Context:
I just spent some time with Sora’s new “social app,” and honestly, I’m left with mixed feelings. There’s some very real tech magic under the hood, but as a product and a market signal, it’s more interesting as a chess move than as an actual social network.
Here’s what stood out:
TECH
The tech is genuinely cool. The face/voice superimpose and collaboration features are slick—definitely the kind of thing that makes you go “oh, so that’s why Meta rushed out their generative AI feed last week.” This is next-gen stuff, and you can see the arms race happening in real time.
APP
As an app, Sora is built for consumption (no surprise there), but it’s buggy, and video generation is way too slow for posting to feel good. These are fixable, but right now, it’s a bottleneck. Maybe it’s just the cost of doing business at this scale, or maybe it’s a justification for building out a ton of infra before anyone cares about monetization.
LEGAL
This is a “just send it” moment on legal/copyright. A year ago, dropping this level of copyright violation with high fidelity would’ve started a holy war. Now? Maybe the sheer scale of infra investment, plus cultural exhaustion and distraction, means we’re living in the “age of power” instead of the “age of law.” I’m not saying it’s right, but I wouldn’t bet against it.
CONTENT
Here’s the real problem: the content just isn’t compelling. It’s got Studio Ghibli syndrome—everyone wants to try it, but nobody really wants to stick around. I’m not convinced that taking text and blowing it up into video (even when the quality gets great) is actually that interesting. It feels like a recipe for infinite, ignorable slop. Wild to see all this focus on high production value video, when in reality, standup comedy and memes (low production, high meaning) are what dominate culture today.
ALTMAN as TOM
One weird thing: a crazy high percentage of the videos reference Sam Altman or remix him. It’s giving MySpace Tom, or Twitter-Elon, or Truth Social-Trump vibes. Maybe in the “age of power” every major player needs their own social space. Maybe this is less about acquiring information and more about staking out territory. Worth playing with, for sure, but I don’t buy that OAI is building a social network that actually surfaces novel, important info about the world. The content just isn’t there, structurally. But as a power move? Super interesting.1. TECH
Takeaways:
The tech is impressive and the competitive dynamics are heating up fast.
The app experience is rough, but probably fixable.
Legal risk is being ignored—maybe because power wins now.
The content is not compelling, and I’m skeptical it ever will be.
The “Altman as Tom” effect is a fascinating signal about how social power is being mapped onto tech.