Physics and design win again, as a million year old tool gets a more productive makeover.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9_9wmjK3j8
The new and improved Vipukirves(Leverax) uses a “unique lever action” that is “considerably stronger than a traditional axe” to separate a log into sections, allowing the user to easily create a pile of firewood in seconds. The ax is painted in traffic-light red and yellow to make it easier to spot if left on the ground.
When you say “Do not track”… the web hears… well… nothing apparently.
Yahoo joined a list of, well, a lot of companies not paying heed to browser “Do not track” settings. Yahoo initially stopped honoring Internet Explorer DNT requests when Microsoft turned the feature on by default.
Even Google, whose Chrome Browser includes DNT settings says “At this time, most web services, including Google’s, do not alter their behavior or change their services upon receiving Do Not Track requests.”
This probably shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Lorrie Faith Cranor, who led development of P3P more than a decade ago, told Ars in 2012 that “every time we come up with a technical solution that protects privacy, the websites come up with something they want to do that is broken by this privacy protection.”
As this position becomes uniform across the industry, U.S. tech companies will ignore the instructions stamped on the fronts of subpoenas urging them not to alert subjects about data requests, industry lawyers say. Companies that already routinely notify users have found that investigators often drop data demands to avoid having suspects learn of inquiries.
Twitter is rolling out a new look for account profiles:
(More info here)
Why it may matter:
The new look is designed to appeal to new users, and strengthen engagement. Prepare for new followers who are less familiar with Twitter syntax and etiquette. (Translation… your mom will be here soon!)
Content discovery is addressed. Your most engaging tweets, as well as “pinned” tweets can help you make sure your best content isn’t lost in the Twitter fire hose.
Photos and Video take a front seat. They look great, and the user is able to filter by those post types, specifically
Content is still consumed in the newsfeed. I would venture to guess that similar content filtering and discovery will make its way to the newsfeed soon… but let’s face it… few of your followers are visiting your profile.
What you should do about it
When it becomes available… use the new profile to put your best face out there. Whether you are an individual or a brand, it’s worth making it look good.
If your Twitter strategy is taking a back seat, it’d be worth keeping an eye on your numbers in the coming months. This may start drawing some new users.
Continue to prioritize the news feed. While it’ll be nice to make this look good.. your highest priority should still be making sure your content looks its absolute best in the users newsfeed.
The way I portray myself online, isn’t me. It’s the me I want you to think I am.
The truth is, the better my life looks, the better I look. But, the more I allow you to see the way my REAL life looks, the more God has a chance to show His glory through me.
This is a car commercial… But it makes the point well.
I talk, daily, with a lot of people who manage a lot of Facebook brand pages. From major national retailers, to a small local coffee shop. We all seem to be trying to game understand the news feed and how to get our content in front of users on Facebook.
We’re quick to blame algorithm changes, or a greedy “pay up” approach, but the truth is… it still just comes down to our content.
The new feed is built, and continually rebuilt to display content it thinks the user wants to see. That’s content from friends, family and brands.
When we post content that tells the user how awesome WE are, we post content they have little interest in, or get little value from. It isn’t that Facebook just wants us to pay. Facebook isn’t showing that to our fans… because our fans don’t want to see it.
While not perfect for this measurement, a readily available public metric of engagement for any Facebook page is the “talking about this” stat. Brands that are largely self promotional (see Coca-cola, and McDonalds) see that stat at about 1% of their overall “fan” base.
Brands that present content of value (often publishers… see Mashable, or USA Today) are seeing that number closer to 10-15% of their fan base.
As brands lament the lower impressions being given to inbound links, those publisher pages are primarily all links.
So, as we watch our content impressions drop, the sobering reminder is that it’s probably our fault.
The system is neither new, nor sketchy. It’s been in place for years, and it’s about as unsketchy as an anti-copyright infringement system can get. It allows Dropbox to block pre-selected files from being shared from person-to-person (thus keeping Dropbox from getting raided by the Feds), without their anti-infringement system having any idea what most of your files actually are.
