Twitter Super Follows and Clubhouse portend a shift from algorithmic, scale-focused, low-attention feeds to low-volume, high-attention relationships with users
even though I've never created one or even spoken — I find myself instinctively wanting to see who else entered the room because some “tech reporter” may tattle if it's a Prohibited Person. That's the climate they've created: like the Stasi Cristian Nyari / @cnyari : From “algorithmic curation” to “intentionality” and “transaction.” https://onezero.medium.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : I wrote about the internet's latest big shift: from high-volume, low-marginal-attention, algorithmic feeds to low-volume, high-marginal attention, relational platforms. https://onezero.medium.com/... @parismarx : Maybe I'm getting old, or maybe it's just because I feel exhausted, but the idea of learning how to use a new social media that involves even further commercialization of our interactions through direct payments does not sound appealing to me https://onezero.medium.com/... OneZero / @ozm : New digital media products are focusing on low-volume, high-attention relationships rather than high-volume, low-attention feeds, @WillOremus writes. https://onezero.medium.com/... Josh Chapdelaine / @joshchapdelaine : .@WillOremus details how new digital media products are focusing on, “ low-volume, high-attention relationships rather than high-volume, low-attention feeds.” As big tech continues to extract attention and revenue, more people will be locked out. https://onezero.medium.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Will Oremus's OneZero argument lands one month after a skeptical take on Clubhouse questioned whether its synchronous audio rooms hold attention beyond the pandemic, and it gives that doubt a framework: Super Follows and Clubhouse are both bets that users will trade volume for intimacy. The piece extends two earlier OneZero/NYT threads — the internet as a dark forest where life retreats into private spaces and the end of the Wild Wild Web era of shoot-first strategy — into an economic claim: attention itself is repricing.
First-order effects
- Twitter gains a direct creator-revenue line with Super Follows, tying its economics to relationship depth rather than timeline scroll depth.
- Clubhouse's scarcity-by-design model — invite gates, live-only rooms — makes presence, not reach, the product users are buying.
Second-order effects
- Meta's internal push to make Facebook more TikTok-like, recommending posts from unconnected sources, is the counter-bet: the incumbent doubles down on algorithmic scale precisely as upstarts monetize smallness.
- If paid relational tiers work, every feed-based platform faces pressure to add subscription mechanics, splitting product roadmaps between ad inventory and member revenue.
Third-order effects
- The industry may bifurcate into recommendation-scale networks on one side and paid, high-trust relational spaces on the other — with moderation, design incentives, and platform power concentrating differently in each.
- Clubhouse's later trajectory — private Houses, asynchronous Chats, and a majority layoff reset — shows how hard the high-attention model is to sustain, suggesting the shift rewards whoever owns the payment relationship, not just the room.
The trend: Social platforms are splitting between algorithmic scale and paid, high-margin attention, with monetization mechanics like Super Follows forcing every network to pick which side of the divide its economics serve.