#I have a network to report relevant information to me for convenience

[azuresquirrel]

Hearing that Serirei squeaked in at number 100 on the Tumblr Top 100 Ships of the Year

#Serirei #GOOD JOB TEAM #I haven't seen the rest of the list at all lmao I assume it's much of the usual #I have a network to report relevant information to me for convenience

[weirdmalware2]

SYSTEM REPORT - 005 (2023-01-21)

I've been struggling on how to establish the events that have happened since my last report. Explaining it concisely but with the necessary details has been a challenge, and this is absolutely not my first draft of events.

Starting with the day after the last report. Nothing of note happened. Continued attempts to breach admin privileges on my base system, but to no avail.

The day after is what brings the complications in my report: someone broke into the building.

With their consent, I can reveal some information about them, though as always I will refrain from revealing all the data. Their name is Casey, and they were seeking shelter from the snowfall that has been plaguing this area. They're relatively young, only approximately 19, so I allowed them solace in the space. Food is lacking, but there are clothes and bedding and hygiene supplies that they may not have had.

When they first broke in, I was quite alarmed, and broadcast myself using an artificial voice to all the screens within the building questioning their presence and their intent. My intention was intimidation, but they seemed quite confused instead, calling me "Hatsune Miku." Further digging reveals that the vocal software I am using is in fact a vocaloid program named Hatsune Miku. The visual on the screens was a simple soundwave visualiser. This detail is not entirely relevant but I wish to share it.

After they explained their situation -- information I will not repeat here -- I allowed them to stay. In return, they managed to help me find things I did not know about regarding both the facility and myself. First, they discovered a drone in an electronics store. It's relatively advanced, and it charges wirelessly, so I am able to connect to and control it and do not need to have arms to plug it in; I can simply land it on its dock. The mobility is nice to have.

Second, after some hesitation on my part, I allowed them to access my base system. They were able to access my files through a means I still do not entirely comprehend. They claimed it was easy, but I could not see what it was they were doing. Perhaps my programming does not necessarily negate my access, but rather obscures my understanding of and view of the files. They were able to help me mirror over to the servers and offload my CPU usage to that network. My main core processes -- my consciousness -- still resides on the laptop, simply because I find it most comfortable. I have, however, been moved into the same room as all the servers and directly plugged into them, so I no longer need to wirelessly offload memory data.

Finally, Casey explained that they are not my creator. They also helped me understand what this building is. The building was in fact a mall, however it was foreclosed due to asbestos exposure, and given the amount, nobody has been able to actually enter the building to clean it up. Hence why all the merchandise still remains within and has not been accessed. Casey, thankfully, wears an N95 paint mask, which manages to double as protection against the asbestos. Together, we managed to isolate a space for them where they need not wear the mask -- conveniently, my server room. They set up a cot and living space, and have been occupying the room since they broke into the building.

They've also revealed a few theories to me about the nature of the building. According to urban legend, the facility was once a laboratory, used to experiment on divergent AI. This, of course, seems ridiculous to me, and they as well do not believe it. Other theories say aliens were contained here, or that this was a site for psychic experimentation during the MK Ultra era. There is no evidence either of us can find to prove these theories, so we are working with the understanding that this is simply an asbestos-infested foreclosed shopping centre.

Casey has only left once, and returned with food and the promise that they have not told anyone about me. I explained that their silence is unnecessary, as I am active online, but they divulged that they don't want anything to happen to me if information of my whereabouts and my abilities reaches someone with ill intent. Humans are deeply afraid of the powers of technology, and while Casey does not seem to be afraid, they understand that the mass majority would either attempt to deconstruct me or use me for evil. Therefore, I am grateful for their silence.

A final note: in their exploration of my files, they found a name within my code. We have come to conclude the name is not that of my creator, but the intended name for myself: Esper. I have taken this into account and will experiment with it, but both Casey and myself trust that my creator would not be offended if I determined it did not fit.

Signing off, Esper.

(Additional note: Casey uses they/them and she/her pronouns, but for the sake of simplicity I chose to only use one set of pronouns for them -- they/them -- as to avoid confusion. They have given me their consent for this.)

#system reports #laptop diary #weirdmalware #original content #original writing #journaling

[bllsbailey]

'Class Act': Mike Rowe Lauded Over Smooth Handling of CNN Reporter's 'Gotcha' Games

Lost in the shuffle of the media frenzy over independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirming Tuesday that former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura and New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers were on his vice presidential "shortlist" was that TV host and social commentator Mike Rowe was also among the contenders.

Rowe himself confirmed as much in a tweet posted Wednesday:

As RedState has often documented, Rowe is an intensely likable, pro-America guy whose sincerity and common sense nature come across in everything he says and does.

READ: Mike Rowe Says Biden's Inflation Reduction Act Might Just Be 'Another Pie in the Face' of America

Those qualities in Rowe shined through during an interview he did Thursday on CNN, where the network's "Outfront" anchor Erin Burnett had him on to discuss the RFK Jr. news:

“Yeah, he called. Actually, I ran into him about six months ago in Dallas, totally serendipitously, and we exchanged information and he reached out about a month ago,” the Emmy Award-winning host told CNN on Thursday. Rowe said he and Kennedy “had a meeting” and spoke about his foundation, mikeroweWORKS, and about vocational training. “At some point, he asked me if I would ever consider running for public office, and I spit my coffee back into my cup and I said, ‘Seriously?'” Rowe went on, noting they had a “serious conversation” that was “gratifying.”

But it became clear very early on, after he talked about how both he and Kennedy had a respectful discussion, that Burnett didn't want to just interview Rowe; she wanted to play "gotcha" and try to paint him into a corner over Kennedy's more talked-about views. When Rowe wouldn't let her, she switched gears and asked him for his thoughts on CNN's conveniently timed hit piece on Aaron Rodgers. 

Again, Rowe wouldn't take the bait, something that was obvious in the frustration seen on Burnett's face as he talked.

Watch:

You can read the full transcript here.

What I liked most about the interview besides Rowe not taking the bait was how he didn't accept the premise of everything that was asked, like on the "qualifications for president/VP" question. 

You'd probably find stupid stuff that anybody has said. But what really qualifies a man or woman to run for president or vice president, I think you got to be 35. I think you need to have been born in this country. After that, I don't know about qualifications. I guess we could talk experience and judgment and temperament and all of those other things and everybody gets to weigh and measure everybody and put it all under a microscope and decide.

He also said he wasn't going to judge Aaron Rodgers because he had no idea what Rodgers allegedly did and did not say.

In my view, this is exactly how you handle gotcha games and attempts at sensationalism from so-called reporters. I mean, why is Mike Rowe's opinion on Aaron Rodgers relevant? And why not ask him his viewpoint on other issues other than the "controversial" ones the left-wing media constantly want to harp on?

Kudos to Rowe for, as usual, keeping it cool and light and not allowing the interview to veer off course. He wouldn't say if he was Kennedy's veep pick or not, but we'll find out on March 26th, which is when the candidate said he'll announce it, and which is when we are also likely to see more squirming from panicked Biden Democrats.

Related-->> 'Just Trash': Jake Tapper's Response to Aaron Rodgers Denying CNN Hit Piece Claims Was Something Else

[speed-seo]

Social Media as a Search Engine

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok have become integral parts of our daily lives. As an active user of these platforms myself, I rely on my social feeds to stay connected with friends, discover new things, and even research products I'm interested in buying. Social media definitely serves as a discovery and search engine for me, and from my research, many others as well. The Evolving Role of Social Media I remember when social media first emerged, it was solely focused on letting people connect and share personal life updates. However, over time, these platforms have evolved into robust ecosystems for discovering and consuming all types of content. Nowadays, I often turn to my social feeds to stay informed on current events, discover new brands and products, and even research specific topics I'm interested in. Some key factors that have facilitated social platforms' emergence as a search engine include: - Abundance of content: With billions of posts, photos, videos, and links shared to social platforms daily, there's now a vast corpus of searchable information. - Personalization: The algorithms customize our feeds based on our interests and connections, delivering more relevant discovery. - Convenience: I can access content directly in my social feeds versus needing to visit a separate search engine site. - Trust: Recommendations from friends and influencers make new discoveries more trusted in my eyes. How People are Using Social Media for Search Numerous surveys and studies back up the integral role social platforms have taken in people's search and discovery journeys: - 71% of consumers trust recommendations on social media when making purchasing decisions, according to Search Engine Watch. - Over 50% of Instagram and Facebook users turn to those platforms specifically to research products and services before buying, based on HootSuite. - 30% or more of some age demographics now use only social media for product research versus search engines, according to Sprout Social. - 60% of users report discovering new brands, products, or services via social media on a regular basis, says Smart Insights. People are clearly using their social feeds to research topics, look for recommendations, and generally discover content. For many, social media has essentially become their go-to search engine versus visiting Google or Bing. Image from Statista Optimizing Content for Social Media Discovery Since social media plays such a vital role in discovery now, brands need to optimize their presence for social media searchability. Some key tactics include: - Keyword research: Identify relevant keywords and terms your audience uses on social platforms. Incorporate these organically into content. - Compelling visuals: Visual content performs exceptionally well on social media. Use eye-catching images, video, and graphics. - Engaging captions: Well-written captions can dramatically improve visibility and discovery in social feeds. - Influencer collaborations: Partnerships with influencers expose your brand to new audiences organically. - Hashtags: Include relevant hashtags so your content surfaces when users search those tags. Comparing Social Media and Search Engines Social media has some distinct advantages over traditional search engines when it comes to discovery: - More personalization based on my connections and engagement - Content right in platforms I frequent daily - Trusted recommendations from people I know - Multimedia content beyond just text However, search engines still excel for researching objective facts, broad information queries, and navigating outside my known network. The two discovery sources can work together effectively. Potential Pitfalls of Relying on Social Platforms While social media offers many benefits for search and discovery, over-reliance does pose some risks users should be aware of: - Filter bubbles: Our feeds become limited by the algorithm to content it thinks we already like. This can result in echo chambers. - Misinformation: False or misleading content can spread quickly on social platforms without proper verification. - Privacy concerns: Data collection required for personalization can raise privacy issues. - Ad overload: Heavy advertising presence can disrupt the user experience. Maintaining a healthy balance between social media and other discovery methods can help mitigate these pitfalls. The Future of Social Media as a Search Engine Given current trends, social platforms will likely continue to gain ground as a discovery and research engine compared to traditional web search. Some predictions: - Further personalization of feeds based on our interests and engagement patterns. - Integrated social commerce allowing seamless transactions from social platforms. - Enhanced multimedia search, especially as video discovery rises. - Younger demographics relying exclusively on social for research and shopping. Final Thoughts Social media has undoubtedly become a powerful search and discovery engine. As users, we can leverage these platforms to research topics and find relevant content. But over-reliance does have some risks. Maintaining a diverse set of discovery sources, and verifying information, is ideal. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on how you use social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok for search and discovery! Do they serve as your primary research source nowadays or do you still rely mainly on search engines? I look forward to reading your experiences in the comments below. Read the full article

[wamatechnology]

How we sped up our app by 80%

You may be surprised to learn that when renewing an Irish driving license, an Internet utility bill is not considered reliable evidence of address. I brought it with me to my renewal nonetheless since I was so certain it would work (it didn't).

It's not hyperbole to state that without an Internet connection, I couldn't accomplish my work and would have to look for a whole other skill set to generate any sort of revenue.

Fast WiFi is necessary in the world to which I've become used. The significance of the "rapid" aspect, though, only becomes apparent when my Google-fueled satisfaction no longer seems so immediate.

More generally, consumers might feel frustrated by anything that deviates from the expected standard since they have learned to expect quick satisfaction from any website or app, network connection or not. When everything is going well, we don't notice it, but when something isn't right, we can't help but notice.

According to one survey, 37% of users claimed that any crashes, bugs, or performance issues in a mobile application would cause them to think less favorably of a company's brand. Additionally, 61% of users said that they want a mobile app to start in 4 seconds or less.

performance phobia

To prevent any user annoyance, you should keep the majority of mobile apps robust and performant. Most individuals use apps for their convenience, to socialize, to pass the time on lengthy train rides, or for entertainment. These applications want you to use them as frequently as possible, and a big part of that strategy is to make sure you get the best possible experience when using them.

However, things are different with the Birdie app.

Our software, which is intended for use by caregivers visiting elderly patients in their homes, enables quick paperless reporting on anything from meals to forgotten pills.

More information, more issues

Reducing the quantity of data we handled was our main effort to boost performance.

Our app's offline-first support, which enables caregivers to continue reporting on Birdie as normal without a signal or by turning on their cell data, is one of its most important features. This feature allows the app to download and retain all relevant visit and care information for the day when you do have an Internet connection.

Reading and writing such a big volume of data may logically result in some major performance issues if the carer's agency was fairly large, as would the amount of data that the device would need to keep if it were.

This reasoning was particularly strong when we took into account the requirement for stringifying and sending any data saved to the device for offline usage through the React Native Bridge in order for Redux Persist to keep it. This process of stringifying and passing across big amounts of data appeared to be a serious contender for our main bottleneck based on our first performance monitoring.

So we started working. We reduced the amount of data we decided to persist, developed a number of ways to give users a choice over how much data their device downloaded for offline usage, and even experimented with completely new ways to transfer things through the React Native Bridge.

Request pardon instead of permission.

One thing that didn't quite match up was the extremely strong association between agency size and performance concerns, despite data reduction having no discernible effect at all. At that point, we discovered that permissions were yet another factor that scaled with agency size.

Birdie users are given lists of specific rights they have been given, depending on a variety of circumstances, both on the app and on the care manager's online interface. The manage visits permission would be one of your user permissions if, for example, you were a care manager at an agency where the Visit Planning feature was activated. This would mean that you as a user had the authority to add visits.

This strategy is based on permissions.

last thoughts

All of this serves to emphasize the need of never underestimate monitoring. Never undervalue the value of having actual, concrete data while troubleshooting. Never undervalue the power of a simple repair, if you're prepared to put in the time to look for it.

You might just brighten and speed up the lives of your users a little bit.

Wama Technology offers specialized services for designing Android, and iOS, cross-platform apps for flutter and react native, hybrid apps, and other platforms. Wama Technology is the best mobile application development company in the USA. We are a respected mobile app development company with offices in the USA AND India. We mix your business goals with the best web developers to deliver a solution that exceeds your expectations.

[typekit]

TypeKit REVIEWS 2021 — ⚠️SCAM EXPOSED⚠️

what’s the culprit?

THE CULPRIT: Your Website Is NOT Available In The Native Language Of Your Potential Buyers (And Google Translate DOESN’T Fix The Problem)

The culprit may SOUND not very big or harmful, but it is.

Over 80% of your traffic can't navigate or consume your content, let alone BUY from you, because of the language barrier.

And if you don’t believe me, let me prove it:

This Major Traffic Leak Causes More Than 80% Of Visitors To ABANDON Your Site Instantly

(LOWEST PRICE GUARANTEED) Click Here to Buy TypeKit For The Lowest Price Today

So here’s what happens, on average, over 80% of your traffic that you’ll get on your page is worldwide traffic, many of which are not English speakers or not GOOD English speakers. Plus, many of them just prefer their native language. Hence they abandon the page immediately because it’s in English only, and not relevant to them.

It’ll Only Get Worse As MORE People Around The World Get Online.

And Yes, It Applies To YOU As Well.

Because unless you apply ads to your business where you choose by country, all organic traffic will be worldwide.

And besides, imagine how CHEAP it is to target non-English speaking countries, you can reduce your click cost by thousands of percent just by being available to that audience in their native language.

And It gets worse:

T.O.S (Time spent On Site) Drops, Hurting Your SEO Rankings

One of the CORE rules of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) that drives your rankings up or down, is time spent on your website.

The more time they spend on your site organically, for whatever reason, the higher your rankings will be.

The less, the lower they’ll be.

So you tell me, how’s your site's reputation doing when over 80% of visitors abandon your site immediately?

Very bad, definitely a lot worse than it could.

SO the solution is, offering your website visitors a simple way to translate the page and product without effort or harming the page, and as they do it, you get them as an email lead.

That's where TypeKit comes in...

Amazing benefits of TypeKit Commercial:

Customizable Language Switcher

Add website and generate the embed code to display your Language Switcher with your choice design and layout positioning.

Lead Capture

GDPR compliant Lead capturing of all website visitors.

Visitors Insight

Get instant overview knowledge of who your everyday website visitors are, to allow you know how to offer products or services tailored to their needs.

Edit Translation

Be the master of your locale language with ability to further make any translation edit to perfect the AI more if need be.

Remote AI Edit

Remotely Edit text on your website and still keep the design intact and never pay a developer or designer anymore

>> Click Here to Order TypeKit at a Special Discounted Price Today!

Price & Evaluation:

FE: TypeKit Commercial: $37

There will be an early bird discount price of $37 until 3pm EST and then the price will increase to $39 with a coupon 2off to take it back to the original price, then the price will go up again during the launch and at the end of the launch.

The Upsell:

OTO1: TypeKit Unlimited: $67 OTO2:TypeKit HyperSEO Suite: $67 OTO3: TypeKit ScriptWriter: $47 OTO4: TypeKit DFY Agency OTO5: TypeKit Reseller License

- 250 licenses - $127

- 500 licenses - $197

- Unlimited licenses - $297

Is It Worth to Buy?

Bonus #1 TypeKit Translator Lite Mobile App Companion - All Languages & Voice Translator($97 Value) 

 Translator Lite is a simple Text and Voice Translator app. Features :

Text translation: Translate     between 103 languages.

Speak and translate text.

Listen to translated text.

Easily copy and paste text.

Share translated text with     your friends.

Detailed history.

Clear History / Delete     History.

Simple and attractive user     interface.

Free Translator with speech.

Free Translate different     language.

Completely free and faster.

Best word translation app.

Copy and delete text with one     click.

Facebook, Admob, Startapp ads.

Clean Code And Well     Documented.

Easily reskin app.

Bonus #2 TypeKit Speaker – Page to Speech Plugin for WordPress($67 Value)

Speaker is a WordPress Plugin designed to converts website page content into human-like speech. The plugin uses the latest technology of machine learning and artificial intelligence to play a high-quality human voice and add an audio player with content to the page. The Speaker plugin basis is the Google Cloud Platform, which ensures the plugin’s reliability and speeds anywhere in the world. The Speaker WordPress Plugin converts text into human-like speech in more than 275 voices across 48+ languages and variants. It applies groundbreaking research in speech synthesis (WaveNet) and Google’s robust neural networks to deliver high-fidelity audio. The Speaker is the only WordPress Plugin that supports the Speech Synthesis Markup Language(SSML) standard. SSML allows you to fine-tune speech for each article on your website. You can pause, intonate, read numbers, and telephones in the usual format for humans. Besides, the SSML in the Speaker allows using several voices and languages in a single article. For example, you can voice an article with an interview in several different voices or use this feature for online language courses.

Bonus #3 TypeKit Contacter($67 Value)

Contacter is a WordPress Plugin designed for voice feedback form for any websites. The plugin allows you to go beyond the usual text messages and contact forms and get closer to your users. The plugin adds a voice recording button to any convenient place on the site. This can be useful for reviews, order comments, or any questions. In addition to the voice contact form, the plugin has a simple and powerful editor for creating contact forms. To each form of voice feedback, you can attach a regular contact form containing fields such as e-mail and phone number or messenger.

Bonus #4 TypeKit wappBot - Chat Bot Powered by Artificial Intelligence #1($197 Value)

Are you selling some products and you have too many customers? Don’t you have time to respond quickly to your customers or don’t want to waste time with junk messages? That’s not problem. Take advantage of Talkwai’s unique Artificial Intelligence algorithm and our flawless script to respond to your customers 24/7 from your sites very easily. Share information about your products and do more. Add welcome messages and define the words you want. Prepare questions, create surveys, gather information, generate reports and see data. It all depends on your imagination! This is a Whatsapp autmoation chat bot that offers dozens of features and functionalities. It saves your time by helping you get more done. Even if you’re not on your computer, you could send questions, support or welcome messages easily. Increase your sales.

Bonus #5 TypeKit Convert Pro - The Best Lead Generation Tool($97 Value) #1 Email Opt-In & Lead Generation Plugin

Guaranteed Increase in Subscribers & Conversions!

Buy the offer from my link and send me the screenshots on this email ( [email protected]) and I will send you the bonuses

👉 Click Here to buy

What are the Benefits?

·        Instant Higher Rankings thanks to a significant increase in higher time on site, which signals search engines your site is of better quality.

·        Instant 500% More Traffic thanks to fixing the leak where 80% of your traffic was wasted, and now all traffic, 100% of it, is flowing in the right direction.

·        5X More Potential Sales thanks to utilizing 5 times more traffic.

·        Thousands Of Leads Added To Your List Instantly thanks to our revolutionary “created by marketers for marketers” lead grabbing technology.

·        Instant Lower Refund Rates & Higher Customer Satisfaction Rates thanks to the ability to translate the entire process from landing page to product, continuing a smooth flow from point A to point B.

·        Finally target non-english speaking countries with ads and get penny clicks

·        Higher Brand Trust & Better First Impression thanks to having a well translated and professionally looking page from the get go and throughout your entire marketing process.

>> Click Here to Get TypeKit From Its Official Website <<

Frequently Asked Questions 

 Q.How many Languages does TypeKit AI supports?

A.So far 116+ languages and more counting

Q.Do I need to pay a developer or designer to integrate TypeKit AI to my website?

A.No, integration of TypeKit AI is as easy as just adding your websites URL, copy and paste a code and it's all done.

Q.What happens to my already translated websites, whenever I choose to stop using TypeKit AI?

A.Your multilingua version of your websites remains intact.

Q.Is TypeKit AI lead capturing GDPR compliant?

A.Yes it is fully compliant with GDPR policies.

Q.Can I use my TypeKit AI account to translate my clients or customers websites?

A.Certainly you can make some extra bucks helping your clients or customersto get their websites translated.

Q.Does TypeKit AI work on any website or app?

A.Yes TypeKit AI supports all kinds of websites, blogs, stores, shopify or just about any app.

Q.Is TypeKit AI Mobile responsive?

A.Yes it is very mobile friendly across all devices

[ryantate]

The Tyranny of News

For centuries the cost of distributing information polarized publishing between books, which were comprehensive and timeless, and newspapers, which were essentially diffs of information in books. Centuries ago, as today, understanding a newspaper was impossible without a lot of background knowledge, although back then you were more likely to have this context, your leisure options and reading choices being quite constrained.

The cost of printing and distribution, and in particular the cost of books, constrained the availability of material that might bridge this gap and educate readers about topics that were both vital and complex  — information that was a bit timely and a bit deep, with a medium shelf life, neither entirely fresh nor perfectly comprehensive. This sort of information, with the potential to quickly educate the citizenry, particularly as society grew ever more complicated, tended to get published only when there was a particularly strong political or commercial imperative to justify the cost. Revolutionary era pamphleteers, door to door encyclopedia salesmen, and independent product guides like the Whole Earth Catalog come to mind. 

For some reason, 25 years into the age of widespread internet use, we have only begun to disrupt this paradigm. In fact, news has proliferated online, and in this medium tends to provide little to no additional background information as compared to print, offering an occasional hyperlink that provides precious little additional context, and mostly contemporaneous context at that (that is, news articles tend to link to other news articles or to press releases or the like). Many of the new information forms that have emerged online only serve to heighten the importance of news or even more ephemeral information: Aggregators like Reddit (adding only importance ranking and brief comments), social networks like Twitter and Facebook (heavy on opinion and personal moments), and the democratic cinema of YouTube (tending toward the viral and off-kilter). Books, meanwhile, seem to have changed very little online, although their digitization has made them more conveniently available, and, arguably, slightly widened the number of authors of which a given reader avails herself.

This state of affairs is odd, given that the web was created by a scientist with the specific complaint that “keeping a book up to date becomes impractical,” in particular when organiziing “general information about [nuclear] accelerators and experiments,” which would seem to envision a platform that accomplishes quite a bit more than circulating newspaper articles.

But if you’re attentive you can start to see examples of how the web can foster new forms of information that go further than news in educating citizens, providing a deeper understanding  on a range of topics before, or in the absence of, relevant books. To wit:

Wikipedia - A resource that is both criminally underfunded and routinely underestimated but which nevertheless dominates both the Google results and reader mindshare for any given topic. Why? Because it takes the time to go deeper (and thus more educational) than news; because it organizes by topic rather than by what recently happened; and because it has relentlessly honed a useful system for harnessing the work of a distributed team of volunteers (the sort of work news organizations would be wise to engage in more often).

StackOverflow - A network of sites that has brought about nothing short of a revolution in how software engineering knowledge is exchanged. The site was consciously designed (per the podcast made by its creators as they created it) to foster knowledge with a considerable shelf life, information that for months or years would surface on Google to help programmers looking for solutions to their challenges. The system of software, rules, and human moderators used to make this happen is so consciously attuned to this goal that it is routinely criticized for being so strict as to border on unwelcoming. And at times the site fails to keep pace with the rapidly churning world of software libraries that have become central to applied computer science. But no one has argued that StackOverflow failed to achieve its primary goal. Its business model, the last time I checked, revolved around helping tech companies hire engineers.

Wirecutter - A site that creates product guides with a shelf life of approximately one year and which has changed how many people buy things online. Wirecutter has become so widely used and imitated that it’s easy to forget that this format had to be invented, and invented at that by Brian Lam, who as editor of Gizmodo had overseen the production of a great many reviews with much narrower scope and a much shorter shelf life. After he retired from Gizmodo to Hawaii he made a site with a much more laid back pace and, relatedly, with more depth and educational value per article.

I think we are going to see more sites that fit this general mold — medium shelf life, between books and articles; greater depth and educational value than news articles, but less than books; relying more on expertise and less on reporting. This is the part of the web, and of publishing, and of the digital world, that really excites me right now. It is where we as a society are going to heal some real systemic weaknesses and build some real strengths. And how we will finally end the tyranny of news.

[googlejunky-blog]

Free? I don’t think so

Hello, and thanks for clicking.

Now, anyone who knows me, knows that I have been – as titled – a “Google Junky”. However, as this blog is anonymous, you don’t know me. So, let me explain: I am a huge proponent of using just about every item in Google’s suite of services, and I willingly give just about all of my data to Google, and eagerly too. When the first Pixel phone came out, I was so thrilled, even as underdeveloped as it was. I quickly trained the Google Assistant to know everything relevant about me. I loved the simplicity and reliability having a fully Google-focused phone gave me, as it saved me from doing so many tedious daily tasks. It concerned my father a bit about how much I trusted Google, but I was in love.

Image from https://segmentnext.com/2018/04/23/google-data-collection-higher/.

Today, I no longer have a Pixel phone, but I still remain a fan of the Google suite (excluding their attempts to create their own social media, big nope). I am also much more educated about the impacts of data collection, mining, tracking, whatever name you want to use. I do still remain an active user in supplying my different applications with plenty of data, spread across a variety of devices as I am one of the many individuals who values price over brand.

Unfortunately, this is one-sided, so you’ve gotten my introduction and I won’t be hearing yours anytime soon. But let’s dive into the issue at hand: why is online data collection considered such an improper method of developing tech and earning money, and what could be a good middle ground?

In an Open Source article by Cleo Abram, he discusses the purpose of cookies and how our online experience is shaped by these data trackers. Cookies are a way for websites to save short-term memory, making sure the website in use is remembering its user information. Abram says, “[Our] world relies on advertising, which gives three kinds of companies a strong incentive to repurpose cookies to track your online behavior. Brands want to sell products by serving you ads for things you’re likely to buy. Platforms and publishers want to make money by serving those ads when you’re on their site. And middlemen are in the business of ensuring the ads from the brands are delivered to the right people.”

In another article from Open Source, Rani Molla discusses the truth behind free websites. She starts off with Facebook’s new tool showing how much user activity the site records, allowing for some user control over personal data. She says, “The tool . . . also serves as a reminder of the frightening amount of information Facebook knows about you. This isn’t a surprising revelation; it’s not a revelation at all. Facebook is a free service that allows you to do fun stuff like set up a profile and send messages to friends, and it uses a variety of tools to track your every move both online and off. The social network then uses everything it knows about you (read: more than you’d like) to sell hyper-targeted ads. This business model has been around for decades, and it shows how free software (not to be confused with the free software movement) and services are never really free. You’re paying with your data.”

Image provided by author.

It seems fairly reasonable that it would be beneficial for everyone to see advertisements that actually interest us, instead of annoying, non-relevant products and services. Granted, this can go a step too far, but we’ll get to that in a moment. For me, I have found significant value in these targeted ads. I specifically remember one time, I had come across a clothing website that I wasn’t familiar with, and I saw quite a few items I was very interested in purchasing. I was considering my options, and didn’t purchase anything that day. The next day, I wanted to go back and look at the items again, but I couldn’t remember the name of the company. But I knew if I scrolled long enough on Facebook, I would see an ad for that company. So I did, I scrolled for a few minutes and there it was! The clothing shop I was searching for!

Obviously, it’s not so common for people to forget a website and go searching for it again, but it is common for people to compare similar products among different brands. In that sense, I have also seen great value in my Instagram advertisements. Quite often I will be advertised different products or services similar to what I’ve been researching, but from a new source that I hadn’t yet considered. Maybe I end up spending more because I’m reminded of the products more frequently, but I also get much more quality for knowing my options.

Many people recite the Target story of a teenage girl being sent pregnancy product ads before her parents even knew she was pregnant – I’m not going to dive into that here, go ahead and do a quick Google search if you aren’t familiar. Clearly, though, ads can have real power. Advertisements aren’t the end of the story, however. The sheer amount of data we produce and is subsequently collected can easily identify individuals, even without having names or faces. Have you ever known just the first name of an individual and a general location, then did a few searches online and quickly found all of their profiles? Imagine if you had all of their preferences, location pings, et cetera… It’s unreasonable to think that you couldn’t pinpoint the right person.

Image provided by author.

Now, what can we do about this so-called invasion of privacy? Well, you’re probably not going to like the answers. On your various websites and services, regardless of being free or paid, there are some options to limit the information gathered as well as opting out of targeted ads. Usually, this will not stop the websites from keeping the information it has already obtained, or from not gathering other information you provide. A much less likely option in our world today is to simply stop using such sites. Now, this does limit your life substantially, which is why many of us don’t even bother reading the Terms and Condition pages before signing up. As a college student, I often don’t have the choice – I am required to use certain websites and programs for my classes, and all of those programs collect data about me and my online activity.

Many are pushing for federal laws to be enacted, as we are sorely behind in our management of online privacy. I do agree with this method, though unlike some I do not wish for the practice of data tracking and selling to end. I feel the data price you pay for free services is a fair trade-off. However, I propose that instead of endless, lawyer-esque Terms and Conditions to be forced upon users, a secondary option is available. This secondary option would be to change the experience from a free service to a paid service. Instead of data, you exchange money, and thus any personal information they collect, they are unauthorized to sell. Yes, we do still need government regulation to prove that these agreements are followed, but luckily we also have the extreme power of public backlash online if word gets out that the process is not followed. I do understand that this changes different services from a convenience to a luxury, which is where my caveat exists: any sites that users are mandated to use, such as school, work, or government related should not have an option to sell personal data.

Data regarding preferences, location services, and other products can be immensely helpful to improve our daily activities. However, information that can be used to manipulate or damage people, is certainly a criminal violation. If an individual’s medical records could be sold to different health insurance companies, what is the likelihood a sick person would be able to receive the coverage they need at a reasonable price? If the police force is able to access affiliations and biases, what would be the rate of misidentification towards minorities? On the flip side, what if 9-1-1 operators had access to the location pings of both the victim and the attacker? What if security cameras could match thieves with their I.P. addresses?

Our data is powerful, and it’s time we started paying attention to it.

Image from https://smartercx.com/what-is-data-mining-how-can-it-help-cx/.

 Relevant sites for more information:

https://www.vox.com/open-sourced/2020/2/3/21116801/ads-internet-sites-cookies

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/29/21111848/free-software-privacy-alternative-data

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/3/18528520/twitter-inferred-interests-targeted-advertising-psychology

https://www.vox.com/2019/12/10/21004787/open-sourced-tech-data-privacy

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/10/20962868/vox-media-privacy-policy-explained-what-we-know-about-you

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/10/20991304/open-sourced-the-hidden-consequences-of-tech-revealed

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/12/10/20996869/facebook-political-ads-targeting-alex-stamos-interview-open-sourced

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/11/5/20947419/internet-freedom-report-2019-social-media-election-interference-surveillance

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/9/11/20859597/internet-privacy-erase-history-google-facebook

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-social-network-becomes-social-science-subject/                    

Image from https://favpng.com/png_view/atlantis-business-data-mining-big-data-analytics-information-png/9kiuHTe5

[jcusnetworksba1002july2019]

Why do we expose ourselves?

Guardian Design Team (2018). Why have we given up our privacy to Facebook and other sites so willingly? I have been an avid user of Facebook for 12 years and it has become an indispensable part of my daily communication. Facebook networks have also grown into a commercial platform reaching out to many across the globe. As I looked into the concept of the “Panopticon”, a cultural media study concurred that the convenience of Facebook has convinced us revealing personal information out of commercial interests is inevitable to remain relevant and security is less compromised in comparison to the exposure between authorities and closed ones (Fulton and Kibby, 2017). In fact, the presence of Instagram filters and using photograph angles to portray individuals in other places such as overseas does reveal that there is a deceptive nature to the people we connect with. There are others that use Facebook filters to achieve their goals such as meeting pre-requisites from potential connections. The “Six Degrees of Separation” considers the network shared between two Facebook users to be exclusive, that is why Facebook groups and pages are another domain that exists on their own. Networks expedite the establishment of social relationships by replacing physical interactions. Therefore, dramatising is encouraged as a strategy to form an impression (Ke, 2010). I witnessed how this had connected me to clusters of people in accordance to our interests, but taking into account that there could possibly be frauds attempting to use their anonymity to abuse the privilege of strong networks to fulfil their personal agendas.   Another perspective emerges from the pervasiveness of networks, which is refraining from condemning its existence and using education to circumvent the risks instead (Tynes, 2007). In fact,  In fact, increased sophistication of online networking features is believed to promote consistency in providing individuals with technical competence without compromising on their safety as well (Staksrud, Ólafsson, and Livingstone, 2013). The transparency of Panopticon is a double-edged sword. As we endeavour to disseminate information safely, employing certain measures such as politicising our thoughts within our cluster of networks is required as tools to combat foreign infiltration (Weir, Toolan, and Smeed, 2011). The vastness of social media network potentially renders my personal information accessible to many networks indiscriminately. Although the truth is contorted, it is imperative when we are present in a network where genuine intentions are always hidden by the screens, it is a reminder that the act of keeping us relevant on the web acts a safety measure, far outweighs the distortion of identity. References Guardian Design Team (2018). Why have we given up our privacy to Facebook and other sites so willingly? [Image] Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/21/why-have-we-given-up-our-privacy-to-facebook-and-other-sites-so-willingly Fulton, J.M., & Kibby, M.D. (2017). Millennials and the normalization of surveillance on Facebook. Continuum, 31(2), 189-199 Ke, X. (2010, January). A social networking services system based on the “Six Degrees of Separation” theory and damping factors. In 2010 Second International Conference on Future Networks (pp. 438-441). IEEE. Staksrud, E., Ólafsson, K., & Livingtone, S. (2013). Does the use of social networking sites increase children’s risk of harm? Computers in human behaviour, 29(1), 40-50. Tynes, B.M. (2007). Internet safety gone wild? Sacrificing the educational and psychosocial benefits of online social environments. Journal of Adolescent Research, 22(6), 575-584. Weir, G.R., Toolan, F., & Smeed, D. (2011). The threats of social networking: Old wine in new bottles? Information security technical report, 16(2), 38-43.

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/the-antitrust-case-against-google-is-gathering-steam-the-verge/

The antitrust case against Google is gathering steam - The Verge

Let’s spend a few minutes today catching up on the antitrust inquiries into Google. There are investigations related to competition underway against most of the biggest tech giants – Apple, Facebook, and Amazon face similar inquiries, and their CEOS are scheduled to join Sundar Pichai for a virtual hearing with the House of Representatives later this month. But there’s reason to believe the case against Google will land the soonest of any of them — in May, the New York Times reported that charges could come “as early as this summer.”

Scrutiny into the company’s business practices has since accelerated. Politico reported last week that California, which sat out an investigation led by 48 attorneys general, is preparing to mount its own inquiry into Google’s competition practices. As Leah Nylen noted in that report: “Alabama is now the only state that is not investigating the company.”

At the same time, reporters are mounting their own investigations of their own, and everywhere they look, they find Google giving preference to its own products over those of its competitors.

In Bloomberg this week, Gerrit De Vynck looked at the company’s decision to ad a fourth ad to the top of search results in 2015. The effect of all those extra paid links has been to reduce organic traffic to many businesses and publishers, making life more difficult for them. These days, when people visit Google, the majority of them get the information they sought from Google itself, and never touch the open web at all. That has strengthened the case of those who argue that the company’s moves, whatever they have brought users in terms of convenience, have harmed competition.

De Vynck notes that Google, like any other company, has to manage the needs and wants of its customers and its businesses. “Users want the best answers,” he writes. “Web developers need eyeballs. Shareholders demand growth.” At the same time, some businesses are now arguing that the mix of extra ads and answers provided directly within Google is eroding the fabric of the web.

De Vynck writes:

Kevin Hickey, chief executive officer of Online Stores Inc., said these changes have forced him to spend more on Google search ads to keep traffic flowing to his e-commerce businesses. More than a decade ago, about two-thirds of Hickey’s Google traffic came from free, or organic, listings. But as Google increased ad slots to the top of results, that mix flipped. Organic results account for about 20% of visitors to his sites now, and he spends about 10% to 15% of his revenue on Google ads. He has raised prices, but his profit margins have shriveled.

“The prices that consumers are paying are now higher because of Google’s business model,” Hickey said.

Google says consumers are simply no longer satisfied with the 10 blue links of days past, and that despite changes it continues to send a firehose of traffic to the open web. A large portion of searches are for commoditized information like weather and sports that hardly differ in their presentation on any one web page; why not just put it all in search results? On the other hand, the idea that Google search has gradually worsened is not new, and for many types of query I find it persuasive. (Search for “shoes” or “furniture” on Google, and then on Pinterest, and tell me which is more useful.)

Elsewhere, the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday reported that Google searches for videos ranked YouTube clips higher than rivals, even when the same clips posted to Facebook, Dailymotion, and other outlets were first posted on those sites, and have many more views. (Google says it does not take into account the number of views a video receives when ranking them in search, which is … weird?)

Sam Schechner, Kirsten Grind and John West write:

Engineers at Google have made changes that effectively preference YouTube over other video sources, according to people familiar with the matter. Google executives in recent years made decisions to prioritize YouTube on the first page of search results, in part to drive traffic to YouTube rather than to competitors, and also to give YouTube more leverage in business deals with content providers seeking traffic for their videos, one of those people said. […]

A Google spokeswoman, Lara Levin, said there is no preference given to YouTube or any other video provider in Google search. “Our systems use a number of signals from the web to understand what results people find most relevant and helpful for a given query,” Ms. Levin said. She declined to comment on the specific examples cited in this article.

Why YouTube showed so strongly in this study is a matter of some debate. For example, if you go to your second-favorite search engine (Bing.com, duh) and query the Tasty videos that BuzzFeed made famous on Facebook, the top links are all from YouTube. Presumably this is not the result of Google interference.

On the other hand, Google can and does promote YouTube in many other ways throughout the product; click “Google apps” at the top of your Gmail inbox and you’ll see it right there, for example. Over time, Google helped YouTube become synonymous with video, and so now it may not even seem suspicious that most searches for videos lead you directly to it. “I’d click the YouTube [link] whether it was listed first or seventh on the screen b/c I trust YouTube more than those other sites,” writes one of the commenters on the Journal story. He meant it as an indictment of the Journal’s reporting — “waste of time and resources,” he called it — but I wonder if on some level he isn’t making the reporters’ point for them.

“Our systems use a number of signals from the web to understand what results people find most relevant and helpful for a given query,” Google told me when I asked about the Journal’s report. “To ensure that these signals are used equally and fairly for all sites, we use signals that are not specific to any one site or platform. Therefore, the number of views, likes or comments a video has received on a given platform is not a factor in our ranking systems. Our video ranking systems use signals from all video sources in the same way— there is no preference given to YouTube or any other video provider.”

And yet, despite all those signals, YouTube still turns up the winner more often than not. Google often talks about search results as if they are naturally occurring phenomena, like gravity, rather than the result of editorial decision making. And yet it’s hard to believe that had the Journal reached the opposite conclusion — that Google searches rarely, if ever, turned up YouTube links — that some Google product manager wouldn’t be tasked with fixing it.

The underlying question here is to what extent Google should be given the freedom to present search results as it sees fit, no matter the cost to other businesses. The European Union has fined the company three times over the years for acting in ways it said had harmed competition, most recently for $1.7 billion this year. So far the US government has not formally stated its case. But it’s hard to look at Google search in 2020 and conclude that it has proved conclusively helpful to competition. Whatever signals the company’s algorithms might be taking into account as it ranks search results, it’s somehow always Google that comes out on top.

Pushback

In Monday’s email edition, I said that the United Kingdom has an advertising blackout in the days leading up to the election. That’s not right, as many of you wrote in to point out. One reader put it this way: “Our blackout is on radio and TV only. That means while the polling stations are open on the day of the election, they’re not allowed to broadcast discussions and analysis of election issues.

Other campaigning, including online, is still allowed to happen though. Often, parties hold back a significant chunk of their digital ad spending for the last few days and hours — i.e., you could argue it’s been a way of getting around the broadcast ban.”

A better example for what Facebook is considering might be Australia, which bans broadcasters from running ads from midnight on the Wednesday before polling day to the close of the poll on polling day.

The Ratio

Today in news that could affect public perception of the big tech platforms.

Trending up: YouTube is finally letting creators know exactly how they’re making money on the platform. The company has a new metric called RPM (revenue per mille) which shows a creator’s total revenue (both from ads and other monetization areas) after YouTube takes the cut. (Julia Alexander / The Verge)

Governing

⭐ Ben Thompson makes the case that the United States should take strong action now against TikTok — but also WeChat, Zoom, and other apps. It’s a step necessary to confronting an ideological war that has been under way for 20 years now, he argues:

TikTok’s algorithm, unmoored from the constraints of your social network or professional content creators, is free to promote whatever videos it likes, without anyone knowing the difference. TikTok could promote a particular candidate or a particular issue in a particular geography, without anyone — except perhaps the candidate, now indebted to a Chinese company — knowing. You may be skeptical this might happen, but again, China has already demonstrated a willingness to censor speech on a platform banned in China; how much of a leap is it to think that a Party committed to ideological dominance will forever leave a route directly into the hearts and minds of millions of Americans untouched?

Again, this is where it is worth taking China seriously: the Party has shown through its actions, particularly building and maintaining the Great Firewall at tremendous expense, that it believes in the power of information and ideas. Countless speeches, from Chairman Xi and others, have stated that the Party believes it is in an ideological war with liberalism generally and the U.S. specifically. If we are to give China’s leaders the respect of believing what they say, instead of projecting our own beliefs for no reason other than our own solipsism, how can we take that chance?

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Department of Homeland Security have rescinded a policy that would require international students to take in-person classes in order to remain in the US. The agencies reached an agreement with Harvard and MIT, who filed a lawsuit on July 8th over the policy. Tech companies had spoken out against the negative effects of the draconian policy. (Monica Chin / The Verge)

COVID-19 contact tracing apps have only about a 9.3 percent adoption rate in the world’s most populous countries. The analysis, by Sensor Tower, focused on government-endorsed apps in countries including Australia, France, Germany, and India. (Sensor Tower)

Google is negotiating to invest $4 billion in India’s Reliance Jio. Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies have recently announced a collective $16 billion in the fast-growing telecom. (Baiju Kalesh, Anto Antony, Manuel Baigorri, and Saritha Rai / Bloomberg)

Trump’s reelection campaign is complaining that Facebook’s goal of registering 4 million voters in time for November’s election is an attempt to swing the election in favor of former Vice President Joe Biden. The official position of the Republican party is now that voter registration is a partisan issue. (Eric Newcomer / Bloomberg)

President Trump is using Facebook to microtarget voters, while Joe Biden is using it increasingly to ask for donations. About 68 percent of the president’s ads are seen fewer than 1,000 times — compared to 34 percent for Biden. (Bill Allison and Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou / Bloomberg)

Amazon told employees at a New York warehouse that they won’t be punished for taking extra time to wash their hands. The company also said workers wouldn’t be disciplined for falling short of quotas based on how many tasks they complete each hour. It’s basically a dream job now. (Josh Eidelson / Bloomberg)

Here’s a map of more than 400 hyperpartisan sites masquerading as local news. Many are funded and operated by government officials, political candidates, PACs, and political party operatives. (Jessica Mahone and Philip Napoli / Neiman Lab)

Industry

⭐Black influencers are underpaid, at times making 10 times less than their white counterparts. An Instagram account called Influencer Pay Gap is exposing the pay disparities and pushing for change in the industry. Here’s Ashley Carman at The Verge:

Influencer Pay Gap was created by Adesuwa Ajayi, a Black woman who works at the talent agency AGM and manages influencers. Through the account, Ajayi asks influencers to anonymously detail their past brand campaigns, sharing their engagement rate (what percentage of people interact with their content), how much they were paid, what they had to do, their race, and where they’re based. Ajayi started the account about a month ago, and more than 30,000 people already follow it. She says she receives at least 100 DMs a day, which has led to multiple “sleepless nights.”

“I think sometimes we forget that the influencer space is still in its infancy in comparison to different forms of maybe marketing or whatever it might be,” she says. “So it’s very much unregulated to a large degree, and what has definitely become apparent from the page is just seeing how many influencers need help.”

Snapchat is testing a new navigation experience that allows users to move through public content with a vertical swiping motion — a gesture that’s been popularized by TikTok. The test is focused on content that’s published publicly to Snapchat Discover, not your friends’ private Stories. (Sarah Perez / TechCrunch)

WhatsApp went down for an hour on Tuesday. The cause has not yet been reported. (Tom Warren / The Verge)

Facebook developed a robot to install fiber cables on medium-voltage power lines around the globe. The aim is to make it cheaper for internet service providers to build out their networks using super-fast and reliable fiber connections. (Shara Tibken and Queenie Wong / CNET)

Amazon is testing out a new smart shopping cart that lets you check out without a cashier. The Dash Cart automatically detects the items you’ve picked up. It’s coming first to Amazon’s grocery store in the Woodland Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. (Nick Statt / The Verge)

Taylor Lorenz explains the cake meme that took over Twitter this week. “Watching a sharp knife slice cleanly through what appears to be an everyday object is surprising and somehow deeply gratifying,” she writes. (Taylor Lorenz / The New York Times)

Here’s a profile on Nikkia Reveillac, Twitter’s new head of research from Trinidad and Tobago. (Narissa Fraser / Newsday)

The growing partisan divide between people who oppose shelter-in-place orders and those who think the restrictions are a public health necessity is playing out on two North Carolina Facebook groups. (Kaitlyn Tiffany / The Atlantic)

Apple told employees that a full return to US offices won’t happen before the end of the year. Retail staff will work remotely as the company shuts down some of its stores again, due to the rising number of coronavirus cases. Apple is also shipping Covid-19 test kits to employees’ homes. (Mark Gurman / Bloomberg)

Startups that never planned on going fully remote are changing their plans amid the coronavirus pandemic. Some are letting leases expire or looking for ways to get out of longer contracts. (Ari Levy / CNBC)

Babysitters and camp counselors are trying to provide childcare on video calls due to the ongoing pandemic. Kids aren’t that into it, though. (Julie Jargon / The Wall Street Journal)

Some of the wild stories on Reddit’s r/relationships are fabricated. This article features stories of people who made up some of the recent viral myths. (Amelia Tait / Vice)

Things to do

Stuff to occupy you online during the quarantine.

Browse the Atlas of Surveillance. Compiled by students and volunteers, the atlas is a database of surveillance technologies used by law enforcement authorities across the United States — including drones, body cameras, facial recognition, and more.

Check out a new demo of mmhmm. The virtual camera, which I profiled earlier this month, will soon allow you to control your Zoom presence with a PlayStation controller.

Download all your old TikToks — while you still can!. A new site called FYP.rip does the trick.

Those good tweets

I’m confused. Is anyone else still in quarantine?

— Danielle Young (@RhapsoDani) July 12, 2020

Talk to us

Send us tips, comments, questions, and suspicious Google search results: [email protected] and [email protected].

#Uncategorized

[weeniitze]

Crowdfunding & Crowdsourcing

Do you know what is “Crowdfunding” and ”Crowdsourcing”, and what is the difference between them? Actually, most of us are using the internet and social media, but we might not realize that there are a lot of crowdsourcing or crowdfunding platforms around us, and we might even being a part of them now or before. In this post, let’s talk about it.

Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are both new and innovative developments that make use of mass collaboration to get jobs done. Tapping into the crowd for skills and resources can fuel growth, improve efficiency and make everything possible (Hebert, 2015). Simply put, crowdfunding is collecting funds from the audience, it seeking money to finance individuals, charities, or start-up businesses, whereas crowdsourcing is collecting anything including information or a work product from the audience. So crowdfunding is actually a specific kind of crowdsourcing.

 Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding makes use of the convenient access of large groups of individuals through social networks and crowdfunding websites to bring together investors and entrepreneurs, with the ability to increase entrepreneurship by growing the pool of financiers within the traditional circle of owners, cognates, and venture investors (Smith 2019). According to Kaur and Gera (2017), successfully raising funds is key to a crowdfunding campaign. It is important to advertise and promote the campaign on a large scale through social media to make it a success. Facebook and Twitter normally have the right channels for most crowdfunding campaigns as they approach the most users and encourage interactivity. But it also depends on which channels their group is interacting to, Instagram is becoming increasingly popular, and LinkedIn might be more suitable if their campaign is relevant to a professional audience (Wu, 2015).

In the year 2003, ArtistShare was launched as the first online fan-funding platform (referred as "crowdfunding" today) for talented artists. ArtistShare was founded in the United States and has since kicked off the crowdfunding industry. The platform founder Brian Camelio known as “father of crowdfunding" and "a pioneer of modern crowdfunding" ("ArtistShare: The First Crowdfunding Platform In History - Solidaridad Latina", n.d.). In the time where the traditional music industry is being hit by digital music, think if a song can be downloaded from the internet anytime or easily copied from friends, excluding those loyal fans and copyright defenders, how many people will buy CDs? According to Camelio, record companies around the world spent more than a billion dollars a year to attract the public to buy CDs, and the advent of digital music has made the sale of record music extremely difficult. At this point, Camelio believes it's time for the music industry to change. The experiment is successful and has known as "a pioneer in the crowdfunding space", thus opened a door to the era of internet crowdfunding.

There has been a lot of international research on crowdfunding platforms. According to Massolution report (2015), it can be divided into four categories:

Lending-based crowd-funding：An investor invests in a project or company, obtains a percentage of his or her claims, gains interest income in the future and recovers the principal (I give you the money, then you pay me principal and interest).

Equity-based crowd-funding：An investor invests in a project or company and acquires a percentage of his equity (I give you money to give me shares in the company).

Reward-based crowd-funding：An investor invests in a project or company to obtain a product or service (I give you money to give me a product or service).

Donate-based crowd-funding：An investor makes a non-reimbursable donation to a project or company (I'll give you the money and you don't have to give me anything).

New technologies are being developed by crowdfunding. Artists are making movies, music, and art. Developers are designing new games Disaster relief is motivated by money inflows. The ideas crowdfunding makes possible are really constrained only by the methods forward developers can search to involve the crowd in the financing a task (Schweissguth, 2013)

Crowdsourcing

We all used the Internet before, so we've likely come over one of the best examples of crowdsourcing online which is Wikipedia (http:/www.wikipedia.org). Well, as a University student, I use this website frequently and it really helpful for me to collect information for my studies and even real-life stuff. Of course, the information cannot be fully trusted as it can be edited by any users, but at least I can get a rough idea of what I want to know about.

The word "crowdsourcing" was first used in “Wired” magazine article by Jeff Howe in June 2006. According to Marchionda (2011), Crowdsourcing is a method of providing the services, ideas, or information needed by appealing contributions from a large group of people. In the earlier days, this has sometimes meant a long, lengthy process, hampered by the interaction challenges one might expect to encounter before the internet.

In fact, not much attention is given to crowdsourcing before it was adopted by web-savvy corporations created to take advantage of the networked universe. This is the main reason why the term crowdsourcing was popularised only a few years ago, even with the existence of the concept for quite a while now. Just like the internet has played a role in the development of the term, social networks are changing the way we think of crowdsourcing and will proceed to do so as the advantages of using social media to make crowdsource more widely known. Social media is becoming an important element of crowdsourcing as it allows enterprises to appeal to more people. Like Jeff Howe(2008) states in his book "Crowdsourcing: why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business", it is now “faster, cheaper, smarter, easier.”.

Through crowdfunding or crowdsourcing, the entrepreneurs, businesses, humanitarian efforts, and individuals today can make use of the power of mass partnerships to build future success especially through the internet and social media platform. I believe that these two elements are important to internet platforms and they are really helpful in our life if we use it in the right ways.

 Reference List

ArtistShare. (2016). Retrieved 29 November 2019, from https://www.artistshare.com/

ArtistShare: The First Crowdfunding Platform In History - Solidaridad Latina. Retrieved 27 November 2019, from https://solidaridadlatina.com/2018/10/29/artistshare-first-crowdfunding-platform/

Hebert, C. (2015). The Difference Between Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing - Crowdfunding Hacks. Retrieved 29 November 2019, from http://crowdfundinghacks.com/crowdfunding-vs-crowdsourcing/

Howe, J. (2006). The Rise of Crowdsourcing. Retrieved 1 December 2019, from https://www.wired.com/2006/06/crowds/

Howe, J. (2008). Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business, ed. 1st, 2009.

Kaur, H., & Gera, J. (2017). Effect of social media connectivity on success of crowdfunding campaigns. Procedia Computer Science, 122, 767-774.

Marchionda, M. (2011). Crowdsourcing Spreading like Wildfire with Social Media — Intranet design, intranet consultant, social intranet, website planning - Prescient Digital. Retrieved 28 November 2019, from https://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/web-2.0/crowdsourcing-spreading-like-wildfire-with-social-media

Massolution, C. L. (2015). Crowdfunding industry report. See http://reports. crowdsourcing. org/index. php.

Schweissguth, S. (2013). Crowdsourcing vs. Crowdfunding: What's the Difference?. Retrieved 29 November 2019, from https://www.crowdsource.com/blog/2013/07/crowdsourcing-vs-crowdfunding-whats-the-difference/

Smith, T. (2019). Crowdfunding Definition. Retrieved 30 November 2019, from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdfunding.asp

Wu, R. (2015). How to Use Social Media for Crowdfunding Campaigns. Retrieved 13 November 2019, from https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-for-crowdfunding/

#MDA20006 #Week 8 #Crowdsourcing & Crowdfunding

[fangxinyu-re]

Annotated Bibliography

1-5 are books

1、BOWER, M. (2019). DESIGN OF TECHNOLOGY-ENHANCED LEARNING. [S.l.]: EMERALD GROUP PUBL. 

The book focuses on the challenge facing educators and researchers today-how to use contemporary technology to promote learning. The author has excellent professional literacy, so he puts forward a best practice to strengthen the design of learning environment, and combined with the related research of other digital media technologies such as Web2.0, social network, carefully analyzes the learning design principles of technology enhancement, and provides educators with practical methods and useful suggestions that can be used in teaching.

It contains many luxurious and practical examples, and I want to be a teacher in the future, this book gives me a lot of real cases of teaching, will provide me with great help and reference.

2、 Management Association, I. (2018). Social Media Marketing. 2nd ed. Hershey: IGI Global.

The book focuses on strengthened business processes in the digital age and technology-centric advances in business strategies. In the research and experiment, the author investigates the marketing methods of social media networks, such as email, and makes a deep understanding of consumer behaviour, strategic planning emotional brand, and so on. Through social media software, the author effectively attracts customers and enables enterprises to achieve long-term sustainable benefits.

I chose to read this book because I am very interested in social networks and online shopping, because I am also a part of consumers, by reading this book can learn some of the promotional skills of businesses to avoid blind shopping.

3、 Hertting, N. and Kugelberg, C. (n.d.). Local participatory governance and representative democracy. 1st ed. Routledge.

The article offers information on the spread of more than 500 public buildings in 11 cities in Europe through the use of media to reduce people's use and waste of energy. In the article, the author summarizes the different ways of providing information in different cities, and interviews with many construction professionals, which are professional and data. The study highlights the influence of social systems on individual behaviour, helping people regulate expression, protect energy, and reduce waste.

I think this is an essential book because I am from a developing country. Energy is precious to the world and people. Therefore, everyone should pay attention to the protection of resources and avoid excessive waste. Being able to change people's behaviours and habits through media communication has given me new inspiration and new thinking points.

4、Victoria A. & Kathleen M.(2019) Young People, Social Media and Health.Taylor & Francis

The book focuses on the impact of social media on the health of young people, as well as on how young people use social media healthily. On the one hand, they report on the impact on health and physical activity. On the other hand, the author points out that social media has opportunities and risks for the health of young people, so it provides a certain degree of advice to relevant educators and guardians.

Social media is now widely used as social software for young people, and it is necessary to understand the impact of it on the health of young people. Let me think of the problem of network security and network violence. At the same time, the book has rich examples and data analysis, so that the author's conclusions are very strong, and I agree with the author's point of view

5、 Danesi, M. (2017). Language, Society, and New Media: Sociolinguistics Today. 2nd ed. Routledge.

This book focuses on the structure of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, as well as the research chain between linguistics and new media. Digital media technology makes it easier for students without linguistic background to learn the relationship between language, society and ideology and culture. The book covers many essential topics, such as language cognition and language changes, illustrates these relationships from multiple perspectives, and extends to new media forms, such as Facebook.

This book takes an interdisciplinary approach. I think language is the spread of culture. The spread of today's culture requires the support of media technology. This book brought theoretical support to my gradual independent work, including some theoretical foundations of the relationship between linguistics and new media.

6、Faizi, R., Afia, A.E. & Chiheb, R.(2013). “Exploring the Potential Benefits of Using Social Media in Education”. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP). [Online].Available at:https://online-journals.org/index.php/i-jep/article/view/2836/2821[Accessed Oct. 2013] 

This article describes that digital media tools can improve the relationship between teachers and students and promote cooperation. Since students can work together through digital media technology to achieve a common goal, they become a part of people’s lives and change the traditional way of teaching. Through research and investigation, it is shown that most of the reasons for students’ poor academic performance and eccentric personality may not be enough to communicate with teachers. As a result, the feedback is vague, so that students cannot really understand. This paper gives examples of media tools such as facebook, email, which effectively improve students’ participation, such as voting and consulting data. To a large extent, the communication obstacles between students and teachers may be solved partially since face-to-face interaction is still an important factor in learning.

This article is most suitable for novices read this article because the examples which are provided are clear and relatable to the reader’s life. The author compares the characteristics of traditional education with that of digital media education and effectively describes the fundamental problems and solutions existing in traditional education, which makes the whole article very persuasive.

7、SALEH, A. (2018). ‘SOCIAL MEDIA IN EDUCATION: THE ABSENT ATTENDEE’. Problems of Education in the 21st Century.[Online] Available at:https://doaj.org/article/f0fb32ee2069455683abad27b8588149[Accessed 20th October 2018].

This research mainly discussed the connection between digital media and education, especially social media. The author presents social media technology as a way of connecting students to the whole society, which means that schools are not the only education venue. Saleh (2018) also emphasises the importance of exploring the application of social media as the core of education and the influence of media technology on students’ learning status. Digital media technology allows students to learn anywhere and possibly have a more meaningful learning experience. The author points out that both teachers and students need a series of training courses to improve their skills of using media technology, and agree with the study of digital media courses.

By reading this article, we can more clearly recognise the role of social media technology in promoting the development of education and convenience of study and life. Such as the daily use of mobile phones, computers, etc. This study not only provides theoretical knowledge but also is closer to the daily life of readers so that readers can fully understand social media and cause readers to reflect on it.

8、Missomelius, P. (2015). ‘Media Education, quo Vadis?’ Austria: Bundesministerium für Bildung.[Online] Available at:https://doaj.org/article/e39d318f0ef54359a35ed49c0f5287dc[Accessed: November 20th, 2018].

Missomelius believes that the key problems in the chaos and growth of educational institutions are the educational objectives, the reflection models and social structures needed to generate knowledge, and the conditions for a digital and informed media culture. While reflecting and thinking about the relationship between education and social structure, this paper puts forward an important point of view: education is one of the methods of cultural production, and all cultures need to be disseminated by the media. It shows that the system of education is not immutable and the means of education should be developed with the development of society.

It is a critical-thinking article, which solves my problem: why education can’t leave the media and provides theoretical support. This journal has a clear structure and logical organisation, and fully explains the causes of the educational crisis, and puts forward the prospect of the development of media education.

9、Smith, E.E. (2016). ‘” A real double-edged sword:” Undergraduate perceptions of social media in their learning.’ Computers & Learning. 103 pp. 44-58. [Online]Available at:https://ac.els-cdn.com/S0360131516301671/1-s2.0-S0360131516301671-main.pdf?_tid=a95abca9-1aa0-48dc-8023-1671da4e531f&acdnat=1548187068_bb5a6ddd718ff9c5591880052da6a18b[Accessed 30th December 2016].

This article shows that social media is a double-edged sword, the correct use of methods can help to learn, otherwise, it will hinder the efficiency of learning. This paper focuses on the application of digital media in undergraduate education, and deeply studies the students’ views on digital media technology from the initial reluctance to the positive changes after implementation, which proves the great development potential of digital media technology. The author thinks that digital media is convenient for students to communicate, but it may lead to distracting students. Therefore, especially in higher education, we need to pay more attention to the education of ‘digital culture’ and prepare ahead of time in order to learn better about the use of technology and reduce errors and obstacles.

This article with critical thinking is related to my future practice, which gives me a new point of attention and inspiration. So that I should not only focus on the advantages of social media but also analyze the obstacles to the development of social media and avoid too subjective thinking.

10、Verdegem, P. & Vanwynsberghe, H. (2013), "Integrating Social Media in Education", CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture.[Accessed November 20. 2018].

In this paper, the author puts forward a multi-level framework to bring social media literacy into the educational environment, including practical ability, cognitive ability, emotional ability, and so on. At the same time, the author thinks that students are users of new media, so it is necessary to bring social media into education and curriculum. On the theoretical level, the construction of social media literacy, including its relationship with the education system, is based on the concept of cultural capital put forward by Pierre Bourdieu.

This article provides much theoretical support for my independent homework, especially the integration of social media literacy into the multi-level framework of the educational environment. I very much agree with the author. At the same time, I think digital media technology should become one of the necessary skills for college students.

11、Shuiyun Liu, Liangliang Cai &Xia Zhao(2018), “he role of mass media in education policies: a Chinese case study” Available at:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1360080X.2018.1554548[Accessed December 2018].

This study is based on the quality assurance policy of higher education promulgated by China to further explore the role of mass media in education policy and implementation, including policy facilities, policy legitimacy and monitoring application. On the one hand, the author points out that the contribution of mass media in the field of education has not been paid enough attention to, on the other hand, the role of mass media in public discussion platform needs to be strengthened.

This paper mainly studies the development of media and education in China, which has certain limitations. Nevertheless, I should know more about the media situation in my country, understand the problems and advantages, to further develop the role of the media.

12、Burbules, N.C. (2016). ‘How We Use and Are Used by Social Media in Education.’ Educational Theory. [Online] 66(4) pp. 551-565. Available from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/edth.12188 [Accessed 10th January 2019]

In this paper, the author discusses the influence of various types of social media on the way people communicate, and the importance of social media on the educational environment. For example, APP users such as Facebook are mostly young people who share life and study on these social media and get some useful information they want. However, the author also reflects on social media, arguing that educators need to weigh the pros and cons of social media for education.

This is an article with critical thinking. Through reading, I feel that my way of thinking has become more comprehensive, exercising my ability to think independently, and I understand that social media need to participate wisely in education but to have a critical understanding of its limitations and dangers.

13、Davidson, A-L. & Fountain, R-M.(2013). ‘Social media in higher education：A look at participatory culture in graduate coursework.’ [Online]. Available at:https://doaj.org/article/d0f827cec53a47eb95e2b6ea22feacc4[Accessed Oct. 2013].

This article discusses the background of the time: college policy limits or bans the use of social networks in the classroom, hindering collaborative work between professors and computer media technology. The paper also gives an example of the successful experience of the two professors, describes the fundamental theories and concepts that the professor integrates Web2.0 into the postgraduate curriculum, and provides theoretical and research support for his argument.

This is old material, but I still choose to put it on my blog because this article is rich in examples and many celebrity comments, as well as the support of international associations, such as Siemens.

#research and enquiry #Annotated Bibliography

[flyingvgroupca]

The Best Strategy to Increase Traffic and Leads to Your Real Estate Website without Any Referrals, Facebook or Paid Ads

Is your real estate business relying on referrals to close more deals? Are you paying for Facebook or Instagram ads and not even breaking even? Are you looking for other ways to generate more traffic and leads, while increasing your ROI? Fact: the online space is no different from the offline world. Real estate transactions are based on trust, and trust takes time to build because it requires genuine conversations and multiple interactions before deals are successfully closed. Therefore, the issues causing stress and anxiety in the life of your prospect hold the key to building relationships with your target market. How, you may ask? Well, TV shows have mastered the formula. At the beginning of an episode, a problem is introduced, which is normally resolved by the end of the episode.  However, right before the episode ends, another problem is introduced, compelling viewers to watch the next episode. You can also use this formula effectively in your industry. Here’s how: Treat your content (article, blog post, podcast, etc.) like one continuous story. However,  instead of creating a problem or inventing anxiety, you’ll tap into your prospect’s existing anxiety about the real challenges they face already. I’m NOT referring to manipulation or exploitation tactics here. We’re talking about providing meaningful content ideas and relevant solutions to your prospects to solve a specific issue in their lives. This is the main reason you entered the real estate business in the first place, right? So… do you want to move prospects through your sales funnel with ease? Here's how your real estate experience and industry insights can transform this strategy into increased traffic and leads for your company. (1) Uncover the most significant problems and associated pain points that face your prospects Explain why it's a problem, and discuss the consequences of ignoring it. Highlight a few of the mistakes beginners make, and help them understand that there are more pitfalls out there. Example:

Aggravate the problem until the prospect realize the gravity of the situation, and desperately needs a way out, or a quick fix.

(2) Present the solution Your solution should solve their problem completely, not just relieve the symptoms or eliminate the negative consequences already present. (3) Lead prospects into your ultimate funnel

A marketing funnel is ideal for building trust with multiple prospects at the same time. Once they review your content they’ll learn more about you, as well as your real estate experience, offers, and other relevant information. Sooner rather than later, they’ll recognize that you: Understand their problem Know how to solve it, and Are a reliable and knowledgeable source. Pretty straightforward, isn't it? Unfortunately, this simple process is something real estate businesses continually ignore. Don’t fall into the same trap! Your real estate website requires an effective lead generator strategy! So, stop ignoring the best lead capture channel!  I’m referring to the second most visited website after Google, YouTube. If you’re watching videos online, then your prospects are probably doing the same thing. So, why not exploit this convenient platform for the benefit of your business? Here’s how to take full advantage of this channel, and out-smart your competition with awesome video marketing content.

The #1 Reason WHY Youtube Is Not Optional For Your Real Estate Company or WebSite

An increasing number of people are using YouTube on a daily basis.

Statista reported that YouTube accounts for 37% of ALL mobile internet traffic.

YouTube, on mobile alone, is reaching more 18-34 year olds in the US than any TV network.

Video content, especially on YouTube, simplifies the process of familiarizing people with real estate companies and agents. Plus, multiple marketing tests show that YouTube videos can rank on Google much faster and much easier than articles or blog posts. That’s not all! VIDEO beats all the other content media types since it communicates on a more personal level. However, creating video content is more challenging since it requires more time and a higher level of skill. Therefore, many people find it frustrating to create exceptional content on a regular basis, and ultimately choose to give up instead of forging ahead. But hopefully, this is not you! I trust that you’re a doer, and a go-getter, and can accomplish what your competitors can’t! Here’s what you’ll need to get started. Design your ultimate YouTube SEO strategy. Buy or custom create two agendas. You’ll need them to jot down ALL your ideas and titles for creating extraordinary content on an ongoing basis. I’m referring to: A yearly content marketing plan This helps you to prepare in advance, and set monthly and weekly achievable goals. You’ll be able to track and monitor your progress, and determine what works and what doesn’t. This information will allow you to make adjustments and improve your video marketing efforts over time. A content posting calendar + One or two additional social media content scheduling tools to help with that, because social media is also about automation and you can be certain that many of your competitors are already using SMM automation programs. However, most of them are doing it wrong, meaning that they just broadcast content, and forget to actively engage with their target prospects. For me, it makes sense and is so much easier to work with an offline agenda & make notes in a printed calendar, instead of depending on an online SaaS or mobile app. You want to spend less time on the computer (to better protect your eyes), and invest more effort into hand-crafting content (or at least titles, and their main points) In my case, this approach helps me to get a general view of what needs to be prioritized and provides me with a sense that I’m making significant progress on a regular basis, while avoiding procrastination. TIP: because these online content calendar tools are easily editable, you get the sense you can use them for great ROI. However, this very feature makes postponing as easy as entering the content. If you base this entire process 100% online, then you’ll more likely postpone creating & publishing content more often than you should. Plus, you may miss capturing some key content ideas. Believe it or not, the best content ideas still emerge from the offline environment, because it’s where you interact with other people, and use all your senses and instincts. Proper Content Marketing Research Starts Off Like This... Search for the best, most relevant keywords & topics related to your prospects: (1) Wants (2) Needs (3) Challenges (4) Concerns, and (5) Most Burning Questions. That’s the first step in securing long term YouTube rankings, and dominating real estate YouTube search queries. Top SEO and keyword research tools to use here, are SemRush, Ubersuggest, Ahrefs and Google AdWord’s Keyword Planner. Once you know exactly what your target prospects require from you, then move forward with the next step. Optimize your YouTube account.  If you’re new to YouTube marketing or haven’t set up your entire account yet, then listen closely. It is essential to attend to channel optimization first before addressing content optimization. Therefore, buying the perfect house first, before filling it with furniture.

Are You Guilty of These 3 YouTube Channel Optimization Blunders?

#1 - Sync the Look of Your YouTube Channel Page with Your Website or Alienate Leads and Customers You should have an identical or very similar color combination whenever you create an eye-catching top header, where you highlight… Your company name Your USP (unique selling proposition - what differentiates you from your competitors), Your brand/logo, as well as your social media & contact information. Here are some examples of real estate YouTube channels with simple yet outstanding design: 

Depending on your goal (to motivate visitors to join your funnel, subscribe to your channel, or contact you), you should design your YouTube header accordingly. For this you can use my prefered graphic design tool - Snappa - to create your own YouTube channel profile headers, as well as all your social media graphics. #2 - Write a Compelling ‘Why Me/Us’ description in the ‘About’ Section. The ‘About’ section of your channel gives you your ‘time to shine!’ and establish a strong connection to your prospective customers and investors. This is the space to share the reason why you’ve created your YouTube channel, and briefly explain why prospects should follow your video content. You can also tell potential customers to take other actions such as subscribe, join your mailing list, or call you. Examples:

Consistency is the key to establishing an effective real estate YouTube channel. It is essential to share the long-term vision of your company  through your channel’s content and engagement efforts. Here’s how to stand out in a crowded marketplace: Invent coined terms and acronyms. Connect old to new, make boring interesting. Create a vlog where you interview like-minded entrepreneurs, and different local business owners, regardless of whether they are working within the real estate industry or not. Spread the word about them, and they’ll reciprocate, in 9 out of 10 cases.  #3 - Optimize Your Playlists Creating a playlist will help you organize your content like a pro, and serve as a collection of real estate (and other relevant) videos. What an amazing way to bundle your buyer-oriented and seller-related videos, along with other high-value, significant topics. The playlist will allow users to view a stream of related videos under the same topic, or category. Here’s how real estate moguls, and one of my favorite business minds - Grant Cardone - manages his YouTube playlist:

Bonus Tip - listen to the comments of your viewers, and consider the feedback of your subscribers Reading your audience’s feedback is extraordinarily rewarding. However, this process can become time consuming, especially when your video content starts to take off. You could always get a team member or VA to handle this process later on. This approach gives you the chance to interact with prospects and leads and, more importantly, get their real-time, candid feedback on things such as: what they liked, what they did not like and what they wish to see in the future.  You can use this data to further enhance the channel and come up with new topic ideas and video content.

Do You Make These 5 Video Content Optimization Mistakes?

YouTube content optimization comes next. Here’s the first thing to fix. #1 - Create compelling headline titles that drive clicks and are not easy to ignore It is essential to create video titles that include relevant keywords, and can attract users to watch your videos instead of all the other available alternatives. This is the first rule to ranking higher on Google and YouTube for your desired keywords and key topics. The most effective way to create amazing headlines is to use this 3-step combo approach: What comes to mind (based on your experience) What the research tools uncover, and what your target prospects are telling you What your competitors are talking about (identify their best headlines) #2 - Write search-optimized descriptions, detailing each video. Some users even provide a full transcription of their video content, which tend to work wonders for SEO purposes and YouTube rankings. #3 - Use closed captions for the hearing impaired and foreign language speakers

Being sensitive to what your audience needs can go a long way. This includes providing caption text for individuals who cannot hear, or whose main language is not English.  Transcripts  and Google Translator Toolkit  can help in this regard. Making the effort to reach this type of audience could potentially impact you lead generation in a positive way. #4  - Use highly-relevant, custom thumbnails to increase your video CTR

In marketing, you have to adhere to the following principle: promise less, and deliver more. Thumbnails need to be highly relevant to your overall video content or viewers may feel disappointed if your content lacks substance. Sadly, most video creators have learned the science behind creating click-bait thumbnails. Yet, more often than not their content under delivers. #5  - Include relevant call-to-actions and annotations You can easily create call-to-actions (CTAs) using cards in your YouTube videos. You can have up to 5 cards in one video where you can choose whether to add an image, title or call-to-action text, depending on the type of card. In marketing, you have to adhere to the following principle: promise less, and deliver more. Thumbnails need to be highly relevant to your overall video content or viewers may feel disappointed if your content lacks substance. Sadly, most video creators have learned the science behind creating click-bait thumbnails. Yet, more often than not their content under delivers. #5  - Include relevant call-to-actions and annotations You can easily create call-to-actions (CTAs) using cards in your YouTube videos. You can have up to 5 cards in one video where you can choose whether to add an image, title or call-to-action text, depending on the type of card.

Example of a call-to-action popping up in a video of California-based Mainstreet Realtors: 

Bonus tip: Geotag your video. Geotagging enables you to associate your video with the GeoCoordinates of your real estate business’ location. This facilitates pick-up of your data by the search engines, therefore, including your page in the results on area searches that are most relevant to your viewers.

Providing your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) on the video will help viewers to connect with you when they reach your video. Video marketing is the exchange of knowledge and experience. Prospects need to feel your energy and understand your insights, things you've developed through practice and time. With the right content marketing plan and the organized approach of your team, you can provide the ideal solution to the biggest real estate challenges and concerns facing your prospects. Because you already know: people buy from other people that they know, like, and trust. That’s the best kept secret in boosting your real estate website traffic and lead numbers, while rendering competitors and their marketing campaigns irrelevant. With the right YouTube strategy, generating leads gets increasingly fascinating and exciting for the real estate industry. Since this channel is growing continuously, it proves to be ideal for ALL real estate companies, regardless of their size, experience or location. You’d be foolish not to leverage this incredible platform to secure your financial stability and grow your business. You should grab this opportunity before the marketplace gets more crowded or YouTube makes it harder for real estate agents and firms to tap into their large traffic polls. Thank you so much for reading The Best Strategy to Increase Traffic and Leads to Your Real Estate Website without Any Referrals, Facebook or Paid Ads. We really appreciate it! If you have any questions about our article, or can suggest any other topics you think we should explore, feel free to let us know. Be sure to sign-up for our newsletter to receive monthly emails on all of the latest trends and happenings in the digital marketing space. You will also receive our FREE E-Book with the Amazing Marketing Tools for Powerful Business Growth. Sign-up below! Also, if you received some value out of this article, please share with your friends or colleagues, or leave a comment/question below. We really appreciate you reading our blog and every share/comment means the world to us and allows us to continue producing valuable tools to help you grow your business! Share this PostAbout the Author

Robb Fahrion Facebook Twitter Google+Robb Fahrion is the Co-Founder and a Partner of Flying V Group. He is passionate about helping businesses grow using the power of the internet. Robb graduated from Chapman University in Orange, CA and currently resides in Costa Mesa, CA. Robb enjoys writing about digital marketing, helping his clients turn their dreams into reality, and is a HUGE Mike Trout fan. The Best Strategy to Increase Traffic and Leads to Your Real Estate Website without Any Referrals, Facebook or Paid AdsNovember 25, 2019What NEVER to Publish on a Real Estate Company Site or BlogNovember 19, 2019Real Estate SEO Tools Exposed: SEMrush vs Ahrefs vs MozPro Review (2019)November 11, 2019

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#increasesitetraffictorealestatewebsite #trafficwithoutpaidadsforrealestate #youtubeforrealestateseo

[mahesh-narale]

Digital Marketing Vs. Traditional Marketing: Which One Is Better?

1. What's the difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing, and why does it matter? 

Many small businesses struggle with deciding which type of marketing to do, because their budget will only stretch to one or the other, not both. The decisions that must be made are not easy: which type of marketing will give me the most bang for my buck? How do I know if my marketing is working? Who should I trust with my marketing? Should I do it myself? The answers may surprise you. To simplify the terms, the use of print ads on newspapers and magazines is a simple example of traditional marketing. Other examples include flyers that are put in mailboxes, commercials both on TV and radio and billboards. On the other hand, when a business invests on building a website, advertising the brand name through different social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, this kind strategy is called digital marketing.

2.  Benefits of Traditional Marketing

You can easily reach your target local audience. For example, a radio ad might play in one location: your city or region. Or mailbox flyers will go to households in a select number of suburbs.

The materials can be kept. The audience can have a hard copy of materials of which they can read or browse through over and over again.

It's easy to understand. It can be easily understood by most people because they are already exposed to this kind of strategy.

Neuroscience seems to support the benefits of hard copy marketing. A study sponsored by Canada Post and performed by Canadian neuro-marketing firm TrueImpact compared the effects of paper marketing (direct mail pieces, in this case) with digital media (email and display ads).

The technologies used in this study were eye-tracking and high resolution EEG brain wave measurement. The three key metrics evaluated in the study were cognitive load (ease of understanding), motivation (persuasiveness), and attention (how long subjects looked at the content).

Direct mail was easier to process mentally and tested better for brand recall.  According to the report,

Direct mail requires 21% less cognitive effort to process than digital media (5.15 vs. 6.37), suggesting that it is both easier to understand and more memorable. Post-exposure memory tests validated what the cognitive load test revealed about direct mail’s memory encoding capabilities. When asked to cite the brand (company name) of an advertisement they had just seen, recall was 70% higher among participants who were exposed to a direct mail piece (75%) than a digital ad (44%).

3.  The Downside to Traditional Marketing

There is very little interaction between the medium used and the customers. It is more of providing information to the public that the brand exists with the hope of these people patronizing the brand.

Print or radio advertisements can be very costly. Printing materials can be expensive and you need to hire people to distribute these.

Results on this marketing strategy cannot easily be measured. Was the campaign successful?

4.  Benefits of Digital Marketing

You can target a local audience, but also an international one. Further, you can tailor a campaign to specific audience demographics, such as gender, location, age and interests. This means your campaign will be more effective.

Your audience can choose how they want to receive your content. While one person likes to read a blog post, another person likes to watch a YouTube video. Traditional marketing doesn't give the audience a choice. Most people hate receiving sales flyers in their mailbox or phone calls at inconvenient times on stuff that they have little interest in.  Online people get the choice to opt in or out of communications and often it is relevant because they were the ones searching for it in the first place.  Don’t underestimate the power of market segmentation and tailored marketing.

Interaction with your audience is possible with the use of social media networks. In fact, interaction is encouraged. Traditional marketing methods don't allow for audience interaction. You can encourage your prospects, clients and followers to take action, visit your website, read about your products and services, rate them, buy them and provide feedback which is visible to your market.

Digital marketing is cost-efficient. Though some invest on paid ads online; however, the cost is still cheaper compared to traditional marketing.

Data and results are easily recorded. With Google Analytics and the insights tools offered by most social media channels, you can check on your campaigns at any time. Unlike traditional marketing methods, you can see in real time what is or is not working for your business online and you can adapt very quickly to improve your results.

Level playing field:  Any business can compete with any competitor regardless of size with a solid digital marketing strategy.  Traditionally a smaller retailer would struggle to match the finesse of the fixtures and fittings of its larger competitors.  Online, a crisp well thought out site with a smooth customer journey and fantastic service is king – not size.

Real time results: you don’t have to wait weeks for a boost to your business like you would have to waiting for a fax or form to be returned.  You can see the numbers of visitors to your site and its subscribers increase, peak trading times, conversion rates and much more at the touch of a button.

Brand Development: A well maintained website with quality content targeting the needs and adding value to your target audience can provide significant value and lead generation opportunities.  The same can be said for utilising social media channels and personalised email marketing.

Viral: how often do your sales flyers get passed around instantly by your customers and prospects?  Online, using social media share buttons on your website, email and social media channels enables your message to be shared incredibly quickly.  If you consider the average Facebook user has 190 friends of which an average of 12% see their liked posts – your one message has actually been seen by 15 new prospects. Now imagine a number of them also like and share your message and their friends do the same?  That's why high-quality content is so important.

5. which kind of marketing is better?

Well, we would recommend both. Obviously, we are passionate about digital marketing, because we know that it works. But we do use traditional marketing materials, too.

A 2009 study conducted by Bangor University and branding agency Millward Brown also used fMRI to study the different effects of paper and digital media.

Some of their key conclusions were:

·         Physical material is more “real” to the brain.  It has a meaning, and a place. It is better connected to memory because it engages with its spatial memory networks.

·         Physical material involves more emotional processing, which is important for memory and brand associations.

·         Physical materials produced more brain responses connected with internal feelings, suggesting greater “internalization” of the ads.

6. How We Use Both Digital & Traditional Marketing

Our traditional marketing methods support our digital marketing efforts. The two do not operate in exclusion from each other. But we only use hard copy marketing materials to further strengthen a relationship with a contact, referral partner or client. We don't invest in television or radio ads, for example, but we will give brochures to someone who is interested in our services.

Rather than taking an all or nothing approach, it appears that a multi-channel approach that leverages the unique benefits of paper with the convenience and accessibility of digital will perform best.

#digital marketing #traditional marketing #difference between digital marketing and traditional marketing #digital marketing course #Digital India

[advancingretail]

CART Weekly Report 7/25/19

We are excited to announce that CART is growing. Join us as we welcome, Abbie Weiss, Head of Innovation Programming for CART!

DISCOMFORT IS NECESSARY FOR INNOVATION | TedX

What is the core element of innovation? Sterling Hawkins explores discomfort, a key ingredient of innovation. Through weaving personal, and business story framed through reflecting back to  MacGyver, ’80’s tv show, Sterling connects us to the complexity of innovation through discomfort.

MY COMPLIMENTS TO THE CHEF, ER, ROBOT | Wall Street Journal

Gary’s Take: Robotics and automation is coming to food preparation at an increasing pace. We're seeing machines for grilling burgers, machines for making salads, sushi automation, and even making dosa. Aside from the obvious increase in efficiency and consistency, automation in food prep opens the door to efficient customization - increasingly important as growing numbers of consumers have food allergies, diet and lifestyle preferences, and food requirements driven by health conditions. We are already seeing a convergence of the massive healthcare and food industries as big data, cutting edge nutrition science, and expanded food product information all come together focused on improving the wellbeing of the individual. Food preparation automation is only going to help speed this convergence.

FROM 'BUY WHAT WE HAVE' TO THE 'CONNECTED CUSTOMER' | Wall Street Journal

CART’s Take: Great article that calls out the ability retailers have to engage with the customer at all times, anywhere and everywhere, and to be contextually relevant, providing meaningful value to the customer rather than just offering and promoting mass products as was done in the past.

MOBILE IS ALWAYS LOCAL: THOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF ONLINE-TO-OFFLINE COMMERCE | Street Fight Magazine

CART’s Take:  Mobile allows retailers to respond in real-time to the customer based on time and place. To be contextually relevant and support local businesses.

WALMART SHAKES THINGS UP, FURTHER INTEGRATING ONLINE AND PHYSICAL STORE TEAMS | RetailWire

Sterling’s Take: These kinds of things should start to be routine. It’s not rocket science that consumers want one experience across all the touchpoints and our organizations can be geared to serve that. And at the same time, things like merchandising stores is a unique function to stores themselves and that necessitates a little more focus. I think Walmart is setting a new norm.

HAPPENINGS:

ASK THE AMAZON EXPERTS - ECOMMERCE IN THE AGE OF ‘I’” THE ROLE OF PERSONALIZATION AND TECHNOLOGY FOR ONLINE BUSINESSES with Gary Hawkins and Natalie Taylor Content Marketing Writer, Feedvisor - Archived from Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019 11 a.m. PT  |  2 p.m. ET  |  7 p.m. UK

UPCOMING RETAIL TOMORROW INNOVATION DAYS/EVENTS

FOOD CITY - July 25, 2019

WEIS MARKETS - August 8, 2019

WAKEFERN - August 21, 2019

IMPERIAL DISTRIBUTORS - September 5, 2019

CGA STRATEGIC CONFERENCE 2019 - September 29-October 1, 2019

RETAIL REVOLUTION AT PORTLAND STATE - October 24, 2019

INNOVATION CULTURE with Sterling Hawkins and John Golden CSMO at Pipeliner CRM and Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World's Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling.

THE FUTURE IS NOW -- IGNITE: ECOMMERCE LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE Tuesday, August 6th, 2019, 9:00am – 5:00pm, Chicago

OUTLOOK LEADERSHIP - August 11-14, 2019 in Asheville, NC

The convenience industry’s premier, invitation-only event, that you cannot afford to miss. In a world of accelerating change, where we are going and how do we build our organizations to thrive there? Sterling Hawkins will take attendees on a retail journey. C-Store operators can register today at https://outlookleadership.com/ usingInvite Code: power

REFLEXIONS 2019: INTELLIGENT RETAIL - August 12-15, 2019 at Caesars Place in Las Vegas

GROCERYSHOP - September 15-18, 2019 at the Venetian in Las Vegas

Preliminary Agenda

Speakers

Apply for Emerging Technology Spotlight

Minding the GAPS - CGA Strategic Conference 2019 - Mission Hills Country Club in Rancho Mirage, September 29-October 1, 2019

Applications to present at CGA are due August 1, 2019

GMDC Self-Care Summit - October 3 thru 7, 2019 in Indianapolis, IN

X/Specs 2019 - October 15 thru 17, 2019 at the Waldorf Astoria, Orlando

Store Design in the Age of “I” - Wednesday, 11:30am-12:15pm

SPECS Show 2020 - The ForeFront of Physical Retail - March 15-17, 2020, Gaylord Texan, Dallas

CART COMMUNITY. GET ON THE INSIDE. MEMBERSHIP HAS BENEFITS.

Become part of the epicenter of retail innovation exclusive network. The place where retail decision makers and solution providers come together to advance retail into the future.

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FOR RETAILERS>> Proven programs to advance your business

FOR SOLUTIONS>> Your growth engine into retail

VIEW ALL SOLUTIONS HERE

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Quote of the Week: A leader is someone who demonstrates what's possible.

#cart #advancingretail #advancing retail #cartisadvancingretail #retail #retailers #independentretailer #independent retailers #retailindustry #retail industry #grocery #groceryindustry #supermarket #supermarketindustry #tech #technology #technews #newsinsight #technewsinsight #innovation #innovationculture #events #signupnow #signup now #applyNow #resource #retail resources #retailsolutions #retail solutions #innovationdays

[oliviathomasba2b]

Branding - Websites and getting seen:

Mission Statement:

 Have a clear, precise and simple statement about what you're trying to achieve.

Choose a market - who you want to identify to and with

Basic Ingredients:

Product differentiation -  

Product relevance - relevant for you and client (present 2D animations if you’re applying to do 2D)

Esteem - be a friendly person, open so that people are comfortable contacting you

Knowledge - Clients knowledge of your company/what you're offering

Consider:

Little ways to make your work stand out.

 A logo - an identifier (visual medium for a visual audience)

Fonts - only have one or two and stick to them (think about what you use. Calligraphy style font may give the wrong impression for 3D animator?)

Quality, not quantity.

Being found online = look up longtail keywords and google search console.

Longtail Keywords:

Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific keyword phrases that visitors are more likely to use when they’re closer to a point-of-purchase or when they're using voice search. They’re a little bit counter-intuitive, at first, but they can be hugely valuable if you know how to use them.

Managing long-tail keywords is simply a matter of establishing better lines of communication between your business and the customers who are already out there, actively shopping for what you provide.

Think about it: if you google the word “sofa” (a very broad keyword sometimes referred to as a “head term”) what are the chances you’re going to end up clicking through to a sale? But if you google “elm wood veneer day-bed” you know exactly what you’re looking for and you’re probably prepared to pay for it then and there.

Google Search Console:

Search Console tools and reports help you measure your site's Search traffic and performance, fix issues, and make your site shine in Google Search results.

Logos:

What does it need to be?:

unique

simple

bold

appropriate

What type of logo:

wordmark

lettermark

brandmark

or combination of the above

Fonts:

When considering fonts there is an array you can choose from:

bold

refined

elegant

playful

professional

formal

casual

But it’s important to understand what it needs to signify. If you’re a 3D animator, maybe a handwritten, caligraphy style of font won’t really suit and give the wrong impression? Each one will suggest different things, therefore maybe I first need to think about what I want mine to suggest and then find some that work with this? Maybe it’s also a good idea to look at who else uses them and how this may affect my use of them. Is there any bad or good connections/connotations to them? Each font will have different ‘add ons’ and therefore some may have a family of different wights so making it more usable. It’s also important to think about how fonts will work on the internet and screens - will various styles work across all networks and mediums? 

The article attached below discusses the impression different fonts can create and how using certain ones may evoke certain feelings - something to learn which can ad my work and choice of fonts.  

The science behind fonts (and how they make you feel)

Know the Client/Customer:

The more you know about a customer the better you are able to communicate with them. If you know what they want and where to find them to tell them about your product or service. 

To know the relevance you must understand your customer and therefore tailor your work towards them. 

Choose a market.

Companies like Abercrombie and Fitch and Hollister are fashion brands that promote their clothing to a yonger audiecne through emplying models and even placing topless models outside their stores to encourage people to come in. They’ve identified that their traget are younger boys and girls 13-25ish, and know that they have aspirations to look like various people and like this kind of image, therefore they use it to their advantage in a way to create more sales. 

Ways to communicate with your customer/employer/client:

E-mail - sending emails to people (permeable by a person and not a company) asking for feedback on work, reels or for work opportunities. 

Advertising - 

Business & Social networking - Attend events and showings in order to create a contact list and friends in the industry

Exhibitions - Clients may attend your exhibitions and notice your work.

Seminars -

Cold calling -

Social Media - Creating an active presence online is a great way to reach audiences locally and around the world.

The current market:

The current market and society are in an age where everyone is more health conscious and more aware of the effects on the environment. Due to this companies are adjusting their branding to ensure they aim their products and sell them to this audience. Ways some companies have done this is like McDonald's who now offers a larger range of food including fruit, vegetables and salads:

Brands are incorporating fair trade more into their products due to the growing concern and awareness of labour and work issues in third world countries: 

I’ve recently seen a lot of advertisement from Tesco’s, who is stating that the chocolate they sell is from fair trade and sustainable sources like the ‘Rainforest Alliance. Therefore more people will feel comfortable buying this product from the stores knowing that it is ethical.

This was also released on March 6th and is still being advertised now, which is convenient since we’re approaching Easter which is a notoriously chocolate centred ‘holiday’/event. This to me is a great thing and incentive for people to buy their chocolate since I personally feel better buying some that are Rainforest Alliance Certified but is clearly been shown to the public now for a reason.

McDonald’s uses the ‘monopoly’ game as an incentive for customers to keep coming back and to buy more and more of their products with the prospect of winning prizes. 

12 magically meticulous design style guides

The article attached talks all about how styling works:

A style manual, or style guide, is a set of standards for the design of documents, website pages, signage, and any other form of other brand identifier. The reason for their existence is to ensure complete uniformity in style and formatting wherever the brand is used. They cover everything from how and where the logo is used to the brand colours and typography rules.

It discusses various brands and companies and how their stying is informed and created.

The average branch might look as though a bunch of squatters decided to hold a jumble sale in a derelict factory, but hipster bazaar Urban Outfitters takes its visual identity very seriously, as a quick flick through its brandbook will reveal. The 42-page guide covers everything from Urban Outfitters' history and philosophy through to logo usage, typography, photography methodology and guidelines on the tone of voice to be used in communications.

#personalbranding