aggregation-theory-nitter.md (2938B)
1 +++ 2 title = "Aggregation Theory, Virtuous Cycles, and Nitter" 3 date = 2022-06-27 4 +++ 5 6 In 2015, Ben Thompson first proposed [Aggregation Theory] in an article 7 by the same name. He argues, in short, that the internet "has 8 fundamentally changed the plane of competition," in that in our era, 9 "the most important factor determining success is the user experience." 10 Why is it then, that YouTube and [Reddit] and [Twitter] all... suck? 11 12 <!-- more --> 13 14 The answer, I believe, lies just a sentence later in the article: 15 16 > ... the best distributors/aggregators/market-makers win by providing 17 > the best experience, which earns them the most consumers/users, which 18 > attracts the most suppliers, which enhances the user experience in a 19 > virtuous cycle. 20 21 When YouTube first launched in 2005, it provided users with a vastly 22 better experience than anything else available at the time. No longer 23 did you have to download videos via `BitTorrent` or `ftp` (or however 24 else one procured [elephant videos] back in the day): now you could 25 stream them on the web. 26 27 17 years have passed since then, and the world is a much different 28 place. YouTube is the king of video on the internet. And yet, your 29 browser's default `<video>` tag provides a way better experience than 30 the slow and clunky YouTube player. 31 32 The story is much the same for similar giants. Reddit was founded 33 alongside YouTube in 2005, Twitter a year later. Both websites are 34 slow, practically unusable on mobile, and heavily limited for those 35 without an account. 36 37 One would think that if success was truly predicated on a better user 38 experience, such glaring flaws would lead to other platforms "winning" 39 by simply providing a better UX. We can see glimpses of what this might 40 look like with alternative front-ends, like [teddit] and [Nitter], which 41 wrap around the existing platforms while massively cutting down on bloat 42 – providing an objectively better UX. Nevertheless, YouTube and friends 43 remain on top. 44 45 The pivotal realization here lies in the second half of Thompson's 46 paragraph quoted above: the idea that having a better UX grows the 47 initial userbase of an aggregator, and that *having those users* 48 enhances the experience for future users (who further improve the 49 experience, attracting more users, and so on and so on). 50 51 YouTube and Reddit and Twitter had a better UX than their competitors in 52 the early 2000s, and attracted millions of users in the ensuing decades. 53 54 Now the moat is too big for alternative platforms to overcome – no new 55 startups have yet built a user experience more attractive than YouTube's 56 2.5 billion users. 57 58 [Aggregation Theory]: https://stratechery.com/2015/aggregation-theory/ 59 [Reddit]: https://ognjen.io/reddits-disrespectful-design/ 60 [Twitter]: https://annoying.technology/posts/e6901c0ea272f57d/ 61 [elephant videos]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw 62 [teddit]: https://codeberg.org/teddit/teddit 63 [Nitter]: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter