I agree. Fragmentation and duplication is frustrating. Not sure what the solution is though.

• Maybe a database that defines and outlines categories of platform, allows voting for the preferred platform, and makes it clear which has the biggest network?

• Willingness to merge or shut down platforms that are mainly duplicated by other larger ones?

• Facilitating connection and interoperability between platforms?

There are numerous benefits, however. A bubbly community can plausibly:

1. appeal to a larger group of people due to market segmentation.^[1] The "perfect pasta sauce flavour" that will maximise your profit is a selection various flavours so you can appeal to more of the market.
2. correspondingly, due to a proliferation of more varied roles for each bubble, you could increase productivity due to specialisation of labour.
3. resist some of the damage caused by information cascades due to slower (and less centralised) transfer of information.
4. inspire more tight-knit belonging, trust, and intra-cooperation due to bubbles being smaller (more tribe-size rather than nation-size). It's easier to speak informally in a group you mostly know, compared to a larger group where there's a greater separation between perceived high-status and low-status. This is good both for encouraging open discussions, inspiring confidence, and for just feeling happier.
5. increase the variation of group models, and thereby increase the chance of discovering new group models that work better than any we've tried before.
6. with greater ease fine-tune social status gradients within each bubble due to having fewer people that influence you (same effect that leads to cults, but it can also lead to good things).
7. probably more stuff here I forget.
8. Edit 3 months later: Forgot to say that bubbliness reduces outbreeding depression and memetic swamping (ht. Holly), a more solid argument for why bubbles can be more effective at what they do due to specialisation (faster adaptation to selection pressure).
   1. Memetic swamping also leads to social recession/depression due to everyone being optimised for norms and cultures that aren't adaptive for any group of people, it's just an unhappy compromise. Bubbliness has a chance of reversing some of that damage.

But speaking at such an abstract level like this has limited usefwlness, and you should probably optimise stuff case-by-case.

1. ^{^}

   "Market segmentation is a marketing strategy in which select groups of consumers are identified so that certain products or product lines can be presented to them in a way that appeals to their interests." (wikipedia)