The veil is lifting on X, exposing a global web of propagandists and freelancing grifters - and it’s total mayhem out there.

Everyone has been anticipating this for a few days now, but Nikita Bier (head of product at X) finally dropped the bomb: “In a couple of hours, we’ll be rolling out About This Account globally, allowing you to see the country or region where an account is based. This will be accessible by tapping the signup date on profiles.”

If you’ve been on X, then you surely cannot escape the many corners with sizable propaganda effect. If anything, we have reached a level of propaganda fatigue I didn’t think was possible. Legions upon legions from every ideological persuasion pounced on a list of accounts they taunted or were taunted by. From Ethiopia to India to Thailand to Saudi Arabia to Russia, and around the world you go!

In every corner, there are operatives being exposed. There is an independent journalist here. There is an activist there. There are mercenaries! So many mercenaries! They say this is a public square, but it is a war zone.

The Great Unmasking

Within hours of the rollout, the platform descended into chaos. Users noticed that clicking on an account’s join date now opens a tab showing the country or region in which the account is located. Simple enough. Elegant, even. What happened next was anything but.

A prominent account called “MAGA NATION” with over 392k followers turned out to be posting from Eastern Europe, not America. Other examples include “Dark MAGA” based in Thailand, “MAGA Scope” run from Nigeria, and an “America First” account operated from Bangladesh. The irony of “America First” coming from Bangladesh. You can’t make this up.

But it’s not just the MAGA crowd. The BBC found examples of accounts sharing anti-Trump posts that were actually based outside the US. One account with 52k followers claimed to be a “proud Democrat” and “professional Maga hunter.” The user appears to have deleted their profile after it was revealed they were based in Kenya. Everyone is in on the game. Everyone.

This is not about right vs. left. This is about everywhere vs. everyone.

The Iranian Paradox

And then there’s Iran, where the feature exposed something far more sinister than mere grifting.

The new feature has exposed accounts in Iran that access the platform using what Iranians call “white SIM cards,” which allow unrestricted Internet access as part of the so-called “tiered Internet” system in Iran. In a country where X has been blocked since 2009, most Iranians are forced to use VPNs. But a select few don’t need to.

Among those that appear to have unrestricted access to the world wide web are the Fars and Tasnim news agencies, both affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), as well as several hard-line lawmakers that support restricted Internet access.

The same people advocating for restricted Internet access for ordinary Iranians are posting freely on a platform banned for everyone else. The regime’s propagandists don’t need VPNs because the regime gave them a pass. Few people in Iran are left feeling good about this.

Some users pushed back, posting screenshots showing X still listed Iran as their connection country even while they said they were using VPNs. The digital-rights group IRCF warned that some widely used circumvention tools can leak signals that leave a user’s underlying Iranian connection partly visible.

Iranian activists are being outed via “VPN privilege.” A tool meant to expose propagandists is now potentially exposing dissidents. The road to hell, paved with good intentions, etc.

Scotland Is Apparently in Tehran

Just when you thought it couldn’t get weirder, enter the Scottish independence movement. Several prominent X accounts posing as supporters of Scottish independence are in fact operated from inside Iran, exposing another layer of the regime’s online propaganda machine.

The investigation shows that these accounts, which present themselves as Scottish activists through local imagery, regional vocabulary, and cultural references, were active during the recent 12-day Iran–Israel conflict. For a brief period, they even issued posts supportive of Tehran. When the regime imposed a nationwide internet shutdown during the conflict, all of these accounts went silent at the exact same time.

Why would Iran care about Scottish independence? Why does any foreign influence campaign exist? To exploit weaknesses, in this case, to create chaos.

Each profile changed its username only once at the moment of registration, mirroring a centrally designed template. Their posting rhythms are unusually regular, lacking the natural variability of authentic human users. Their profile pictures are AI-generated. It’s all manufactured. An assembly line of fake Scots advocating for breaking up the United Kingdom, run from Tehran with government bandwidth.

The Grift Economy

Let’s talk about the mercenaries. Not everyone exposed is a state actor. Many are just hustlers who figured out that rage equals engagement, and engagement equals payment through X’s monetization system.

VPN usage doesn’t explain accounts with thousands of posts over months, all originating from the same foreign location, all focused on American political rage-bait, all monetizing engagement through Musk’s payment system.

This is the grift economy. Some dude in Nigeria figured out that posting “TRUMP 2028! PATRIOTS UNITE!” generates more engagement than whatever else he could be doing. Can you blame him? X created a system where outrage pays, and then acted shocked when people from everywhere showed up to collect.

The account MAGA NATION has not addressed its location and continues to post at a healthy clip. One of its most recent posts asks if its followers think Hillary Clinton should be arrested. Business as usual. The grift doesn’t stop just because you got caught.

Vitalik Was Right (Probably)

Vitalik Buterin weighed in, predicting it’ll work short-term but state actors will adapt fast, restoring chaos in six months. He’s spot on.

Buterin’s critique centers on the feature’s vulnerability to manipulation, predicting that within six months, foreign political troll accounts will successfully spoof their locations to appear as though they operate from the United States or the United Kingdom. He argued that creating a single account with a fraudulent location and growing it to a million followers would be straightforward through methods such as renting passports, phone numbers, and IP addresses.

The feature will crush the low-level grift economy. The guy in Bangladesh running “American Patriot 1776” will have to find another hustle. But the professionals? Others say it’s an unfair game-ender, because it exposes real locations for honest users, while the most sophisticated bad actors will easily hide behind false ones.

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams called it “psychotic” and questioned its mandatory nature, stating “opt-in doxxing is fine, mandatory doxxing is psychotic.” He’s not wrong. The crypto community is especially spooked because the feature’s implementation appears particularly concerning for crypto users, given the industry’s history of targeted attacks and kidnappings related to digital asset holdings.

The Privacy Paradox

The controversy appears particularly stark when contrasted with platform owner Elon Musk’s March 2022 statement promising that X would “do whatever it takes to protect the rights of users to remain anonymous, as they would otherwise face persecution from employers or risk of physical harm.”

So which is it? Anonymity for those who need it, or transparency for the public square?

X allows users to adjust whether or not the feature displays their country or if it only displays their geographical region. Originally, the company had said this would be an option in areas where free speech could have penalties. But that creates its own problem. If you’re choosing to hide your country, you’re essentially signaling you have something to hide.

Buterin warned that even a small amount of location data could expose high-risk users to real-world harm, especially high-worth crypto holders or individuals living under restrictive governments.

The same feature protecting Americans from foreign propaganda is potentially exposing Iranian dissidents to the regime.

Virtual Walls for a Virtual World

Maybe we do need buffers - virtual walls like De-Propagandized Zones (DPZs). Imagine geofencing your feed to your own region or country. A “Local Only” mode may just help turn down the temperature.

I’m half-joking. But only half.

The thing is, we spent decades celebrating the borderless internet. Information wants to be free! The global village! Turns out the global village has a lot of people who want to burn down your specific house.

This immediate impact is a jolt of awareness, because both the public and policymakers can now see concrete examples of how outsiders try to shape American political conversations from afar. This awareness is a double-edged sword though. On one hand, it empowers users to identify foreign propaganda. On the other hand, it injects a new layer of skepticism into political discourse - people may reflexively dismiss opposing views as “just foreign bots.”

Which is exactly what will happen. Every argument will now end with “show me your location.” Lose an argument? “You’re a bot from Pakistan.” It’s going to be insufferable.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The fallout of this update is going to take a few weeks to fully sink in. But here’s what I think happens:

The freelance grifters? They’re toast and back to the pros we go. Maybe.

The state actors? Buterin argues that while obtaining fake locations for a million accounts might prove moderately difficult, creating a single account with a fraudulent location and growing it to a million followers would be straightforward. They’ll adapt. They always do.

And for the rest of us? We’ll spend the next six months checking everyone’s location details before engaging in any argument, only to realize that the tag doesn’t really prove anything because VPNs exist and sophisticated actors have already adapted.

It is unclear how this experiment will play out, and I think it will take a good 6-12 months for us to fully realize its impact. One can’t help shake the feeling that we are erecting virtual walls in a clear rebuke to the globalization of the public square.

The internet was supposed to connect us all, but manipulation at scale is turning out to be unsustainable.

And that, is a problem that location tags cannot solve.

Ever since we adopted ComedyTech at the core of our tech map, it became clear that we have to take a holistic approach rather than a transactional one. Let me explain. If you’ve ever purchased a ticket through TicketMaster or Eventbrite, you’ll notice how there’s event discovery, by address or date. You can buy your ticket, select your seat, and so on. It’s a generally smooth and seamless experience. But once you purchase your ticket and receive your email confirmation, the transaction has completed.

There’s something missing. The rest of the experience is disjointed. In a recent Denton Record-Chronicle article that spotlighted the 2nd Denton Laughs at Royal YUM, where the crowd, wielding nothing but a QR code on their tickets, had the power to financially reward their favorite comedians, catapulting the night beyond mere laughs into a real stake in the game. This echoes the journey Nido detailed in his blog, where he described our pivot from a nebulous wedge strategy to a concrete tool for enhancing community spirit through comedy.

Dallas-Fort Worth-based comedian Jacob Marshall was voted first place by the audience during his stand-up routine at Denton Laughs 2 at Royal Yum restaurant," the Denton Record-Chronicle reported. This demonstrates the real-time impact and engagement our app fosters among audiences.

With new app created by locals, stand-up comics in Denton compete for a bigger cut of ticket revenue, Denton-Record Chronicle, March 31, 2024

Holy shit! We are revolutionizing comedy! We’re not just participants, no sirree, we’re pioneers.

Practically, this means that we have identified the components that make up the creation of a comedy show when we produced ours:

• Venue

• Lineup

• Tickets

• Web page

Venue

Luckily for us, I had one at my disposal. But a reliable way to find interested venues is not currently available. An advantage of playing house with a venue was that I also knew what I wanted as a venue owner, without having to second guess it. It’s simple: more diners. Here’s an inside view of our venue’s page views on Yelp.

Notice that climb? That’s not a joke. This is real, tangible proof that has an even more real effect on the bottom line. It translated to a 30% increase in sales during the event weeks. That’s the kind of math a venue owner can appreciate.

This translated to over 400 new subscribers in the span of 2 weeks to our venue’s newsletter. I mean, I thought I was killing it with 891 subscribers to panda mistake. To a venue, that can be very valuable. Now I know that my tech knowledge allows me to use enterprise level tools on a local restaurant, which means that I understand that for most local restaurant owners, email lists aren’t as valuable as they are to me. Restaurants are our primary non-comedy club venue to host a comedy show. While breweries, bars and cafes are more popular spaces for open mic’s, restaurants offer an opportunity to a different demographic, not typically found in those spaces.

With the understanding that our users prefer an abstraction and an executive level view of things, we can build a plethora of marketing tools for venues built around the customers who opt-in to receive relevant marketing content.

Lineup

Producers don’t really need software to put a lineup together. They know who would be a fit for any project. They know who lives where and what their preferences are. But once they have gone through their DM’s and texts and confirmed their lineup, they may need to mention them in the event description.

One of the unexpected surprises from our Denton Laughs experience was that comedians felt our voting format was like a “competition”. It wasn’t something you would do regularly. But that doesn’t mean fans aren’t interested in ranking performances and feeling more engaged with the art of comedy.

Because.. we’ve been talking to the comedians and holy.. they hardly ever do talk to their fans. They don’t even know who likes them past the dimly lit laughing faces, fans are a crowd. The crowd either loves you or hates you. I thought that was weird. Here I am trying to know my customers and these guys have no idea who wants to see them again? That’s an easy problem to fix. There are many problems that can easily be fixed in this forgotten lost Amazonian tribe that is comedy.

Tickets

We weren’t sure what we wanted at first, but there are some obvious and less obvious common features in the industry. For example, tiered pricing based on time of purchase is very common. Discounts and promotions, less so. The thing that would put someone off selling tickets on one of the big sits is that they take a big bite off the sales of tickets. For example, Eventbrite charges 3.7% + $1.79 per sold ticket + 2.9% of the total order. I mean, damn..

Now the reason why most barebones ticketing solutions charge ~$1 per ticket + order processing fees is because they don’t have the massive list of event goers that any one of the big and popular sites have. But in the case of standup comedy shows, this is less relevant because more than 50% of comedy show tickets are sold at the door, with most customers unknown. And I think there’s an opportunity to get to know them better.

Web page

No one wants to spend time fiddling with websites, but a basic event page would do. A place that people can buy tickets on. Something to maybe showcase the profiles of the comedians, venue details, menus, schedule, etc.

And with that, you have all the pieces to put together a comedy show. These tools exist for none of them are new or exciting in themselves. But no one has ever put them together in a way that allows you to build a full comedy experience, with an infinite feedback loop.

And as we build our beachhead, I realize that none of it can happen without being a part of the community we are building this around. Alright, back to work then. ComedyTech won’t build itself!

After an exciting 36 days in Texas's vibrant DFW comedy scene, Fancrowd's home, Mo and I were targeting comedians to create buzz for our app as part of our wedge strategy. Yet, our compass was off by a few clicks, our so-called wedge strategy was more a hidden gem, a role cloaked not just in laughter but in a profound community spirit. My favorite definition of a wedge is from Lenny Rachitsky: “In business, as in rock cutting, a wedge is made up of two parts: 1) the right tool and 2) the right place to strike”. Here's a peek into the journey of two comedy outsiders discovering the genuine wedge that took them by surprise.

Off the bat, the comedy community's energy was felt. By Day 2, we had Royal YUM in Denton ready as our stage for our first show 'Denton Laughs,' marking the start of an exciting journey from securing our venue, building the stage with our own hands, booking comedians, to daily promotions leading up to the event. Despite the initial ticket sale challenges, Day 8 brought unexpected allies from Ericka Estrella, a local photographer expanding her comedy portfolio, and Alfred Kainga, a seasoned comic prepping for his Netflix special who asked to join our lineup. Their involvement catalyzed a wave of interest, culminating in a sold-out show by Day 11. The success of the show wasn't just in the numbers; it was a vibrant showcase of community, laughter, and the perfect atmosphere, proving that our efforts had tapped into something far greater than just comedy.

After the community embraced our initiative, it became clear that a strategic shift was necessary; our initial wedge approach needed refinement. After all, our business is not in producing or managing shows. Despite the event's success and positive feedback, the logistical challenges shed light on an overlooked asset: producers. These key players bridge venues, comics, and audiences, shaping memorable experiences while using 3-5 platforms to do so. This realization inspired Mo to rapidly start building Fancrowd's answer to ticketing for the comedy industry, made specifically for comedy show producers, transforming our market approach and deepening our engagement with all stakeholders. This adjustment not only refines our broader strategy but also sharpens our perspective on the entire comedy talent vertical.

By Day 29, we had the foundations of a comedy-specific ticketing platform packed with a punch. Inspired by game theory and Fancrowd's philosophy; rewarding humor, we designed features with the producer, comedian, venue and crowds in mind. Our solution transforms comedy shows by introducing new features like the Comedy Coffer and F Games, directly involving audiences in the success of comedians and venues, enhancing crowd engagement, and offering a new revenue model for the comics, all while simplifying logistics for producers making it a win-win-win for comedy everywhere. Now we just have to test it.

By Day 30, preparations for 'The 2nd Denton Laughs' were complete, the venue, stage, and comics, along with a revamped website tailored for the diverse stakeholders. The event on Day 35 wasn't just successful in drawing laughs and boosting sales; it represented a significant shift in embracing #ComedyTech among venues, comics, and audiences alike. Comics got paid in new ways while connecting with new audiences, the crowds got to do more than just laugh with their tickets, while the venue saw an uptick in sales for the week of the event. My engagement with over 200 individuals, 50+ comics, and numerous DFW venues, like Royal Yum's transformation from restaurant to a Denton comedy hotspot, showcased the community's eagerness for more comedy. This experience underscored Fancrowd's role in empowering producers, leading to a significant positive socio-economic impact across the comedy ecosystem.

As we look ahead, our app ties into this IRL space seamlessly, by introducing contests where anyone can earn their spotlight on a stage near them, amplifying the reach and impact of humor on a local level when amplified by technology. To build our producer platform in 17 days and launch our upcoming app, we're not just addressing issues within the comedy ecosystem; instead, we're transforming challenges into opportunities for growth and connection where laughter is the only social currency that matters, in being funny, and spotting funny.

Join Fancrowd to explore how we leverage #ComedyTech to build a better future for the entire comedy ecosystem. Whether you're here to discover, perform, or host, there's a spot on our stage for everyone. Start by visiting our website or sign up for early access to our app and see how you can be part of the revolution. 

FANCROWD #FreedomtoLaugh #ComedyTech #LaughwithPurpose #RewardingHumor #Comedy

Once upon a time, in a world that seemed a little too serious, there was a force quietly at work. It wasn’t a new policy or a peace treaty. No, it was something far more primal and powerful: laughter. Across the globe, from a subway in New York to a bustling market in Bangkok, laughter has the same cadence, the same infectious charm. It's a sound that knows no enemy, recognizes no borders, and speaks a single language.

This is no fairytale—it's the narrative of our times, where humor has emerged as the world's favourite diplomat. ComedyTech, the harmonious blend of technology and humor, is the beacon of unity and joy that can bridge this world one bit and byte at a time.

As the globe grapples with conflicts that have led to unspeakable loss, the role of humour, amplified by ComedyTech, becomes even more pivotal. It's a delicate balance—bringing levity to a world weighed down by grief. Yet, in these moments, humor reveals its true strength, not as a means to overshadow the gravity of events but to offer a glimmer of hope, a shared humanity that can withstand the darkness.

Behavioural psychology underscores the impact of our craft: laughter isn't merely a reaction; it's a social strategy, a balm for the soul amid chaos. Research has shown that in the face of division, a shared joke can soften hearts and open minds. Humour, especially in adversity, is humanity's universal coping mechanism. A 2022 Ipsos study found that a staggering 77% of people select comedy as their top entertainment choice, revealing its indispensable role in our lives.

ComedyTech's influence stretches beyond the stage and screen, weaving into our daily lives through memes and shared hilarities. Shows like 'The Tim Dillon Show' and 'The Mind of Joey Diaz' on Patreon, YouTube sensations 'Kill Tony', 'Andrew Schulz', and 'The Jimmy Dore Show', plus Spotify's 'The Joe Rogan Experience' and the groundbreaking work of creators like Mr. Beast, exemplify ComedyTech's cultural footprint. They are not just sources of entertainment but platforms for connection, reflection, and sometimes, respectful provocation, as Jason Alexander's Duckman profoundly said about comedy's power to challenge and provoke thought.

And let's face it, in a world often divided, we could all benefit from a collective chuckle. When two strangers giggle at a man chasing after his dogs, or when a packed comedy club erupts in laughter over a comedian's on-stage blunder, or when the infectious giggles of a baby on a subway become a shared moment of joy, we're reminded of who we are at our core—social animals, wired for connection.

At FANCROWDr (F), we’re ready to champion this movement. In the coming months, F will debut as a gamified platform where humor isn’t an afterthought—it's the main event. Enhanced by AI, our platform is a celebration of 'everything funny,' a competitive stage where users can showcase their comedic talent, engage in contests of humor, and be rewarded with cash and prizes not just for being funny but for spotting funny too.

Because, at the end of the day, it's not just about being funny; it's about being human. Laughter is the common thread that binds us—the heartbeat of ComedyTech and our collective beacon of hope. Dive into the FANCROWDr experience by visiting www.fancrowdr.com to join our waiting list for early access, or continue this vital conversation by reaching out on our social media channels or at hello@fancrowdr.com. In a world rife with discord, laughter is the balm that can heal and unite us all. Join us, and let's laugh our way to a better tomorrow.

If you’ve been watching the news lately, you’d get the feeling that we are inching closer toward a world war. It’s already starting with many smaller conflicts flaring up globally, followed by Ukraine/Russia and now Israel/Palestine.

And if you are on any social media platform, you’re probably being bombarded within your own echo chamber of how horrible the other guy is. But even more so, people are becoming a lot more comfortable openly talking about killing families and children. This is not exclusive to any one conflict or group, but it is becoming normalized every day.

All this makes me wonder if what I’m building today is a worthy endeavor. After all, the only reason I’m doing it is that I want to leave a net positive impact before I finally die. FANCROWDr, a social gaming app hosting funny contests where users get to vote on and rewarded for. I didn’t want to “fix” a problem. I wanted to create joy, the same way an artist doesn’t create art to fix a problem.

But I don’t know how this will look 2-3 years down the line. Will we be able to laugh on an app while the world is on fire? I’d say, yes. Or would I have wasted my time building a frivolous app that serves no actual purpose?

I’d like to think of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, or Dr Strangelove as examples of war comedy that helped relieve tension and offer necessary escapism. Of course escapism takes many forms.

Beirut is notoriously known for its vibrant nightlife during conflicts, something they have an abundance of. But they’re not alone in this. Sarajevo partied hard in the early 90’s, as does Kiev today.

And this makes me think of Nightbirde who came on America’s Got Talent and performed a tearjerker, “It’s Okay.” She said something that I will never forget and will always try to embrace.

You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy

And I hope you too will.

We see that journalists are not adapting to the use of social media, past using it for their own promotion, yet intolerant toward PR professionals using it to reach out to them.

I’ve often complained that restaurant online ordering solutions don’t come with the basics of tracking and monitoring tools you’d normally get in any ecommerce solution. URL shorteners offer a workaround this, but how does tracking help us?

For this exercise, we are going to use two data sources:

1. Transactions export by order source:
   I’ve removed sensitive data like order id’s and customer names, but this is an actual export from ChowNow’s transactions. The only variables that we can use in our sales attribution are the time and order source. Neither of those variables are perfect, so we will have to still perform some approximations.

   

2. URL weblogs:

   I’ve exported this from SOCIALHOSE links url shorterning tool.

   

Now that we have our data, we can start analyzing while remaining tool-agnostic. Let’s have a little fun now shall we?

Attribution Rules for Tracking Clicks with Purchases

Attribution is the holy grail of marketing, because it is so impossibly difficult to get right. We have to make a lot of educated guesses, because the data is never complete enough.

We will use two basic rules for our attribution of sales here:

Time lapse rule

For the purpose of this exercise, we will allow for a maximum of 10 minutes from the time a user clicked on the link to when an order is made. If more than 10 minutes passed, that order cannot be attributed to the link.

Device match rule

ChowNow’s exports only tell us the following about the order source:

• Direct Mobile Web 4.0: mobile user

• Direct Web 4.0: desktop user

• Discover iOS: through ChowNow’s iOS app

• Yelp: through Yelp’s order (and payment) processing

• Unknown/Other

We try to match the order source with devices we know. So if we think an order fits the time lapse rule, we check to see if the device/os match the Order Source.

Play with numbers like a data scientist

We’re not going to do anything advanced here, so don’t let the ‘data scientist’ scare you. Now let’s fire up Jupyter and play with those numbers a little..

As you can see, this is not particularly interesting, but we can see that our users are overwhelmingly on mobile devices. It’s not a surprise, but I was actually surprised at how much PC users were there.

Matching timezones

If you’ve noticed, there are a couple of lines that seem to deal with time. Those lines simply take the string-based time column and converts it into a machine-readable version, so we can have fun with it later.

When combining data from multiple sources, we have to be careful to match the timezones used. For example, ChowNow’s exports times in PST, while we are on CST (that’s a 2 hour difference). If you don’t do that, you may find it difficult to attribute any orders to a clicked link.

Keep it short and sweet

Now we have some data showing the gross sales amounts. Here we created a new DataFrame that only has the columns: bot, device, os, gross. This is not necessary, but it makes it easier for us to know what we’re working with.

Let’s take a closer look at the breakdown to see if any of this makes any sense.

iOS users spend the most

We’ve always known about iOS users being more affluent than Android users. There are many reasons why iOS users spend more money than other platforms, but we’re not getting into this now.

Let’s take a look at our breakdown from August 1’s sales of direct online orders. That is, those are orders made directly through the restaurant menu (powered by ChowNow) and does not include phone-in orders or in-person orders.

I’ve included the bots here just so you’re aware of the noise level they create. As you can see, the iOS users spend is significantly higher than those of Android’s or even desktop.

An assumption the restaurant owner had was that orders that came through offices for lunch are big tickets. That may still be true, but what we can demonstrably tell is that those holding an iPhone make the biggest orders.

We barely scratched the surface here, but I hope that it was enough to have you start imagining all the different bits and pieces of information you have at your disposal, and how collating them can inform your business strategy.

One would be forgiven to assume that link shortening services are all about creating a url with less characters. Well, historically, that may have been one of the main purposes of the service, but things have changed since then.

It all began when Twitter started knee-capping a bunch of third-party tools built around its platform. When Twitter adopted a standard of shortening links themselves, others like LinkedIn followed suit. It is now safe to assume that your link will not be rendered the same way by any social network, making saving character counts an exercise in dead horse beating.

Of course, that only makes sense in posts and not in advertisements. Ah! If you’re trying to track how a link is visited by using UTM parameters, you will quickly learn that they create a very ugly looking URL. Quiet simply, it just looks like an unprofessional mess. Ideally, you don’t want to let your customers know what you’re calling a campaign or how you’ve configured it. It’s internal stuff that should remain so.

You could read this article by the UK Government Communication Service’s Louise Harris, where she claims that you shouldn’t use the service because there are other service providers offering the service. It’s almost as if Harris worked for Google or Meta. To demonstrate, allow me to quote this hilarity:

Some link shorteners claim to provide you with analytics. And perhaps they do, but no more than you get natively, for free, on social media platforms and via tools like Google Analytics. Social media platforms tell you how many clicks you received and provide a click-through rate (CTR) — you don’t need a third party tool like a link shortener to find that out.

Louis Harris, Creative and Channels Team Leader, Government Digital Service (GDS)

Harris is addressing government organizations here, by actually saying that you should put all your eggs in the Google basket.. or Instagram one. Whichever one you like, just not some other service because that’s the one worthy. Or something. But point is, it is complete and absolute nonsense.

Regardless of the entity you’re representing online, be it a government agency or your own personal brand, decoupling yourself from providers who can shut you out of the world is a key component in assessing the risk of any service. You may be thinking, but the government can’t be de-platformed, right? Well, maybe. But that is not true for all governments. Because this is a variable that changes based on who the service provider is and their relationship with you, perhaps it is better to adopt a more holistic approach.

I recall working on a project with government entity in Abu Dhabi, over a decade ago. One of their requirements was to not allow Google services to track anything from within their sites. They wanted their own analytics and did not want to share their data with anyone else, including Google. This is a more typical governmental approach to data.

Let us break down the pros and cons for a links shortening tool, by type of user.

Link Shortening for Creators

Creators come in all shapes and sizes, but they often have a much lower bar for branding, even if some exceed it and then some. The point is, because of that, often it makes little sense to take on the overhead of your domain name.

The overhead the comes with your own domain, website and other associated services is simply uneconomical, which is why link shortening services make sense. They make sense because you want to have the same level of control, sans administrative overhead.

A creator use case

Jenny is an active creator on instagram. She posts regularly and has an engaged following. Then, one day, Instagram decided that her account was involved in suspicious activities and was suspended. Luckily, Jenny uses a url shortening service and a link-in-bio service where she uses one link to point to her instagram account. All she had to do was update the link's target url to her newly created account.

The above is an over-simplified poorly constructed use case, but the idea stands. You get to have control over where the link takes you and change that at will.

This is a very powerful tool.

Link Shortening for Agencies

When you’re an agency, you’re dealing with multiple clients with a wide array of needs and wants. There will be a client who only needs social profiles links and another who is constantly running promotions and ads. There will be a need to segment them and categorize them accordingly.

But you already know this. The only question you have to ask yourself is, does this service do all the things that I want for my customers.

Link Shortening for Brands

Brands have a slightly different want, which centers around the type of domains used in a url shortened address. While having a generic shortened url works for creators and smaller clients at an agency, it will not work for bigger brands.

It’s really an obvious problem, because no one is going to feel comfortable clicking on an unknown link that is supposedly associated with a recognizable brand. The good news is, most url shortening services offer the option to brand your shortened url’s.

URL shorteners may have burst into the scene as a way to ration characters in social posts, but this is just as relevant as claiming that revolving doors were invented to keep horses out. It may have kept horses out, but that’s not why Theophilius van Kannel invented them.

Originally posted here https://socialhose.net/blog/how-url-shorteners-are-so-much-more-than-short-links/

More than half the inhabitants of planet Earth are on social media, which adds up to about 5 billion people, with an average daily use of 2h 27m (source: Digital 2022: Global Overview Report). It is no wonder that social media is often blamed for a lot of society’s modern ills, such as political polarization and a wide array of mental health issues.

COVID-19 accelerated social media adoption and usage, as more people stayed home fiddling with their phones instead of being productive. This is not a surprising development, but something else happened from 2020 to 2021. According to Pew Research’s report, there was a slight reversal in social media’s role in how Americans get their news.

I would even go as far and suggest that this is a natural progression to Americans’ decline of trust in news media. According to a Gaullup report, 36% of Americans have confidence in mass media, the second lowest on record.

It would appear that things are in decline wherever we look. Meta’s internal report that was first reported on by WSJ here shows how aware social media companies are of the impact their products have on people’s mental health. Of course, you can only trust traditional media so much to be objective and fair, when they are in an existential battle with social media companies. But the point is, there is clearly something happening there.

We are then presented with an undeniable problem, with debatable impact. The lazy solution is by way of China’s Social Credit System. But this (hopefully) cannot stand in a democracy. Instead, we are left to the ingenuity of private enterprising individuals to create new technologies and ways of using it.

What if we are able to move away from attention seeking content to purposeful and meaningful content, all while being entertained? What if we are able to create an environment where rooting for others is what brings us satisfaction, instead of the dopamine hit of a meaningless like? What if we could learn to love again?

Too romantic? Perhaps. Instead, let us introduce some sobriety to reverse the rise in youth depression. American children are already shockingly over-medicated. According to the National Survey of Children’s Health (2007-08, 2011-12), the number of children ages 2-5 on ADHD medication has doubled. The shocker is not that there are children ages TWO to FIVE who are on ADHD medication, but in the fact that this number has doubled! I’m not a doctor, but I genuinely cannot imagine a need to give a 2 year old ADHD medication. I may be wrong, but it’s very hard to imagine.

What I can imagine is a new way to create meaningful content and interactions, designed specifically to help you grow. I can also imagine how that can become very boring and stuffy, which is why making it entertaining and gainful is an equally important component.

In comes Responsible Social, a framework to make social media use a net positive experience to the user and the community they serve.

Never Passive

The University of Wisconsin conducted a study (PDF) to determine the relationship between depression symptoms, screen time, and the active and passive usage of Tiktok among adolescents. It found that depressed users are passive users.

A correlation coefficient of 0.46 is a moderate to strong correlation. For those not into statistics, anything between ± 0.50 and ± 1 is strong, ± 0.30 and ± 0.49 is moderate, and anything below .29 is a small correlation.

Of course correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but even if we were to assume that it is a depression-induced behavior, it is still worth changing.

Responsible Social is always active and never passive.

Give Constructive Feedback

One cannot consider feedback without taking trolls into account. Online trolls ushered in a culture of hate and negativity that has ruined many Internet experiences. Different platforms have had varying degrees of success in fighting trolls. Back in 2013, things have gotten so bad at Youtube that people were starting to be put off by the comments, calling it the Wild Wild West. It wasn’t until Youtube finally started providing creators with better moderation tools that it became usable again.

Instead of gravitating toward lazy solutions such as censorship, we could instead design a system that places us in a feedback loop that is constantly updating with your personal development and aspirations.

Giving feedback is an obligation toward our communities, and receiving it is a privilege in a Responsible Social environment.

Seek Growth

Despite the steady decline in university enrollment, Americans overwhelmingly value ongoing learning and growth. While we see the Spring of 2022 enrollment figures drop by a whopping 4.7% from the previous year, 87% of millennials believe learning and development in the workplace is important. So much so that according to statistics by Work Institute, 22% of employees leave their jobs citing lack of career development.

In other words, just because Americans are staying out of universities, doesn’t mean that they have abandoned learning. Just as well, a Social Responsible framework provides meaningful avenues to seek knowledge, growth and talent development.

Explore Self

We all have different capabilities that are governed by our abilities, talents, competence, and personal characteristics. While talent is an ability we are born with, the more time we spend developing it the more competent we become.

Often, we have talents that go undiscovered or underdeveloped. It is then necessary to foster an environment that allows users to explore their own talents, hidden or abandoned.

A Social Responsible approach would create a steady stream of ways to discover and develop talent, in a safe and encouraging community of comparable levels of talent.

Compete

Competition fuels our economy, motivates our sports teams, and pushes us to achieve more. While one can compete against others, it is even more important to learn to compete against oneself, because that represents a mindset shift from competing to win to competing to grow.

That is not to say that competing to win is a bad thing, far from it. All forms of healthy competition are good for us and our communities. When we have a healthy competitive environment, participants are all given an equal opportunity to win. What we don’t want is negative competition, which is when we cross moral and ethical lines to win at all costs.

Responsible Social utilizes leaderboards and other gamification tactics make competing both engaging and fun.

Community Support

When we think of community support IRL (in real life), we often think of helping an elderly lady put her groceries away, or picking up someone else’s trash from the street, etc. They are activities that embody what we would consider as a Good Samaritan. That is, someone who is compassionate and helpful.

Extending this online can be translated to promoting others in their competitive endeavors. Providing more feedback to more people, forming sub-groups with special tasks, are examples of things we can do to be a positive force within a given community.

With those 6 components, we have a framework to build Responsible Social apps. We can help lower the levels of toxicity experienced by billions online by building software that adds value to our world.

Let us build Responsible Social.

Not many people think about technology in the restaurant business past food delivery apps, but it is so much more than that. Ever since the pandemic, restaurants, which are predominantly low-tech, became increasingly more reliant on technology. Forced to adapt to a customer-base that is more comfortable eating at home, restaurants needed to be more accessible there through the little screens.

The issue is far more pressing than the question of high commission fees. It is the usurping of restaurants’ control over their operation. Take for example, Google’s Business Profile listings, an indispensable tool for local businesses.

Here, Google uses links to a restaurant’s menu on their profile that are sent from different providers. The restaurant has no control over this. In fact, Google advises businesses to contact the providers directly here.

I’d love to hear from others who have attempted to call the individual providers about this, because my experience has been pure frustration. Simply put, the clueless tech support who has no knowledge about any of this, instinctively responds back telling you that this is on Google and not on their platform.. and to go talk to Google about it. It’s a logical response, but not a useful one. One would have to escalate multiple times, be unusually persistent, to maybe, possibly have it removed.

At least Google is provider-agnostic, or so it seems. This is not the case with Yelp, who have an agreement with Grubhub to use their ordering widget overriding any other option.

And so it goes. Yelp says we can’t change it because it comes straight from Grubhub (divine links!). Grubhub is effectively forcing all their restaurant customers to fulfill their orders through them on Yelp.

This would have been okay if Grubhub and others earned a commission from the customer ordering food, but they are taking a sizable chunk of the restaurant’s income in return of what exactly? If the customer found their way to the business through other means (not your app), you can no longer claim to have earned it by providing a marketplace.

Strong-arming restaurants to sell through them, even outside of their own app gives some seriously major mafia vibes. What’s next? You’ll break my legs? This makes me think of flipdish, a company that makes ordering kiosks for restaurants. Flipdish will install a kiosk in the building where the restaurant is. The customer orders through it and they get a 6% commission. They think they are the good guys.

It is inconceivable to understand why anyone would want to pay 6% of their total sale, just because you put your way between the customer and the business. It’s absolutely insane! Is the kiosk a useful service? Possibly. Would I pay for it? Maybe. Would I give them a cut of my profits? Absolutely not. That’s just wrong.

There has to be a better way for the tech ecosystem to work with restaurants. This is not a sustainable situation and tech companies need to wake up before it’s too late.

The entire commission-based business model has become the default for every little startup. Months ago I came across those guys who built nifty little tool to dynamically price items to maximize revenue. Great concept with a mixed bag result. The issue is when they wanted to get paid a % of increased revenue instead of a simple flat fee for their software. This is emblematic of the entire industry.

I use this example without naming them in this negative piece despite personally liking the team and their product. I use this because those guys did not set out to take advantage of restaurants. But the commission-based model has become so pervasive that newcomers unknowingly continue to hurt the industry by adopting it.

Folks, we are due for a correction. For too long, restaurants have been unfairly taken advantage of. I suspect that we will start seeing a new breed of tools and companies that will ditch the commission-based model and charge flat fees for their services. Until then, use the delivery apps to discover new places but order directly from your favorite ones. They’ll appreciate it.

Communist ideology creeping into the Creator Economy thought leadership pieces is cause for concern. Crypto is a libertarian dream, not a communist one. One must remember that Bitcoin was introduced to the world in response to the global financial crisis of 2008. Remember 2008? The narrative pivoted since then with the constant framing of worker vs factory/platform, which should make one pause.

One of the more prominent voices in the Creator Economy space is Li Jin, a communist-curious VC. By prominent, I simply mean that she gets better coverage than most. Li Jin made waves when she was quoted in an uncharacteristically glowing profile of her in the NYT, on how she was “inspired by the ideas of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.”

Considering that Venture Capitalists are one of the more extreme manifestations of capitalism, it is no wonder that other VC's were aghast by the article. NYT isn't what it used to be, so we can be forgiven if we ignore some of their fluff pieces.

This was the beginning of a choregraphed campaign introducing communist terminology into VC lexicon. An article published in the Harvard Business Review titled, A Labor Movement for the Platform Economy was penned by Li Jin along with Scott Kominers and Lila Shroff.

I will now go through the article's interesting passages.

Here the claim is that participation is decentralized, making it harder to connect, ignoring social media and even the example used in the same article's first paragraph about DoorDash drivers effectively organizing on FB 😕

It also touts the accomplishments of unions, ignoring decades of dwindling impact by the labor union in the US economy. Unions have done squat for racial inequality since the 70's, or assimilating immigrants, or giving a political voice to low-income workers. They're failing.

This is where it gets disingenuous at best, because just as well, stakeholders can be concentrated in a small group of people who are holding the ownership/voting rights tokens. But yeah let's blame top performing creators on YT for not caring about their smaller counterparts..

The authors here posit that the reason why cooperatives have not been as prevalent and successful is that it is logistically too difficult to attract capital. Ok, so cue the "crypto is the solution".

No? Okay, please explain to me how this is any different from the top founders, early adopters of any new DAO or any decentralized project holding all the keys?

To the authors' credit, they at the very least recognize the dangers of regulations. Regulations will have unintended consequences and should be used as a last resort. This is as a good rule of thumb as any.

The dangers of overselling the benefits of decentralized trustless networks is that you end up not affecting any change at all, once faced with the crushing disappointment.

If 63% of marketers are planning on a big job change, where are they going?

All marketers have left the building

If you’ve been watching the employment reports lately, you would probably be aware of a few things:

• Employers are short-staff across the board with some sectors more affected than others

• Employees are demanding more WFH options with some resistance from employers

• Everyone seems to be quitting their jobs

And if you’re still not sure how that is impacting marketers, the 2021 Rosie Report tells a tale of a new world order. The report includes a survey of 423 US-based marketers, which found a whopping 63% of marketers planning a big job change this year.

I asked We Are Rosie for a breakdown of the demographics of their survey and this is what they had to say.

 — @RosieReport

It’s important to recognize the size of the population before we can assign any confidence in survey results. Please excuse my pedantry, but if the data needs qualification, we should do that early on. According the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are 270,200 Marketing Managers, as of May 2020. Estimates of all marketing related jobs range from 620k to 824k, depending on who you ask and what categories they group together.

With that in mind, a more optimal sample size would be north of 2000 respondents. However, we can still work with what we have as long as increase the error margin to 5%.

So now that we know we can live with an error margin of 5%, where are all the marketers leaving to? That’s higher than the global trend of 41%.

1 in 3 Independent marketers are never going back to Full-Time Employment

This is very significant, because it shows that marketers did like Katy Perry and liked it. The newfound independence of flexible working schedules and the ability to choose the projects they want to work on have never been more attractive, primarily because employers are now more willing to hire remotely. The trend is to work on projects without the long-term commitment.

“Every full-time job I’ve had started out as a freelance gig — and every time I regret signing on as a ‘real employee’.” — Creative Director

This quote from the report aptly sums up the sentiment. Marketers have commitment issues. They’re just not into you. They’re not ready to settle down just yet. They want to explore and see other people.

It’s not surprising then that we would find another 27% of those surveyed not concerned with upward mobility. It’s almost as if marketers have decided to go on backpacking through Europe on a self discovery journey.

Allow me to put this in a way that employers can understand better.

Marketing careers suck

It’s that simple. If people aren’t bothered with it and are looking for project-based work, it is a clear indicator that whatever career paths exist today are nowhere near as attractive as they need to be.

It’s not about the money though. It is obvious that marketers are making a decent living skipping FTE. I suspect this has more to do with working conditions than financial compensation.

WFH struggles: what a difference a year can make

Looking at the chart above, we can conclude that there are some clear benefits from Working From Home. As people become more competent in their use of technology, difficulties decrease. As more people join the WFH movement, loneliness decreases as they have more people to relate to. However, the problem with time management rears its ugly head once again.

Time management is an especially serious problem, as Americans put in more working hours than most industrial nations. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the US is the 10th most overworked country (2018). If we were to to couple this with WFH and the inability to unplug from work, we have a recipe for mass burnouts.

Measuring productivity changes with WFH

I’m a huge fan of measuring productivity and have done so extensively in the past. But productivity is not always measurable or quantifiable. A 9-month long study of 16,000 call center workers [PDF] reports an increase of 13% in productivity. Call center work is a lot easier to measure. A marketing manager’s productivity has a lot more moving parts, making it tricky.

The push-pull between companies and employees continues with employees quitting over Apple’s hybrid work policy, while Ford expanded their hybrid policy, and Facebook doubled-down making WFH policies permanent.

The debate continues with proponents declaring that productivity has either increased or remained the same. Some people even mock managers for wanting to “monitor” them at work by visually confirming they’re working. This oversimplification makes it difficult to address the real challenges brought by WFH.

For example, building meaningful connections that would facilitate professional growth is more difficult for entry level workers. Creativity-based work isn’t about the number of hours you spend, but is sparked by casual mindless conversations.

This is not to say that we cannot find WFH alternatives to achieve comparable results. It is, however, a very important factor to consider as we examine ways to adapt.

Creating clear actionable goals for marketers that we can hold them accountable to would be more productive than worrying about the number of hours they are clocking on the job.

Vaccination messaging and censorship

COVID-19 vaccination can be a divisive issue and has become needlessly politicized, due to many factors internal and external.

The US Surgeon General Jerome Adams recently posted a series of tweets admitting that his advice in the early days of the pandemic against masks was the wrong call. He appears to apologize for everything, but his actual fault.

 — @JeromeAdamsMD

In his tweets he claims that what he and Dr. Fauci said was based on the “science and conditions at the time”. In a now-deleted tweet from Feb 29, 2020 the Surgeon General clearly and in plain English said that masks are NOT effective.

I remember watching Dr. Fauci on TV explaining why masks aren’t effective for the general public. He explained how they are notoriously difficult to keep on properly and that the untrained public’s constant adjustment of the mask would lead to an increase risk of infection. Can you believe that? I will never forget this because I’ve had a lot of long arguments about this where I defended Fauci’s position and now feel stupid for it. Examples of how masks were effective in Asia during the SARS outbreaks did not dissuade me.

The science did not change, despite the lies Dr Jerome Adams continues to spew. Something far more sinister has happened. People of science broke the public’s trust. The unwritten contract we had was simple: you give us the unfiltered facts as you know them.

Allow me to demonstrate. Imagine visiting your physician for a medical checkup, and she tells you that you have lung cancer knowing you’re a smoker. You don’t have lung cancer, but she lied to you so you can be incentivized to quit smoking. If you condone that type of behavior from your healthcare provider, then you will find Dr Fauci and company’s action acceptable. If not, then you would find it absolutely reprehensible.

Scientists are not in the business of lying to the public for the greater good or for any reason for that matter. This has always been the domain of politicians. So is it any wonder that skepticism in our institutions continues to dominate?

Instead of addressing the erosion of trust in the CDC and other instrumental institutes, politicians are quick to blame social media platforms for disseminating misinformation. In a stunning sound-bite, President Biden declared that “they’re killing people”.

 — @thehill

Facebook was quick to respond with data showing that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been vaccinated or plan to. Of course that is not going to stop politicians from using FB as a punching bag. But there is more danger than FB’s feelings.

New language is emerging to label COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy as inciteful. The vaccine that the FDA has only issued Emergency Use Authorization because they still have questions. A legitimate cautious approach that you would expect from a science-based organization.

 — @davidfrum

Most disturbing is the censorship coordination between the White House and social media platforms, which allow the government to effectively skirt the first amendment by outsourcing it to private companies.

“..current constitutional doctrine doesn’t clearly lay out how much government coercion of a private actor’s speech decisions it would take to constitute a First Amendment violation.” — Noah Feldman, opined.

Expect more of social media platforms cracking down on content that they deem inappropriate. It is definitely a development that we will be watching very closely.

Twitter was founded in 2006 and since then, it has grown up to over 300 million monthly active users employing 4900 people. But this isn’t what makes Twitter special. Twitter’s conversational style is what makes it special. Unlike all other social networks, success on this platform depends on your ability to hold a conversation. This also makes it the best platform for a quick pulse check on sentiments on any given subject.

Social listening is the active tracking of online conversations through keyword and phrases, giving you a 360 view in real-time.

Why is Twitter Monitoring Important?

Social listening on Twitter is the most cost effective way to track and analyze sentiments across a wide array of subjects and audiences. There is simply nothing that comes even close to the type of insights social listening can offer us.

According to research, customers reach out to brands online to:

1. Ask questions

2. Raise issues with your products and/or services

3. Praise your products and/or services

4. Tell all about online experience

5. Tell all about offline experience

In a somewhat dated but relevant survey from 2017, 25% of businesses were using social listening to improve their products, 24% to attract customers, and 21% to improve customer service.

When it comes to Twitter monitoring, we want to think beyond branded searchwords and consider trends, geographically segmented micro-influencers, and other ways to glean insights from the marketing treasure trove that is Twitter.

How to Do Social Listening on Twitter?

You can do a lot of basic social media monitoring using Twitter’s own tools, without needing to resort to specialized social listening software.

The same tool is also available on Tweetdeck, which offers more flexibility for Twitter power users.

Twitter’s advanced search allows you to search for keywords/phrases and also filter by:

• Date range

• Language

• Authors

• Location

• Engagement: number of reweets, likes, and replies

Tweetdeck’s social listening options are so good that you may find it perfect for your purposes. Of course, if you’re looking for something with a little more oomph! and reporting, then you can always opt for a specialized social listening tool like SOCIALHOSE.

There are many social listening platforms that complicate the process of query building. That is, the search phrase and filters we use to pull data from Twitter.

If you prefer clicking through countless boxes to label things AND/OR and drag and drop every phrase into a bucket or something, then this is not the right tool for you. If you want to just type out your query, without complication then you’re in the right place.

We begin by using the + operator. We use + to say “must include” and — to say “must exclude”. In the above example, the + operator is redundant but it is for you to understand it.

We use parenthesis to group things together. Every space is interpreted as an OR operator. The AND operator must be explicitly used. So, the above reads as “must include journorequest OR prrequest OR lazyweb”. Great.

At first, it may be difficult to determine what we should be listening for, because we are spoiled for choice. The sheer volume of online conversations happening every second in real-time.

In order to put things in perspective, approximately 9,500 tweets are sent every second. This is an incredible amount of information waiting to be looked at and analyzed.

Develop an Actionable Twitter social listening Strategy

So you have your feeds working for you, collecting valuable social data, it’s time to take action and utilize all the insights that we have learned from our active listening.

Product improvement

Rhianna’s Savage x Fenty recently released leggings with a butt cleavage. You read that right. Sometimes, a product is so outrageously ridiculous that it elicits strong reactions from consumers.. and sometimes, nothing happens. In this case, people were not shy about letting their opinions be known.

And divided indeed! If we were to take a quick look at sentiments without digging too deep into the search, we will see an unusually high volume of negative tweets. That should either inform us to change plans or double down.

We don’t know what Savage x Fenty will do with the way the butt cleavage leggings have been received, but it is an opportunity to continue to gauge sentiments through time.

Industry monitoring

You probably have figured out by now that social listening is not a “set it and forget it” type of affair. You must actively be listening and adapting, because conversations are happening at breakneck speeds. 9500 tweets per second, remember?

When monitoring industry trends, you can start by tracking some of the key players’ twitter accounts at first. As you continue to monitor their activities, new topics will emerge.

This is where the Word Cloud (themes) become very useful and informative.

Inform content strategy & campaigns

A content engine is the people, processes and tools that produce the fuel that feeds our content creation. A content engine is what we use to draw inspiration and insights. Who are the 5 best accounts to follow on Twitter who tweet about our topic/area of interest? Experts, contrarians and other influencers are all candidates for your content engine.

Identify new partnerships

There is no guarantee that you will find new partnerships on Twitter, just like there aren’t any guarantees to find love at your local bar. One thing is for certain, making your business and brand available and approachable will increase the chances of that happening.

You may find a new distributor. An influencer who will be your brand advocate. Like most things in life, you get what you put in.

Find New Leads Through Social Listening

Finding and qualifying leads happens on Twitter all the time, because of its top of the funnel nature. Similar to SEO, we search for high intent phrases to find prospects and leads.

Using social listening to find leads on Twitter is a very cost effective way to find prospects in real-time.

How Much Does Social Listening Cost for Twitter?

Social listening can be cost effective or expensive, depending on how you approach it and the tools you choose to use. At SOCIALHOSE, you can start social listening on Twitter starting at $2 per feed. Adding analytics will add $15 to your feed. It all depends on what you’re trying to achieve.

Originally published at https://www.socialhose.io.

“We understand that the PAC decision to support select Members of Congress who contested the results troubled some stakeholders.”

Toyota issued this statement on PAC contributions hours after the Lincoln Project threw their hat in the ring.

 — @ProjectLincoln

The Lincoln Project are agitators with a whole lotta cash. Their abrasive style earned them notoriety during the 2020 Elections and they don’t seem to be going away any time soon.

Since the story broke on June 26, it was clear that Toyota’s comms team dropped the ball. Toyota did not do anything unusual or wrong, except that they failed to read the room.

While the recent announcement tries to fix a problem of their own making, it may not be so easy. I suspect Toyota will be bullied into contributing to causes that they don’t necessarily care for, just to buy the silence of groups like Citizens for Ethics and The Lincoln Project.

 — @CREWcrew

Groups are out for blood and it is in my estimation that this will very likely devolve “extortion” so Toyota can right the wrong. Again, this entire scenario was completely unnecessary and I wonder how much it has cost Toyota, but their walk-back indicates it is serious enough.

We will continue to track it in the background, but I think the crisis has been averted, but like a benign tumor, you don’t want to ignore it in your annual check-up.

Originally published at https://www.getrevue.co on July 14, 2021.

In an interview with Marketing Brew, Hill House and Communité both came out swinging at metrics measuring influencer marketing campaigns. Surprise: creatives don’t want to be held accountable for their work.

Gems like, “CPM is wack” from Danielle McGrory, founder of Communité or amazing oversimplifications by Hill House Home’s CEO Neil Diamond such as, “followers don’t matter.”

It’s not new to hear creatives look down on measurement and metrics as irrelevant. They see their work as art and therefor impossible to quantify. Then of course there is this curious selection criteria:

One of Diamond’s favorite influencers of the 13 selected for [..], not only because she is Hill House’s first trans influencer, but also because…

Wow. I understand the desire to pander to the trans community because of their relatively outsized voices, but can we go back to choosing creators for their creativity alone? I sincerely don’t understand what someone’s gender identity has to do with their work. What I do know is that when a marketing agency says they’re looking for “marketing appeal”, they are really just saying “trending subculture.”

I don’t know what Neil is talking about, but no one looks at “follower count” as the deciding metric to choose an influencer. It’s particularly disingenuous coming from someone in the industry, because he surely knows better.

When we look at influencers, we look at their reach including engagement levels. Micro-influencers are particularly interesting because of the high engagement levels and trust levels with their followers.

We also know that it is more effective to have 10x microinfluencers with the same level of follower count than 1 influencer with 10x the follower count. This is, simply because of engagement.

So, Neil saying follower counts don’t matter is of course true, but also bullshit because no one is making that argument anyway.

Those guys keep talking about content creators and calling them influencers because it’s convenient. Hill House are not hiring influencers, they are hiring content creators to get really cheap freelance work with some minimal distribution.

This is admittedly a brilliant strategy that was put in focus due to the pandemic, but will likely continue to grow. Why? Cause people crave authenticity and you have a much better chance to uncovering authentic amazing talent with a wider net.

Not all content creators are influencers and not all influencers are content creators. It’s really not that complicated a concept. You can be an influencer and not necessarily create any meaningful content.

To put it in an easier way to digest, content creators are focused on their content whereas influencers are focused on engagement. Every now and then you come across someone who is both, and those are stars in their own right.

What’s Wrong with Metrics?

One word: vanity. Clients can sometimes insist on certain metrics that don’t make sense outside of vanity. This can be frustrating to agencies who find it would penalize them unfairly. It doesn’t always have to be this way though. We could, *gasp* actually measure things that affect the bottom line. I mean, isn’t that why we’re doing all this?

I would be very wary of any agency that completely rejects accountability by claiming they are “wack”. Any successes such an agency may have would be nothing more than a fluke. The “gut” instincts of one executive that is not possible to scale nor replicate. Hill House Home and their likes are causing more harm to the industry than they realize.

By rejecting accountability without offering an alternative, they are a breed of agencies that I find troubling.

A recent report by Axios shows that Toyota’s contributions to election objector GOP’s significantly higher than other corporations. As with all statistics, the devil is in the detail. Toyota is the second biggest contributor to members of congress, second only to Cubis Corp, a defense contractor.

Corporations are rightly reluctant to get involved in local politics, so it is probably worth thinking about it from the perspective of their specific needs and not so much as a political statement. However, when asked about this, Toyota’s response was rather disappointing:

We do not believe it is appropriate to judge members of Congress solely based on their votes on the electoral certification.

Seriously, Toyota? This is the best you can do? Let’s see what happened though. We created a feed with the following boolean search query:

+toyota +(gop contribution donation congress)

And we looked at both Twitter and Instagram.

As you can see, the negative sentiment is quickly climbing, currently at 27% negative mentions. I would caution from looking at this and dismissing it as a crisis averted. History has shown us that issues like this can easily sit out for a long period, before resurfacing against with a vengeance. It is precisely why we keep a close eye at how conversations are moving.

As this is a divisive issue, we expect to see positive sentiment to counter the negative. However, the real question is, is this the hill Toyota wants to die on?

https://twitter.com/elzubeir_mo/status/1409356416096342016

It’s early and I suspect this issue will escalate. So far, it’s not looking good for Toyota.

Social Listening for Crisis Management

Social listening is one of many components of crisis management, and acts as a cost effective way to gauge consumer sentiments in real-time.

The first thing we have done here is created the feed that would capture Toyota mentions in relation to donations to the GOP. We then start observing the trends as they emerge.

As themes begin to emerge through word clouds, we can then set up new feeds to monitor those specific themes as well. Additionally, influencers on the subject will become more apparent as we continue to monitor and analyze results.

Setting up alerts to notify the stakeholders in your organization is just as important as listening to the right conversations. Having the ability to manage recipients and segmenting them into different groups is what separates professional tools from hobbyists.

Originally published at https://www.getrevue.co on June 30, 2021.

I’m a huge fan of The Handmaid’s Tale show on Hulu. The dystopian setting requires a significant effort suspending your disbelief, in order to enjoy it. Wholesale institutionalized rape, vicious punishments including severing body parts, hangings on the wall.. all in a not too distant future America.

We can sit here and debate how believable Gilead is, but one thing is for certain, product placements were nowhere to be found. In fact, Gilead itself is almost communist when it comes to consumer choices. Foodstuffs are often in short supply, as the new country fights internal and external wars.

During the Season 4 finale, Commander Fred was talking to his wife Serena, where he awkwardly blurted that he would like to maybe Zoom? My ears perked up in the same way my dog’s does when I ask him if he wants to go for a walk. Zoom? That can’t be right.

I played it again and sure enough, he uttered the word “Zoom”. Sheesh. Ok, product placement alert! Then there is a shot of Serena sitting at her desk with her laptop open, with Zoom’s application open. If you weren’t sure you heard Zoom earlier, now you know you heard it right.

Product placement is a marketing technique, where a product and/or service are “hopefully” seamlessly referenced in a piece of work, such as this TV show. The first known product placement in film is reportedly by the Level Brothers in France, featuring Sunlight soap in 1896. And before that, logistics companies lobbied Jules Verne to mention their companies by name, in his famed novel Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).

Today, we have come to accept product placements or embedded marketing without so much as batting an eye. We hear it in music. We see it in movies. Dubai has made product placements one of the cornerstones of their branding strategy. It’s not unusual to hear Nicki Minaj or Drake namedrop Dubai.

But it has to feel natural. It has to feel “right”. When you are in a make-belief world, your imagination is already stretched thin. I don’t know about you, but I simply did not buy it. It was cringe.

Whenever there is a discussion on China, my instincts are to be suspicious of them; a testament to my Western education. But lately, I have been thinking of how it is more than just that. The backlash entertainers and athletes face at home for “giving in” to China makes one wonder what this is really all about.

Let us take the most recent John Cena apology for calling Taiwan a country. Let us remove all emotions from this and look at it this way: While very few countries have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan, in many ways it is treated like a full country. It is not a country, but it’s also not “not a country”. It is understandable to mistakenly call it one. What do you do when you’re in someone’s home and you unintentionally offend a cultural norm for them? You quickly apologize and fix it.

It’s really not that complicated. “Oh, no shoes in the house? I’m so sorry, let me remove mine real quick!” How hard is that?

Unless, you feel that you have a right over the house. Maybe you bought the furniture. Or built the second floor? Now it feels like the host should be so grateful to you that your minor mistakes should be overlooked. They don’t mean anything to you, after all. It’s not like you’re purposely trying to dirty the house. You’re just not thinking about whatever “thing” they’re into.

Back to China and Taiwan. There is the usual old world history filled with wars and conquests. Then came colonization and the trading of countries like Pokemon cards. It is no wonder some think they are the arbiters of what is a country and what is not.

China and Taiwan can figure it out. If the US government chooses to take a position and recognize Taiwan to agitate China or any other reason they have, then that is an entirely different story. I think those making the “Taiwan Is A Country” battlefield cry are unable to see that it isn’t China being belligerent and trying to humiliate Western companies and celebrities. But you’re making it personal when it’s not even about you.

Maybe just apologize and not get involved in other people’s business, until you really are ready to interfere.

It’s called respect.

I remember the last meeting I had before the pandemic. We met at some bar/restaurant to discuss a project that never materialized. But it was in that vibe, where I was meeting with different people involved in different roles. The part where you get to talk to everyone and hear what they have to say. I love that part.

The Capital Factory guys host this coffee thing every month in Dallas, and I thought, why not? Right? Let me be very honest, my anxiety hit hard. All of a sudden I was thinking of excuses to not go. I didn’t want to leave. Of course, this made me realize how important it is to go. It wasn’t an optional thing, it was an absolutely essential step in the recovery from the pandemic’s lockdown.

I needed to see people. Human persons, not Panda (the dog). As with those things, you meet people new people and learn about what they’re working on. I love that shit. This guy was telling me about the drones they’re working on to survey tight urban spaces. I just love hearing what people are doing and seeing the passion just flow as they talk. It’s absolutely intoxicating.

But, I couldn’t take a lot of it. I quickly started to feel uncomfortable and not in control. I wrapped up the last few conversations and quietly headed to my car. My anxiety took over, I must confess. This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

The guy at the parking lot hurried towards me as I started my car. Smiles, revealing his grills and tells me that he’s been waiting for me (owner of my car). He then hands me a QR card to check out his music. I asked, what kind of music? I knew what it was going to be. He’s got grills!

I feel obligated to share this with you: rando’s music. It’s all terrible music, but I appreciate the hustle. And it made me realize that, if the rando with the grills and music on a QR card can put himself out there to a stranger like me, I can make it to more of those networking events.

And yeah I wore my “where the hose at?” shirt. And yes, it was a definite conversation starter.

Jeff Bezos penned his final letter to the shareholders and everyone started picking it apart, dissecting it and analyzing every comma and period. What I found particularly interesting to me was the mantra “create more than you consume”.

If we were to consider consumerism within the context of our obsession with acquiring material things, we can see that Amazon would not have become as wildly successful without it. In fact, it may have contributed to it with its global reach and influence.

I take Bezos’ advice to heart and believe in it. But I also think it’s a bit odd to suggest this, while needing others to consume more than they create.. in order for you to create more than you consume. We can’t all be creating more than we consume is what I’m trying to say.

If, like me, you believe that life is ultimately a zero-sum game, then Bezos is also saying that you must make sure your customers consume what you create more than they create anything for anyone. It’s obvious to me that Jeff Bezos believes so too.

The only other time I’ve found a reference of Bezos talking about something being zero-sum was on the issue of search. In it, the author confuses winner-takes-all for zero-sum. They’re not the same thing.