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Every social network ends up having somewhat of an emotional tone as well that springs up out of its users as an emergent property.

Like clearly Tumblr and Blogger and Twitter, despite being structurally not that different from each other, have different cultures.

What I’ve found interesting about TikTok is that the culture seems so joyful. Lots of really happy people sharing in a way that actually makes you feel some cohesion with other people.

People checking in from the South, or Georgia or Wisconsin, or the city or country, etc. it’s sort of the opposite of the constant divisiveness you feel browsing Twitter or Reddit. Or the opposite the little cultural bubble Facebook puts you in.

I wasn’t aware the internet could still do that. I think that might prove to have interesting implications.




Emergent properties is a good way of putting things. A lot of these things seems to play out in an at least somewhat chaotic and difficult to predict way. Remember Orcut, which effectively ended up as Google's Brazilian social network.

Sometimes rules and other deliberate structures guide the evolution but it's often small things that aren't obvious up front.

And, of course, very different things can evolve within the same social network. Lots of people don't care about monetization on YouTube. For others, it's what YouTube exists for from their personal perspective.




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