📡 Let’s keep going.
Pulse #127 — The struggle of continuing and believing.
“This is pointless.”
Have you ever felt that after keeping at something for so long — when nothing seems to happen? Is it really pointless?
This is one of my favourite tweets — ever. I strongly believe in the idea of consistency. What you’re looking for might just be right after the next turn…
But what if it’s not? What if it’s not the right path? What if it’s the path of repetitive and fruitless endeavour? Or anything, if done enough, can be fruitful?
Well, I don’t know.
Recently, I’ve been thinking about this newsletter and my telegram channels — mainly iXDaily; should I keep doing what I’ve been doing, or should I stop and focus my energy on something else?
It seems easy, but keeping everything running smoothly is not. If you’ve done it for a while, you’ll know.
I mean, I think one of the things that blow my mind about Seth Godin, besides being obviously brilliant, is his consistency in his blogging. He’s been posting [at least] one entry in his blog, every day since December 2004… That’s over 6200 days… That’s mind-blowing to me. I’ve been doing this weekly for two and a half years and I think I’m consistent af! Then I compare myself, and I’m like “are you fckin kidding me, dude?”
I don’t know, maybe it’s the growth. For me, it’s a lot of fun when it’s growing — fast; but when the growth slows down, I tend to get anxious. It’s not like I stop believing in what I do, but I’m like “hey god, I don’t mind a sign,” you know?
I do believe things take time too… a 40-months old newsletter with paid subscribers [thank you all], is not nothing; but I can’t stop my brain from floating the ideas like “fine! it’s good and all; but couldn’t it be better?” I mean when it’s pushing for improvements, it’s fine; but when it’s targeting my confidence… it sucks.
“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.” — Warren Buffett
Okay. The rant is done. I’m giving this more time and effort… it should work out — at least I hope it does.
thank you for being here and reading this.
grateful for everything — entitled to nothing.
News
30,000 orgs’ email hacked via Microsoft Exchange Server flaws [link]
Facebook under probe for ‘systemic’ racial bias in hiring and promotions [link]
Russian intelligence reportedly used fake news sites to spread misinformation about coronavirus vaccines [link]
Apple mixed-reality headset likely coming sometime in 2022, analyst predicts [link]
Apple’s antitrust case in the UK, Square’s musical bet, and Kings of NFT [link]
Brave goes after Google, Netflix goes after TikTok, and Twitter’s eCommerce bet [link]
Microsoft’s new stuff, AI to rule the world, and Spotify to surpass Apple [link]
Foldable iPhone, Instagram’s Live Rooms, and Volvo’s EVs [link]
SolarWinds CEO goes “it wasn’t me; it was the intern” and Facebook’s privacy settlement [link]
🚗 a gift for you.
Worth Your Attention
If you still don’t know about NFTs, read this, this, and this. And then this, about how Kings of Leon is releasing their new album as NFTs here.
The latest bid so far 89 ETH, almost $150,000 Why do some companies become household names, while others flame out? How do certain memes go viral? And why do some social movements take off and spread, while others fizzle? The Snowball Effect on Hidden Brain last week was a fantastic episode. It’s must listen. [Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify]
Chart of the Week
Top Apps Worldwide for February 2021 by Downloads
TikTok was the most downloaded non-gaming app worldwide for February 2021 with more than 56 million installs. The countries with the largest number of TikTok installs were from Douyin in China at 18%, followed by the United States at 11%.
Read more on SensorTower.
& more stats
Average post engagement rate in 2020: Instagram at 1.16%; Facebook at 0.27%; Twitter at 0.07% [link]
Smaller independents and artists direct grew fastest in 2020 [link]
A map and visualisation of ~40m cellular base stations on earth. [link]
30 Years of US Music Sales [link]
Australian news site traffic fell 15-20% when Facebook removed them [link | link]
Tools & Apps
Scan Thing: Quickest way to capture and save anything around you [iOS]
Volt.fm: Your exciting new Spotify page
Nerdy Image Downloader: Easily downloads all images from a Pinterest board into a .zip file [Chrome/Brave Extension]
Clubhouse Toolbox: Tools to elevate your experience (with regular updates)
Spotted
Twitter is working on the toggle for whether to make a Space private or not [link]
More details on how the Instagram affiliate program will work [link | link | link]
Instagram is working on end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) chats [link]
Instagram is working on audio rooms [link]
Instagram is working on a shortcut for Video Chats in the profile [link]
Instagram is working on the "Brightness.AI" Post edit option [link]
LinkedIn is working to allow you to add pronouns to your profile [link]
🐦 Tweets of the Week
tickles & chuckles
and now we’re done for this week
What did you think of this issue?
Also, if you’d let me know what’s your favourite section of the newsletter and what you’d like me to write about in the first section, that’d be great.
You can either reply to this email or just comment here 👇