Social Media Archives - Sam Harrelson

Accelerationism: What Are We Doing to Ourselves?

Here’s your word for today as Apple’s WWDC looks to include an announcement of a major partnership with OpenAI (the folks behind ChatGPT) to make Siri much closer to an artificial intelligence (or “Apple Intelligence” as the marketing goes) assistant.

Accelerationism.

It’s a term that’s been used in the tech world for years, but the mindset (mind virus?) has really reached new levels in the post-ChatGPT 4 era that we now live in before what feels like an imminent release of something even more powerful in the coming months or years.

Here’s an article from 2017 about the term accelerationism and accelerationists:

Accelerationism: how a fringe philosophy predicted the future we live in – The Guardian:

Accelerationists argue that technology, particularly computer technology, and capitalism, particularly the most aggressive, global variety, should be massively sped up and intensified – either because this is the best way forward for humanity, or because there is no alternative. Accelerationists favour automation. They favour the further merging of the digital and the human. They often favour the deregulation of business, and drastically scaled-back government. They believe that people should stop deluding themselves that economic and technological progress can be controlled. They often believe that social and political upheaval has a value in itself.

With my mind heavy on what the Apple / OpenAI partnership might look like before WWDC starts in just a few minutes (it feels like this could be an important moment for historical events), Ted Gioia made this thought-provoking post on the realization that we are doing to ourselves what Dr. Calhoun did to his poor mice (unknowingly) in the 1960’s famous Universe 25 experiment.

It’s worth your time to read this and ponder our own current situation.

Is Silicon Valley Building Universe 25? – by Ted Gioia:

Even today, Dr. Calhoun’s bold experiment—known as Universe 25—demands our attention. In fact, we need to study Universe 25 far more carefully today, because zealous tech accelerationists—that’s now a word, by the way—aim to create something comparable for human beings.What would you do if AI took care of all your needs?

After being in the classroom for the last three years of “post-Covid” education and seeing how many young people are absolutely struggling with mental health (and how little schools of any sort, from public to private such as the ones where I taught, are doing to help them), it’s shocking that we’ll send stocks soaring on big tech news today that will make our swipes and screen time increase and lead us further down the primrose path of a future of disconnected violence and mental health disaster.

Threads and RIP Twitter

Instagram Threads launched today. It’s a slicker and very nice text-based social platform. It’s basically what Twitter should have become.

I’ve used Twitter since it was TWTTR way back and had the original @sam handle in early 2006. I thought it was magical. And it was. So much of what we thought about making content on the web was changing and evolving.

Then Twitter really took off in 2006 with the tech crowd (as you can see here on this blog with all the posts tagged with “twitter”), and it was seriously magical. I remember staying in a Las Vegas hotel during a tech conference with the late great Wayne Porter when Twitter was still text-based, and him threatening to take my phone out into the desert and shoot it because it would not stop giving 40404 alerts (Twitter’s number) in early 2006.

Track was amazing. You could type “track mullins” into Twitter, and any mention of “mullins” (my hometown) would signal an alert. Amazing. I remember driving to the NASCAR race at Richmond in 2007 with my Blackberry and Twitter track set up… I had the best time.

2007 was a year of exploration. The world discovered Twitter along with social media. We elected a President in 2008 who broadcast his inauguration on social media in January 2009. It felt like we were living in the future. Twitter track, social media casts, Skype… it was all so amazing.

I made a video in early 2007 that I hastily uploaded to YouTube titled “How To Use Twitter,” which had over 2.5 million views and made me a good lump of change before I deleted it. It was the top-ranked video for Twitter at the time. Geez, I loved that platform.

Then… the 2010s happened. I won’t speak of those. But social media went in a different direction.

Now here we are with Threads by Instagram. It is clean and vibrant. It’s what Twitter could have been. But it feels empty and hollow in a way that Twitter never did. It will be a fantastic platform. Threads will completely trounce Twitter and make Elon Musk’s endeavor of purchasing and seemingly detaching Twitter from life support seem vainglorious.

But I will always hold out hope for the Bird. RIP, Twitter. You did well. You ushered in something so unique.

Now may we all return to our own blogs and our own places of content creation and learn the lessons we needed to learn about trusting in the altruism of large corporations when it comes to our human outputs (and why you shouldn’t).

Planning Out Social Media in 2023

I’m constantly on the fence about pre-planning or pre-scheduling too many marketing posts ahead of time on social media. It’s handy, for sure. However, given that events happen without warning, there are real risks that could make whatever you’re trying to do look incredibly out-of-touch.

However, there is a benefit to having a month (or week) long agenda of posts to help keep you or your team on track. Social media is a platform that often rewards spontaneity, and you should be building that into marketing efforts. But it would be best if you had a foundation on which to grow, and a good plan can get you there.

For example, I stumbled upon a free monthlong planner for social media posts in January 2023 from Plann. There is any number of these out there. Still, the benefit is that these calendars take away the guesswork and produce dozens of content pieces that can be used across social networks, promotional materials, videos, recaps, etc.

So spend some time thinking and planning while allowing your marketing efforts to remain responsive and flexible in 2023!

Trying Out Neeva

“…advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor quality search results.”

– Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in a 1998 research paper while they were doctoral students at Stanford

I’ve been trying out the search engine service Neeva lately. You can read more about the founding of the company by ex-Googler Sridhar Ramaswamy here (it’s a fascinating story).

I come from the time when the web was still in its primordial stage. Thought technologies such as web browsers and search engines were still young and completely exhilarating. I paid for Netscape (and I was amazed when I got to college in 1996 and walked into the computer lab with 8 machines running Netscape, WordPerfect, Office, and the Corel suite). Browsers and search engines and minute-based access to the web were something you paid for (unless you stockpiled AOL disks like I did).

Neeva is definitely a different service. I’m still wrapping my head around it, but it feels like a good mix of “old school web” and what we’ll eventually get to once we exit this period of advertising-based “free” services that have been the predominate business model on the web for the last 15 years.

The search interface is clean and fast. There are no ad trackers. The company is looking to make money by offering subscriptions. That’s intriguing for me. I’ve never been a big fan of the saying “if you’re not paying for a service, you’re the product” and all, but it does ease my mind to exchange money for what I consider valuable services on the web (Pinboard for bookmarking comes to mind).

Google is such an intimate part of all of our lives, whether we care to admit it or not. Our memories, correspondence, social graphs, birthday reminders, calendars etc are all wrapped up in the service (at least… much more than that for “power users” like myself). But we need alternatives.

I’ll continue experimenting with Neeva to see if it’s one of the dandelions that pops up to spread seeds across the ecosystem of the web or if it’s just a one-season deal. But it “feels” like it has staying power. And for that, I’m excited. Will report back here about my usage as it accumulates in the coming weeks.

Don’t Look Over Instagram Reels for Your Marketing in 2021

I remember the first few times I saw a friend post a Reel on Instagram and thought “well, that’s a weird knock-off of Snapchat and Tik-Tok” and wondered how or if my clients should even know about (or bother) with it.

Then in November, we also got word from Instagram that major changes were coming to how they promoted content in a much search-friendlier way (without having to use hashtags!).

Those two combined together means that Instagram with its 2 billion active users and built-in affinity groups shouldn’t be overlooked in 2021.

Use Reels for whatever you’re marketing or trying to message about and don’t skip over the functionality there.

2021 is going to be the year of 15 second videos.

Engagement umbers are already through the roof with Reels and that’s only going to continue to increase.

To further help Instagram categorize your account, you want to consistently post content that’s relevant to your niche. To illustrate, if you run an Instagram account for your dog training business, you’ll want to focus on posting content about dog training and avoid content that strays into an unrelated category. Other ways to help you show up in search within your category include following other similar accounts and adding a relevant keyword to your name in your bio (i.e., Alexa | Dog Trainer).

To compete with the rise in popularity of TikTok, Instagram launched Reels, a new form of video content delivered in 15–30 seconds to create quick, attention-grabbing moments in a creative and entertaining way. Instagram’s new UI update, which put IG Reels front and center, should hint to marketers that Instagram Reels will be here to stay in 2021.

Source: Social Media Marketing Trends for 2021: Predictions From the Pros : Social Media Examiner

The Economics of Mask Wearing

Just as you might be setting up separate channels in Slack to better communicate with coworkers during this period or hosting chats among different groups of friends on apps like Houseparty, now’s a great time to build community among your audience with more specialized channels.
— Carlos Gil (@carlosgil83) December 2, 2020

For the last 18 or so years that I’ve been in marketing, I’ve used “democratization” and “community focus” as consistent buzzwords in both my consulting work as well as speaking at conferences etc.

I don’t think there’s any better example as to why those terms are important than the experience of living through 2020. Specialization is everything as people are looking for a community in new ways online to replace the in-person human element we all miss.

Regardless of whether we are able to have in-person gatherings again soon and not have to worry about the virus, things have changed for many of us and there are new habits and norms (Zoom and hyper-special media isn’t going away) that will not be going away. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be wearing a mask for a while.

One key I’m pushing with all of my clients is the idea of specialization in community building. As marketers, we’ve generally done a poor job of handling “community building” correctly. There has been too much focus on affinity metrics, KPI’s and NPS (Net Promotor Score) that has resulted in insulting generic surveys when we happen to purchase anything from dog bowl from a pet’s store all the way to a car. “TELL US HOW WE DID!” is now one of the least clicked email subject lines in our inboxes.

Engagement, authentic presence, customer service, and democratization of the message are very important. But “generic” is a poison pill. Choose wisely in your messaging in 2021.

About the Microsoft and Walmart Acquiring TikTok Deal

The idea would be to help turn TikTok U.S. into more of an e-commerce app for creators and users, much like what TikTok parent company ByteDance does with a similar app in China.

Source: Microsoft working with Walmart on TikTok deal – Axios

One of the main reasons TikTok has taken off with influencers, soccer moms, niche businesses, and aspiring dance stars here in the US is that it “feels” like an indie app that isn’t owned by Facebook or Google.

TikTok very much has that Instagram feel from about 2013 (I remember when an 8th grader first showed Instagram to me and explained why it was so much better than Facebook or Twitter and wasn’t owned by a big company).

With the ongoing speculation that Oracle is somehow involved in the attempts to acquire TikTok from the Chinese company ByteDance at our current administration’s behest, the CEO resigning last night, and now the two COOLEST brands in the United States… Microsoft AND Walmart!… I just don’t see how TikTok retains that feeling. Especially if this odd consortium of mega-companies turns it into an “e-commerce app for creators and users.”

I think we’ll look back on this period a few years from now and use it as a cautionary tale for huge companies looking to make a play in a hot space.

Yes, there are some previous examples of successful transitions for creative-focused apps and services that kept the mojo after being gobbled up, such as when Google acquired YouTube for $1billion in the mid-2000’s. But then, Google wasn’t quite the behemoth it is now, and YouTube sorely needed the backing of a Google to stay on the web given the legal and logistical load it was rapidly taking on. But then consider services like Flickr or Tumblr that had a diehard communities before being subsumed into the Yahoo! debacle and mismanaged into oblivion.

All that to say, I don’t see how Oracle / Microsoft / Walmart pulls this off and pivots TikTok into a successful “Made in America!” platform while keeping the hotness of the app.