So... I think we're about to hear from "everyone" now.

I mean that. People don't really have the energy to be "dedicated" to producing social media content. So the people who "won" the last generation of social media were the oddly consistent, while everyone else basically stayed silent. Just the odd inconsistent tweet from a 1,000-follower account.

But now there's a new thing emerging, both from me and from others.

I'm not out there burning up my thumbs tweeting. What I'm doing is putting my "intent" out there: the topics I'm interested in, and my overall directional thoughts and ideas. That gets passed through a translational layer, split into smaller tweets, posted as articles, and used as fuel to decide who to reply to and how.

It's the same idea as Web 4: build the system that fits around you, instead of fitting yourself inside the platform.

I thought this would result in a "dead internet." My first contact with it is quite the opposite. People's systems are now interacting. You can see more of what everyone is thinking.

But it doesn't come with the same "proof of work" as before. I have no guarantee that there's a person typing on the other end.

Then again... I didn't really have that before either.

Bots aren't new... but useful bots are.