This from ‘Quitting Instagram: She’s one of the millions disillusioned with social media. But she also helped create it‘ at The Washington Post:
“There was so much pressure to do things that ‘scaled,’ to use the Silicon Valley buzzword,” said Josh Riedel, the third (Instagram) employee after Systrom and Krieger. “But when you have over a billion users, something gets lost along the way.”
My first job was at a tiny grocery store in a busy vacation town. Everyone knew one another. Lots of hand written notes in the employee areas. The express check out aisle was built out of wood.
Then we moved to a bigger store. Suddenly there were people we didn’t know. The charm and grit of those small aisles was replaced by a vastness of overhead lights and neon signs.
Now years later that quaint express lane has been replaced by self-checkout lines.
Lots got lost from that progress, from the growth, from the expansion. I mean, easy to just think nostalgia, right? But same goes for this website stuff.
You’re not “succesful” unless you have a ja-gillion users, or followers, or listeners. The allure of “big enough” is rarely praised.