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Shanti's avatar

very good post! I think the point about social networks is most salient... if "social" media isn't made for "social" interactions, what is it? I think the idea of Facebook Messenger being reintegrated into the main Facebook app is kind of horrifying, because most of these networks have extensive private messaging products as well as the public interaction ones, and they work well and are ubiquitous, even if the other aspects of the app are not appreciated by the users. Is the bullheaded determination to pivot to (short) video going to erase those private message functions and drive people to ... email? to SMS? and with google search being increasingly gamed by SEO and shoppng products -- they gotta milk every last dollar! -- what will the Gmail/google drive products look like -- could they also become filled with advertising? lots of horrible stuff ahead i am sure

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Rohan Salmond's avatar

Looking forward to listening to the podcast. Re: Instagram and TikTok, I’m led to think about the early days of YouTube, which I was deeply involved with. Back then, bandwidth/storage/upload limitations meant it was a platform for ~1 to 5 minute video — what I think is now considered “short form” lol. When TikTok announced they were allowing up to 10 minute uploads I had a serious flashback to 2008

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Joel Humphries's avatar

Very excited for the podcast!

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CentrallyPlannedEconomyOfIdeas's avatar

Has Andrew from Boonta Vista already been commissioned to write a theme for the podcast? Or are you waiting to build the audience first?

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AJ's avatar

Love the new podcast! In answer to your comment on the first episode about the Facebook group for the apartment building, my building has a Slack channel. Then again, I live in Collingwood and there's 5 devs per square metre up in this mug.

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Joshua Leto's avatar

I can't see a difference between "a singular feed of video" and broadcast television. What am I missing? I know the format is moderately different, but isn't it the same delivery mechanism, with a theoretical difference in control. Video, video, commercial, video, video, commercial, and so on.

The upside is that it's made it easy for me to mostly ignore it.

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James Hennessy's avatar

I think the key difference is in the extreme narrow targeting of content. The shift from social networks broadly acknowledging human input signals (people you follow, channels you explicitly subscribe to) to mostly disregarding that and just blasting you very targeted content based on what you actually do on those networks is significant.

But at the same time I think you're right that a return to something that on the surface basically looks like the classic broadcast TV format is kind of funny and ironic.

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Joshua Leto's avatar

You’re right about the targeting. I guess it’s more like specialty cable. Food Network, History Channel, etc. That’s my personal preference coming through that I don’t feel a difference between networks and cable programming. It’s all broad and generic to me.

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Matt Cowgill's avatar

what’s a soft launch

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James Hennessy's avatar

You wouldn’t get it.

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