Free business idea: Instagram, but for photos.
Many think that “the elites” or “the media” are pushing an agenda. They’re not, it’s actually worse. They’re just giving us what we want so they can sell it to us and become wealthier.
Heck, if I was them, I’d do it.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in Everybody Lies:
Many have viewed American journalism as controlled by rich people or corporations with the goal of influencing the masses, perhaps to push people toward their political views. Gentzkow and Shapiro’s paper suggests, however, that this is not the predominant motivation of owners. The owners of the American press, instead, are primarily giving the masses what they want so that owners can become even richer.
“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that makes it good or bad.”
– Miles Davis
Brisbane on a Tuesday afternoon
It was a good month for me on Unsplash. Zero dollars made, but millions of feel-good bucks.
More Aussies - 18% - are going to be investing in crypto in the next 2yrs than real estate - 17% - so it’s going to be a pretty good 2yrs for A Current Affair. In fact, I might invest in ACA, they’re going to have some great li’l ozzy battler ripped-off stories.
TikTok's talking points are totally cool, nothing to see here, move along now, everything's cool ya see
It almost seems like TikTok is the great globalist company we’ve all been waiting for, to save us from the boredom of our everyday lives, and to connect us - not with our friends - but with some kind of massive data store in China that I am totally sure is totally ok and nothing to stress about at all, ya know.
TikTok’s public relations talking points via Gizmodo:
- downplay the parent company ByteDance
- downplay the China association
- downplay AI
- TikTok is a global company
- The TikTok app doesn’t even operate in China
- TikTok is highly localised in its experience and operations, which means … insert country here … has a lot of independence in the day-to-day operations of the platform
insert everything is fine gif
Tugun Beach tonight
What we measure is often not what matters
“If actors are getting older and the music we listen to is getting older, it may be because TikTok stars, Twitch streamers, and Roblox creators aren’t being counted among entertainers, even if they have a similar-sized audience. One thing that drags down the average age of Fortune 500 executives is when tech startups with young founders go public, but many of those startups don’t have the revenue to qualify for the Fortune 500, even if their market cap puts them in the S&P.”
This is the kicker, this is where the story is going. What we measure isn’t always what matters:
“Revenue is a lagging measure of impact, just as box office results are an output from fame.”
What else are we measuring that doesn’t matter as much as something we’re not measuring at all?
🌙
The radio is dead, long love the radio
Tim Burrowes in Unmade:
The meat of the event came in the panel, which included SCA CEO Grant Blackley. As is regularly the case, he was refreshingly less guarded than most of his peers. He actually told us some of what he was thinking about the company’s future direction.
It included acknowledgement that the day will come when the transmitters will be turned off, and all audio is delivered digitally. While an obvious observation, there was a time not so long ago when that would have been sacrilege coming from the person who is also chairman of Commercial Radio Australia.
Slightly to the surprise (I think) of his colleagues, Blackley also confided that he is thinking about making Listnr the main company brand. “One day you might no longer see us called SCA. You might see us called Listnr. I could see a world where if it is in fact at the centre of our universe and it is driving all of our growth and ambitions, and it houses all of our product, maybe there’s a natural extension there… who knows?”
He knows. Given that he told the audience he’d made the same point on stage at the Radiodays conference in Europe a few weeks back, I think the answer to that is that he’s already decided.
Although this is a very obvious path for the radio industry to take, because it’s where the eyes in the ears and the attention has moved.
The one remaining issue is that as a technology, AM/FM radio, DAB digital radio, and digital television broadcast, are actually quite beautiful technologies.
High definition delivery of audio and visual signals across an entire city and there’s no ISP charging per gigabyte. The only thing required to listen is a simple radio or TV receiver. As much as radio and TV as we know it today will die, it will never go away, I wonder what form it will take in the future?
I wonder what will fill the FM channels in 20 years time?
I’ll always love the radio, it was a beautiful medium in 2009 when this photo of me was taken. Today, the same radio stations are playing the same tune in a different world. That season needs to end, but what does the next look like?
Reels is less than half as successful as Stories was on the same theft timeline
Nathan Baschez in Every:
Is Reels even working?
Yes and no. Reels is now two years old and, according to my reading of the data, it’s only working about half as well as Stories was two years after it launched.
Back in 2018, when Stories was as old as Reels is now, Kevin Systrom was asked about the proportion of time spent in Stories. He declined to give a number but claimed it was “almost just as important” as the main feed. So I’m assuming it was probably somewhere in the 40–50% range.
Reels, on the other hand, only accounts for 20% of time spent—despite the fact that Instagram is pushing it a lot harder. The only thing they did to get us to use Stories was put that little row of circles at the top of our feeds. But now they’re actually sprinkling Reels directly inside our feeds so they’re impossible to ignore. If it was just a little row you could quickly scroll past, I bet that 20% figure would be much lower, perhaps below 10%.
Zuckerberg and the rice playpen
As I write this I’m standing in what used to be a seed, or maybe rice, playpen at a local indoor play centre.
Used to be, because this last week they’ve removed the seed/rice and left the floor in this playpen bare like the other areas in the centre. Apparently the upkeep of that one playpen resulted in a whole extra staff member, so the seed pen just wasn’t good for business. They’re now saving a wage, and the business plan
It was good for play, though. My three year old was very worried about its absence, and honestly, it was the main drawcard for this play centre. I’ve never seen it empty, and every toddler in the room desperately wanted to run their fingers through the hundreds of kilograms of other-kid-germ-infected seed. The seeded play pen was good for so many things, just apparently not for business.
This, seemingly, is the art of business. What can I add to my vehicle driving toward our North Star that makes the product or service more valuable, more desirable, more wanted. What can I take away that would not detract from those same elements.
How can we be driving towards our North Star with the least amount of baggage, and the most amount of joy and soul intact?
I wonder if letting that staff member go and removing the rice increased joy, soul, satisfaction in the play centre?
Which makes me think of this line from Mark Zuckerberg of Meta/Facebook/the metaverse this week:
“Our north star is can we get a billion people into the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars a piece in digital commerce by the end of the decade? If we do that, we’ll build a business that is as big as our current ad business within this decade. I think that’s a really exciting thing. I think a big part of how you do that is by pushing the open metaverse forward, which is what we’re going to do.”
What a soulless and boring North Star. Get back to me when your metaverse has a germ-ridden rice pen, Zuck.
Another dose of inspiration for my family’s 2023:
Seneca:
“Everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed hoping I by a man who is preoccupied with many things.”
Warren Buffett:
“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.”
My 2023 goal in Mexico is to no longer know to do.
Wendell Berry:
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
May god save any of you who find this book in your family homes
“Mark last week as the end of the social networking era, which began with the rise of Friendster in 2003, shaped two decades of internet growth, and now closes with Facebook’s rollout of a sweeping TikTok-like redesign.”
Taylor Lorenz on why you don’t want the old Instagram back:
“It’s tempting to think that if Instagram simply reverted to a previous design or reinstated a chronological feed, that would somehow bring us closer to the people we care about. But we don’t forge personal connections by sharing or commenting on highly personal public-facing photos that are permanently displayed on a grid anymore. These days, intimacy is fostered through features like DMs, group chats, or ephemeral posts to Close Friends.”
A fancy hotel in Brisbane is trying to engage the Streisand effect by asking that these photos be removed from my Unsplash profile. It’s funny that brands are still trying to discourage user-generated content in 2022.
I might not be TikTok cool, but I’m Grammarly cool
