Here is an attempt to stand up some logic that I think informs some of the true hurdles we’re bound to face with River. Rudimentarily, the goal for Instagram is to create an environment that encourages users to use the app as much as possible. This is because they are in the business of engineering attention. Eyeballs equate to money from advertisers, which is a core part of Instagram’s business model. This is why the shift to viral content and entertainment at large is where Instagram has seen a lot of recent growth. At its core, it is, post a pic of you at your best, but what keeps you there are all the manipulative social levers that urge you to stay on the platform. We’ve identified certain feelings of exhaustion that are prevalent amongst ourselves and others. This idea that participation in mainstream social media (Instagram and Twitter) leads to feelings of isolation and disconnection, not for all but for some. This is loosely how I’ve been defining our target audience. It is adjacent to this idea of tech luddites, the daylight computer buyers, the light phone users, those who have enabled screen time restrictions, or maybe even those who have gone as far as to buy a [Brick](https://getbrick.app/). Obviously this feels very backwards. Why would you design yet another social media app for people who want to spend less time on their phones? Lets back up a second, because maybe you don’t agree with me that that niche is our target audience. Lets say then that our target audience exists outside of that niche, and they are amongst the rest of the world spending countless hours on Instagram and Twitter and never feeling guilty about it. How then, do you target those users? This is where I think the Dan Romero playbook comes in. To be successful with a consumer social app, he claims you must at a minimum: 1. Be mobile first 2. Enable push notifications I can’t seem to find the original cast that I’m thinking of that mentions some other things, but in my head it is essentially a list of other attention engineering devices that he is describing as requisites to even get any users at all. This is where the question of collective motivation comes up again and strikes extremely hard. It is the same line of thinking that is called out in [Austin Robey’s tweet.](https://x.com/austinrobey_/status/1787142053731647724) It is a combination of a lack of understanding and time spent towards identifying and articulating an issue. And generally I think a lack of creativity imposed by certain societal constraints that has forced us to not think far enough outside of the box.