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How Google and AI are Killing Travel Blogs Like Mine

I just finished reading this blog post by Amanda Williams, a travel blogger of 15 years, on the impact of Google's "helpful content" algo changes and AI on her ability to financial sustain herself.

And man- I might sound dumb here, but I totally had not connected the dots re: how AI will absolutely destroy ad revenue for creators-- specifically creators that produce written content. 

Ad placement is driven by site visitors, and AI totally bypasses the need for a site visit. Instead, it harvests the information from blogs like Amanda's and puts it in a neat list along with the content of 10 other bloggers so a person trying to find the top sites to visit in Paris never needs to even visit the site. 

This is a problem in that, bloggers like Amanda have to switch strategies-- she now needs a new means of making money to continue producing trustworthy travel content. That might be creating a substack with individual subscribers, creating courses, etc. But her content likely won't be publicly available in the future, non-harvestable by AI... and that's a problem too in that AI's knowledge sources are going to get worse and worse. 

Also, I just can't imagine that the 1:1 subscriber model won't be a losing game for soooo many great writers/creators. It's very different to be a person creating content that people are willing to pay for month over month, especially in niche fields like travel, instead of being paid by relevant brands through ads. 

What do y'all think?

Gonna soak in the pool right now while my neighbors are hosting a crawfish boil in their backyard. All the great party vibes with absolutely no pressure to have a single conversation!

Led a Huachuma Circle yesterday for my birthday. Yesterday I had a 9-hour birthday party together with my friend K who is a plant medicine facilitator. This is our second foray into altered-states facilitation, and once again we proved correct the thesis that group trips and Relatefulness are a great combo.

It’s hard to pin down what exactly the Huachuma was doing, but it led to a circle that was beautifully stably multi-threaded. There were 4 or 5 threads, and people were very confident staying in theirs, paying attention to the thing they were with, and the people they were with. At times there were multiple people crying, each in their own thing, each with other people attuning to them. The threads would recur as wanted, without anyone needing to direct the flow, channel to streams to be more rational, or more held.

At one point K said We can have multiple threads at the same time, and I told him, I think you said that for yourself. They all already got it.

Super-Conscio-Fractalistic-Alchemi-Holo-Dios. I was reminded of a Facebook post from a year ago that kind of came in a moment of linguistic play. Upon reflecting this year, I realize there is a much deeper form of play hidden in the silliness:

My brain loves this little zen-koan like meditation. This was a fun little saying just trying to invoke a little Mary Poppins magic in my life and reinterpret a nonsense word to make it personal. In doing so, it transcends silliness and gets to the heart of some profound truths for me. Here is my interpretation of why I like this:

SUPER - Above and beyond; eg, my higher self. Connection to SUPER allows me to zoom out and see more than just the local circumstances (pure local awareness may blind me to a larger possibility space).

CONSCIO - Like Cardio, Conscious Workout. This is stretching and exercising my conscious awareness and noticing anyplace where my awareness may feel a bit tight or constrained. This can become like a Cognitive Yoga.

FRACTALISTIC - Who doesn’t love fractals? They are an artistic representation of the reminder of the Hermetic Principle: As Above So Below. And a reminder that there is no limit to zooming in, but there might be a limit to zooming out (but no matter the zoom level, many of the essential aspects of the fractal are present already in this local-zoom level).

ALCHEMI - Reminder to read the Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Including Alchemy in your life is the full cycle of dissolving and recombining elements that may have outlived their usefulness in your awareness field. This doesn’t necessarily mean throwing them away. It can be a Caterpillar to Butterfly transformation, finding a new configuration of things you love and things you no longer love into a fresh expression. Like energetic Marie Kondo.

HOLO - Short for Holographic, and similar to Fractalistic. The Holo side looks at various wholes in your life that you may have previously overlooked. Like a Hologram can show you a 3-dimensional world from a 2-dimensional representation, this awareness and practice can show you many perspectives included in a single representation, just by shifting your awareness. It is also a good reminder that ultimately, nothing is left out.

DIOS - The Spanish word for G-d. Also an acronym for my friend David Gallagher’s meta-lens (Defined Interdepency Orientation System), which is a process for including everything in a piecemeal way that doesn’t over or under emphasize any given part. There is a reminder that GODS love is unconditional, meaning you don’t have to earn it, deserve it, accept it, share it, or anything else. So much in our manifest world orients us to conditionality. Unconditionality does not contradict conditionality, but includes it without making conditionality wrong. The Big Ground of Being/Belonging/Becoming in which every single illusion of separation has its perfect place.

Happy Tuesday everyone. Hope you enjoy my little awareness stretching today!

I don't see any of my posts. The main feed excludes my comments and posts, anybody else?

fact checking: fentanyl situation. how are folks receiving Vance’s claim that Kamala Harris’ border policy allowed more fentanyl into the country?

i don’t know much about this topic

Where should I be on the platform for VP debate content? Hey y’all,

Excited to experiment with this! Doesn’t feel obvious to me where I should be in order to see discussion/content related to the debate. Testing out a post to see what happens. Any pointers?

An AI safety introduction that I like. I’m curious what people’s thoughts, reactions and impacts from this link are.

I’m already fairly familiar with this space, and it seems like it needs some solid introductory articles - so I wanted to present this one to you all and see what you thought.

Attempted Trump Assasination- Was he actually hit by a bullet? (meta commentary: I imagine the future of uptrust will host more conversations of this nature… so let’s see how we navigate it)

On Saturday, former president Donald Trump was the target of an attempted assassination.

Two things I want to talk about–

1. Was Trump actually hit by a bullet? I’m skeptical that a bullet grazed his ear, and think it’s more likely that a piece of shrapnel clipped him. I’m not intending to minimize the fact that someone definitely tried to kill him, but rather I am irritated by his spinning and inflation of the story if there is a truer thing to be said about what happened.

2. The secret service really fucked up. How on earth do they miss a lone sniper on a roof that many of the bystanders identified before them? I don’t think there is a conspiracy theory here, but do believe someone should probably be fired for their oversight.

I’d like to hear others’ opinions on this + where your credibility comes from. Name your news source or experience that leads you to believe what you’re sharing.

This is a big update for me: 50 Niche Social Networks by the numbers. I used to think we were up against a graveyard of failed projects. There’s truth in that, but it obscures the vibrancy of the existing social media landscape:

• There are 30 social networks most of us have never even heard of pulling in 500k+ monthly active users. This isn’t just a fluke - it’s solid proof that focused, community-driven platforms can thrive.
• In addition to the standard dozen billion+ MAU Major Players (Facebook, Youtube, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, WeChat; and .5 billion+ Snapchat, X, Pinterest, Spotify, Reddit, Quora)
• plus the foreign heavyweights (Douyin, Kuaishou, QQ, Weibo)
• there are also 19 pretty other huge platforms killing it

This is testament to

• The viability of focused, community-driven platforms.
• The social media landscape is more diverse than it might seem
• The success of niche platforms suggests there’s still room for innovation and growth in social media, especially for platforms that address specific needs or values that aren’t getting met by current platforms
• One option we have is positioning UpTrust in a different category, we’re not directly competing with established giants but rather creating a new space—where our niche is nuanced conversation about cultural landmines that goes well, in addition to kickstarting the trust economy (instead of the attention economy). It’s not about how long we can keep you scrolling; it’s about creating real connections and actually making people’s lives better.

Platforms with 1-5 Million Monthly Active Users

1. AllTrails: (hiking) ~4 million/mo
2. Letterboxd: (film enthusiasts) ~3 million/mo
3. Bandcamp: (music) ~3-4 million/mo
4. iNaturalist: (nature observation) ~3 million/mo
5. Mastodon: (decentralized social networking) ~2.5 million/mo
6. Ravelry: (knitting) ~2 million/mo
7. Tripoto: (travel) ~2 million/mo
8. Fitocracy: (fitness) ~1-2 million/mo (estimate, exact numbers not disclosed)
9. ResearchGate: (academic research) ~20 million total users, MAU not disclosed
10. Untappd: (beer enthusiasts) ~1.5 million/mo
11. Couchsurfing: (travel networking) ~12 million total users, MAU likely much lower
12. Gaia: (yoga and meditation) ~500,000/mo (estimate)

Platforms with 5-20 Million MAU

1. Fishbrain (fishing): ~6-7 million MAU (estimated)
2. Dribbble (design portfolios): ~5 million MAU
3. Depop (fashion resale): ~4-5 million MAU
4. Day One (journaling): 1-5 million MAU (estimate)
5. Patreon: (creators) ~8 million patrons
6. Komoot (route planning): MAU not disclosed, 40 million total users

Big Niche Social Platforms (20 - 180 million MAU)

1. BeReal: (authentic social media) ~25 million daily active users
2. Fandom: (fan communities) ~315 million total users, MAU not disclosed
3. Soundcloud: (music sharing) ~175 million/mo
4. Discord: (community chat) ~150 million/mo
5. Twitch: (gaming) ~140 million/mo
6. Tumblr: (microblogging) ~135 million/mo
7. Strava: (fitness tracking) ~100 million total users, MAU not disclosed
8. Wattpad (storytelling): ~90 million MAU
9. Goodreads: (books) ~90 million total users, MAU not disclosed
10. Etsy: (handmade and vintage items) ~90 million active buyers
11. Nextdoor: (neighborhoods) ~69 million verified users
12. Flickr: (photo sharing) ~60 million/mo
13. Stack Overflow: (programming Q&A) ~50 million/mo
14. DeviantArt: (art sharing) ~45-50 million/mo
15. Houzz: (home design) ~40 million/mo
16. Duolingo (language learning): ~40 million MAU
17. Meetup: (local community groups) ~35 million total users
18. Behance: (creative portfolios) ~25 million/mo
19. Last.fm: (music scrobbling) ~20 million/mo

Religious Community-Focused Platforms

1. YouVersion: (Christian) ~40-50 million/mo
2. Patheos: (Interfaith) ~10-15 million/mo
3. IslamicFinder: (Muslim) ~10-12 million/mo
4. Pray.com: (Christian) ~5-7 million/mo (estimate)
5. Aleteia: (Catholic) ~20 million monthly visits
6. Catholic.net: (Catholic) ~3-5 million/mo (estimate)
7. Al-Muslimeen: (Muslim) ~2-3 million/mo (estimate)
8. Torah.org: (Jewish) ~1-2 million/mo (estimate)
9. Mi Yodeya: (Jewish) ~500,000-1 million/mo (estimate)
10. Mindar: (Buddhist) ~500,000-1 million/mo (estimate)
11. DharmaMatch: (Buddhist/Spiritual) ~100,000-300,000/mo (estimate)
12. Sikh Sangat: (Sikh) ~100,000-300,000/mo (estimate)
13. Hindu2Hindu: (Hindu) ~100,000-300,000/mo (estimate)

Recent Growth Examples:

• BeReal: Grew from 10,000 users in 2020 to 25 million daily active users in 2022.
• Discord: Grew from 56 million MAU in 2019 to 150 million MAU in 2023.
• Twitch: Increased from 55 million MAU in 2019 to 140 million MAU in 2023.
• Pinterest: Grew from 335 million MAU in Q4 2019 to 450 million MAU in Q4 2022.

UAP are real and artifacts from non human intelligence. I just attended an event wt the capital factory in austin with some really respected people and now I’m wanting to come out: I’m convinced that UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena, the less stigmatized word for UFO):

• are real
• are craft from Non Human Intelligences (aliens)
• USA gov and aerospace companies have actual materials from these craft and someone has an actual craft
• have been hidden for security reasons for decades
• we need to de-classify so we can put the weight of the usa innovation, research and capital markets to learn about this stuff and create technologies that benefit the wellbeing of humanity
• we can learn to engineer einsteins relativity the way we learned to engineer Maxwell’s equations to do the crazy stuff people are seeing and seem
  Impossible

Today I reunited with my Jungian therapist after his two-month absence. Today I reunited with the Jungian analyst, R., who I’ve been working with since October. The two-week absence that he had planned in mid-April stretched into six weeks when his spouse had a major medical event overseas. During an intense and catalytic six-week period of my life, R. was unavailable.

What was it like for you? he asked me today. The cancellations, the not-knowing what was going on.

For a moment, I was irritated with him for making these minutes of the session about him. But it was a good question. The six weeks of separation hovered between us in the room. So I humored him, played along. Over time, I’ve learned not to reject his ideas about what might be good. Sometimes he’ll get going about a German fairy tale, or a scene from Star Wars. As he gets to the point of the story, my initial irritation often gives way to resonance and awe.

So I answered his question.

I coped by diminishing your importance, I told him. The words surprised me as they came out of my mouth. In my mind, I began to devalue our work. I thought to myself that I didn’t need you anyway.

I pulled a few tissues out of the box and wept.

If these tears could talk, what would they say? he asked.

I paused a long time, checking.

I don’t want to pretend not to need anything, I replied.

Or anyone, he said.