Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Home runs score a million runs
What failed
Meta tries a lot of things and falls on its face a few times. Audio rooms went to the top of everything alongside Reels and failed, even though Twitter and plenty of other tech companies tried audio rooms too. Reels first went into Stories, which didn't work, and then moved.
Instagram Shops went poorly because it was designed and launched around the US, while TikTok Shops thrive outside the US and UK. In Southeast Asia, click-to-messaging combined with live video shopping is a massive business, so that was the right place for it.
The baseball math
In baseball, a home run scores one run. Here, slugging it out of the stadium can score a million, so base hits are not the goal and at-bats really matter.
More attempts means more failures, which is acceptable when the wins are that large. That reasoning is why speed matters: the faster a company moves, the more swings it gets. Meta kills projects faster than most companies, though by its own value of moving fast, probably not fast enough.
Why do hits matter more in software?
Copying a finished piece of software costs almost nothing, so a winning product can reach a very large audience on the same code. WhatsApp passed one billion users in February 2016, and Instagram passed one billion in June 2018. A car maker, by contrast, pays for the materials and labor in every car it sells.
How did audio rooms spread so fast?
Clubhouse launched in 2020 as an invite-only iPhone app and drew heavy attention in early 2021. Twitter responded with Spaces, and Facebook announced Live Audio Rooms in 2021. Clubhouse reached Android in May 2021, and its download growth slowed after that early-2021 peak.
Why does live shopping thrive in Southeast Asia?
Alibaba's Taobao Live started in China in 2016 and set the live-selling model: a host demonstrates products on video while viewers buy inside the same app. Shopping apps in Southeast Asia such as Shopee and Lazada added live streaming afterward. Many shoppers there reached the internet first through smartphones and chat apps, so buying through a conversation with a seller is a familiar habit.
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