Blood in the Water

Yesterday, I talked about the modern conditions that exist for anyone to create things. 

But a lot of people who want to make art very much do not want to deal with website design and hosting and SEO. 

Sensing this blood in the water, a group of companies emerged and positioned their platforms as the place for all of this creative expression to live.

They knew this art - writing, dancing, photography, etc. - would be valuable, and so to attract people to their platforms, they developed tools to help them in their creative pursuits. 

At first, it was great. Everybody loved the platforms. 

Some of these platforms even solved the discovery problem, for a while. 

But the platforms are today perceived as having too much power.

Anytime they change their discoverability features, people lose their minds. They’ve found that the followers they’ve amassed on the platforms are fickle, or in some cases not really theirs at all. 

In a world of ultimate creative expression, many people are still struggling with creative control.