đĄ The ex-influencer/president of the US
Pulse #121 âThere are things in a week you cannot ignore like Bernie Sanders at Bidenâs inauguration, or Bidenâs inauguration itself, or DJ Trumpâs last song...
There are things in a week you cannot ignore â or avoid seeing â in the world, like Bernie Sanders at Bidenâs inauguration, or Bidenâs inauguration itself, or DJ Trumpâs last song, of course [at least for now]!
Letâs 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 wasnât 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 didnât become less important, but he did become less relevant, both because he couldnât cause controversy on Twitter and he was about to leave the Oval Office, but only one because of his behaviour.
Now, letâs go back to 2015 and 2016; a time we could go out, try clothes in a store and hug people we loved â the pre-coronavirus era; when Donald Trump was not the US President. Do you remember what happened?
Trump announced his candidacy and the media â and people â 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 Iâm not too sure) that âyou canât be normal and expect abnormal resultsâ â and he went after the abnormal results. Looking back at it, it has been his main move from the very beginning.
Trumpâs entering the race to win the White House started as a joke [to many of us] â got the attention he was hoping/planning he would, and went viral â 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 couldâve 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 whatâs the difference [not implying thereâs 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 hasnât changed much, but his access has. In addition to his not being the US president, he now doesnât have the power he once had in the attention economy. Heâs not an âinfluencerâ 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 isnât the fact that private companies can impact the worldâs 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 couldâve done what they did in the past two weeks a lot sooner and they did not. Itâs 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]
Appleâs VR headset, Facebookâs Oversight board, and the Search for Australia [link]
Amazon extending helping hand toward Biden, Opera goes after gamers, and TikTokâs new feature [link]
Turkey pissed off at Twitter & Pinterest, India pissed off at WhatsApp, and Netflixâs earnings [link]
Crowdsourcing for justice, Social Media algorithms, and Telegram under pressure [link]
Githubâs late apology, Signalâs return, and guess whoâs going back to prison!? [link]
đ a gift for you.
Worth Your Attention
You probably already have a business card, but Iâm guessing itâs 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. Itâs definitely worth your attention.
You can read it here.
Iâll post about mine as soon as I design and order them đ
Statistics
4 in 10 Consumers Always Read Local Businessesâ Responses to Reviews
When it comes to influencing purchase decisions, consumers take product and business reviews to heart. But, itâs not just reviews that consumers read â close to three-quarters also read the businessesâ 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.
Read more on Marketing Charts.
Tools & Apps
this is almost perfect for podcasting - live! follow me on stereo @behrouz; thereâs a good chance i start a live audio thingâŚ
genei: AI-generated summaries for any article or research paper.
this is quite handy if youâre doing researchâŚ
Side Hustle Stack: a FREE resource to find platform-based work
itâs 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 youâre not living under a rock, youâll find this hilarious! and i also pitched in with a snapchat lens⌠đ
Spotted
Yelp is working on new category icons for the home page, as well as slight layout improvements [link]
Gboard is working on âGrammar checkâ [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]
Meanwhile on Twitter
Ideas from around the WWW
That's all for now...
What did you think of this issue?
where does this all head? what's the goal? purpose?