Tag: Social Media

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News You Can Use: 3/27/2019

  • Workplace tracking is growing fast. Most workers don’t seem very concerned

    The single area that worries watchdogs the most is, perhaps, wellness. A majority of large companies and a significant percentage of smaller ones have programs today that, in the name of encouraging their workers to be in good physical and mental shape, seek out personal health information. This can include questions about whether workers are anxious or depressed, drink alcohol or use drugs, or take medication.

    The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act are supposed to ensure that an employee’s sensitive details are held close. Yet there are gaps in these laws, experts say, and companies may not always adhere strictly to the regulations that are on the books.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90318167/workplace-tracking-is-growing-fast-most-workers-dont-seem-very-concerned

  • Amazon is aggressively blocking ads for unprofitable products as part of a plan to bolster its bottom line

    In recent months, Amazon has been telling more vendors, or brand owners who sell their goods wholesale, that if Amazon can’t sell those products to consumers at a profit, it won’t let them pay to promote the items. For example, if a $5 water bottle costs Amazon that amount to store, pack and ship, the maker of the water bottle won’t be allowed to advertise it.

    The added stringency, which CNBC learned of from conversations with vendors and emails they received from Amazon as well as from outside experts, reflects a broader push to squeeze earnings out of a historically low-margin business. In its most recent quarter, Amazon posted $3 billion in net income, the highest in company history, while profit for the full year more than more than tripled to $10 billion.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/20/amazon-aggressively-suspending-ads-of-unprofitable-products-as-focus-on-the-bottom-line-grows.html

  • The colossal problem with universal basic income
  • No sleep, no sex, no life: tech workers in China’s Silicon Valley face burnout before they reach 30

    “One thing Chinese founders or unicorns haven’t figured out is how to become a sustainable business. If you continue those [long hours] for 10 years, people will have no personal life any more, they will have no kids, they will go crazy,” Wingender said.

    Yang is pondering what comes next. With more than 10 years of experience, he now holds a mid-level position at a top-tier internet company but has reached a career ceiling. He compares himself to a construction worker, who can earn good money due to high work intensity but can easily be replaced by younger, cheaper labour.

    https://www.scmp.com/tech/apps-social/article/3002533/no-sleep-no-sex-no-life-tech-workers-chinas-silicon-valley-face

  • The New Social Network That Isn’t New at All

    Newsletters could be a more reliable means of increasing readership for major publishers whose relationships with social networks have soured. Remember when Facebook moved away from promoting videos on the platform? Or when it decided to show more posts from friends and family, and de-emphasize content from publishers and brands? With every shift, big media companies had to adjust.

    Also

    “You don’t have to fight an algorithm to reach your audience,” Casey Newton, a journalist who writes The Interface, a daily newsletter for the technology news site The Verge, told me. “With newsletters, we can rebuild all of the direct connections to people we lost when the social web came along.”

    It can be more than just a creative endeavor: Newsletters can make a fine one-person business. Writers can charge readers to a monthly fee for their newsletters. Substack takes a cut of that fee; Revue charges writers using a tiered-pricing system based on the size of newsletter’s subscriber base.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/technology/new-social-network-email-newsletter.html

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 10/3/2018

Social Media is Exhausting

  • You’re Probably Not Even Thinking About One of Social Media’s Biggest Dangers

    When people start sharing information with the public, it can open up doors for the information to be used against them. Details like full name, date of birth, hometown and even school locations and dates of graduation can become dangerous in the wrong hands. Social media platforms typically require your name and your date of birth, but most platforms will give you the option to not make the information shareable.

    Beyond basic information, be careful about what you post. Of course, you should not share your debit/credit card and social security numbers with people online, but images can be dangerous, too. A few examples would be things like posting a picture of your new car and not covering your license plate number or sharing event details that contain your home address.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/320172

  • More tech companies drop college degree requirement

    “In 2017, IBM’s vice president of talent, Joanna Daley told CNBC Make It that about 15 percent of her company’s U.S. hires don’t have a four-year degree. She said that instead of looking exclusively at candidates who went to college, IBM now looks at candidates who have hands-on experience via a coding boot camp or an industry-related vocational class,” according to this CNBC article.

    Now, Apple, Google and EY are joining the ranks of companies that don’t require a degree, according to a list from Glassdoor.com.

    https://www.cio.com/article/3309059/careers-staffing/more-tech-companies-drop-college-degree-requirement.html

  • Career advice from the “Edison of medicine”
  • LinkedIn’s Co-Founder Warns of Perils in Regulating Big Tech

    If Facebook was restricted and slowed down, maybe what we’d all have is [China’s] WeChat. So, instead of having Facebook as our platform, which is a thing we can evolve in, it’s actually in fact a Chinese company that’s doing it. It’s like simply saying, “Oh, we’re a monopoly in the whole world, and we’re gonna slow down our industry as a way of [solving tech problems],” but that is not a very rational policy.

    Tech needs to do a much better job being transparent. But I prefer a pattern where the government says, “We want you to show you’re having the following improving impact on society. If you’re doing that, we don’t need regulation.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/linkedins-co-founder-warns-of-perils-in-regulating-big-tech-1537967181?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Elon Musk is sad and disappointed by the SEC’s fraud charges

    Reached for comment, a Tesla spokesperson sent the following statement from Musk:

    “This unjustified action by the SEC leaves me deeply saddened and disappointed. I have always taken action in the best interests of truth, transparency and investors. Integrity is the most important value in my life and the facts will show I never compromised this in any way.”

    Later, Tesla sent a second statement, this one a joint statement from the company and board of directors:

    “Tesla and the board of directors are fully confident in Elon, his integrity, and his leadership of the company, which has resulted in the most successful US auto company in over a century. Our focus remains on the continued ramp of Model 3 production and delivering for our customers, shareholders and employees.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90243445/read-the-secs-full-fraud-complaint-against-tesla-ceo-elon-musk

Photo by Aleksandar Cvetanovic on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 9/12/2018

The Source: Avoiding Deadlines

  • 44 Percent of Americans 18-27 Have Deleted the Facebook App This Year, Poll Finds

    According to a new study by the Pew Research Center, 54 percent of Facebook users ages 18 and older have adjusted their privacy settings in the wake of revelations that Facebook repeatedly failed to protect consumer data as it was shared and abused by a myriad of Facebook partners, including political analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.

    The study also notes that around 42 percent of Facebook users have chosen to take a break from the social platform of several weeks or more, with a quarter of users choosing to delete the Facebook app from their phones entirely in the last year.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3q5nk/44-percent-of-americans-18-27-have-deleted-the-facebook-app-this-year-poll-finds

  • When should you take a mental health day?

    It is generally not a good idea to take a mental health day spontaneously. That is, if you wake up in the morning and dread going to work, don’t use that feeling as a reason to call in sick. Stress and anxiety are emotional experiences you have when there is something in your world you are trying to avoid. If you call in sick when you feel this way, you are laying down a memory that can start to create a habit to respond to stress and anxiety by actually avoiding work that may need to be done. You don’t want your go-to response to stress to be to run away from it.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90225167/when-is-it-ok-to-take-a-mental-health-day

  • 3 steps to money mastery: Would you rather have freedom or stuff?
  • Confessions of a young ad agency staffer: ‘If you leave for lunch, you get that side-eye’

    In the ad agency world, people who are very young stress themselves until they get sick because they want so badly to be perfect. Everyone I know who is young who works in this business is like, ‘I have to be amazing, I have to get promoted.’ Everyone who is older is so jaded. They just don’t want to work anymore. My boss works from home twice a week and takes calls from home.

    Do you feel like multiple people should be doing your job?

    I handle seven different parts of our client’s business. It’s crazy. I feel like there should be a manager and someone to assist them for every piece of business I work on. They don’t hire enough people. When someone goes on vacation, we have to sit down and train everybody on what we’re doing. It’s very inefficient. I think that to save money they try to cram as many of us onto as many clients and campaigns as possible.

    https://digiday.com/marketing/confessions-young-ad-agency-staffer-leave-lunch-get-side-eye/

  • Not all popular YouTubers are raking in cash for their videos

    Marshall says his decision to use “real music” you’d hear on the radio severely cuts into the actual profit turned by his channel. Where the profits for a monetized video that uses music in the public domain would be split between the creator and YouTube, the record labels that own the top-40 tracks take “all of the money, and we are left with zero.” These videos can still be profitable if the YouTuber and the label can reach an agreement; otherwise, monetizing videos with copyrighted music is virtually out of the question. “Out of … 147 videos, we are monetizing 11,” he says in a video explaining his earnings. “That’s 7 percent. We are monetizing 7 percent of the content that we put out.”

    According to Marshall, the only way the team is able to continue making videos is through people buying merch, tickets to their tour (roughly $30 a ticket for general admission, according to a recent sale), or by buying a $4.99 channel membership for special perks. (This model is similar to the one employed by mid-range musicians, who also rely on merch and ticket sales, and independent writers and artists through platforms like Patreon.) “You’re supporting us. Just you buying a shirt, it’s silly … but it’s what allows us to keep doing this,” he explains.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/5/17822822/youtube-youtubers-influencers-video-ad-revenue-subscribers-fitness-marshall

Photo by Chad Peltola on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 8/8/2018

The Source: Communication Complications: Joey Lombardi

  • Are we losing the art of telephone conversation?

    The number of calls made dropped for the first time in 2017. It’s not a huge drop – 1.7% – and the figure may be misleading since calls made on WhatsApp and Facebook weren’t counted. Three-quarters of people still believe that voice calls are important. But that’s not as many – 92% – as the number who value their phones mainly for internet access.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/03/phone-calls-becoming-lost-art

  • What James Gunn’s firing says about the rising stakes of social media

    Gunn’s tweets were up to a decade in the past, while Barr’s tweet reflected her current thinking and displayed actual racism, as opposed to tasteless humor. Nonetheless, there is a lesson to be learned from similarities between the two, namely: If you want to keep your job, don’t tweet anything that could possibly be construed as controversial. In the case of both Barr and Gunn, their employers’ response was, essentially, “Shut This Down Immediately, Sort Out The Details Later,” with the emphasis on damage control over details. (The details were taken care of eventually; ABC later backtracked on canceling Roseanne, announcing the replacement series The Conners in late June, and similarly, there are now reports that Marvel might consider rehiring Gunn.)

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/1/17639430/james-gunn-disney-mike-cernovich-firing-social-media-guardians-of-the-galaxy

  • Elon Musk is fulfilling Thomas Edison’s energy dreams | Michio Kaku
  • How Robot Hands Are Evolving to Do What Ours Can

    Inside OpenAI, the San Francisco artificial intelligence lab founded by Elon Musk and several other big Silicon Valley names, you will find a robotic hand called Dactyl. It looks a lot like Luke Skywalker’s mechanical prosthetic in the latest Star Wars film: mechanical digits that bend and straighten like a human hand.

    If you give Dactyl an alphabet block and ask it to show you particular letters — let’s say the red O, the orange P and the blue I — it will show them to you and spin, twist and flip the toy in nimble ways.

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/30/technology/robot-hands.html

  • Steven Pinker, Author of Bill Gates’s Favorite Book, Says Entrepreneurs Should Trust Stats, Not Their Intuition

    The thesis of Pinker’s book ultimately boils down to, that while you might think that the world is doomed — considering the news we read and see — if you measure health, wealth, safety, knowledge and quality of life generally, humanity overall is better off than ever.

    “For all the flaws in human nature,” Pinker writes, “it contains the seeds of its own improvement, as long as it comes up with norms and institutions that channel parochial interests into universal benefits.”

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/317386

Photo by Ye Fung Tchen on Unsplash

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News You Can Use: 5/16/2018

  • At Nike, Revolt Led by Women Leads to Exodus of Male Executives

    On March 5, the packet of completed questionnaires landed on the desk of Mark Parker, Nike’s chief executive. Over the next several weeks, at least six top male executives left or said they were planning to leave the company, including Trevor Edwards, president of the Nike brand, who was widely viewed as a leading candidate to succeed Mr. Parker, and Jayme Martin, Mr. Edwards’s lieutenant, who oversaw much of Nike’s global business.

    Others who have departed include the head of diversity and inclusion, a vice president in footwear and a senior director for Nike’s basketball division.

    It is a humbling setback for a company that is famous worldwide and has built its brand around the inspirational slogan “Just Do It.” While the #MeToo movement has led to the downfall of individual men, the kind of sweeping overhaul that is occurring at Nike is rare in the corporate world, and illustrates how internal pressure from employees is forcing even huge companies to quickly address workplace problems.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/business/nike-women.html

  • Here’s why Gibson is bankrupt—no, it’s not because rock is dead

    So far, so good, but Gibson also sells studio monitors, headphones, turntables, and other musical instruments, and that’s where the problems started:

    1. In 2012, it bought a stake in consumer audio company Onkyo.
    2. In 2013, it purchased stereo maker TEAC in 2013 for $53 million.
    3. The spending spree continued in 2014, when Gibson paid $135 million to acquire Royal Phillips’s home-entertainment systems, in a bid to become “the largest music and sound technology company in the world,” per its CEO. That acquisition put the company in a lot of debt

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40566146/heres-why-gibson-is-bankrupt-no-its-not-because-rock-is-dead

  • Is Airbnb ruining cities?
  • Why Social Media Discretion Is Increasingly Important to Your Brand

    A majority of the estimated 80 percent of small-business owners using Facebook are posting every day. According to CareerBuilder, “70 percent of employers use social media to screen candidates” prior to hiring. It’s wise to assume potential clients are exercising the same due diligence when they consider doing business with you.

    Trying to maintain a separation between personal and business is fruitless. Social media has connected us all to each other. Friends read your business posts and clients follow your personal posts, which means your business brand is your personal brand. It’s what you signed up for when you became an entrepreneur.

    As you post, you should assume that every bit of information you put out adds to, or takes from, the value of your personal brand. The temptation is in volunteering too much information. Nobody wants to know about your ingrown toenail.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/312814

  • Here’s how we plan to be GDPR compliant

    However, we do use some of Google’s tools for analysis purposes which, in turn, might mean Google is hoovering up personal data for its purposes. I say ‘might’ because Google hasn’t exactly been as transparent as everyone would like. Indeed, media groups have been sharply critical of Google’s approach to this thorny problem.

    Google’s problems can quickly become our problem so we’re monitoring the situation and will tweak what we do as events unfold.

    https://diginomica.com/2018/05/07/plan-gdpr-compliant/
    This topic continues to confuse me on a personal live since I don’t advertise but I do use mail lists. More to come…

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