An annoying feature in an "influencer" career is that it seems like you'll be much better off if you're "nice" to everyone.

You can always collaborate or "swap." You don't like their work, or maybe even them as a person, but gosh can you pass up this opportunity?

Tomorrow, Zynga shuts down FarmVille on Facebook after 11 years. I wanted to share the story of how we created it and why it has played such an important role in the evolution of gaming. 1/x

The real innovation of FarmVille was in making games accessible to busy adults, giving them a place to invest and express themselves and be seen by people in their lives as creative. People thought of FarmVille as a sort of Etch-a-Sketch. 2/x

It was the first game at scale that leveraged big data, and almost everything inside the game was tested and optimized. FarmVille became a training ground for a generation of entrepreneurs and product managers. 3/x

In 2008, Happy Farm reached 20+ million daily active users, setting off a wave of competition from game developers, and numerous farming games began to hit the market. 4/x.

On February 6, 2009, FarmTown reached 1 million DAU on Facebook. Farm Town combined the moving maps from MyFarm with avatars in Zynga’s YoVille. I wrote the date on the wall, and said we need to count the days until we are in the market with our own game. 5/x

1. I'm the CEO of a platform for females & know I have a unique insight into the single sex space debate. I see it play out in real time.

During our 1st MVP test phase, 1000s of TW onboarded & created "KILL TERF" profiles.

Are we supposed to take these seriously or not?

2. I fought to include TW on Giggle but the reality is I fought not knowing the hostility of the situation. I was shocked & devastated by the KILL TERF & other obscene profiles, but...

Is "KILL TERFS", "RAPE TERFS" & "LOOK AT MY GIRL DICK" what we can except in the real world?

3. Is it "just" something said to women online or is it something that would be done in "analogue" female spaces?

It's a really important questions to ask, because not only do women not want to read stuff like this... we don't want to physically experience it either.

4. It's important to remember, without this abhorrent behavior we'd all be having a very different debate.

This behavior has *added* to womens fear.

You can dismiss it if it doesn't suit your agenda. But if you do, no solution to ensure the safety of *everyone* will be found.

5. When I read something like this, what stands out to me is the line "a lot of the time I'll get side eye or even outright harassment." Lucky you!

Imagine getting a rape threat.

When that statement is put into the context of the admission prior to it, it's scary for women.

It makes me smile every time I notice IGListKit at work in Instagram. We put a lot of work into making and improving it. Proud to see it holding up 4 years later.

🧵 with some memories on how it was built:

At Instagram, product work slowed around the holidays, so we used the time to pay down tech debt. In winter 2014 I reviewed a +12k line refactor from UITableView to UICollectionView.

We recently dropped iOS 5 so we could use the new 6+ APIs without backwards compatibility.

That review taught me a lot about UICV: data sources should mutate in one place else risk out-of-sync exceptions, the first view layout may reloadData, sticky headers make good perf hard, and many more UICV tidbits

We used reloadData for everything and it worked, for the most part.

Except two things bugged the hell out of me:

1. No animated changes (duh)
2. Images could flicker and the like animation could cancel

I dug into the latter and learned that if you reloadData, every cell on screen gets reused. So even if nothing in the UI changes, you still reuse (or init) cells, bind data, set images, etc. that’s a lot of work!

How I built a 7 Million+ strong COMMUNITY on social media, in 5 years.

(A thread)

Video content is the past, present & future.

Golden rule of social media : People gravitate towards HUMANS & their stories.

The easiest way to attach people to your journey is COMMUNICATION through video.

If you cant come on screen, at least use voice. Video>Photo>Written.

From day 1 :
- Wrote down ALL ideas on paper (content pieces, growth strategies, future targets)
- Decided to expand my team, whenever my income allowed me to.
- Make. Money. First.
Don't just rely on YouTube income or brands for money. You may also provide SERVICES to fans.

But in the long term, BIG money will come from brands.

Therefore accumulate numbers and create your own niche.

How to get numbers?
- Entertain or Educate or Motivate

- Create videos/pieces that address people's most common questions/thoughts about the niche you've chosen.

As you grow through your base strategy of video creation (could be YT, IG Reels or even LinkedIn Video)...

You can further community loyalty through sharing pieces of your personal story. How?
- Vlogs
- Captions that expose your mindset.
- Tweets

Be a good storyteller.