Why broadcast social media is so compelling to everyone*

A sociological explanation

*Ok to most people. Even those who don’t use it can eventually get sucked in, no matter the age

Some smart wag at Microsoft (when I worked there) once said, “A killer app1 essentially digitizes how humans have behaved for centuries”. And that always stuck with me. It’s a valuable framework for thinking about software product creation; through the lens of whether it fulfills longstanding human behavior and core needs. Some examples: Word — writing, Excel — easier mathing, Messenger — communicating, etc.

Really good software takes long-standing human intent and magnifies it/makes it more efficient/makes it easier/makes it more powerful. As such there is value for PMs who are anthropologists and philosophers; people who study human intent not just in the moment, but through history. They can often unlock unexpected hidden value.

Recently I was pondering the nature of social media and how pervasive it is. Why is it so compelling for humans to be on broadcast social media? Because let’s be honest, nothing else on the planet has been adopted at such a furious pace in almost ever. It’s started to overshadow human behavior across entertainment, information, culture, and politics.

In 2014 I tried to build a mobile app and platform that would help people convert their weak ties to close ties. An interest-based social network that allowed customers to leisurely discover people who were their tribe or whose interests and predilections intersected. I dreamed of using a CPU and software (mobile device) to help people expand Dunbar’s number2 limitation on their ability to build relationships. In retrospect, I think I missed a crucial point about social media; it’s really not just about building relationships. That’s at best a subordinate (though valid) objective.

Don’t get me wrong, the idea that we can expand Dunbar’s number of humans using technology is likely true. Many consumers avail themselves of that ability every day (although software that does this well is not yet really deployed at scale). ‘Groupware’ sort of fills this role at the moment — group chats in whatever chat app of your choice, interest-based groups and forums. This kind of conglomeration was previously limited by place, time, and planning (organizing the event of being together) and so it’s a major improvement on our human desire to socialize in digital groups with much less effort. But this is not enough — many digital groups die off like a vine in the dessert. Reddit exemplifies this; it takes special alchemy and critical mass for groups to thrive on that platform and even when this happens, it’s judged by ‘activity’ and ‘post creation’. Anecdotally the death rate of Reddit communities is 98%. Achieving intimacy is hard and takes a lot of shared experience. The best online groups I know have an offline bonding component in addition to the online one… I know an amazing golf WhatsApp group that is the exemplary nirvana of a thriving community. But it works because every so often, members gather to play epic rounds of golf at famous golf courses around the USA and the world. So groupware is not THE killer app. Or it’s a sort of lesser species of killer app compared to the current iteration of broadcast social media. This super killer app fulfills something more primal.

When most people build relationships, often one at a time, occasionally in groups, what we get in return, our main objective, is attention. The desire to be known and celebrated is very primitive. In previous non-technological iterations of human society, we had to achieve this laboriously through relationships built in 1s, 2s, or more. Per Dunbar’s number, the number of people we could gain attention and recognition from was limited for most humans. A few people escape these limitations and achieve fame and fortune by the dint of ability and exposure. And even then their fame was mediated, first through dead tree media (papers and magazines; slow and limited to the reading population). TV and movies were a new media and a game-changer for this kind of notoriety, reaching far greater numbers of people, faster. Note that for both of these, feedback was mediated by other people or companies and was rarely instant. But that didn’t matter much and a new class of human was invented; the celebrity.

In short, it appears that if we can attain attention and recognition, humans have no great need for the relationships that are normally a precursor for that objective. Skipping a step is an ‘essential benefit’ because the objective is that much closer, less tedious, and conserves energy.

Broadcast social media works because it allows us to gain attention and recognition without the toil of building relationships. And it also achieves this through the miracle of instant feedback. The recognition comes fast and furious at the speed of light tapping. Let’s dip into this a bit:

Broadcast social media has warped the effort needed to get ‘attention’

1. Social media super charges social outreach — social outreach is the precursor to building relationships. In the meatspace, one has to exit the house/home and connect. Usually with 1 or more people. With social media, stepping out means looking into a microphone and/or camera (lower calories spent, less social skill needed). The clever among us are rewarded with automatic outreach to hundreds, thousands, and millions of people. Instantly. Under the principle of conservation of energy and asymmetrical benefit, this is a slam dunk.
2. Side steps relationships and goes straight to attention and recognition — relationships take repeated outreach even when there is extraordinary chemistry and talent. With social media, this is no longer necessary and resonating with one person means also resonating with their friends and the implied serial amplification of that potentially infinite loop. It’s like every piece of content represents a 12-hour rave where you could reach and connect with hundreds or thousands if you were talented enough. Again asymmetrical benefits for little effort.
3. Gratification is instant — social satisfaction can come from attention; being seen, recognized, and celebrated, and relationships are normally a means to achieve that. With social media, the relationship part of the sequence can be bypassed entirely, or its of the shallowest kind possible. And the recognition is instant. And smart content can have a liberal dose of it — thousands of engagement and likes. This kind of instant gratification is not even normally possible in human relationships (possible for 1 or a few people, but certainly not tens or hundreds).

So social media represents a significant advancement in our social life pattern, achieving the ultimate objective with a much lower investment than we would normally make and achieving it at a significant scale. Every time you can deliver this this kind of ‘amplified personal good’, you have minted a ‘killer app’ — humans will flock to whatever conserves energy, to achieve ancient primal social goals.

— — — -

1 A killer app is a piece of software or service that most people need or love so much, they cannot but use it once they encounter it. The makers can profit immensely of this popularity if they have the right business model.

2 Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships — relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. Note that Dunbar’s number is not confirmed science.