1/ It's 1995. Netscape is the dominant browser. Your laptop costs $6,000. The World Wide Web has 16M users.
And GeoCities is the 3rd-most-popular website in the world.
"Community" is again becoming the defining word of the internet. In many ways, community began with Geocities.
2/ GeoCities helped people discover the internet & find like-minded people online with "Neighborhoods"
GeoCities had 28 neighborhoods built around interests, like Area51 for sci-fi & fantasy and Hot Springs for health & wellness.
Early web users found community & belonging.
3/ In 1995, Bill Gates said: "The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow."
Before Google & search, GeoCities helped people understand online community through the familiar paradigms of neighborhoods and, within neighborhoods, blocks.
4/ One early GeoCities user remembers:
"The idea that in the beginning, cyberspace is an empty space that has to be populated, was I think easily linked to this idea of America being an ‘empty’ continent. GeoCities provided web space with a story, with a narrative." (@business)
5/ GeoCities shut down ~10 years after Yahoo bought it for $3.7B in 1999
But its ethos of belonging & concept of online communities can be seen in today's 7M Discord servers or 1M+ subreddits
The internet is niche & as more people come online, niches grow big & new niches form.
6/ The legacy of GeoCities is helping people transition from real-world communities to online communities with the familiar metaphor of neighborhoods.
In a time when online "community" is again a buzzword, it's interesting to look back on where it started.
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OnlyFans 2020 numbers:
• Revenue grew +553% to $391 million
• Users grew 5x from 20 million to 120 million
• Over 300 creators made more than $1 million
OnlyFans' success is a fascinating combination of business model innovation & the desire for online belonging.
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OnlyFans' business model lets creators stitch together subscriptions, tipping, & microtransactions.
Creators can send out locked DMs that look like personal messages, but are sent en masse to thousands of subscribers. One message can earn a creator thousands of dollars.
Locked DMs are a way for creators to earn income at scale and for subscribers to feel personally connected to the creator.
@lucymort_ calls this “the commodification of intimacy.” Online relationships with OnlyFans creators can become replacements for real-life intimacy.
1/ Survey of Gen Zs—66% prioritize financial stability over doing something they enjoy. This is a pretty stunning reversal from the Millennial mindset.
We're seeing the ripple effects of a generation that grew up during the financial crisis.
(Source: XYZ University)
2/ In David Brooks' words:
“Children can now expect to have a lower quality of life than their parents, the pandemic rages, climate change looms, & social media is vicious. Their worldview is predicated on threat, not safety.”
3/ This worldview built on threat instead of on safety is clearest in young people's distrust of institutions & companies.
Many watched their parents work within “the system” and be promised good lives and stable jobs—only to be laid off during the recession or pandemic.
1/ I continue to think that Baby Boomers are tech's most underserved demographic. Huge market + decades-long tailwinds.
Every day, 10,000 people in the US turn 65. By 2040, 1 in every 5 Americans will be over 65, and 50% of the population is already over 50.
2/ Baby Boomers are already the wealthiest generation in history, collectively earning double that of the “Silent Generation” above them. Boomers control 70% of U.S. disposable income and 50% of U.S. consumer spending dollars.
Yet just ~5% of advertising dollars target Boomers.
3/ And they're underratedly tech-savvy.
Boomers make up a third of all internet users, 90% have a computer, and 70% have a smartphone.
30 million US Boomers call themselves “heavy Internet users"—roughly defined as using the Internet for 15 hours or more each week.