Your Secret Is(n't) Safe On Venmo
Social-feed personal finance, news via text, and less (or more) advertising
“What you’re seeing on Instagram or Facebook is what they want you to see,” said Abby Faber, a 19-year-old freshman at Indiana University. “They’re edited pictures that they put up. But with Venmo, it’s very normal casual interactions. It’s what they were doing and spending money on.”
[Leslie Albrecht, MarketWatch]
Venmo’s Social Feed
Earlier this month, numerous attention-hungry news sources shared a lovely tale of lust, crime, sleuthing, and revenge within the Venmo ecosystem. Venmo is a treasure trove for jealous spouses and arrest-hungry detectives. Thanking a trustworthy buddy for fronting a dime bag used to be an activity you barely executed in front of local pharmacies, or in Starbucks parking lots with cops hilariously nearby. Extramarital relationships were congealed in bars during business trips, or comically, via Ashley Madison. Venmo provided all of these actors with an alternative method for disguising unsavory activities. The service was a half-step ahead of prying eyes and fingers. Apparently, no longer.
What I find most interesting about Venmo is its underlying social network. Benedict Evans labeled Facebook an “index of its users.” It attained this status by ingesting every asinine "like," comment, click, and emoji posted on the site. Facebook knows how networks of friends evolve from the moment contact lists migrate bit by bit from users phones. Facebook accounts are used to carelessly navigate past login screens present on many websites and interact with ads served on those sites because of what we’ve told the service we like (cats, babies, but hate posts about vegans). Venmo’s index focuses on financial transactions, but every incident includes information about who was paid or owes us the most for last night’s headache-inducing tequila shots. Said another way, both Facebook and Venmo users have spent time telling these services who they are, what they enjoy, or the object or activity they purchased. We give it to them, for free. Chemical addictions pop out of the nowhere as a result of the unstoppable social feed.
Some of this behavior and sharing seems logical, but much of it is better left unsaid or buried in offline channels. Venmo’s social graph proliferates because users don’t seem to understand how to make their transactions private. The blame rests partly on users, who don’t seem to care, but also on Venmo, who likely defaulted users to public sharing even though they probably didn’t intend to be so visible. The same is true of Facebook.
Then again, I may be completely missing the point. Essential transactions are happening, with meaningful taglines such as “haha, get it” and “what do you mean I have to plant trees, I just want my WIFI.” People are addicted to Venmo too.
Sexting With TheSkimm
My wife subscribes to TheSkimm. She loves it. She is one of 7 million (!) newsletter subscribers who devour tiny bits of news and humor every day. Others pay for TheSkimm app that includes features such as SkimmNotes (think: very short podcasts) and a calendar integrating your events with useful or useless happenings around the world.
Last Wednesday, the service introduced yet another ingredient designed to expand its grip on users. The service is called 1:1. Simply put, TheSkimm will allow app subscribers to discuss and ask questions about one topic chosen by editors every week. Discussion responses will come not from automation, at least not at first, and instead from editors and other staff who open up a specific window during their day to handle traffic to and from the service. You might be asking this question: will I text TheSkimm, or is this a gimmick?
It’s not a gimmick, and I think this is a fascinating idea. I think it can work well. Those of you who read my first-ever newsletter know I praised a service called Text Rex. Text Rex allowed me to avoid Yelp (i.e., hell) entirely and instead text the staff of The Infatuation for a restaurant recommendation. Kind staff members would, in reply, send me their top proposal based the initial criteria in my first message, or ask a clarifying question if absolutely necessary. Key to all of this was the direct link to my already-active texting app. I didn’t have to undergo a costly app switch to extract valuable information. The direct messaging connection is why I think TheSkimm approach makes so much sense. So many of its subscribers are text-message friends -- like many of us -- who can now discuss news topics and ask questions that otherwise might have been forgotten. No need for other apps.
I’ll be curious to see how this usage model expands over time as Apple, Facebook, and WhatsApp roll out direct business messaging features in their mobile apps.
Advertising Sucks, Let The Outline Reinvent Journalism
We love lists. Their structure and logic make us happy. The need to scribble them somewhere forces us to buy stationary decorated with flowers, or cute pencils, or worse, headers such as “Jeff and Audrey’s Scratch Pad.” Cosmopolitan Magazine is still a fervent supporter of lists, attaching their utility to nearly everything with headlines such as “734 ways to please your [____].” It's easy to pick the magazine off the shelf and disappear into a CVS corner to read it. Who hasn't?
It was only a matter of time before internet publications connected the dots and spun us into their web. This Outline article references a site called Upworthy, but I’m personally more aware of BuzzFeed. In fact, I live around the corner from their headquarters. Today, the site lists valuable life reference pieces such as “24 Songs That Made 23-33 Year-Olds Jealous Assholes Even Though You Were Like 12 And A Single Loser.” Either that title makes you laugh, cringe, or puke. But in so many cases those reactions are converted into clicks. Ads are served. A retailer is given yet another chance to extract a dollar or two from your pocket, and hopefully a lot more.
The Outline is here to save us from this advertising mess, or so they say. The site uses select advertising partners and nuanced formats instead of intrusive banner ads or auto-play video. It doesn’t bother with ad exchanges and third parties. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, the site wants to grow to 10 or 20 million unique monthly visitors from 3 million, and ultimately grow its brand into a portfolio of equally compelling new sites from just one.
I’m not sure there is enough oxygen for another culturally-hip news upstart. We already know of sites with similar leanings such as Axios, Quartz, and especially hipster-beard fixed-gear bike Vice. Many of us consume small snippets of relevant news via TheSkimm. There is yet another class of destinations focused on more in-depth analysis such as Above Avalon, Stratechery, and The Information. These last three employ no advertising and instead focus on monthly or yearly-discount subscriptions to gather up revenue. I subscribe to Stratechery and think it is one of the best. Thus, the question I’m trying to answer is this: can a niche culture site drive enough attention to their advertisers to stay afloat, or will advertisers merely revert to Facebook and Google? We will see.