Twitter Co-Founder Wants You to Know He’s Very Sad and Lonely

Ev Williams, the billionaire who co-founded Twitter and Medium, is sad. To combat that sadness, Williams is doing the lone happening helium knows how: launching a caller app.

In a bizarre profile, Williams told The New York Times that conscionable earlier his 50th day helium realized he’d “underinvested” successful his friendships. He past decided to plan an app that would archer him wherever his friends lived due to the fact that helium did not know.

Behold Mozi: the effect of Williams’s mid-life crisis. Like truthful galore different tech apps, Mozi is simply a spot of bundle that sits betwixt you and your friends. “Mozi is simply a backstage societal web for seeing your radical more, IRL. Add your plans, cheque who’s successful town, and cognize erstwhile you overlap,” it explains connected its website.

I’m not a billionaire investor, but I americium a antheral approaching mediate age. I’ve tended to immoderate relationships good and others poorly. I usage a assortment of antithetic integer tools to support up with friends. I cognize wherever they live, however, and don’t request an app to archer maine erstwhile they’ll beryllium successful town. The relationships I attraction astir are bully capable that a speedy substance connection oregon enactment successful a calendar app suffices.

I was successful D.C. past week for a league connected atomic weapons. I’ve got a batch of friends successful our nation’s superior and I sent substance messages to the ones I was funny successful seeing. I had meal with 1 who was available. It was beauteous casual to acceptable up. I didn’t request an app for it. But then, again, I’m not a billionaire who has spent the past 3 decades propping up startups and neglecting my idiosyncratic relationships.

Many Americans spell done a benignant of midlife crisis. At the mediate constituent of our lives, it’s evident that the champion is implicit and each that lays earlier america is decline. Time, which erstwhile seemed truthful limitless, is moving out. Williams has the luxury, money, and clip to motorboat an app successful an effort to wrestle with his midlife crisis. He’s almighty capable that the Times volition spill ink astir his bittersweet and lonely life.

“While I treasure and nurture my friendships today, I was not ever truthful mindful astir them,” Williams said successful a blog station announcing the app. “In fact, conscionable a mates of years ago, I was trying to marque a database of radical to invitation to my 50th birthday, and I had a bittersweet realization: I didn’t person a robust acceptable of friendships I felt large astir fixed my signifier successful life.”

Scrambling to enactment unneurotic an app won’t hole the underlying problem. Mozi is truthful unusual to maine due to the fact that it feels similar it’s solving problems that person agelong been solved. It feels similar a outcry successful the dark, an effort by an aging affluent antheral to claw backmost relationships he’s neglected. “It wasn’t me,” Williams seems to beryllium saying. “It was this damn societal media. All this tech. If lone I’d made the close app, the close way.”

A batch of Williams’ blog reads similar a confederate pistillate who conscionable discovered Chicken Soup for the Soul oregon a tech enforcement who’s conscionable travel down from a peculiarly harsh ayahuasca trip. “After a beingness moving astatine mattering, I realized I had under-invested successful what truly mattered: Relationships,” helium said successful the blog.

“The net did marque america much connected. It conscionable besides made america much divided. It made america much everything,” Williams told the Times. This is true. It’s besides affluent coming from the antheral who co-founded Twitter, a level whose inducement structures fostered immoderate of the worst quality impulses connected the internet.

Like each bully entrepreneurs, Williams besides outsourced the occupation of really processing Mozi. He needed idiosyncratic other to lick the occupation of his faltering quality connections for him. “When I accidental I had ‘started building,’ what I really did is constitute a two-page memo and prosecute a dev store to physique a prototype. This was soon aft I stepped distant from day-to-day operations astatine Medium. And I was successful nary hurry to commencement different company,” helium said successful his blog.

Some radical person a hard clip keeping up the quality connections successful their lives, it’s true. Mozi astir apt won’t assistance them. This is an app for radical similar Williams oregon different tech people, the benignant of folks who usage a spreadsheet to signifier faces they spot astir them oregon make Obsidian org charts to wrapper their heads astir quality connections.

Mozi is not the thing. It’s conscionable different chore that keeps you from making nonstop interaction with the radical you privation successful your life. It’s different mode to record them distant into an abstract integer space. Make a telephone call. Send a text. Write an email. Take a picture. Start a radical chat. We person thousands of solutions to the problems Mozi solves.

We bash not yet person a solution for what to bash astir sad, lonely, aging tech bros. Mozi, astatine least, is the slightest damaging of their caller projects.