Iris ten Teije

My pal @iristenteije has been saying for a while that software is becoming more like content. Here's what I think the 'software is dead' crowd are missing: 1. The internet commoditised the distribution of content. Suddenly, you didn't need the approval and distribution engine of a newspaper to have millions of people read what you wrote. 2. The same happened with software's distribution, but the barrier to entry was still higher than with content. People with no formal training can create a blog post in an hour that's consumed and enjoyed by thousands or more. Historically not true with software. 3. So as software gets easier and cheaper to make, there are imperfect, but useful analogies for what already happened in content, and what's happening now. Some predictions: - the number of people creating software will continue to explode. - the amount of software (great, okay and bad) will grow accordingly, think 10,000x in a few years, but with similar ratios of each bucket as before. - the business of software will change rapidly, in a similar fashion to content. - lots more software will be free: as a funnel to something else, to build people's profiles, for the love of the game. - people will still make plenty of money from directly monetising software, but it'll become increasingly important to (as @nikitabier) says, have one or more of these: network effects, proprietary data & physical components. - I'd suggest tech commentators are underestimating the importance of brand/personality in this too. more influencers will run software companies. - just having the greatest product/distribution/intensity will still matter though, whether you're monetising directly or not. the difference in output between a great person and good person is even wider post-AI than pre-AI. - the number of people required to build useful software will keep shrinking. just like content creators are typically a single person, software products/companies will increasingly be a solopreneur or smaller team. - the type of software that's built will drastically expand, as more people (and agents) participate and build for themselves and their people/ideas. - finally, in the immortal words of @GRITCULT, things will get weirder.