it’s incredible how often a platform completely misses the cultural moment it helped create https://twitter.com/rac/status/1312468407816601600

i was in the berlin tech ‘scene’ right around when the tipping point for soundcloud, and i remember being at a garden party for the opening of their new office (which wasn’t finished) and noticing there were no actual artists there

how many technology platforms have a music genre named after them? there’s no “youtube screamo” my friends

the things soundcloud engineers i talked to were focused on made no sense either in terms of creating value for the actual users of the platform. you’re gonna rewrite it all in haskell bro? well okay but when are artists gonna make some money

in some ways it reminds of twitter’s seeming complete inability to understand how anyone actually uses their platform or what they use it for - they seem to think it’s for parasocial engagement when all the really valuable stuff is in these small mobile communities

one big difference is that users invented a lot of twitter’s features (rts, hashtags, threads) for them and they at least made them part of the platform

@nickarner these might be good topics for our next “why computers are bad” https://twitter.com/atroyn/status/1308130499349499904?s=21 https://twitter.com/atroyn/status/1308130499349499904

contrast stuff like tiktok, @mschfxyz which are themselves cultural products (tiktok dances, the whole product is app-enabled memes etc.)

it’s probably not controversial to say at this point, but soundcloud fucking blew it - they had lightning in a bottle and pissed it away on nonsense

the other one i think about often is somethingawful creating almost all internet culture and at the same time being completely irrelevant, but that’s 100% kyanka being a piss baby

a cultural platform as ideologically creator focused as amazon is customer focused would have a shot at creating something world shaking

yeah it’s tech-broey analogy come fight me about it i don’t care

gonna throw on the flume mixtape and just hang out for a bit or i would if the sonos integration worked you fuckers

youtube cracked this pretty early with vloggers- i remember being at one of the very first yt community events and the creators were front and center, even ahead of google’s own execs

this makes me think of how much i was sleep walking through all these things damn. oh well i’m awake now