Interactive and Participatory Internet Templates

Taylor Lorenz (2023) elucidates throughout Extremely Online how creators utilized social media platforms' affordances that enabled them to have more direct contact with technology, which consequently made them more equipped to become creators. Specifically, creators and users operated in platforms using John R. Gallagher's (2019) concept of IPI templates, or interactive and participatory internet templates, that afford the common user a more accessible means to communicate with other users on the internet, as opposed to needing to code their communication within Web 1.0. As Gallagher posited, these IPI templates contain "prefabricated designs and cultural forms" that author for its users behavioral rules of possible user-to-user interactions (p. 34). Lorenz's chronicling of creators' and users' participation in platforms' IPI templates that contain their own embedded cultural forms provides a practical framework for scholars to better understand the structural components of platform interfaces that shape our range of available interactions online.

Lorenz documents Twitter's pivotal experience with updating its IPI template in tandem with its audience reception, completely shifting its platform function and cultural form to what we know of it today. At its inception, Twitter's purpose was "for staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you're doing" accompanied by the prompt, "What's your status?" above a rectangular text box for users to type their 140-character-limit text (Lorenz, 2023, p. 103). Lorenz notes that audience reception to this prompt was mixed: Some liked these mini-updates to friends; others questioned, "Who really cares what I am doing, every hour of the day?" Following people's use of Twitter during an earthquake in 2006, founders came to the realization that Twitter was "not just a way to share one's individual status but a way to share news and catch 'a view into what was happening in the world'" (p. 104). Within the following year, people began to use Twitter as a platform to share news and live commentary on events. When defining its platform between texting versus microblogging versus status updates, Twitter shifted its prompt from "What's your status?" to "What's happening?" From this monumental change in prompt, the revolutionary idea to employ "followers" instead of "friends," and the invention of the hashtag to assist in sifting through updates, Lorenz documents Twitter's strategic choices in its IPI template that laid out a specific set of available interactions for its users and shaped the platform to share news and updates to the public, not just one's circle of friends.

In addition to Twitter's pivotal influence of the IPI template that helped form its primary use, Lorenz shows how content creators and celebrities leveraged Instagram's easy-to-use IPI template and its affordances to become widely circulated. Lorenz recounts that Instagram's founders realized their ideal users were "photographers who had enjoyed practicing their craft on the app and wanted to share that joy with others," favoring "aesthetics over growth" (pp. 130, 131). As such, Instagram's IPI template combined photo sharing and photo editing features, including a wide range of filters to make users' posts more visually appealing. Instagram gained popularity because of its accessibility and ease of use: "You could just snap a picture, apply a filter, and post it—no words necessary" (p. 129). Because of influencers' desire to monetize their content and earn money, they used Instagram's visual focus and photo editing and sharing features provided within its IPI template almost as a digital billboard, contrary to what its founders had wanted, posting curated brand deals and advertisements. From polished sponsorship posts to visual self promotion, content creators and celebrities, such as models Joans Smalls, Karlie Kloss, and Cara Delevinge on the cover of Vogue, attributed their fame to "how Instagram had helped make them stars" (p. 141).