Ordinary Astronauts

Interview: Michael Mignano on the end of social media and the rise of “recommendation media”

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This week we’ve got an interview that blew my mind, a truly mind-expanding conversation with Michael Mignano. Mike co-founded Anchor in 2015 and grew it into the world’s largest podcast hosting platform, it was acquired by Spotify in 2019 and he went on to become Head of Talk at Spotify. Recently he left and has been angel investing and is on a tear writing fantastic essays about the future of content distribution technology.

In this conversation we cover:

  • Why recommendation media—entertaining content from strangers—is replacing social media—content from friends and family.
  • What strategic motivations platforms like Meta have for making this shift
  • How it affects creators
  • Where traditional “social media” type content for friends and family is moving
  • What could happen when AI content generation keeps getting better
  • What role there is in this for Snapchat and Twitter, who are both struggling

    • This episode goes quite deep on the topic and I learned a ton from it. We’re going to have to have Mike back on the show once some time has passed to check in on these trends and see how it’s going!

    To go deeper on these topics, read Mike’s essay published in Every on the End of Social Media: https://every.to/p/the-end-of-social-media?sid=9593

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    Ordinary AstronautsBy Dan Shipper and Nathan Baschez