Distribution is the key to success on social media.

But in the current media environment who has a vested interest in your success?

The sad reality is.. almost no one.

People are too busy building their own distribution channels — growing their following, getting engagement, all while trying to create something of value to distribute (..or not)

The platforms don’t care if what you create is valuable (this is true on FC too, by the way).

Their algo only cares if your content can help them sell more ads or grow.

So you’re competing with everyone on the platform for distribution, but you’re not competing based on how much value you contribute to the network, you’re competing on how much engagement you can get.

So everyone has the incentive to create less value and compete to get more attention.

Do you realize how mind-numbingly dumb and wasteful this whole dynamic is?!

This is what a coordination failure looks like.

This is what happens when you misapply scarcity principles in a non-scarce world.

Now imagine if the platform had a vested interest to surface content based on its value (or impact) in the network.

Suddenly you’re no longer competing with others for scarce attention — you only need to think about how what you create benefits the network.

The network may also want to boost contributors when others create or build on top of their work — this would incentivize users to build in the open, and maximize value creation in the network.

So now users have an incentive to create as much value as possible for the network, collaborate with others, improve on the work of others, and have a vested interest in the success of others on the network — you take care of creating value, and the network takes care of its distribution.

Users get to see the content (and use the tools) they’re most interested in, while the network grows in value — a win, win, win.

The next stage is to apply the same game theoretic incentives to both the platform itself and the content on it, and not only do you solve a massive coordination failure, but also get a network where people can prosper based on the impact = profit meta.