Social media broke the promise of connection. Here's what I built instead.
I had already been using MySpace, I had a Xanga - the internet was a much more secondary world. Facebook was different from the others but it still had that archival feel. The timeline was simple, chronological, and devoid of the algorithm. All the way through college and even a bit beyond, it felt like a hopeful, connected place. I had friends in far-flung portions of the country and the world. My life had connected me with a wide range of people.
Social media fundamentally changed when it became clear that it was profitable to optimize for engagement. Advertising in the early 2010s wasn't as prevalent as it is now. The focus still seemed to be, "let's connect!" but things became more and more extractive. It was no longer about serving you friends, bands, and the happenings you wanted to see. It was about keeping you on and engaged. This is what we see today. The introduction of AI is making it even worse. Now the data collected about you can be fed into ever more complex computational models to deliver you ever more targeted ads. Now people are leaving social media in search of better.
I've struggled for a long time with keeping those connections alive. I get focused on my day to day life and those friends aren't front and center in my life. So for me, out of sight, out of mind becomes a neglected friendship. I still want that connection in my life and so I started thinking, what if I take the structure of a sales CRM and use the underlying idea for my friendships?
I started talking to friends about it and discovered I wasn't alone. We were all looking for something that would help remind us to connect to those who really matters in our lives. Family, friends, colleagues. The people who help define us. That's where a personal CRM comes in. One that doesn't harvest your data. It doesn't lock you in and keep your attention. It acts as a tool. You tell it who's important. You determine how often you want reminders. You're the one in control.
And so I put my mind to it and started building the tools I wanted to see, starting with Good Company. No algorithms, no data collection. An app that says "Hey, don't forget to text Sarah, she's important to you" then helps you act on that message. Use the app, then go live your life.