Notes on scale
One week in to the ctx beta (+ a loveletter to Are.na)
It’s been a week since the ctx beta began. By the numbers:
101 active members
9,527 objects added to member libraries
240 member collages created
216 labels added
82 recommendations sent among members
62 friendships among members
122 invites sent from beta testing accounts
With no real points of comparison, it’s difficult to know what to make of the above, but the qualitative feedback (“holyshit this is crazyyyyyy," “this solves a set of problems I have been trying to solve for a very long time”) is confirmation that there’s a least some sort of a there there. How big of a there? And how big does a there need to be in order for something to be worth doing?
There is a website called Are.na that I would argue emblematizes the internet we want. It’s worth reading their about page because it is a case-in-point that such an internet is possible, and generously discloses the blueprint to getting there.
In case you’re unfamiliar, Are.na self describes like this:
Are.na is a place to save content, create collections over time and connect ideas. Privately or with other people.
Are.na is a mindful space where you can work through any project over time. It's a place to structure your ideas and build new forms of knowledge together.
Are.na is, like ctx hopes to be, a community of people who care deeply about relating media objects to one another in a way that creates a rich and fluid infrastructure to support their circulation and discovery. It has existed for fifteen years – longer than most places you visit on the internet – and there is no reason to think it won’t have continued longevity, with the same slow growth that has characterized it since inception.
As the about page describes, as of today there are 20,516 paying members that supply $125,085 in monthly recurring revenue. This covers salaries for their small team and other operating overhead, and because they don’t depend on any other funding sources, they can do what many technology companies don’t do, namely create exactly the tools that their community members find useful (often with the community’s involvement).
Many people do not understand Are.na or find it useful. This is, almost, by design. When you create a thing for 20,000 people, you are necessarily creating a thing that is not for a billion people. And that’s not to say that Are.na couldn’t be for 50,000 or 100,000 people, perhaps there are many more who simply haven’t heard of it, but it’s difficult to imagine it being for a billion people, or even a million. There are only so many people who want to relate to information in a maximally intentional way.
Worldwide, how many people want to relate to online music in the ways that ctx affords? I’m wagering a number between 1,000 and 100,000. Applications serving this “community-scale” range of member populations1 are surprisingly few in this corporate platform era of the internet. When people feel nostalgic for an older web, it’s often community scale that they are nostalgic for. Are.na provides that feeling in the present tense. I hope ctx might also.
In other words, the scale of member populations that makes community-shaped development possible or desirable.