The Friendship Economy
Follows. Likes. Subscribes. These words are revered as the oil of the internet economy.
But what if personal relationships rather than anonymous metrics were quietly redefining how we consume and create?
A few weeks back, I met Greg. We’re fellow passengers on the online writing spaceship. We chatted about maintaining balance between the information you consume and what you put out into the world. The secret sauce according to him is physiological triggers, small rituals like listening to music that can move you from “consume” to “create” mode. Every time I need to get writing, I have a weird urge to listen to Eminem. I can relate.
Greg has turned his philosophy into a coffee brand. I love coffee, it’s the first substance I put into my body in the morning. But as much as I tried to become a coffee snob, I’ve felt frustrated about the overwhelming spectrum of options. To this day, I’m not sure I can tell the difference between “candied fruit”, “bourbon vanilla” and “bittersweet chocolate”. The idea behind Greg’s coffee made the choice much simpler: a philosophy I could relate to. And with the added flavor of supporting a new friend’s entrepreneurship journey. I was sold.
My struggle picking the right coffee is just one example of a broader trend. Infinite variations of the same product are plaguing our brains with decision paralysis. They’re screaming for a filtering mechanism.
In a world where limitless choice overwhelms consumers, personal affinity could well become the filter we’ve all been waiting for.
What’s not to like when you think about a future where you could be purchasing your favorite products from your friends.
What about the production side of the equation?
Once upon a time, you’d have an idea for a product and throw it in the pit of merciless consumers. This way of building products is quietly leaving the stage. Creators are flipping the script by building what David Perell has coined “audience-first-products”. Build your own niche market with the power of your ideas first and only launch your product once you have a crowd of cheer-leading fans.
In the future, creators might not even have to decide which products to launch. Their communities will tell them what they should build.
This week I sent a message to one of my favorite creators after he posted one of his killer pieces of wisdom. The exchange looked like this:
I don’t know if he will end up selling his prints but he appreciated the push. I see this happening more and more in the open too. If you pay attention to the conversation on Twitter, you’ll notice that the question creators are asking is shifting from “do you like it?” to “should I build it?”.
The Internet lowers the bar for experimentation enabling people to build ideas in public without necessarily turning them into products. The community you develop as a creator becomes your intimate focus group telling you what it would like to purchase from you.
The online world is increasingly looking like a constellation of small villages where people know each other by name. Just like personal connections have been the pillar of pre-industrial societies, they’re turning out to be the lifeblood of the internet economy of tomorrow.