Creating Better Digital Spaces

Lately, the show Naked and Afraid has been my background noise. If you’re unfamiliar, Naked and Afraid drops two people with survivalist backgrounds into a harsh natural environment where they must survive for 21 days.?

They have no clothes, and they get to bring one item each. A pot for boiling water. A bar of magnesium for starting a fire. A knife or axe. Contestants don’t get to communicate about who brings what, but still, before the competition even begins, they are relying on each other.?

Over 21 days, they build shelters and hunt for water. They find ways to keep the bugs and rain off of them. They must stay out of the sun and be smart with their calories. Every few days, when they catch a frog or a small bird to eat, they say it feels like a feast.???

Sometimes, one partner taps out and goes home early. The remaining contestant must finish on their own. This is infinitely harder. The simplest tasks take immense effort, and often luck.

Even when contestants don’t like each other, or when one makes a bad decision that affects the other, they know that they need each other in the most literal sense. Naked and Afraid reminds me, somewhat harshly, why humans are social animals.

It’s because we have to be.?

// More social, less media, please //

Anyone would agree that mainstream social media platforms have become a dumpster fire. Putting aside my own lamentations about Big Tech at large, I see a few common denominators when I take these platforms at face value.?

• They gamify attention and popularity, rewarding the most incendiary, provocative content.?
• They are wide open. Many people who do not know you can see your posts and comment without the context of actually knowing you.?
• There is no real common denominator among the spectrum of people you may encounter.?
• Platforms show little regard for the integrity and truthfulness of content that users post.?

These conventions discourage good-faith discussions. They discourage learning and real connection. They’re too heavy on “media” and too light on “social.”?

I recently got access to a nascent social media app (sorry, I can’t name it), that has introduced me to many people who think differently than me. But this app is small. The common denominator among us is that we are all part of the creator’s network. And we are all doing fairly high-level work in our professions.

These elements establish a foundation of good faith and rapport. People can talk about ideas from different sides without trying to dunk on each other. We can say things imperfectly. There’s this feeling that we’re all working together toward an answer, and at the end of the day, we’re all friends here.?

The content doesn’t need moderation. It’s the same within the niche social apps we’ve built at WLCM. These products host conversation and community about specific and shared parts of their users’ lives – motherhood, mental health, breastfeeding. People feel safe sharing very personal information and perspectives in these digital environments, which were built for a stated purpose and among a group with meaningful and relevant commonalities. They confirm that healthy, fulfilling digital communities are possible.?

And that gives me hope.?

Within your product, you’re creating an environment. The contours and design of that environment influence your users’ behavior. Creating a quality environment doesn’t happen on its own.?

Think deeply about what you consider quality behavior, and how to incentivize that behavior.

In my mind, the incentive structure that undergirds Facebook, Twitter, and other major platforms sits at the core of their problem. You must have an idea about what’s important, healthy, and good within the context of your app and the user’s experience.?

Consider how big a group can get before it starts to feel impersonal. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar posited that humans can sustain on average about 150 personal relationships before starting to splinter into groups. Of course, that number has been challenged, but it’s worth considering how big a digital community can get before it loses that intimate feel.??

Understand the common denominator among your users and center community around that. If you provide the common ground, you sow the seeds for users to form their own individual connections with one another. That’s where the gold is, making a friend — perhaps for life. What problems, issues, desires, and preferences are shared by your users and how can you foster engagement around them?

Trust. Good faith. Common ground. These are the ingredients to healthy digital community, no matter what your app does. In the coming weeks, I’ll be releasing a new blog series about social media and how I think we can do it better.

• Got an idea, but not sure how to get it built? My new ebook has your name on it. Check out my guide, How to Get Software Built if you’ve got an idea you can’t shake, or you’re intimidated by navigating the development world.?
• Our blog series on AI has come to its conclusion! I’ll be designing that into a downloadable, but in the meantime, check out the latest entries about How AI Learns and How to Think About AI in Your Product.?
• For Forbes, I contributed to an article about essential skills for the digital workplace . Self-guided research and learning are at the top of my list, but there are some definitely some other gems in here.

We'll release a new blog series soon that can help you think about the bigger picture of social media and digital communities, as well as how to make them better within your product.

Anna Kazlauskas and Jay Graber , respective founders and CEOs of Vana and BlueSky, are doing social media better.

Vana is an AI company doing cool things with decentralized data autonomy. Last month, Vana launched its Reddit Data DAO. This program allows Reddit users who opt into it to combine their Reddit posts into a data pool. They then get to vote with other members on how that data is used — e.g. to license (or not license) the data pool to generative AI companies for a shared profit. How cool is that?

Bluesky is more than a “Twitter alternative.” Bluesky makes it easier to curate your feed and it encourages smaller, more intimate groups. Bluesky is an open network, which means that in addition to providing a social network, it also provides a shared identity across the entire social internet. The difference between this and, say, “Sign in with Facebook” is that Bluesky is designed to avoid being controlled by a single person or company.?

I’m excited to see where these platforms go. If you try either of them, I’d love to know what you think!

So often, people just transfer a manual process into a digital format and wonder why it doesn’t feel like a transformation.?

We are working on an app for a stellar nonprofit who has relied on spreadsheets and laborious, manual workflows up until this point. They came to us because they can’t keep up with demand working like this. It’s been great fun to reduce an eight-step manual workflow down to a one-step automated one.

I can’t wait for them to start using it. It’s going to make their lives so much better.?

If you’ve got a project in mind, tell us about it here .

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WLCM (pronounced “Welcome”) is a tight-knit, long-standing team of 25 veteran specialists – designers, project managers, QA specialists, and engineers – who have launched over 150 apps together for clients across industries, many award-winning and nationally recognized.