The Good Online Game
Welcome to the 1,265 newly Not Boring folks who have joined us since last Monday! Today’s Not Boring is brought to you by… In March, I wrote that Excel Never Dies. I could have spoken too soon. Rows very much wants Excel to die. It has a shot: Rows is one of the “Holy shit 🤯” new product experiences I’ve had in a long time. Rows is a spreadsheet powered by APIs, with built-in integrations that let you enrich mailing lists, learn what’s in a company’s tech stack, find firm data through Crunchbase, and way more, proper within the spreadsheet. They even made me a template to watch trending tweets on topics I’m writing about. Plus, the spreadsheets are at all times able to share: past simply collaborating with others, anybody can transform their spreadsheets into interactive internet apps in a single-click on. Anyone can construct types, fashions, and inside tools out of a spreadsheet with out having to code.
Everything in Rows is system-based. It’s kind of like if Excel, Airtable, and Zapier had a child, plus entry to databases that usually reside behind paywalls. It’s actually unimaginable already, and it’s still in beta. Rows desires Not Boring readers — people who love finance & tech — to be among the many early adopters. Happy belated Mother’s Day to all the not boring mothers! Most of the time at Not Boring, I write about companies, with details and figures and histories and graphs. Occasionally, I’ll write about ideas and business fashions, just like the Metaverse, DAOs, or APIs. Sometimes, I’ll let you into my mind to see what’s going on in there before an idea is totally baked, when its only a bunch of wisps beginning to form a braid. Today is a type of pieces. It’s shorter. It’s meant to be interactive. A lot of the fun will happen when you are taking the idea and try to apply it to your individual work or life.
To be clear, much of today’s essay is based by myself private expertise. I absolutely perceive that not everybody has the luxurious of having a roof over their head, meals on the desk, and an internet connection. Many people can’t afford the time to play the sport. But when you’re taking the hours it takes to learn Not Boring, you’re most likely already taking part in the good Online Game to a point. You read this since you want to know how the web economic system works, and how one can play it better. But you can’t play to win except you know you’re enjoying. Let’s get to it. This didn’t begin as a bit about games. I set out to reply this query: why are tech development stocks sagging whereas crypto moons and worth roars again? Crypto is simply extra enjoyable. But crypto itself isn’t the sport. It’s simply the in-game foreign money for a a lot larger recreation, performed throughout the internet, that includes CEOs, influencers, artists, researchers, buyers, and regular folks, such as you and me.
That’s a way more fun matter to discover than which asset class is outperforming which. That is bigger, extra everlasting than day-to-day market fluctuations. We’re all taking part in an amazing Online Game. How properly we play determines the rewards we get, on-line and offline. The nice Online Game is performed concurrently by billions of people, on-line, as themselves, with actual-world consequences. Your monetary and psychological wellbeing is at stake, but the downside is restricted. The upside, on the other hand, is infinite. Social media is the clearest manifestation of this meta-game. Beginner-level Twitter feels weird, like a bunch of individuals exposing their personal thoughts to the world. Medium-degree Twitter is Threads and engagement hacks. Twitter Mastery is indistinguishable from an ongoing recreation. This is also true for Reddit, Discord, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and different social networks. But social media is just one piece of an interconnected sport that spans on-line and offline areas. The best way you play in a single area unlocks alternatives in others.
Sharing ideas on Twitter would possibly get you invited to a Discord, your participation in that Discord would possibly get you invited to work on a brand new mission, and that new undertaking might make you wealthy. Or it might carry you extra followers on Twitter and more Discord invites and extra project opportunities and new ideas that you want to explore which could kick off any number of recent paths. We now dwell in a world in which, by typing issues into your cellphone or your keyboard, or saying issues into a microphone, or snapping photos or movies, you’ll be able to marshall resources, support, and alternatives. Crypto has the potential to take it up a notch by baking recreation mechanics — points, rewards, skins, groups, and extra — right into the whole internet. The good Online Game is free to play, and it starts merely: by realizing that you’re playing a recreation. Every tweet is a free lottery ticket. That’s a giant unlock. Anyone can play. You’ll be able to choose methods to play given your resources and expertise at the present second.