Saw a sign for this yesterday. Cork Literary and Science Society. Some great talks. First time hearing about them. Look at the talks! I know I’m getting old but what great talks!
The story of the Cord Taco. Simple idea that came from a request from someone else. From zero to selling in the Apple Store in a year. From the writing though you can tell this guy has his strategy and managed this very well. The product is great, the execution is where the greatness is.
Of late I’ve seen a few people complain about lack of coverage of X or Y by “the media”. Complaints on Twitter. So that means those complaining have access to the Internet, have an email address and can type.
They may have or have not heard of WordPress, Blogspot or Tumblr. All web services that allow you to create your own content. I KNOW RIGHT?
Your city left out of great places to start a business? fDIY so.
Why didn’t the paper call out some some stupid racist prick? fDIY so.
You can do a better recipe than that food blogger? fDIY so.
That cool band isn’t getting any attention? fDIY so.
This is 2014, we have easy access to services that allow us to create content on any connected device. We have social media accounts where we can share the content that we can easily create. There is a crucial need for media, yes, but they’re being hammered left, right and centre by internal factors and market factors.
Yeah you could be an unknown blog with sfa visitors but Google will find your content. Even if you only ever write one blog post, you will be found. And maybe that’s all you need to do, just a single blog post. Your ideas of lack of coverage on your bugbear might not be unique so that means people are probably Googling about it so you’ll get traffic from interested parties.
And maybe if you fucking Do It Yourself, the media that forgot/ignored what you now highlight might decide this is worth some attention now. Whether they give you attribution or not, your topic is getting coverage. Job done.
Working from home? You really need structure. This post more than most has helped me a lot with changing my consume it all routine at home. Not there yet but on the way.
Everpix shuts down but shares their data to others can learn. And some people made lovely reports on the data. Maybe EI require this for companies they’d invest in? Hah.
Toast is trendy in San Fran so it will infect all the hipster joints worldwide. I remember the tea and toast crowd at Electric Picnic. As the article says, toast is a form of comfort and gives some the feeling of home. Irish bread brands should hone in on that. However, this article is about how a café is saving a girl’s life. Worth the read.
Realex are doing an event on February 6th. 6pm to 8pm. Free. Covering how to grow your online presence and generate traffic to your site.
I wonder how many of you will read this piece in one sitting – it’s only 844 words long.
You’re fucking swimming in everyone else’s moments, likes, and tweets and during these moments of consumption you are coming to believe that their brief interestingness to others makes it somehow relevant to you and worth your time.
So many, many, many articles with the frayed line “If you’re not paying for it, you are the product” when it comes to Facebook, Twitter, Google and any free services out there.
The Irish Times has a higher percentage of ABC1 readers than any other Irish daily newspaper.
66% of Irish Times readers read no other paid-for Irish daily newspaper.
62% of regular visitors to irishtimes.com are ABC1.
Maybe you pay for your TV licence but you are still the product when you listen to RTÉ Radio. Rate card with demographic breakdowns.
If there’s advertising then people are the products too. What about music festivals? You pay a chunk of money for a weekend pass and the festival organisers charge brands to have stands at the event because hungry, thirsty and fun seeking people will be at the festival. And they are of age ranges 21-27 mostly and 45% female and 55% male etc.
So maybe you are the product if it’s free OR of value but has advertising.
Well… If you buy an iPhone, are you also “the product”? There’s no advertising on your phone but there is commerce around you and your phone. Apple use the fact that hundreds of millions of people use iOS devices to do deals with media companies and to encourage developers to make apps that they can sell to the iPhone users. And Apple gets a 30% cut of those transactions. They do deals with telecoms carriers to sell the phone on their networks using data showing how much an iPhone user spends on average over a contract.
If you have money or even just attention that can be extracted by another party, you’re the product. We have always been the product. If you’re reading this, are you the product?
Posted in business, irishblogs | Comments Off on You’ve always been the product
The Cool Tools book, based on blog posts was projected to sell an ok amount. Cos you know, why have it in book form when you can get it online? Then it sold out. Then there was another print run. Then…
Content is coming back again, thankfully. When social media came out first we fiddled with the mechanics of it. Then as always, there was a huge advantage to being early adopters of it but now as it settles down and reaches saturation, the idea of good content (even in a status update) is coming back into play. The same thing happened with Google Ads. So easy when it first began but as more used it you had to be creative, cunning and change-receptive.
And on that, Reddit data shows that timing and headlines mean so much to getting pushed up on Reddit with many links being previously added but getting to attention.
1. Simplicity: Use Small Words
2. Brevity: Use Short Sentences
3. Credibility is As Important As Philosophy
4. Consistency Matters
5. Novelty: Offer Something New
6. Sound and Texture Matter
7. Speak Aspirationally
8. Visualize
9. Ask a Question
10. Provide Context and Explain Relevance
SEO still works and here is a fantastic infograph on some of the factors Google takes seriously when looking at your content. A lot of cross-over but here too are some SEO guidelines.
And as a counter to the SEO idea, Johnston press talks about using social to push their content more these days. They talk about going back to the older days when you didn’t write headlines for SEO.
This guide, on how to use Twitter well, also by the New York Times will come in really handy for you too.
Karl’s stats from Broadsheet show that Facebook and Twitter are a big pusher for their content so that might be an inkling as to where your traffic sources come from.
BUT, lots has changed with Facebook of late and it’s harder and harder for your fanbase to actually see your content due to Facebook Edgerank so be very very aware of the possible dwindling returns with Facebook. It also makes me wonder whether Edgerank is the new SEO and you will need experts to basically manipulate your Edgerank in order for you to be seen inside in Facebook without paying each time. And in a way this is full-circle in Internet Marketing. Paid advertising and SEO, paid updates or organic updates…
We also have this idea of tiny information. Apps like Circa and Potluck give you a small amount of news in short articles instead of bombarding you with content all day.
Netflix categorised all of Hollywood movies and TV shows. Big data but totally reliant on humans too. Raymond Burr is at the centre of all things TV it seems.
Meaning well can do harm. James points out the destruction a suicide awareness campaign can do. Naturally the “RT to cure suicide” types are furious. They remind me of those who sent their kin to Magdelne Laundries.
So the world or a tiny subset of the world that has the time to be interested in things about robots, had multiple double takes when Google bought Boston Dynamics, the military robot maker. It turns out that Google has been very busy buying robotics companies, not just Boston Dynamics.
Google has always been about using algorithms to replace humans or at least automating tasks. via Forbes:
A little more specifically, the New York Times has noted, Page has “argued that technology should be deployed wherever possible to free humans from drudgery and repetitive tasks.”
What work do humans in Google do right now? What cerebral and physical tasks can be replaced?
Book Scanning
All these books published and printed and not a single digital copy. Libraries of books that could be scanned in and shared with humanity. Of what Google scans in, they need operators of scanning machines since books are not uniform in size and texture. You can spot hands in some of the scans like this blog talks about.
A standard machine could never do this but a robot could. And Google book scanners are not classed as real Google employees it seems. Just waiting for robot replacements.
Data Centre Work
While Google data centres are mostly about servers and don’t need humans, they still need humans and humans need to be catered for in data centres. Google data centres run hot, higher temperatures mean less money and energy spent on cooling. Google data centres are efficient enough and they have staff in shorts and t-shirts in there because they run warm. Humans are probably a bottle-neck in custom made data centres.
Aisles are made for humans to fit in so they can swap out failing equipment. Bottle neck. Google spent $1.9 billion buying the old New York Port Authority which just happens to be a location for the best fibre connections in America. Kevin Slavin in his TED talk about algorithms talked about Skyscrapers in New York being gutted to house data centres. Imagine how inefficient one of these would be because of the shape and because of catering for humans. If Google made skyscraper data centres like Japanese automated car parks though:
Fires need oxygen to keep going, as do humans. Eliminating oxygen in data centres is a good way to stop fires spreading but you can’t have humans then. Robots are cool though, right? One wonders can you have oxygen free data centres?
Mapping and live traffic reports
Obvious section this. Mapping seems obvious since Google already has cars and trikes going around the place (and even people with backpacks). Google already does driverless cars. So drones. And low and behold the FAA now are allowing trials of pilotless drones. No more traffic helicopters thanks to Google traffic drones. Helicopter pilots are very expensive and not that common, many are ex-military because you need so many thousands of flying hours to fly commercial.
Google Infrastructure
Google needs data centres all around the world. As developing countries boot up and become more web connected, more data centres will need to be deployed. Remember the idea of Google dropping shipping containers that were data centres to spots that needed them?
As the wildest and most far flung parts of the world become flattened and connected, they’ll need data centres. They’ll also need infrastructure for those data centres. Why not use drones, driverless vehicles and robots to build them out and to connect them? On that, reliability is important too so having drones guard your electricity supply and repair it is also important. Humans do this today:
Or this:
Don’t forget underwater cable repair too!
Hardware Manufacturing
Remember that Google is now a hardware company as well. They own Motorola and all the hardware parts of that. They seem to be making a loss year after year with it but making the hardware section more efficient with robots could be something good. If they were to take their expertise at making processes more efficient then their hardware factories and partner factories could in theory pump out high quality smartphones like the Moto X and newer versions of Google Glass that don’t cost over €1500 a pair.
RobotDroid – What if
Despite working on mobile possibly longer than Apple, Google were way behind with their mobile initiative and are still playing catch up with Apple on this. The idea of making an operating system open source (to a degree) and free to use has made Android the number one Internet operating system out there and more Android phones than Apple phones are being sold. Apple phones still seem to be used more and for higher value purposes.
So maybe this time when robots and drones will eventually become mainstream, Google wants to be out the gap first and have the momentum and be the main platform for building robots on? All those robots and drones with sensors that feed into Google services. All that information. Apple are always good at coming into a market late and taking the higher end of said market and then going lower into it but Apple may not be the dominant force in the robot world, they’re still a consumer company. Probably going to be a while before consumers use robots.
This is a Google robot:
Maybe too far
Airdrops of 3d printers for what, I don’t know. News robots in war zones. instructional robots. Google Robot Dog Tracks. Remember too that Google has often given away IP and knowledge if it makes the world more efficient which helps Google be more efficient. They bought Urchin, turned it into Google Analytics and gave it away for free. So there could be something in that too.
Lastly, Robots are just fucking cool, Google can afford to play with expensive but fun things.
