Do digital products are born or made? This started as a simple observation on my way home. 

Something ordinary, hard to ignore

Every day, on my way back from the office, I see the same thing.

People dancing in a public square.
Mostly middle-aged women.
Nothing special. And yet, impossible to ignore.

In China, it’s called Guǎngchǎng Wǔ (广场舞 ).
Literally, dancing in the square.
It happens everywhere. Every day. For decades.

The more I watched it, the clearer it became:
this wasn’t just about dancing.

At six o’clock sharp, the scene comes alive.

Someone places a speaker on the ground.
That single gesture changes everything.

A center appears.
And around it, a space.

Free.
Open.
No sign-up.
No instructions.

A place to pass by, stay, or join in.

Around the dance, life unfolds:
street food, kids playing, card games, flyers taped to bikes, people looking at each other, people showing something new.

This isn’t an event.
It’s a system.

When patterns start to repeat

At first, I looked for a quick explanation.
It didn’t convince me.

I asked locals.
“Nothing special.”
“They like dancing.”
“It’s exercise.”

All true.
None sufficient.

One day, I noticed something else.

The choreography looked identical to what you see on TikTok.

So the question flipped.

Were they copying dances from TikTok?
Or had TikTok—born in China—absorbed something that was already happening in public squares?

It might sound stretched.
It didn’t feel that way.

Something similar happened with WeChat.
Its original value wasn’t “messaging.”
It was becoming China’s virtual town square.

As described in Influence Empire by Lulu Yilun Chen, many Chinese platforms don’t invent behaviors.
They digitize ones that were already deeply rooted.

The square works like a primitive social network.

No profiles.
No metrics.
No algorithm.

But everything else is there.

People who create.
People who watch.
People who come back.

A shared space.
Shared content.
A network effect that grows over time.

There’s no measured engagement,
yet no one needs a reminder to return tomorrow.

What changes when scale enters the picture

Are digital products born… or are they made?

Culture isn’t decoration around a product.
It’s its raw material.

Digital products don’t create needs.
They organize them.
Amplify them.
Monetize them.

To socialize.
To be seen.
To watch others.
To belong.

Nothing new.
Just bigger.

Maybe that’s why some products work better in certain places than others.
And maybe that’s why, once you understand local products, you stop missing the ones from elsewhere.

Maybe the mistake is thinking great products are designed from scratch.

Sometimes they aren’t designed.

They’re discovered.

The square was already there.
People were already dancing.

The only thing that changes is the scale.
And who decides to turn it into a product.

This thought is still unfolding.