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Rex Woodbury

4 May, 11 tweets, 4 min read

If you're interested in consumer tech:

Every Wednesday, I send out a piece of writing. Topics include: creators, internet culture, digital economies, Web3, & social media

You can subscribe here. Below are 10 of my favorite recent Digital Native pieces 👇
digitalnative.substack.com

📹 What People Misunderstand About The Creator Economy 📹

5 reasons it's important:
• It's about self-expression
• It's horizontal, not vertical
• It enables diverse voices
• It lets workers reclaim agency
• It breaks down outdated power structures
digitalnative.substack.com/p/what-people-…

🏛️ The Memeification of American Capitalism 🏛️

There are common threads between r/WallStreetBets and NFT mania. Both are emblematic of a growing backlash to institutions.

From GameStop to Beeple, internet culture is seeping into corporate America.
digitalnative.substack.com/p/the-memeific…

💙 Digital Kinship & the Loneliness Epidemic 💙

The internet is both a cause of and salve for the loneliness epidemic.

Culture is in the midst of a pendulum swing back to community over self. And people seek community online.
digitalnative.substack.com/p/digital-kins…

💰 How to Monetize Culture 💰

Business model shifts are often more transformative than technology shifts. This piece explores future business models of the internet, including:

• Subscriptions
• Microtransactions
• Virtual currencies

Commerce > ads
digitalnative.substack.com/p/how-to-monet…

🪞 The Two-Way Mirror of Art and Technology 🪞

• Radio gave us FDR
• TV gave us JFK and Oprah
• Instagram gave us Kim K
• TikTok gave us Charli D'Amelio

New technologies determine culture and the people who define culture.
digitalnative.substack.com/p/the-two-way-…

💄 The Rejection of Internet Perfection 💄

There's been a rapid shift from aspiration to authenticity online. Kylie Jenner quickly gave way to Charli D'Amelio. Gen Zs are behind this shift.
digitalnative.substack.com/p/the-rejectio…

🧱 Memes and the Atomic Units of Culture 🧱

Simply put, a meme is a unit of culture transfer. Memes are our most underrated form of communication.

We're shifting from consumption to creation—more people will actively participate in meme culture.
digitalnative.substack.com/p/memes-and-th…

🌍 We’re All Social Distancing on the Internet Too 🌍

Just as we're all isolated in the real world, we're in our proverbial quarantine bubbles online. The internet is niche and mass media has given way to deeply-engaged but more insular communities.
digitalnative.substack.com/p/were-all-soc…

💃 Gen Z Behaviors 💃

Gen Zs are:
• Community-centric & radically inclusive
• Playful, joyful, & serendipitous
• Deeply creative
• Scrappy & entrepreneurial
• Authentically individualistic
digitalnative.substack.com/p/gen-z-behavi…

🎨 The Digital Renaissance 🎨

NFTs and social tokens are forming the foundation of a new architecture for creative industries. They finally fulfill the internet's promise of removing gatekeepers.
digitalnative.substack.com/p/the-digital-…

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More from @rex_woodbury

Rex Woodbury

@rex_woodbury

5 May

There are a lot of buzzwords in tech right now—creator, community, Web3, NFTs, metaverse.

The thing is, they all connect. They're intersecting & building on each other to forge the next generation of the internet.

Here's how I think everything connects 👇👇👇

First, we're becoming a digital species.

Over the last decade, internet users have swelled to 4.5 billion—60% of the world. Americans spend *11 hours a day* interacting with digital media.

With tech, we communicate, create, & collaborate in new ways & at an unprecedented scale.

@VisualCap

The scale of the internet is stunning. Every single minute, people:

• Stream 404,444 hrs on Netflix
• Post 347,222 Insta stories
• Upload 500 hrs on YouTube
• Ship 6,659 Amazon packages
• Install TikTok 2,704 times
• Send 41,666,667 WhatsApp messages

Source: @VisualCap

Read 21 tweets

Rex Woodbury

@rex_woodbury

30 Apr

This is Miko. She's a virtual streamer who is controlled by a real-life woman known only as The Technician.

The Technician uses the Unreal Engine and a $30,000 motion-capture suit to create Miko.

Thread 👇

The Technician's story starts like that of many other creators:

At the beginning of the pandemic, The Technician was laid off from the animation studio she worked at, just weeks after moving to Los Angeles.

She found herself unemployed and stuck with a $2,000-a-month lease.

In her words: “I thought, you know what would be the good thing to do right now isn’t to try to look for work. Let me put down $20K and try to make it on Twitch.”

The early days were slow-going. She made $300 a month and was thousands of dollars in debt from expensive equipment.

Read 11 tweets

Rex Woodbury

@rex_woodbury

28 Apr

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.

👇👇👇

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.

@lucymort_

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.

Read 8 tweets

Rex Woodbury

@rex_woodbury

26 Apr

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.

Read 6 tweets

Rex Woodbury

@rex_woodbury

16 Apr

1/ Cash App overtook Venmo by embedding itself in culture and by targeting *all* of America, not just NYC, SF, and LA.

Over 200 hip-hop artists have name-dropped Cash App in their songs—the app has captured the zeitgeist in a way that Venmo hasn't been able to.

👇👇👇👇👇👇

2/ Venmo had the headstart, founded in 2009 to Cash App's 2013.

The founders wanted to pay each other for a weekend trip without writing a check, and figured they should be able to use SMS

It was a similar insight to the one PayPal had a decade earlier with payments over email.

3/ Cash App was created by Square in 2013 and operates like a startup inside Square.

While Venmo took off in big cities like NYC and LA, Cash App focused on the South.

Payment network effects are often hyper local: you sign up for the app that your friends are using.

Read 9 tweets

Rex Woodbury

@rex_woodbury

16 Apr

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.

Read 6 tweets

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