Who gets famous?

Of course, these concerns about inclusion and access only arise at the founding of a new social network or platform. But similar problems arise when we choose which users get to benefit from these networks.

For example, most of the big social sharing platforms have given rise to social media stars, the ones you can find among the most popular users on YouTube or Instagram or Snapchat. But if we look closely at most of these stars, they’re either traditional celebrities who made their names through conventional media like movies or TV or the music industry, or a small cohort of “native” stars.

In almost every case, these native stars were simply talented people who were early to the platform, and often were chosen by the platform as “featured users”. Is PewDiePie significantly better than other similar video bloggers on YouTube? Not really. But he was early to the network, and therefore early to find a niche to exploit, and YouTube used him as an example of what to do on their network. That’s not to deny or diminish that he’s also very talented at what he does. It’s just saying that talent alone isn’t enough — one has to be early, too.

And who gets to be early or featured on these apps? Well, mostly friends and family of the people who created the network, and those who are closely connected to them. It’s de rigueur for any social app launched over the last decade to use an invitation system, further cementing the centrality and dominance of its first users in its social hierarchy.

But isn’t social media a meritocracy? Can’t anybody else just repeat the same steps as these early users? As I outlined in “You Can’t Start the Revolution from the Country Club”, the most common reaction from many networks once they’ve birthed a few featured stars, is generally to remove the ability for others to follow in their footsteps. Typically, this is not malicious, but a normal evolution that happens in tandem with a successful app maturing and adapting to its growing community. Along with improved tools for discovering content or connections, a community will close the door on the possibility for its new members to ascend to the same heights of social stardom.

My social network on Twitter resembles that of a minor celebrity. While I’d like to pretend that’s because my tweets are so good, a lot of the reason is that I was early to the network, and friends with its founders. You might be a far better tweeter than me, but you still wouldn’t have those advantages. There should be a way for anybody to achieve the same level on the same network.