Focus on building an intimate room not a big social following
Reading New Public's report on the next era of social technology brings language and research to an instinct I acted on.
In January 2022 I made what looked like a bad business decision. I started a closed, limited learning space with a private WhatsApp Group instead of focusing on scaling my Instagram account and the podcast.
Back then, I didn’t have the language or the evidence to communicate why. I just knew the open social feed couldn’t hold the specificity of my mission or the space I required to serve.
While my peers were building up — growing big followings, going broad — I was building down. Burrowing down is probably more accurate, into a niche and deep community of women saying goodbye to Girlboss.
This month, New Public published a report that gives words and research to the instinct I acted on back then. It’s called After the Feed: Trust, Connection and the Next Era of Social Technology and it points toward not only where the work I’ve been doing fits, but also what’s coming next for all of us.
If you’ve felt the shift but haven’t had the words for it — whether you're building something, considering it, or just trying to figure out where your attention belongs in 2026 — this is for you.
the thing many don’t want to believe.
The report’s central claim is the one I’ve observed many builders, founders, marketers and brands are still refusing to absorb: the era of the algorithmic social feed as the primary place where humans connect and exchange information is over.
The feed itself isn’t going to disappear — people will still scroll and parasocial entertainment will still live there (although my bet is we’ll scroll a lot less as the phone gets replaced by voice-led wearables), but the feed is no longer where your online social life or your information diet will live.
That role is moving to agentic interfaces. Your chat with Claude, the morning briefing your personal AI agent gives you, the content agent that summarises the world for you in the format you prefer. An audience of one, curated by an intelligence that knows you intimately.
And while attention drains toward those interfaces, the big social platforms are simultaneously fracturing. There is already AI-generated harassment at scale. AI-generated “slop” as we now love to call it is already drowning out human voices. Bots that in blind tests have been judged to be human already make up an estimated 51 percent of all internet traffic (dead internet is no longer a theory).
The platforms we were told to build our businesses on are getting weirder, less trustworthy and less social faster than most people are willing to admit. The playbook of “build a personal brand, amass a large following and monetise it” is the playbook of an era that is ending in real-time because the trust it used to signal has been hollowed out by synthetic engagement.
the cosy web: where we’re already going instead.
When open spaces become hostile, we retreat. We leave when it becomes unsafe and many years ago writer Venkatesh Rao coined the term for where we’re going instead — the cosy web. It’s a build on Yancey Strickler’s 2019 idea of the Dark Forest theory of the web.
The cosy web is closed, safe, micro-communities that gather around shared interests, beliefs or ideals.
I am almost positive you can feel this in your own life. The conversations that actually matter to you are happening in WhatsApp Groups, on Discord, private Slack channels, here on Substack in the comments section or subscriber chat. All with their own funny names, language and unspoken but well-respected rules.
And as New Public’s report reveals, this migration from open to closed is happening at every level — from local parenting groups to the elite group chats where political and business decisions are being made. People are choosing trust over reach and if you’re building something, this is the tentpole to build on.
Trust is the new currency. Attention isn’t enough anymore because attention can be manufactured for the price of an API call. What can’t be manufactured is what New Public is calling thick reputation — the kind of standing you build slowly, in a specific community, through showing up over time. It’s no longer about having 100,000 followers, it’s about how long you’ve been showing up somewhere, contributing thoughtfully.
This is a different economy and the brands, communities and creators who understand it first are going to look — just as I have — like they’re making the wrong decision in the short-term.
using purposeful pauses to think critically.
I remember heading into maternity leave in early 2021 feeling very sure I was going to stop monetising the podcast and instead, turn my gaze toward a community-funded model. Very few clients were interested in truly integrated partnerships, favouring the CPM model instead which still the most common way to monetise a podcast today. What it means is for an ad to run on my podcast — either read by me or someone else — I would get a maximum of $68 (this was considered premium) per 1,000 listens. At the time I was getting about 60,000 listens per month which would mean I’d bring in about $4,000 per month in ad revenue.
This model starts to make sense if you’re one of the big boppers getting +300,000 listens per month (It’s A Lot, Life Uncut) but the reality for most is nowhere near this. Light years away, in fact. The vast majority of smaller, independent Australian podcasts get less than 150 downloads per episode within their first month of release. No, that isn’t a typo.
It was this intel that made me realise even though Offline, The Podcast sat in the top one percent in Australia, it wasn’t big enough to be a viable business on its own. I also had a desire to go deeper into spirituality which meant sacrificing mainstream appeal and in turn, the size of my listenership.
At that time I was spending $300-$500 per episode on production (much, much cheaper now) and I was publishing weekly. This meant I was investing about $1,500 a month in production. It was also more or less a full-time job as I spent a lot of time researching guests, building the episode narrative, adding narration, thoughtful intros, sound treatment and then social promotion.
The revenue reality was clear, but so was the intense pull I was feeling to closed, hyper-focused spaces. I knew in my body that the kind of work I was put here to do required four walls. Safe, stable containers that could hold the specifics of a mentee’s story, lived experience, fears and breakthroughs. Neither social media or the podcast could meet them where I knew I had the personal capacity and experience to.
For nearly five years now I have watched what happens when you build small but deep. In the service space it looks like referring paying clients to each other. It looks like collaborating on offers. It looks like noticing when someone has gone quiet. It looks like telling each other when we’re pricing too low.
All of this can’t happen at scale which is why scale isn’t a metric that belongs in the new era of social connection we are now shifting to.
Small is perfect. Small is nourishing. Small is valuable.
the time is now to build your own version of strava or even serve.
What New Public’s report has gifted me is other businesses I can use as examples of the new way instead of always referring to my own. It uses a brilliant example that makes the perhaps abstract idea of micro-communities feel really tangible to most people. It asks you to imagine using AI tools to build something like the running app Strava, only just for the runners in your local area. Not a platform for millions, but a small, specific space for the people you actually run with. Tailored design. A shared language. An unforgettable tone. Stable energetics. A human steward — you — at the centre. Price it in line with the value and transformation it offers and you have yourself a very sustainable business.
I am grateful to not need to imagine this because I built it in 2022 with Off— and again in 2024 with serve. These two micro-communities along with my Group Japa Journey offering have generated over $1 million in revenue. This is what’s possible as a solo service provider bringing like-minded people together in closed community.
This is the model we’re now moving towards and the one you get to witness up-close inside serve, if it aligns.
I built the room I needed & now you can, too.
New Public’s report describes a near future where small, purpose-built spaces, tailored to specific communities, run by humans with AI in supporting roles, owned by their members, become not just viable but central. The infrastructure for this is already here. AI coding tools have collapsed the cost of building software. Small, member-supported economics are working.
The running club is just one version, serve is another. What will yours be and for who?
If you choose to join me inside, I can’t wait to share the process of building the app that now acts as our four walls. I’ll be sharing the platform I used, the configuration prompt that started it all, how long it took, how I’ve set up the sovereign AI mentor that will support you to bring your business through and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. It’s all material for us to learn from.
As soon as the technology came online I dove straight in and I’m going to offer you the courage and confidence to do the same. The next era of brand, business and community is going to be built by the people who decided not to wait. The tech is here and the time is now. We’re all building the plane as we’re flying it.
after the open feed is the closed room.
When I made the call to move towards closed community in January 2022 I had no proof, just a feeling that what I had to give couldn’t be built or held on a feed. Nearly five years on, New Public has put language and research around the instinct and the numbers in my own business are the receipts.
What I want to give you is what I had to give myself — permission to ignore the playbook of the era that was ending, and to start building the room I knew needed to exist and could only exist through me.
Yours is required, too.
Alison xo
Thank you for writing this piece, I needed to read it today! 🫶
So inspiring ✨💫⚡️