Someone is clearly making a push to capitalize on it, and I'm not looking forward to adding it to the endlessly growing list of beautiful things that rich businessmen have destroyed.
From Wikipedia:
Are.na is an online social networking community and creative research platform [...] Are.na was built as a successor to hypertext projects like Ted Nelson's Xanadu, and as an ad-free alternative to social networks like Facebook, forgoing "likes," "favorites," or "shares" in its design. Are.na allows users to compile uploaded and web-clipped "blocks" into different "channels," [...]
The application part itself I quite like. Some of the color contrasts are way to low and style over substance (my first impression was, that it must have been designed by a Swiss Architect), but what I do like a lot is, just how little noise there is.
I have a feeling that is going to alienate mass populace users.
There are already plenty products aimed at the mass populace, I would love to see again more communities built for the niches. Not just in terms of topics (subreddits et al), but functionality and interactions. Because honestly I came to the conclusion that communities only work if they stay relatively small and focused. I haven't used Are.na enough to say anything about their community specifically, but their approach resonates strongly with me.
The main thing I want from that sort of social media is to see original content from people that I know. I don't want to see the best cat video; I want to see my friend's cat video.
Sounds like a key feature.
I think we've learned by now that mass adoption is the death signal for any platform since it will bring in the spammers, advertisers and other undesirables which ruin the experience.
I wouldn’t say there’s nothing interesting on tumblr.
Like, there’s nostalgebraist’s writing on machine learning, Also other people posting some math content.
It is a social blogging site. People write blogs there.