Now imagine a celebrity appearing on the network. Suddenly there is a ton of people who want to know which events the celebrity is attending. And what pictures the celebrity shares. And what opinions the celebrity holds.
Then someone discovers that they can attract a lot of followers by posting not only about events they attended, but also cat pictures and funny jokes.
Hello, mentions, retweets, tags, and other ways of mass broadcasting. Hello interactive drama machine.
To avoid this, you have to actively resist broadcasting, force the users vet their subscribers, etc. All this works against the network effects, and thus against the money-making potential of the service.
That has a much higher activation energy than checking a feed, and only works in smaller groups. If you are checking across groups, you are managing N group chats and texting all of them.
> If you are checking across groups, you are managing N group chats and texting all of them.
Exactly! I have different groups of friends and acquaintances with different tastes, interests, senses of humor, etc.
I appreciate moving between them and interacting directly with them very much. It never feels like I'm "managing" anything, nor does it feel like work. It feels like community.
An events app is just a simple tech solution for optimizing the number of opportunities to work on those relationships. Just like a calendar is a tech solution for making appointments.
I recognize that this is certainly going to be a YMMV response, but I've got circles of friends and acquaintances in most of the areas I'm interested in. I can reach out to all of them if I'm feeling up for whatever, or I can reach out to specific ones depending on what I want to get into this weekend. I appreciate that sense of community more than a cold events calendar can get me. I don't need to know what all of my friends are up to all of the time, and if it's important to me, I can reach out directly.
Heck, even RSVPs to calendar events can be misleading and don't actually tell me why my friend marked themselves as attending. Sometimes people use it as reminders, or maybe they were interested last month but aren't anymore and forgot to remove the event from their list. Maybe plans have changed and they're not going, or maybe their reason for going would be wildly different than mine. I'd rather find out from them what's happening and what they're excited about.
Now imagine a celebrity appearing on the network. Suddenly there is a ton of people who want to know which events the celebrity is attending. And what pictures the celebrity shares. And what opinions the celebrity holds.
Then someone discovers that they can attract a lot of followers by posting not only about events they attended, but also cat pictures and funny jokes.
Hello, mentions, retweets, tags, and other ways of mass broadcasting. Hello interactive drama machine.
To avoid this, you have to actively resist broadcasting, force the users vet their subscribers, etc. All this works against the network effects, and thus against the money-making potential of the service.