random ex-coworker who isn’t a mutual connection with anyone else. Whom you haven’t seen, talked to, texted, or for that matter even thought about in 12 years. Meanwhile, your closest friends in real life, who have on average about 186 mutual connections in common with you, never show up at all.
Jack thinks there’s a sweet spot in the algorithm here, however unintentional. It’s like some bizarre combination of bad coding and the company’s own deliberate yet zany ideas on the best way to run things. Whatever the case, it sure is fascinating – even as he wonders how they, Twitter, and a whole host of other platforms ever hope to make money, to sustain themselves long-term.
This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jasonmcgathey.wordpress.com/2021/05/03/tales-of-a-scorched-coffee-pot-chapter-39/
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“Tales of a Scorched Coffee Pot” – Chapter 39