Thread by @balajis

Product-as-journalism

- coinmarketcap.com
- windy.com
- nomadlist.com
- ourworldindata.org

Dashboards that present numbers alongside (monetizable?) actions can replace pure text coverage in many verticals.

https://twitter.com/JohnONolan/status/1442867780227797000

The numbers are the raw data
Dashboards are presentations thereof
Subjective text accompanies dashboards
Monetizable actions alongside that text

Seems obvious, and already happening, yet also an important lens on what useful information looks like.

Newspapers usually leave their call to action implicit. But it's often "get angry at this guy", then "subscribe now".

The alternative concept of calls-to-action alongside dashboards is interesting. Every action recommended would be explicit, vetted, and possibly monetized.

This is similar to the paper/scanner/digital document concept. As you go from cash, to fintech, to cryptocurrency, you go from the offline version, to a scanned online, to the natively digital version.

What's possible when it's not just a scanned broadsheet?

The ability to have buttons next to multimedia is only a few decades old. And we still separate things out into "apps" and "content".

But it feels that far more can be done with actions embedded in the content, like quantum.country.

One other thing: if you have call-to-action buttons alongside dashboards and textual content, money is now on the line. So there may be a sort of a built-in fact checking that occurs.

"Is this really true, is this worth my money?"

There's an incentive to be cautious.