Thanks, that's a good tip! I'll definitely check them out.
And yup, definitely a concern. Makes me think that perhaps there's a possibility to not cap the posts, but rather have any posts outside of the first one in a week have something like a "secondary" tag. Then again, you might run into the problem that Instagram has where everyone stopped posting as soon as stories caught on.
Why not just allow your users to write their weekly post during all the week (and saving it while not publishing it) but just allowing to publish once a week ?
In doing so, there would be no real scarcity for the writer (the post can be edited to the infinity) and you encourage writing long prose.
Your UX should show that editing the post is the default option and publishing it should be some ritual (maybe send a notification when it is possible?)
I think the weekly post idea really applies to the reader, not the writer. Perhaps you could get around this with a "digest" style of posting. I.e. I can write as many posts as I want, but it will only be published once a week as a digest of posts. This might fit better with human behavior too as it lowers the cost of a single post while still achieving the goal of updating friends on what's happening at a spaced interval.
Why don't you do something like consolidate any posts made within one week to one post? Some have suggested a blog-like digest that gets posted once a week. Why not do something like what you're doing but make it one long post with multiple updates (maybe with timestamps)
Say I post something about my weekend on Monday, it could be important about the loss of a family member or the birth of a child. Maybe I don't want to wait a number of days for that to appear on someone's feed...
But I could also post something new later that week. If it was consolidated into a weekly post it'd end up more like a digest at the end, and someone logging into the social network on Friday would see everything that happened to me so far that week.
It's a play on some of the ideas others have had, but the trick is timing. If my posts are digested to a weekly summary, it's going to reduce incentives for anyone to log in and use the platform on any day but "post day". Additionally if I'm free on Friday to spend time on there, but your new digest won't be posted until Saturday, I'm going to miss everything that's happened to you all week.
The ability to edit the weekly post seems like it could remedy this. Would probably see folks embrace the journaling approach by using headers to timestamp them.
Allow edits to the post, or allow the author to append short updates to it, or something else, but I think the rate limit is an interesting thing and worth sticking with at this stage. It's a principle that once you break would be hard to reestablish. The main risk is that slow posting probably means slow growth, and that is a reason to add some kind of exception -- but try to make it limited it, imo.
Maybe new users can make secondary posts, and as they post more and connect with people, you guide them somehow towards 1/week. Sort of reversing the traditional pattern that new users might need to be rate limited when they first sign up, instead what you want is for established users to post slowly.
Attenuate with a temporal component. Share short bursty material with the people you frequently interact with and dither out over time. Pin things you want your infrequent contacts to see. You keep your “free” speech while slowing the spread of batshit insane brain worms naturally.
I feel like you could achieve your aim by just cutting out the content that isn’t even posted by your friends (or is lazily shared by a friend, but originates with a commercial entity).
I would definitely not cap the posts, nor would I limit in any way their consumption. If I have something to say, why should I not be able to? And if I am interested in what someone does, I don't want to wait for a week to read it.
That said, it is important how the posts are presented. A person who posts all the time about each plate of food... might not be as interesting as another friend who writes only once a month, but usually about really interesting things. A good UI which puts control in the hands of the consumer (but easy to use - convenience matters) is the most important thing here imho.
And yup, definitely a concern. Makes me think that perhaps there's a possibility to not cap the posts, but rather have any posts outside of the first one in a week have something like a "secondary" tag. Then again, you might run into the problem that Instagram has where everyone stopped posting as soon as stories caught on.
Alas, it's a tricky problem.