Гигантская статья про социальные сети и теорию социального капитала.
"Status as a Service (StaaS)": https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2019/2/19/status-as-a-service

Статья сложная: и написана не самым простым языком и предлагаемые концепции требуют осмысления. Я ее прочитал в несколько подходов, но остался очень доволен.

Автор берет два утверждения:
> People are status-seeking monkeys
> People seek out the most efficient path to maximizing social capital

И рассматривает работу различных социальных сетей через них.

Например концепция proof of work: социальный капитал (лайки, фолловеры, etc) имеет ценность только когда его непросто получить. В Инстграме надо запостить интересное фото, в Твиттере — забавный твит в 280 символов.

> — Each new social network issues a new form of social capital, a token.
> — You must show proof of work to earn the token.
> — Over time it becomes harder and harder to mine new tokens on each social network, creating built-in scarcity.

...

> Almost every social network of note had an early signature proof of work hurdle. For Facebook it was posting some witty text-based status update. For Instagram, it was posting an interesting square photo. For Vine, an entertaining 6-second video. For Twitter, it was writing an amusing bit of text of 140 characters or fewer. Pinterest? Pinning a compelling photo. You can likely derive the proof of work for other networks like Quora and Reddit and Twitch and so on. Successful social networks don't pose trick questions at the start, it’s usually clear what they want from you.

...

> Why does proof of work matter for a social network? If people want to maximize social capital, why not make that as easy as possible?
> As with cryptocurrency, if it were so easy, it wouldn't be worth anything. Value is tied to scarcity, and scarcity on social networks derives from proof of work. Status isn't worth much if there's no skill and effort required to mine it. It's not that a social network that makes it easy for lots of users to perform well can't be a useful one, but competition for relative status still motivates humans.