This is a great but I feel like it glosses over a major point—much of this homogenization is the result of testing and optimizing for the largest demographic possible. A very industrialist idea.
As human connection becomes more “online,” we’re starting to see an interesting twist—communities are now based on highly niched ideas rather than locality. Whether you’re on Reddit, X, Discord, or some independent forum, there’s a niche for just about everything. People go deeper with their interests than ever before, and that mashup of niche interests is core to their identity. They also want to share that with others who share parts of that identity.
This also makes the long tail model of the internet viable. You can now position yourself out of your competition with relative ease by niching down with a carefully constructed offering for a very specific group of people. The byproduct of this? A highly differentiated product/service and brand. There’s heavy resistance to this from the industrialist culture we’ve been living in for the past 100+ years, as the decades of limited shelf space and restricted yellow pages have forced us to make products and services that appeal to everyone. To design the product and then find the audience. Wider (and nearly free) distribution, along with lower barriers to entry, have made this unnecessary through the internet. Solving a specific problem for a very particular niche is now king.
TLDR; targeting everyone makes you look like everyone else. Target specific people, and start to build something more meaningful. Look up Seth Godin and his minimum viable audience concept to learn more.
This is a great but I feel like it glosses over a major point—much of this homogenization is the result of testing and optimizing for the largest demographic possible. A very industrialist idea.
As human connection becomes more “online,” we’re starting to see an interesting twist—communities are now based on highly niched ideas rather than locality. Whether you’re on Reddit, X, Discord, or some independent forum, there’s a niche for just about everything. People go deeper with their interests than ever before, and that mashup of niche interests is core to their identity. They also want to share that with others who share parts of that identity.
This also makes the long tail model of the internet viable. You can now position yourself out of your competition with relative ease by niching down with a carefully constructed offering for a very specific group of people. The byproduct of this? A highly differentiated product/service and brand. There’s heavy resistance to this from the industrialist culture we’ve been living in for the past 100+ years, as the decades of limited shelf space and restricted yellow pages have forced us to make products and services that appeal to everyone. To design the product and then find the audience. Wider (and nearly free) distribution, along with lower barriers to entry, have made this unnecessary through the internet. Solving a specific problem for a very particular niche is now king.
TLDR; targeting everyone makes you look like everyone else. Target specific people, and start to build something more meaningful. Look up Seth Godin and his minimum viable audience concept to learn more.