Successful social products feel like a great cocktail party that provides valuable 'leads' (dates, jobs, information). The next wave will emerge not as another feed, but by hosting a party where people already gather (like AI chats) and making it more socially productive.

Learning from Instagram's evolution towards passive consumption, the Sora team intentionally designs its social feed to inspire creation, not just scrolling. This fundamentally changes the platform's incentives and is proving successful, with high rates of daily active creation and posting.

If features like the 'like' button were addictive like nicotine, any app with them would create dependency. The failure of countless social media clones proves this false. The truly addictive element is the high-quality, user-generated content, not the platform's UI mechanics.

Bluesky wasn't founded to be a Twitter clone, but to deconstruct social media into modular components (identity, social graph). This protocol-based approach aims to solve the "cold start" problem for new apps, fostering an ecosystem of competition and user choice beyond a few dominant platforms.

As loneliness increases, media consumption is shifting from passive viewing to active participation. Platforms that best replicate the experience of a real-life conversation, like live streams with interactive comments, are positioned to win because they fulfill a deep-seated human need for connection.

Patreon's CEO believes the next two decades of networks must fix three core flaws of the social media era. This involves changing the optimization function away from engagement, ensuring people own the network effect instead of platforms, and implementing robust governance systems to keep companies true to their mission.

Platforms like Sora 2 struggle to retain users as social destinations. The core driver of social networks—the status game tied to authentic, personal representation—is lost when content is known to be AI-generated. These apps function as powerful creator tools for existing platforms, not as new social graphs.

Current AI hits like ChatGPT are "single-player" tools. The next breakthrough will be a social, multiplayer experience built on network effects and user-generated content, an area where technically-focused AI labs are culturally weak.

GaryVee's early conviction in social media wasn't just about Facebook or Twitter. It was a platform-agnostic belief in the underlying consumer behavior: the desire for connection without gatekeepers. This approach is more resilient than betting on a single company, which could fail (e.g., Myspace, Vine).