🗓 What Happened on Tech Twitter in February

🤑 Everyone got rich on NFTs except you, 🐦 Twitter got its groove back, 📸 The Dispo beta FOMO went viral

Yo! ✌️ I’m Brett! Social Studies is about trying to understand what it means to be human in the context of modern technology. It includes recaps of what happened on Tech Twitter plus deep analysis using frameworks from Psychology, Economics, and the Social Sciences.

I have to apologize for dropping the ball in January. The combination of Launch House picking up steam and some very sad family news threw me for a loop. Sorry yall. 😞

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✨ The TLDR

🤑 Everyone got rich on NFTs except you - true artists and random people alike sold millions of dollars in NFTs. We may be in a bubble but NFTs will lead to much more.

🐦 Twitter got its groove back - The Twitter product team is on fire with the introduction of Fleets, Spaces, Revue (newsletters) and now Super Follows.

📸 The Dispo beta FOMO went viral - David Dobrik’s new exclusive photo sharing app got Tech Twitter hot and bothered. So much that they landed a $200M valuation.

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🚨ATTENTION HEALTH TECH FOLKS🚨

The On Deck Health Fellowship kicks off next month and I’d highly highly recommend you check it out. I did the On Deck Founders Fellowship and it was incredible - I met my cofounders and a handful of close friends through it.

The program combines a world-class curriculum with top industry speakers, unique access to investors, and a pre-vetted pool of potential hires to help ambitious builders create the future of the healthcare ecosystem.

During the 10-weeks, you and 120 healthcare innovators will come together to:

• Navigate the healthcare ecosystem and identify opportunities for innovation

• Build, join, or invest in cutting edge health tech startups

• Deepen your expertise though fireside chats and panels with industry experts

• Collaborate with a group of talented peers to reshape the healthcare system

ODH is like a rolling industry conference, only better: it’s a space for fellows to deepen their industry expertise, accelerate their careers, and build impactful health tech startups — together. Apply now!

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🤑 Everyone got rich on NFTs except you

As long as the internet has existed, digital artists have had trouble monetizing their work. But this past month, that all changed. Prominent digital artists, musicians and celebrities sold non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of their works for millions of dollars.

TZ (Tiffany Zhong) 🏝️ @TZhongg

Logan Paul made $3,540,456 in 1 day. • Dropped the 1st Logan Paul NFT yesterday • 3000 NFTs available • Price: 1 ETH per NFT (1 ETH = $1998 rn) • Sold 1772 NFTs so far • $1M in sales in first 30 min • 3 buyers will win 1st Edition Pokemon Pack (~$40K)

TZ (Tiffany Zhong) 🏝️ @TZhongg

Artist & early crypto adopter @3LAU just sold 33 NFTs for $11,684,101. • 1st NFT album • Top bidder paid $3,666,666 • Broke the record for a single NFT auction • Has previously generated 4.3m in sales from NFT drops • In 2018: launched 1st crypto music festival

The revolution is just beginning. Virtually every creator seems to be exploring NFTs as a core part of their strategy.

Coopahtroopa 🔥ᴗ🔥 @Cooopahtroopa

An NFT. He wants to make an NFT. Remind me the last time celebrities were eager to learn how to use crypto? Answer: Never.

MrBeast @MrBeast

@garyvee I want to make one

NFTs are also creating a new generation of NFT-native artists. Since February, Shlomo has sold >$30K of NFTs across only a handful of pieces. An art collective named after the 🥬 emoji has also been gaining traction.

𒐪 @SHL0MS

just minted "𝚒 𝚑𝚘𝚙𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍 𝚕𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚜 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚢𝚘𝚞. [𝚍𝚞𝚜𝚔]" on @withFND foundation.app/xyz/i-hope-the… 50% goes to an effective altruist charity benefitting dementia research/treatments bidding will close 24h after the first bid

st. @seyitaylor

🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬 techoptimist.xyz🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬🥬

techoptimist.xyztechoptimist.xyza collective of tech optimists 〜

A lot of people sounded the 2017 ICO alarm, but this is different. This feels like the building blocks to a new social media operating system.

D’Arcy Coolican @DCoolican

NFTs are the next frontier for social+ Imagine Opensea wallets with a social graph: - inherent flexing and status - creeping people’s collections - structured data on taste and style - built in biz model that’s not ads All the ingredients to 🚀

📸 The Dispo beta FOMO went viral

An app incubated by YouTube star, David Dobrik, executed the “only give beta access to a few people on Twitter to drive FOMO for everyone else” strategy flawlessly.

Amidst the renaissance in consumer social powered by the creator economy, a consumer social app from a huge creator like Dispo was bound to blow up. And it is.

Chris Cantino @chriscantino

Dispo in a nutshell 📸 •shallow and fake “IG aesthetics” are rendered obsolete •no memes, quotes, or camera roll uploads •collaborative photo rolls allow communities to curate interests together •content consumption flywheel every day at 9am •candid, casual, and REAL

Daniel Liss @Dlisscious

The @DispoHQ Roaring 20s are here. Let the social revolution begin. Community. Joy. Authenticity. Live in the Moment - Dispo by David Dobrik youtu.be/o8q3O0f-7zA via @YouTube

youtu.beLive in the Moment - Dispo by David DobrikGo check out our new version of Dispo: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dispo-live-in-the-moment/id1491684197 Super excited for this!! Its our first version of ...

Shortly after the beta launch, Dispo closed a massive fundraise. At $200M it was a wild valuation, but honestly not crazy. If Dispo succeeds, the valuation is cheap. If it fails, it’s negligible to the investors.

🐦 Twitter got its groove back

Packy McCormick wrote an essay in Not Boring at the beginning of the month talking about how well Twitter has been doing lately considering the introduction of Fleets, Spaces, and Revue (via acquisition), but that was before Twitter announced the Super Follow.

Super follow allows creators to charge monthly subscriptions to get access to exclusive tweets. It’s really exciting and will surely dramatically change the dynamics on the platform.

Packy McCormick @packyM

Twitter continues to get its groove back, you absolutely love to see it.

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💉 Dopamine hits

Neal Khosla @nealkhosla

I feel bad for most of the companies in YC these days. They think YC's approval means they have a good plan when in reality YC is just investing in anything that moves. 90% of the plans in YC are awful, worse than the median plan I see elsewhere. Shame.

Shahed Khan @_shahedk

Sure remote work is cool, but flex work will be the norm. - 1-2 days in office - In-person collaboration for when it's needed - Book a desk or conference room table by the hour or by the day - Smaller HQ opens up budget for travel & meals stipend, for fully remote employees

Anne Lee Skates @anneleeskates

Next-gen social apps lower the barrier to create for specific content forms: @tiktok_us lowered the video creation barrier from @YouTube @Snapchat for conversations, @joinClubhouse for audio, compared to podcasts and other heavily edited + produced audio content What else?

📚 Long reads

Jesse Walden @jessewldn

Crypto will be the "port of entry" for all internet media. My thoughts on NFTs, finally in one place (on @viamirror) 👇 variant.mirror.xyz/T8kdtZRIgy_srX…

variant.mirror.xyzNFTs make the internet ownableBefore tech, I was an artist manager in music. When I started the firm, I believed one thing about the music industry very firmly: ownership endows power. Typically, labels had ownership over the music, and thus, power over artists.

Gaby Goldberg @gaby_goldberg

Why do people come? Why do people stay? Why do people share? Why do people pay? The four questions I always ask when evaluating early-stage consumer startups, with additional insights from @lennysan, @andrewchen, @scottbelsky, and others:

gabygoldberg.medium.comMy Framework for Evaluating Early-Stage Consumer CompaniesAs an early-stage consumer investor, my #1 question to founders almost always regards defensibility. It’s easy to get distracted by the bells and whistles of consumer companies (related: The Value of…

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🙏 Thanks

Sorry again for the delay! Thanks for reading :)

Turner Novak @TurnerNovak

.@APompliano when Bitcoin drops 13%