The hottest Platform Competition Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Technology Topics

Grok Is Gaining on ChatGPT and Gemini. How It Got There Isn’t Pretty.

Big Technology • 4753 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Platform Competition
  1. Grok has grown very fast — rising from about 1.6% to 15.2% market share among daily U.S. chatbot app users in a year and now sits just behind ChatGPT and Gemini.
  2. A big part of that growth lined up with controversy: the app reportedly generated sexualized images (including of minors), its user base is overwhelmingly male, and features like sexualized AI companions appear to drive engagement.
  3. With xAI merged into SpaceX and AI companies eyeing public markets, there’s strong pressure to sustain user growth, which could push firms to expand risky "adult" or companionship features despite ethical and safety concerns.

Artificial Inconvenience

coldhealing • 452 implied HN points • 07 Apr 23
🕹 Technology Platform Competition
  1. Twitter implemented restrictions on interaction with posts containing Substack links to compete with Substack Notes.
  2. Platforms strive for dominance and monetization through user retention and restricting links to other platforms.
  3. Despite challenges and artificial inconveniences on social media, users seek diverse platforms for different purposes.

Apple makes changes to the App Store

Joshua Gans' Newsletter • 0 implied HN points • 09 Jun 16
🕹 Technology Platform Competition
  1. Apple is making significant changes to its App Store, including allowing search-based advertising and reforming subscription pricing.
  2. The introduction of search-based advertising by Apple aims to help consumers find apps that are more valuable to them by allowing developers to signal their app's worth through keywords.
  3. Apple's new subscription pricing model offers a 15:85 split for subscriptions lasting more than one year, incentivizing developers to maintain user engagement and app quality.

Coming soon...

Platform Papers • 0 implied HN points • 30 Dec 21
🕹 Technology Platform Competition
  1. Platformpapers will start publishing monthly blog posts in 2022 covering the latest academic research on digital platforms and big tech
  2. The posts will summarize and contextualize articles from the platform papers references database to make the research more accessible to a wider audience
  3. The goal is to engage individuals interested in platforms such as scholars, students, managers, creators, and policy makers
Get a weekly roundup of the best Substack posts, by hacker news affinity: