Social Media Archives - Page 7 of 13

Hey Bullfrog

The ability to change our minds is one of the greatest human blessings. To see an issue or a situation, take into account the data presented, be reminded of our past history of decisions, and ultimately come to a conclusion is a wonderful adaptation our mammalian brains have come up with to help us deal with the insanity of existing in this overwhelming universe.

“Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles
What makes you think you’re something special when you smile?”

We often don’t share our ideas, thoughts, dreams, or views because we don’t feel as if we know enough on the topic at hand, or there are people who have already volunteered enough of their own viewpoints to suck all the oxygen out of a conversation. With the rise of social media and perceived online anonymity, it’s easy to throw up our hands in the face of the vapid cacophony and decide not to take part in all of the noise.

Although we are all more than capable of making quality decisions on everything from our lunch to our 401k investments, it’s easier to not engage or just have someone else make the decision for us. That’s human nature. It’s also a sentiment we have to daily engage with and overcome. The universe needs our voices and our views. Speak up.

But do so not with an over abundance of confidence or certainty… or fear.

“Some kind of innocence is measured out in years
You don’t know what it’s like to listen to your fears.”

During the recording sessions for The Beatles’ song Hey Bulldog, Paul McCartney began to bark and howl in a dog like voice as the song reached its climax. John Lennon does what any well minded singer might do, and immediately alters his corresponding lyric from the intended “hey bullfrog” (there was a reference to “bullfrog” at the beginning of the song) to “hey bulldog.” And hence, the name of the song changed as well.

Hey Bulldog is one of those songs in which The Beatles sneak an incredible set of lyrics, base lines, and piano notes (it was written as a piano rocker originally). It appears on the otherwise flippant Yellow Submarine album and as a b-side to Lady Madonna (also a piano rocker), and doesn’t make many Top 10 Beatles Songs lists in 2015. However, the song has amazing staying power and has been covered countless times by everyone from Dave Matthews to Dave Grohl. It’s one of my favorites, as well.

It’s not a *nice* Beatles song. John’s lyrics don’t speak of young and un-requited love, or the need for love. Instead, the menacing guitar from Harrison, grandiose bass line from Paul (Harrison was fond of telling Paul to tone down the bass on the songs he wrote as Paul tended to dominate the melody otherwise), and rambling piano backdrop are matched by Lennon’s lyric structure employing a simple but clever repetition of “Some kind of…” at the start and an eyebrow raising cutdown to finish the phrase.

“Some kind of solitude is measured out in you
You think you know me but you haven’t got a clue.”

Loneliness, solitude, innocence… all get measure out in the listener and John doesn’t hold back. He tells us if we’re lonely, we can talk to him in a passive aggressive manner that runs opposite of the sentiment in a song like Tell Me What You See from Help.

It’s a tongue in cheek challenge to misguided reliance on others and false dependency (in my mind, at least… feel free to argue). Even so, there’s the beauty of the interaction and changing of minds happening in a meta real time sense during the recording sessions.

There’s the obtuse and avant-garde rap battle between John and Paul after the barking. And John changed the title mid-way through the song.

The change of the lyric, and ultimately song title, is an outward expression of the creative genius of The Beatles as well as a beautiful testament to the interplay (on the spot sometimes as here) between John and Paul as musicians, friends, and partners.

We have the same opportunities everyday to influence those around us, and be influenced by those around us (or virtually in the case of online interactions). Every major religious system includes an ethical component for these types of influencing and interactions. We’d do well to follow those guidelines. But speak up.

“…let him declare what he seeth…” or Apple vs the Web

“And with iOS 9 and content blockers, what you’re seeing is Apple’s attempt to fully drive the knife into Google’s revenue platform. iOS 9 includes a refined search that auto-suggests content and that can search inside apps, pulling content away from Google and users away from the web, it allows users to block ads, and it offers publishers salvation in the form of Apple News, inside of which Apple will happily display (unblockable!) ads, and even sell them on publishers’ behalf for just a 30 percent cut.

Oh, and if you’re not happy with Apple News, you can always turn to Facebook’s Instant Articles, which will also track the shit out of you and serve unblockable ads inside of the Facebook app, but from Apple’s perspective it’s a win as long as the money’s not going to Google.”

Source: Welcome to hell: Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook and the slow death of the web | The Verge

As I get older, I keep reminding myself that, after all, you can’t go home again. When I got to college, I was exposed to Plato in the Greek and remember reading πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει” καὶ “δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης for the first time. My Greek isn’t what it used to be, but the translation is:

“Everything changes and nothing remains still and you cannot step twice into the same stream.”

When I think about the evolution of the web from when I started using it (1994) through all of my experience with Mosaic and Netscape and CompuServe and Prodigy and AOL to the glory days of a web without a center (post AOL crash), I look back with fondness. The web has been a constant source of challenge, fulfillment, joy, sadness, and especially income for me over these last twenty years.

In my mind’s eye, the “glory days” of the web were sometime around 2004 or so with the advent of Firefox as a capable replacement for Internet Explorer and just shortly before Facebook at the digital world. Things were exciting. GMail was new and in high demand. We all wondered what other wizard toys Google would unveil to us in their wonky way of doing such things. Web design was flush with new energy having been set free of IE, and web protocols were blooming (well, before the dark times of Flash). It felt as if the world would be transformed by this open information system. There were ads, for sure, but the ads were there to pay for the content and the experience (even the “punch the monkey” ads). We used MySpace, but no one spent all day there. It was a tool, not a roach motel. Then came Twitter in 2006 and we web nerds just knew it was the information backbone protocol we had been hoping for. Surely, Twitter would be handed over to the open source community. They had a very open API, after all.

Then came Facebook. But it wasn’t so bad at first. It was a prettier MySpace, that’s all.

Ze Frank had his shows and we all were excited about web2.0 and the promises of what new web tech like AJAX would mean for interfaces and capabilities. I was using Writely in 2004 and loved the idea of being able to use a fairly capable word processor in a browser. Then, Google bought Writely and it became Google Docs.

That’s ok, we still had our RSS feeds and the Mac fan-people had Net News Wire. FeedDemon wasn’t so bad on the desktop and we always had Bloglines and Feedgator on the web. RSS was going to transform the way we consumed content. I just knew it.

Then came Google Reader.

I’m being too nostalgic. The web was never that rosey and free and vibrant and promising as I remember. After all, I was in the web marketing business from 2003 onward. In reality, it didn’t change all that much throughout the web2.0 boom from 2006-2008 or the social media boom from 2009-2013.

However, the web marketing business is changing rapidly now in the Age of the Platform (or App). I would call it The Mobile Age, but “mobiles” is becoming a silly name for the pocket devices we carry with us at all times and perform more and more of our daily business and life through. They’re not “mobile phones” now. They are our computers.

The Age of the Platform was ushered in quickly by Steve Jobs and Apple. Pushing cell tower and mobile device technology with ever increasingly progressive iPhones and then iPads caused a fundamental shift in how we do computing (and marketing). I sometimes wonder if Jobs knew that he was going to go directly after the jugular of Google’s revenue business when he was on stage doing the first iPhone demo? Remember, the first iPhone did not have an app store and only included the native apps. Jobs was insistent that developers could use the Safari Mobile Browser to give users access to “app environments” through HTML 5. That didn’t last long.

Apps have changed everything on the web. They’ll continue to redefine conventions we’ve long held to be self-evident about everything from marketing to banking to security to communication. With its clever play to encourage ad blocking on Mobile Safari (still the only browser environment allowed on their omnipresent iDevices) and ultimately push users into their new News app (this blog is included in their collection… yay?), Apple is moving Safari off the main page and into one of the folders where you put the Compass, Tips, and Game Center apps (at least I do). Apple is breaking up with the web.

There’s no functionality for a browser or webkit on the new Apple TV. Can you imagine the possibilities? However, it’s not needed. We have apps.

Look Homeward, Angel.

Is this a bad thing? I don’t think we can segregate movements like this into “good” or “bad” categories. Tech is agnostic morally, and we decide to do with it what we will. For those of us who reminisce on the ideals of an open and federated web where the market decides what ad formats or sites get exposure… well, we can have our idealism and try to keep blogging (though without ads).

Twitter … Facebook … Google, Apple, or Microsoft ecosystems … I look at all of these things as negatives (personally). Lock in is never good. Reach, engagement, user bases … all those metrics I deal with daily in my job working in web marketing are important variables to consider. However, we are too eager to throw ourselves into a binary decision of being an Apple fanboy or Android fangirl without pondering what we’re exchanging in this transaction.

When I think about how the web has evolved and how it might evolve further in the future, I think of Atticus Finch teaching Scout how to read.

“What was even the point of websites, certain people will find themselves wondering. Were they just weird slow apps with nobody in them?? Why? A bunch of publications will go out of business and a bunch of others will survive the transition and a few will become app content GIANTS with news teams filing to Facebook and their very own Vine stars and thriving Snapchat channels and a Viber bureau and embedded Yakkers and hundreds of people uploading videos in every direction and brands and brands and brands and brands and brands, the end. Welcome to 201…..7?”

Source: The Next Internet is TV | The Awl

I think of how Scout comes home after the first day of First Grade and is completely disillusioned. Her teacher was surprised at Scout’s reading ability and told Scout that her father mustn’t read to her anymore because he “didn’t know how to teach.” Atticus, being the archetype and lawyer that he is, calms Scout and makes a deal with her (and keeps reading to her).

We rely so much on our own perceptions of the past experiences we have to make assumptions about the future. We project based on (presumed) lived out reality. Our brains deceive us, though. When we come home, sometimes things have changed and our memories don’t hold up to the exposure to daylight. We need Atticus to tell us that it’s going to be ok, and we do know how to read properly, and he will continue reading to us at bedtime.

In the marketing business, I walk a fine line between intuition and metrics on an hourly basis. My clients trust me, but they have their own perceptions of taste, design, and ethics that I must navigate and counsel as well. My background in religion and teaching suits me well, but I’m constantly aware of the notion of Πάντα ρει (“everything flows”) that Plato channeled through Heraclitus. Everything flows. Perceptions, marketing techniques, web technologies, app platforms.

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Rather than believing the teacher that tells me that I don’t know how to read properly because my father is not a real teacher, I should realize the utterly unfathomable trajectory that issues such as ad blockers, advertising, and definitions of the web present for humanity. Since the advent of hyperlinks in the early 90’s, we’ve seen the development of a technology that has changed or shifted how we do most everything from reading to producing to consuming to being treated for our over-consumption.

The web’s not dead.

Everything flows.

Now back to my marketing spreadsheets.

The Future is Messaging and Google Seems Oblivious

“Unlike other AI-based services in the market, M can actually complete tasks on your behalf. It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments and way more,” Facebook’s VP of messaging products David Marcus said in a Facebook post.

Source: Facebook’s M Is Here, and Google Should Be Worried

Messaging is big in Asia. Services like WeChat in China and Line in Japan / Thailand / Indonesia are how people communicate, buy things, book things, and operate. Sort of like how we (the enlightened) are amazed that people live inside of Facebook and think of it as the internet. There are even WeChat Stars like our YouTube stars. It is strange for us in the US to wrap our heads around (or at least me).

However, it won’t be for long. I remember sitting in a presentation by a Rakuten VP (they are a large Asian marketing firm that acquired messaging app Viber last year) at a conference in 2004… they were demonstrating data associated with the rising use of mobile phones to purchase items in stores or do cross comparisons via SMS in SE Asia while using brick-and-mortar stores as showrooms. I was blown away and thought “there’s no way anyone in the US would ever buy something on a mobile phone…certainly not furniture or computers.”

I was wrong. Best Buy is the best showroom Amazon could ever hope for (at least in my personal experience).

Five years from now, everyone in America will live inside the major messaging app that we settle on. Whether that’s FB’s Messenger, WeChat, Line, Snapchat (doubtful), Viber, Hangouts, WhatsApp or something we haven’t heard of yet, we will decry this newfangled “messaging media” and “messaging marketing” and look fondly on the days when we all just had Facebook newsfeeds or Twitter timelines.

Remember ICQ and AIM? We’re going back.

Messaging apps are what comes after “social media.” Facebook gets it. Even Apple (iMessage) and Blackberry (Messenger) get it. Google seems to be dragging its feet, which is scary to me.

How Content Marketers and Sites Make Money as Agencies

One of the more interesting line items in the financial statements is “cost of revenue,” which “consists primarily of amounts due to third party websites and platforms to fulfill customers’ advertising campaigns.” (An unspecified percentage of “cost of revenue” refers to the cost of maintaining BuzzFeed’s own servers.) In other words, “cost of revenue” appears to refer primarily to the money BuzzFeed is using to buy traffic from Facebook (and likely other websites too) on behalf of brands advertising on BuzzFeed.

Source: Internal Documents Show BuzzFeed’s Skyrocketing Investment in Editorial

BuzzFeed is an interesting beast because it sits at the fulcrum point between “old news” and “new media news.” BuzzFeed does have quality reporting and long form pieces, but unlike the New York Times those pieces often sit beside the latest funny cat gifs or a hilarious video of a kid after a dentist visit.

How BuzzFeed makes money has been a question that “old news” sites like the NY Times have been trying to figure out with paywalls, subscriptions, email captures etc. None of that seems to be helping slow BuzzFeed down or improve the doom of the more traditional news site economy given the large number of people who get most of their news (quality or otherwise) from Facebook.

Those of us who like to follow these things point back to info like this from 2013 when BuzzFeed was beginning to make serious money and turn heads:

BuzzFeed, for example, has an entire in-house team dedicated to buying ads that drive users to its sponsored posts. Through a program it calls “Social Discovery,” the company buys traffic from a range of sources including Facebook, Twitter, and StumbleUpon, as well as other content-marketing services. It pays to have links to its sponsors’ posts show up in Facebook users’ news feeds and to force them in front of users on StumbleUpon, for example… Peretti said the company is not buying traffic to boost its numbers or meet advertiser commitments. Its brand partners are actually beginning to use its media-buying team as an agency of sorts, asking it to package posts on BuzzFeed with a paid distribution element, too. It doesn’t pay for the ads itself to boost the number of views the content it sells to advertisers gets.

Source: How BuzzFeed Gives Native Ads a Traffic Boost – Digiday

So there you go. If you’re a news site, become an agency with an in-house team to do arbitrage and market your native ads via viewers from Facebook and Twitter (as they are more than happy to take your money). Television and radio has been doing this for decades.

All this has happened before, and will happen again.