Paul Ford in Wired mag might be onto something
Where is trust growing?
It’s often remarked upon that trust is dropping. Trust in government, science, corporations, media, journalists etc.
But where is it growing?
Where the hell is she?
One of the key elements to parenting is knowing whether to say “wow” or “no, don’t do that” when your kid screams “Hey, dad!”
The co-founder of podcast host Anchor has written about his perceived issue with podcasting in the Standards Innovation Paradox, and James Cridland has responded that it hasn’t remained stagnant in its 19/21 years.
The most prominent issue I see in podcast standards today would be in forming a distinction between a serial show, an episodic show, or a one-off show, like a feature story or a documentary. Serials and episodic shows are covered already in the RSS, but I could see a type of audio story that is a single “episode” of either fiction like a feature film, or a single story like a documentary.
Instagram is embarrassing itself because it didn't steal, it copied
Five days after Instagram launched in October 2010 I graced the new photo-sharing service with this gold nugget.
[
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(https://www.instagram.com/p/-iO/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=)
4,301 days later who knew that I could have summed up the entire social network in four words.
“Make me feel better!”
Instagram made me feel better for the longest time. The simple act of making and viewing photos was lubricated to the point of a simple addiction. I could make photos and share them so easily, and you could share your photos and I could experience them so easily. We would doom scroll wanting to see more of each other’s world through the film-filtered Instagram app. Instagram, having stolen from Hipstamatic, did what the hispters never achieved - they made photo sharing easy and beautiful on our new fandangled Apple-branded telephones.
I still remember the early months of Britt and my relationship when she learned about Instagram and when she found out it wasn’t available for Android phones we bought her an iPhone. She switched to an iPhone to use a free photo-sharing app.
Making people feel better is the key to success in business, you’re solving people’s problems, making them feel better. Instagram made us feel so much better.
In the almost 12 years since, the service has adapted new features, like video, IGTV, Stories, and Reels. Each step along that path of evolution has become more and more embarrassing for it.
In 2015 when it adopted Snapchat’s Stories feature the theft was seen as an act of survival, and we generally all went along with it. After all, we wanted Stories but didn’t want to change to Snapchat and risk getting sexted by some young person along the way.
2018’s introduction of IGTV was a hedge against YouTube on mobile. Turns out that portrait/tall video was a few years too early for us.
But in the first year of the Covid pandemic when Instagram replicated TikTok’s video service as an Instagram feature called Reels, that’s when the social network started losing its soul. The desperation to kill TikTok by replicating, copying, the whole service as a feature has brought us to July 2022 when the entire app has evolved into an Instagram-shaped TikTok.
There’s a difference between stealing and copying.
Great artists steal. When an artist - I’m not sure Adam Mosseri would identify as an artist - copies, they replicate, duplicate, they make a facsimile of something else. It lacks soul, and it lacks care. Copying is not what an artist does. Copying is what a lazy corporate slave does.
Stealing, however, is key to being a great artist. If I steal from you, I take your thing and it becomes mine. I take ownership of it. I care for it. It has my attention, it has my soul. Great artists steal. They take your idea and make it their own. If Instagram stole TikTok’s video feature, it would look different to Reels. Reels wasn’t stolen from TikTok, it was copied.
The easiest way to see if Instagram stole or copied TikTok would be to open the recently updated app and see if it carries the craftsmanship of people who care. Is the user experience beautiful, is it thought through? The content being posted on Instagram as a Reel, does it have a Tiktok watermark on it or is it original content made for Instagram?
Also, what’s the deal with some parts of the app being black like a dark mode, and some being white. The recent update is just so poorly implemented.
I often wonder about what the future looks like, and the only data we have to work with is the past. Which major brands, companies, and products ceased to exist in the past - and why? Why am I typing this on a MacBook instead of a Compaq? Why is my phone an iPhone, not a Nokia? Why is my car a Mazda, not a Holden? Why is my internet connection provided by Aussie Broadband, not OzEmail?
For all the P&Ls, corporate mission statements, leadership changes, and org charts, I humbly believe that products/brands/companies that continue to exist, exist because they carry soul and bring purpose into the world, they continue to solve our problems. For all the complaints you can have about Apple Inc., there is a mountain of evidence that the individuals inside the company care about the products they ship. They might have different priorities than you or I, and what they care about might differ from what you’d like them to care about, but it is inarguable that they care.
It’s clear, without a doubt, that Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, and Adam Mosseri, do not care about Instagram. They care about eradicating - or at least neutralising - the competition and now that they can’t simply buy their competition, the goal is to strangle them out of the marketplace. Welcome to modern capitalism, and Meta is welcome to engage in it, but I’m also at liberty to comment that it’s embarrassing and I can’t help but feel that this recent copying won’t result in the goal they are shooting for.
My friend, Scotty McDonald, accused me of becoming a ratchety old man who doesn’t like change, tweeting: “I remember when you were the fearless, early adopting, shining light in my life”. I honestly hope this isn’t the beginning of my slide into the old man yells at cloud meme. But that’s why I blog, to document my eventual demise into a senile old man who might of had a few correct insights along the way.
Regardless, the July 2022 “TikTokfication” of Instagram doesn’t make me feel better, and that was Instagram’s one job.
Coffee. Coffee is what’s at the end of the rainbow. There, I solved it all for you.
They’re showing off Wisk’s flying cars at King George Square in Brisbane today.
Craig Mod (devastatingly) on travel:
“The romantic ideal of travel is to leave as one version of yourself and return another, changed, ‘better’ version of yourself. This trip changed me, but not in the ways you might classically expect. I’ve returned suspicious of travel, more confused than ever about why so many people travel. Unsure if most travel of the last few decades makes sense, or has ever made sense or justified the cost. It feels like some consumerist, un-curious notion of travel was seeded long ago and, like a zombie fungus, has mind-controlled everyone to four specific canals in Venice. To a single painting at the Louvre. To three streets and a square in Manhattan. To a few rickety back alleys around Gion. An eminently photogenic set of torii in Kyoto.”
Monday morning from Main Beach, Surfers Parasise, and the Broadwater
Only 80s kids will know the answer:
- CGA
- EGA
- TANDY
- VGA
But …
The story behind “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain”:
“Most foremen working at that time were chiefly hired for their musical abilities, as singing automatically lifted the spirits of the workers and made the whole process smoother”
#bringbacksingingforemen
Consider me sold on water filtration. Six months ago we got a complete home water filtration unit installed. I wasn’t against it, I just didn’t consider it necessary.
Today I replaced the filters for the first time.
See if you can pick which ones are the six-month-old filters.
I still believe this 10 years on
The one where Charlie Day beats up Ben Abraham. If I Didn’t Love You, the Music Video.
Jim Rohn:
“You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.”
Do banks call debit cards, credit cards, and credit cards, debit cards? Because if it’s a credit card for me, it’s a debit card for them. Right? We both can’t call them credit cards, that’s not how accounting works.