The collector economy

Dec 03, 2021

Twitter ushers in a new CEO, Chinese apps are harnessing content as a product strategy and has the age of the gatekeepers come to an end?

No more gatekeepers?

From Digital Native, by Rex Woodbury

We are witnessing The Great Realignment, as economic flows are systemically restructured and individuals become less reliant on gatekeepers.
Web2 was also a reaction to gatekeepers - will web3 deliver? Some questions have no straightforward answer, for example: should Twitter’s CEO ban tweets or should users vote with tokens?
Finance is still a sector heavily subject to gatekeepers, yet neobanks brought in no-fee banking, Robinhood introduced commission-free trading and WeFunder began helping people invest in startups.

From Lenny’s Newsletter, by Lenny Rachitsky (with David Spinks)

A healthy and flourishing community generates a sticky and fervent user base, is an invaluable source of ideas and can also be a unique place to expand your customer support.
Questions you should be asking yourself as an interested founder:
- Should you even invest in community? (align your business objectives and members’ goals; plan community ownership/hires)
- What is your community strategy? (create business- community- and tactical-level goals)
- How do you build a meaningful community? (designing programs, launching online and community-led events)

(This is an extremely thorough guide to community, check out the full thing here.)

From Platformer, by Casey Newton

For the first time since 2015 Twitter now has a full-time CEO.

Parag Agrawal was the CTO and has spent 10 years at Twitter. He is perceived by many as a sharp technical leader and long-term thinker with an operational focus.
Agrawal has been the executive most focused on crypto and decentralization.
Elliott Management Corp. took a 4% stake in Twitter last Spring and its wishes will still have to be granted: more users, more revenue and a bigger share of the ad market.

Aspirational markets are less about the making of new things and more about connecting things, experiences and places that already exist, into collections.
A collection is a narrative that helps push an item’s desirability up and over its commercial value. There are 2 ways collections increase their value.
1. Absolute and relative rarity (# items in a set; # of same items within a set).
2. Strength of a collection’s link to a story, aesthetics, identity and values.
Collections have their own market logic and competitive dynamics and need to consistently be reinvented and revived.

Chinese apps are harnessing the power of content as a product strategy.
It closes the growth loop and aids platforms in acquiring, segmenting, monetizing and retaining users with a function of both utility and entertainment, as well as an extra boost to product offerings.
Content controls all three features of the golden triangle: “People come for the tools, stay for the social capital, which is stabilized, obscured and legitimized by the entertainment on the platform." - Eugene Wei.