📡 The ex-influencer/president of the US

Pulse #121 —There are things in a week you cannot ignore like Bernie Sanders at Biden’s inauguration, or Biden’s inauguration itself, or DJ Trump’s last song...

Jan 24, 2021

There are things in a week you cannot ignore — or avoid seeing — in the world, like Bernie Sanders at Biden’s inauguration, or Biden’s inauguration itself, or DJ Trump’s last song, of course [at least for now]!

Let’s talk about Trump, social media, and the attention economy in the least political way possible.

During the past couple of weeks, Trump got deplatformed from his favourite app, Twitter, and more than a dozen others, like Facebook [and Instagram], YouTube, Snapchat, Twitch, etc.

What did he lose by that though? It wasn’t like he was removed from the office, nor did his presidency end early. He did lose [the lion share of] his reach and an insane amount of attention he was getting. He didn’t become less important, but he did become less relevant, both because he couldn’t cause controversy on Twitter and he was about to leave the Oval Office, but only one because of his behaviour.

Now, let’s go back to 2015 and 2016; a time we could go out, try clothes in a store and hug people we loved — the pre-coronavirus era; when Donald Trump was not the US President. Do you remember what happened?

Trump announced his candidacy and the media — and people — went nuts (rightly so), and every media outlet started covering him. Why? He was unusual, and he commanded the attention of everyone by being extreme. He basically played this one quote (mainly attributed to Jeffrey Pfeffer, but I’m not too sure) that “you can’t be normal and expect abnormal results” — and he went after the abnormal results. Looking back at it, it has been his main move from the very beginning.

Trump’s entering the race to win the White House started as a joke [to many of us] — got the attention he was hoping/planning he would, and went viral — and then turned into a not-so-funny-but-very-widespread one. One that lasted four years and by the end, stopped being even remotely funny. One so powerful [or popular, but not in a necessarily positive way] that private companies, such as Twitter and Facebook, were afraid to react to, just because it could’ve hurt them financially [which eventually did when they finally acted on it].

Now, without his beloved Twitter and other social platforms, what is Trump actually missing? He has already been the US President, and nothing can change that, but so has Obama. But what’s the difference [not implying there’s only one, but in this context, I mean]? Obama still has many platforms he could leverage, utilise, and command the attention of his fans and the world with. What about Trump? His ability to attract and manage attention [even of his fans] has been radically reduced. He hasn’t changed much, but his access has. In addition to his not being the US president, he now doesn’t have the power he once had in the attention economy. He’s not an “influencer” anymore.

But the whole deplaformation of Trump poses another question, regardless of his actions: should private platforms have the power to do so? Is this for or against the freedom of speech?

For me, the most challenging part of the issue isn’t the fact that private companies can impact the world’s order. I mean, this is barely news (information, oil, and land were right up there before attention), but it is the fact that if it was the right thing to do, they could’ve done what they did in the past two weeks a lot sooner and they did not. It’s not their actions, but their inaction for years.

What do you think? You can now comment here.

Before we get to the rest, how do you feel about a coffee?

News

Apple fixing their stuff, Xbox Live Gold prices, and 3nm chips made in the US [link]
Apple’s VR headset, Facebook’s Oversight board, and the Search for Australia [link]
Amazon extending helping hand toward Biden, Opera goes after gamers, and TikTok’s new feature [link]
Turkey pissed off at Twitter & Pinterest, India pissed off at WhatsApp, and Netflix’s earnings [link]
Crowdsourcing for justice, Social Media algorithms, and Telegram under pressure [link]
Github’s late apology, Signal’s return, and guess who’s going back to prison!? [link]

💊 a gift for you.

Worth Your Attention

You probably already have a business card, but I’m guessing it’s not an NFC-enabled one. In a Medium post, Mahdi Taghizadeh, a dear friend of mine, explains why you should and how you can have one. It’s definitely worth your attention.

You can read it here.

I’ll post about mine as soon as I design and order them 😁

Statistics

4 in 10 Consumers Always Read Local Businesses’ Responses to Reviews

When it comes to influencing purchase decisions, consumers take product and business reviews to heart. But, it’s not just reviews that consumers read — close to three-quarters also read the businesses’ responses to these reviews. This is per a survey from BrightLocal that looks at how local business reviews impact consumer behavior.
The Q4 2020 survey of more than 1,000 US consumers found that close to 9 in 10 either always (34%), regularly (26%), or occasionally (27%) read online reviews. Just 1 in 8 (13%) said they never read local business reviews online.

if you own/operate a local business, make sure you respond to reviews online, specially the negative ones.

Tools & Apps

Stereo: an audio-only social network [iOS | Android]

this is almost perfect for podcasting - live! follow me on stereo @behrouz; there’s a good chance i start a live audio thing…

genei: AI-generated summaries for any article or research paper.

this is quite handy if you’re doing research…

Side Hustle Stack: a FREE resource to find platform-based work

it’s definitely worth having a look.

Bernie Sitting: Add sitting Bernie to any photo & Bernie Sits: Put Bernie Sanders in places using google maps street view.

if you’re not living under a rock, you’ll find this hilarious! and i also pitched in with a snapchat lens… 😂

Spotted

Yelp is working on new category icons for the home page, as well as slight layout improvements [link]
Gboard is working on “Grammar check” [link]
Instagram continues to work to natively support Rooms video calls [link]
Instagram still working on the redesigned Settings menu in the Threads app [link]
Microsoft is working on a new setting for sorting contacts [link], a new privacy option to clear the Search History [link], and the ability to set a range of dates for automatic replies in Outlook for Android [link]
Spotify is working on TikTok-style player UI where you can thumbs up or down on tracks [link]
Twitter might publish Birdwatch data (their misinformation combatting tool) daily [link]
TikTok is working on a new LIVE notification settings section [link]