Several years ago, I read Bird by Birdby Anne Lamott. She writes about a concept called "shitty first drafts" that has stuck with me ever since:
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something -- anything -- down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft -- you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft -- you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.
To me, shitty first drafts is a mindset. It's about getting ideas on the page and out of your system, however convoluted or unintelligible they may be. It's a release of whatever pent up energy and thoughts and ideas you've had stewing. And it's about not judging yourself when you put the words on the page. They're not intended to be perfect or poetic. They're just there to be the first step on the journey or the first rotation of the snowball rolling down the hill.
I like this because it's not just about writing. This mentality is applicable to many different things. Building and shipping products is one of them. Perfect is the enemy of good. Most of the time, you just need to start and ship and see what happens. 99% of the time you won't get it right the first time so just get it out there and revise, revise, revise.
This blog post is a shitty first draft. I've thought about and talked about this idea at least ten times in the past several months, and it's time to get it out of my system. It's a cathartic process.
Anything that requires creativity is well suited to a shitty first draft. The more shitty first drafts, the merrier.
This is part two in a series about how web3 will influence the future of social networks. In Part One, I wrote about how public social networks will be unbundled and siphoned off into smaller networks that form around interests (e.g., Phish Phans, bird-watching enthusiasts, biohackers, Swifties, etc.) and have unique user experiences and business models that are specific to that network.
This second installment focuses on private social networks. I think of these as communities of people who know each other in real life and frequently assemble in groups on messaging applications. When we were building GroupMe we called it the “real life network.” We thought of it as a network of smaller networks and a place for people to stay connected to their “close ties.” Private social networks are the group chats that keep you connected with your family, your best friends from school, your kid’s little league team, your church group, your fitness buddies, and of course, your crew that you go see jamband concerts with. These networks are usually persistent threads in your life. Sometimes they’re hyperactive, and sometimes there’s a lull in the conversation for a week, month, or year(s). But they usually stay with you for a very long time, if not a lifetime.
What’s interesting about private social networks is that they live primarily in messaging applications: groupme, WhatsApp, iMessage, signal, discord, telegram, etc. They’re fragmented, but they seldom burrow themselves into a broadcast platform. That means that the ways we interact with them are fundamentally different than the way we interact with traditional social media. We don’t sit there scrolling and consuming content - we engage and tell jokes, share photos and videos and memes, make real-world plans, wish friends happy birthday, etc. The UX that supports these groups is distinct and simple, but it is also overdue for an upgrade.
Today Fred wrote a post about how writing is a conversation. There are some incredible gems in it:
What I have learned from writing online regularly for over twenty years is that writing online is a conversation.
What I mean by that is that you are not trying to publish complete ideas. You are engaging in a conversation with the world and you are a participant in that...
So to everyone out there who is struggling to polish their posts and make them perfect before hitting publish, I say "don't bother". Think about writing online like being at a cocktail party or a dinner. Think of it like a conversation starter or a witty reply that takes the conversation to the next level. Because that's what writing online is. A conversation.
I also didn't know that the term “freemium” emerged from a conversation on his blog. 🤯
I like the description of writing as a conversation. And one of the great things about it is that the more you do it the better conversationalist you become. One of the reasons is because writing is composable, and it has compounding effects. I've been saying this in my head for years, and it's time to get it on the page.
In software development, and especially in crypto, composability refers to the idea that pieces of code and functionality can be picked up, reused, and recombined ad infinitum (here’s a great
Several years ago, I read Bird by Birdby Anne Lamott. She writes about a concept called "shitty first drafts" that has stuck with me ever since:
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something -- anything -- down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft -- you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft -- you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it's loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.
To me, shitty first drafts is a mindset. It's about getting ideas on the page and out of your system, however convoluted or unintelligible they may be. It's a release of whatever pent up energy and thoughts and ideas you've had stewing. And it's about not judging yourself when you put the words on the page. They're not intended to be perfect or poetic. They're just there to be the first step on the journey or the first rotation of the snowball rolling down the hill.
I like this because it's not just about writing. This mentality is applicable to many different things. Building and shipping products is one of them. Perfect is the enemy of good. Most of the time, you just need to start and ship and see what happens. 99% of the time you won't get it right the first time so just get it out there and revise, revise, revise.
This blog post is a shitty first draft. I've thought about and talked about this idea at least ten times in the past several months, and it's time to get it out of my system. It's a cathartic process.
Anything that requires creativity is well suited to a shitty first draft. The more shitty first drafts, the merrier.
This is part two in a series about how web3 will influence the future of social networks. In Part One, I wrote about how public social networks will be unbundled and siphoned off into smaller networks that form around interests (e.g., Phish Phans, bird-watching enthusiasts, biohackers, Swifties, etc.) and have unique user experiences and business models that are specific to that network.
This second installment focuses on private social networks. I think of these as communities of people who know each other in real life and frequently assemble in groups on messaging applications. When we were building GroupMe we called it the “real life network.” We thought of it as a network of smaller networks and a place for people to stay connected to their “close ties.” Private social networks are the group chats that keep you connected with your family, your best friends from school, your kid’s little league team, your church group, your fitness buddies, and of course, your crew that you go see jamband concerts with. These networks are usually persistent threads in your life. Sometimes they’re hyperactive, and sometimes there’s a lull in the conversation for a week, month, or year(s). But they usually stay with you for a very long time, if not a lifetime.
What’s interesting about private social networks is that they live primarily in messaging applications: groupme, WhatsApp, iMessage, signal, discord, telegram, etc. They’re fragmented, but they seldom burrow themselves into a broadcast platform. That means that the ways we interact with them are fundamentally different than the way we interact with traditional social media. We don’t sit there scrolling and consuming content - we engage and tell jokes, share photos and videos and memes, make real-world plans, wish friends happy birthday, etc. The UX that supports these groups is distinct and simple, but it is also overdue for an upgrade.
Today Fred wrote a post about how writing is a conversation. There are some incredible gems in it:
What I have learned from writing online regularly for over twenty years is that writing online is a conversation.
What I mean by that is that you are not trying to publish complete ideas. You are engaging in a conversation with the world and you are a participant in that...
So to everyone out there who is struggling to polish their posts and make them perfect before hitting publish, I say "don't bother". Think about writing online like being at a cocktail party or a dinner. Think of it like a conversation starter or a witty reply that takes the conversation to the next level. Because that's what writing online is. A conversation.
I also didn't know that the term “freemium” emerged from a conversation on his blog. 🤯
I like the description of writing as a conversation. And one of the great things about it is that the more you do it the better conversationalist you become. One of the reasons is because writing is composable, and it has compounding effects. I've been saying this in my head for years, and it's time to get it on the page.
In software development, and especially in crypto, composability refers to the idea that pieces of code and functionality can be picked up, reused, and recombined ad infinitum (here’s a great
Ride It to the Sky
Ride It to the Sky
Written by
Written by
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Several weeks ago, groupme rolled out its largest release in over a decade. It became one of the first messaging applications to integrate AI into the group chat experience and shipped a handful of other features and upgrades, too. I have long felt that messaging applications - the place where our real-life networks live - have hit an evolutionary wall. There has been little to no innovation with regard to how we interact with these groups, and the UX has been relegated to a chat interface that looks and feels the same across these important applications.
There are three core areas of functionality that need to be explored: applications, money, and AI.
Every real-life network should be able to access a robust suite of applications they can invite to a group chat and interact with together. Years ago when we were building groupme we used to talk about how we were going to create a world where developers could build applications that groups could use together in the app. We wanted people to be able to play Words with Friends together right in their groups. Why can’t groups play interactive games together in a group chat? Why aren’t there applications for collaboratively planning and booking trips, reservations, events, etc.? Real-life networks have real problems and needs, and they should be addressed in the interfaces in which they live.
Groups of people use money to do things together. Splitting the bill at a restaurant? Paying for rent with roommates? Planning an event? Going on a trip? Paying dues for Little League? Making friendly wagers? The list is endless. All of these are pain points. Money needs to be native to group experiences. Every group should have a ledger of contributions, easily be able to split payments, and program their collective and individual money to do whatever they want.
AI is the thing that can keep groups interesting, fun, and useful and give them longevity. MetaAI is available to chat 1-1 in WhatsApp, and now co-pilot is enabled in groupme. Groups should be able to ask agents questions together. Agents should be able to make helpful recommendations to groups and provide value to them in novel ways: suggestions of activities to do together, reservations at places, birthday reminders, surfacing old photos and choice quotes from the chat, rekindling activity when things have gone dormant, telling jokes, etc. The possibilities are limitless. They can be general purpose or even entertainment oriented: imagine inviting an AI into the group that you created together in the image of a friend or one that represents a historical figure, celebrity, musician, etc. AI can be a friend, comedian, personal group concierge, facilitator or counselor in service of your group.
These are all relatively rudimentary and obvious ideas, but they are sorely missing from real-life networks. Why? All of our groups are stuck inside monolithic messaging applications that are designed to service the needs of their owners and not our own. Incumbents care about retaining users in their own messaging applications. They will prioritize the features and strategies that are best suited to entrenching the parent company. This usually means a focus on locking in its username and being closed to outside developers. As a result, messaging applications are way behind the innovation curve. Sure, they are fast and secure, but those are tablestakes characteristics. This thread by Shane Mac, the founder of XMTP, does a good job highlighting this issue:
I believe the only way to create the real-life network experience we deserve and to unseat the incumbent messaging applications is to be Open. An open ecosystem means that anyone can build a client on top of a messaging protocol. People should be able to build unique user experiences for certain demographics without having to rebuild the network itself (similar to the idea in Part One). Building the killer “use case” experience, like a college-focused one, a church congregation, or a recreational sports team, should be much easier. This is why I am excited about protocols like XMTP that are laying the foundation for these ideas to be realized.
Being open means that the applications and AI agents that are invited into every chat can be accessed by every client as well. Imagine an open marketplace of applications that you can invite into 1-1 and group chats that are accessible across any messaging application built atop a shared protocol. What an incredible feature for developers to build once and ship everywhere. The exact same experience could extend to a marketplace of AI agents. I don’t want to only be able to use Meta AI or MSFT’s whatever-they-call-it-today bot. I want to choose for myself. And when it comes to the economics of these real-life networks, being open means lock-in is not possible. Money that moves around within and between groups can also flow from client to client and in and out of the protocol.
For nearly a decade, I get a pitch every month or so from an entrepreneur saying they are going to build the groupme killer. Nobody has done it yet. It’s not because groupme is a stellar application, it’s because you need a forcing function to move all your groups to another application. The only way to do this is to pray the app either gets shut down or to build something that is 10x better. It’s really hard to build something that is 10x better. WhatsApp is a superb messaging application. So is Signal and Telegram. 10x better means something important needs to be fundamentally different. Being open and nurturing a robust developer ecosystem of builders who are chomping at the bit to push forward the paradigm of messaging and real-life networks feels like the way to go about it. People need a reason to switch. It’s time to give them one.
). Writing is the same. Every idea and post becomes a Lego block that’s part of your toolkit, forever available to be assembled however and whenever you want. In a way, each post you write is a powerful primitive.
Over time I’ve found myself linking to my own ideas more and more. That’s because they’re readily accessible, and the ideas they represent are now part of my vocabulary. As you write more, these posts can be rearranged in different ways. They provide a reconfigurable foundation for new ideas to emerge, and in that sense, they continuously build on top of one another. This makes the next new incremental post or idea easier to flow out of you and the process of assembling thoughts more fluid.
Composability is powerful, and it's also a cheat code for getting thoughts and ideas out into the world.
Several weeks ago, groupme rolled out its largest release in over a decade. It became one of the first messaging applications to integrate AI into the group chat experience and shipped a handful of other features and upgrades, too. I have long felt that messaging applications - the place where our real-life networks live - have hit an evolutionary wall. There has been little to no innovation with regard to how we interact with these groups, and the UX has been relegated to a chat interface that looks and feels the same across these important applications.
There are three core areas of functionality that need to be explored: applications, money, and AI.
Every real-life network should be able to access a robust suite of applications they can invite to a group chat and interact with together. Years ago when we were building groupme we used to talk about how we were going to create a world where developers could build applications that groups could use together in the app. We wanted people to be able to play Words with Friends together right in their groups. Why can’t groups play interactive games together in a group chat? Why aren’t there applications for collaboratively planning and booking trips, reservations, events, etc.? Real-life networks have real problems and needs, and they should be addressed in the interfaces in which they live.
Groups of people use money to do things together. Splitting the bill at a restaurant? Paying for rent with roommates? Planning an event? Going on a trip? Paying dues for Little League? Making friendly wagers? The list is endless. All of these are pain points. Money needs to be native to group experiences. Every group should have a ledger of contributions, easily be able to split payments, and program their collective and individual money to do whatever they want.
AI is the thing that can keep groups interesting, fun, and useful and give them longevity. MetaAI is available to chat 1-1 in WhatsApp, and now co-pilot is enabled in groupme. Groups should be able to ask agents questions together. Agents should be able to make helpful recommendations to groups and provide value to them in novel ways: suggestions of activities to do together, reservations at places, birthday reminders, surfacing old photos and choice quotes from the chat, rekindling activity when things have gone dormant, telling jokes, etc. The possibilities are limitless. They can be general purpose or even entertainment oriented: imagine inviting an AI into the group that you created together in the image of a friend or one that represents a historical figure, celebrity, musician, etc. AI can be a friend, comedian, personal group concierge, facilitator or counselor in service of your group.
These are all relatively rudimentary and obvious ideas, but they are sorely missing from real-life networks. Why? All of our groups are stuck inside monolithic messaging applications that are designed to service the needs of their owners and not our own. Incumbents care about retaining users in their own messaging applications. They will prioritize the features and strategies that are best suited to entrenching the parent company. This usually means a focus on locking in its username and being closed to outside developers. As a result, messaging applications are way behind the innovation curve. Sure, they are fast and secure, but those are tablestakes characteristics. This thread by Shane Mac, the founder of XMTP, does a good job highlighting this issue:
I believe the only way to create the real-life network experience we deserve and to unseat the incumbent messaging applications is to be Open. An open ecosystem means that anyone can build a client on top of a messaging protocol. People should be able to build unique user experiences for certain demographics without having to rebuild the network itself (similar to the idea in Part One). Building the killer “use case” experience, like a college-focused one, a church congregation, or a recreational sports team, should be much easier. This is why I am excited about protocols like XMTP that are laying the foundation for these ideas to be realized.
Being open means that the applications and AI agents that are invited into every chat can be accessed by every client as well. Imagine an open marketplace of applications that you can invite into 1-1 and group chats that are accessible across any messaging application built atop a shared protocol. What an incredible feature for developers to build once and ship everywhere. The exact same experience could extend to a marketplace of AI agents. I don’t want to only be able to use Meta AI or MSFT’s whatever-they-call-it-today bot. I want to choose for myself. And when it comes to the economics of these real-life networks, being open means lock-in is not possible. Money that moves around within and between groups can also flow from client to client and in and out of the protocol.
For nearly a decade, I get a pitch every month or so from an entrepreneur saying they are going to build the groupme killer. Nobody has done it yet. It’s not because groupme is a stellar application, it’s because you need a forcing function to move all your groups to another application. The only way to do this is to pray the app either gets shut down or to build something that is 10x better. It’s really hard to build something that is 10x better. WhatsApp is a superb messaging application. So is Signal and Telegram. 10x better means something important needs to be fundamentally different. Being open and nurturing a robust developer ecosystem of builders who are chomping at the bit to push forward the paradigm of messaging and real-life networks feels like the way to go about it. People need a reason to switch. It’s time to give them one.
). Writing is the same. Every idea and post becomes a Lego block that’s part of your toolkit, forever available to be assembled however and whenever you want. In a way, each post you write is a powerful primitive.
Over time I’ve found myself linking to my own ideas more and more. That’s because they’re readily accessible, and the ideas they represent are now part of my vocabulary. As you write more, these posts can be rearranged in different ways. They provide a reconfigurable foundation for new ideas to emerge, and in that sense, they continuously build on top of one another. This makes the next new incremental post or idea easier to flow out of you and the process of assembling thoughts more fluid.
Composability is powerful, and it's also a cheat code for getting thoughts and ideas out into the world.
Today, we are stoked to announce the production launch of XMTP groups, leveraging MLS to bring the most secure, privacy preserving, soon-to-be decentralized group chat to devs.
Today, we are stoked to announce the production launch of XMTP groups, leveraging MLS to bring the most secure, privacy preserving, soon-to-be decentralized group chat to devs.
Learn…
