Just a guy in Vermont trying to connect all the dots...
Dan York
Author's posts
Feb 11
TDYR 286 – Running OUTSIDE On Feb 1 In Keene, NH
On February 1 the weather in Keene, NH, was amazingly warm and so I went for a run... and recorded a podcast episode while running....
Feb 10
Watch Live on Feb 11 – ISOC President/CEO Kathy Brown at UN’s International Day Of Women & Girls In Science
On Thursday, February 11, 2016, our President and CEO Kathy Brown was among the leaders participating in the celebration of the UN's International Day of Women & Girls in Science at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. You can watch live starting at 10:00am US Eastern (UTC-5) at a link available from:
Dan York
Feb 08
Bernie Sanders Advertising On Snapchat Before NH Presidential Primary
Yesterday my teenage daughter clued me in to something that Senator Bernie Sanders' campaign is doing that none of the other Democratic or Republican presidential candidates seem to be doing: advertising on Snapchat!
Once you take a photo in Snapchat, you have the option to swipe to the right to cycle through a series of "filters" that you can add to your photo before you send it to someone or post it to your "story" on Snapchat. These filters include things like your location, the time of day, the outside temperature and, interestingly, the speed in MPH you are currently traveling! (Along with a warning not to "snap and drive!)
One of those filters here in Keene, New Hampshire, (and I'm assuming this is active for all Snapchat users in New Hampshire) lets you add in an image about Bernie Sanders:
Once you've done that you can then make other changes to the photo before sending it on to another Snapchat user (or users) or posting it to your "Story". It also adds a "Bernie" campaign logo to the top of your image.
At first I was puzzled about whether this was an ad or something coming from Snapchat itself (which I thought would be bizarre) but then when I tried it myself I noticed that for a brief moment the word "SPONSORED" appears when you are applying the filter:
And of course when you look closer you see in the brown part on the bottom:
GEOFILTER PAID FOR BY BERNIE 2016 (not the billionaires)
... leaving no doubt that this was an ad from the campaign.
In playing more with the filters, I've seen no sign of ads from any other candidates.
It's quite clever in that yesterday it said "2 DAYS TO GO!" and today it says "1 DAY TO GO!" I'm going to guess that tomorrow there will be something about "today is the day".
Here's what the full image looks like when posted in Snapchat (the actual image is just of a street in downtown Keene ... but notice the Bernie logo on the top and the image on the bottom):
Presumably Snapchatters more creative than I am could take selfies or other photos that make better use of the Bernie filter. :-)
Kudos to the Sanders team for trying something like this. In this year's NH Presidential Primary, we've seen a HUGE amount of social media usage... but so far this is the first I've seen of Snapchat usage.
I would be curious to know, of course, if there are any stats to find out how many Snapchatters actually used the filter ... but I'm not sure how you ever would get that info. (Presumably Snapchat can deliver that info back to the ad purchaser, in this case the Sanders campaign.)
I suspect if this is successful we'll see more usage in the upcoming primaries. The use of "geofiltering" to restrict the filter availability is also intereseting as it allows the campaigns to limit their spending and also very specifically target their messages.
I should note that in order to use this filter, I had to turn on Location Services for Snapchat on my iPhone. I had not done so as I honestly don't use Snapchat all that much... but once I did I then had these filters.
Have any of you reading this seen Snapchat usage by other campaigns?
UPDATE - 9 Feb 2016: And here's what the Snapchat filter looks like on Primary Day itself:
Feb 01
Facebook Live Video Streams Limited to 30 Minutes For Regular Users
After experimenting with Facebook Live video last week, I encountered an interesting limit:
Regular users are LIMITED TO 30 MINUTES per live video stream.
When doing a Facebook Live stream this morning, I suddenly found I started getting warning messages at the 25-minute mark. I captured a few of them:
Naturally I had to let it run down to be out of time... at which point my iPad screen got all blurry:
and stayed that way for a minute or so when it seems the app or Facebook Live service must have been post-processing the video, because the next thing I saw was a screen telling me that my video was posted to my timeline:
And that was that.
Now... in Facebook's Best Practices for Facebook Live, they say (my emphasis added):
7. Broadcast for longer periods of time to reach more fans The longer you broadcast, the more likely fans are to discover and share your video with their friends on Facebook. We recommend that you go live for at least 5 minutes and we've seen some public figures broadcast for over an hour.
Presumably this longer time is for "verified" accounts and Pages.
Searching in Facebook Help, I found this page where down under "How do I share a live video to my Timeline on Facebook?" has this (my emphasis added):
During your broadcast, you'll see the number of live viewers, the names of friends who are watching and a real-time stream of comments. Your broadcast can be no longer than 30 minutes. When you end your broadcast, it'll be saved on your Timeline like any other video.
Now, in all honesty, I don't know that the type of videos I could see personally streaming live with Facebook Live would be longer than 30 minutes. In our days of "snackable video", i.e. it's kind of like a quick snack of food, you're generally looking for really short videos of a couple of minutes.
I could see this for quick "person-on-the-street" interviews... quick updates during events, etc. For all of that, the 30-minute limit is fine.
BUT...
... for companies or organizations (or public figures) who might want to live stream a presentation, workshop, talk, etc.... those events might go much longer.
I would assume the path to longer video would be to get your page or account "verified" (and I may have to try this now :-) ).
Jan 31
First Look: Facebook Launches Live Video For All To Take On Twitter’s Periscope
Hey Twitter... your Periscope is in for some serious trouble! On January 28, 2016, Facebook started expanding their "Live Video" to all iOS users in the USA - and it's definitely a strong offering! Naturally, I had to take Facebook Live Video out for a spin:
Experimenting with Facebook Live Video...
Posted by Dan York on Thursday, January 28, 2016
It was extremely easy to use. All I had to do was go into the iOS Facebook app, press the button to start writing a status update, and then tap on the new "Facebook Live Video" icon:
After that you get a screen where you can see somewhat of a view of what you are going to show in the camera - and the ability to switch between the front and back cameras:
Hit the "Continue" button, enter in a quick text description... and then hit "Go Live" to begin. That's it!
During the time of the live video, you can move the camera around, switch between front and back cameras, zoom in, adjust white balance... and everything else you'd expect to be able to do.
You also get comments coming in from people that you see on the bottom half of your screen. As you saw if you watched the video above, I could then respond to those comments during the live video stream.
When it's all done and you hit the stop recording button, you then get some stats and nicely have the option to save the video to your camera roll:
All in all it was a very simple and easy to use experience.
UPDATE - 1 Feb 2016: It seems that Facebook Live video streams ARE LIMITED TO 30 MINUTES for regular users. I just hit that limit while doing a live stream. Given that the Facebook Best Practices document mentions public figures streaming for over an hour, I'm guessing that "verified" accounts and Pages must have a higher time limit. (I wrote another blog post with screen shots.)
Initial Thoughts About Using Facebook Live Video
Here were some of my initial thoughts about using Facebook Live Video:
1. VIDEOS ARE SQUARE - Facebook nicely gets away from the portrait/vertical vs landscape/horizontal debate by simply making the live video stream square. It doesn't matter which way you hold the camera... or indeed if you switch the position of the camera. It just works.
2. COMMENTS DURING THE LIVE STREAM APPEAR AS COMMENTS TO THE VIDEO IN FACEBOOK - The comments people post during your live stream are nicely captured as comments to the video inside of Facebook. They are all right there for you to see - and for anyone else to see later. I like this!
3. COMMENTS DO NOT APPEAR DURING A REPLAY - My friend Tobias pointed out a down side with the comments... you don't see them in the video (as you do in Periscope) during the replay of the video. This means that comments that are made at a precise moment in the video no longer have the connection with the video. If someone is reacting to what you say by commenting "I totally agree", then I see it during the live stream and can react to that comment during the live stream. However, afterward there is now a comment to the video that says "I totally agree" ... that has lost all connection to its context.
4. LIVE VIDEOS APPEAR RIGHT IN YOUR FEED - When a live video stream is over, the video appears right in your regular Facebook feed... you don't have to do anything special, nor does anyone have to do anything special to find them. (In contrast to, say, YouTube where a live stream does go to your YouTube channel... but it's listed separately from your regular Uploads.)
5. YOU CAN SAVE THE VIDEO TO YOUR iPHONE CAMERA ROLL - When the live stream is over, you also have the option to save the video to your iPhone/iPad camera roll, so you can have a local copy that you can use in other ways.
6. FACEBOOK NOTIFIES PEOPLE YOU ARE LIVE - Similar to Periscope and Meerkat on Facebook, the people following you on Facebook get a notification in their NewsFeed that you are live. However, fans/followers can also subscribe separately to your live videos and get specific notifications whenever you go live.
7. YOU CAN EMBED THE VIDEOS OUTSIDE OF FACEBOOK - If you use a web content management system (CMS) that supports OEmbed, such as WordPress, you can simply copy the URL of your Facebook video and paste it into your editor window... and WordPress will automagically embed the video for you. If you use a system that doesn't support OEmbed (such as TypePad, where this blog is still hosted), you can still get the embed code - you just have to work harder. When you display the video in Facebook in a web browser in the "theater" (lightbox) mode, you go to "Options" at the bottom of the window and choose "Embed Video". In some of the other views of the video there is an "Embed Video" link down below the video on the right side. Either way you wind up with the embed code you can post into your web site editor. One note: the live video needs to have a privacy setting of "Public" in order for the Embed Video link to appear.
8. YOU NEED TO REALIZE THE iPHONE HAS TWO MICROPHONES - If you listen to my first live video above, you can notice the drop in the audio level when I switch from the front-facing camera to the rear-facing camera. I honestly didn't realize the iPhone 5s had two different microphones. It makes total sense, but I just didn't realize it. The result was the difference in audio levels, something I'm now aware of and can compensate for.
9. LIVE VIDEOS ARE TREATED JUST LIKE ANY OTHER POSTS FOR PRIVACY SETTINGS - Just to build off of #4 above, a live video is just another post, so you can do things such as change the privacy from "Friends" to "Public" or vice versa.
10. LIVE VIDEOS ARE AVAILABLE TO FACEBOOK PAGES - If you have a Facebook Page, you can also stream live video. You have to have a "verified" Pages, but if you do, you can use Facebook Live.
After my initial test, I tried it out a bit more with zooming, adjusting white balance, etc., and was again quite impressed.
Are Periscope and Meerkat in Trouble?
In a word... YES.
First Meerkat and then Periscope made it drop-dead easy to stream live video and alert all your followers... but they're based on Twitter. As I noted recently, Facebook has an insanely huge number of users ... and so this brings that live video capability directly inside Facebook's shiny walled garden.
Keep in mind, of course, that this IS the end goal for Facebook - to keep you nice and happy sharing live video inside their pretty walled garden.
Just as Twitter wants you to use Periscope to stay inside their walls... and Google would like you to stream live video with YouTube to stay inside Google's walls. (As would Livestream.com and other sites offering live streaming.)
The game is to keep the eyeballs for the ads... and to keep growing the massive directories of ACTIVE users.
Regardless of motivation, Facebook Live Video is a strong new contender in the live streaming space. Right now it's only available on iOS in the United States but their announcement says it will be offered in more countries soon adn will coming to Android phones soon, too.
Note, too, that Facebook provides some tips/best practices for using Facebook Live that give some further insight into the product's capabilities.
I don't know that I'll be using Facebook Live Video all that often during my regular work weeks, but when I'm at events, conferences, etc., I could see this being a great way to add live streaming into the flow of content that I'm creating.
What do you think? Will you use Facebook Live? Or will you stick with Periscope, Meerkat, YouTube or some other streaming service?
P.S. Here is another example shot with the rear-facing camera on the iPhone 5s and experimenting with zooming and white balance:
Listening to the Apple Hill String Quartet at Brewbakers In Keene, NH
Posted by Dan York on Thursday, January 28, 2016
Jan 31
Audio Recording: My SIPNOC 2014 Talk – "Is It Time For TLS For SIP?"
Is it time to use Transport Layer Security (TLS... essentially what we used to call "SSL") to add a layer of trust and security to Voice-over-IP (VoIP) that uses the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)?
Way back in June 2014, I gave a talk on this topic at the SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) in Herndon, Virginia. I recorded the audio of the session... but then lost track of the recording. I recently found it and, since much of it is (sadly) still relevant, I decided to release the recording as one of my The Dan York Report audio podcast episodes:
The slides that go with the presentation are available on SlideShare:
You'll see in the slide deck that I also provide some tutorials around DANE and DNSSEC along the way.
Coincidentally, I learned on Facebook over the weekend that my friend Olle Johansson was speaking on this exact topic at the FOSDEM 2016 conference in Brussels this weekend. His slides about SIP & TLS are also available on SlideShare, and he has more recent information - and also the conclusion that we need to use "SIP Outbound" for any of this to work:
Olle's last slide about what we need to do hits on the key points - and I agree with his conclusions.
Let's look at how we can get more TLS used within SIP to bring about a more secure and trusted VoIP infrastructure!
Jan 30
TDYR 285 – SIPNOC 2014 – TLS and VoIP
Way back in June 2014 I spoke at the SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) on the topic of "Is It Time For TLS for SIP?" I lost track of the audio recording but recently found it and thought I would share it.
Jan 30
SIPNOC 2014 – Is It Time For TLS for SIP?
Is it time for TLS for SIP-based Voice over IP(VoIP)? At SIPNOC 2014 on June 10, 2014, I spoke about how to secure VOIP communications using TLS and what are both the challenges and benefits.
Jan 30
SIPNOC 2014 – Is It Time For TLS for SIP?
Is it time for TLS for SIP-based Voice over IP(VoIP)? At SIPNOC 2014 on June 10, 2014, I spoke about how to secure VOIP communications using TLS and what are both the challenges and benefits.
Jan 29
Facebook’s Staggering 2015 Q4 Results – Amazing (and Concerning) Numbers!
- 1.59 Billion monthly Facebook users
- 900 Million monthly WhatsApp users
- 800 Million monthly Facebook Messenger users
- 400 Million monthly Instagram users
Wow.
Consider that there are 7 billion people on the entire planet... 7.3 billion if we go with US gov't data... that's about 1/5th OF THE WORLD (21%) USING FACEBOOK each month!
And nearly 1 billion people using WhatsApp.
Amazing numbers!
Admittedly, I'm more than a bit concerned about all of this communication being centralized within one corporation. This gives a HUGE amount of power to one corporate entity to be the gatekeeper of content and communication. Already with the NewsFeed algorithms Facebook is controlling what we see and share. As these numbers grow, they continue to gain more and more control.
As I wrote about last year, Facebook's control of multiple "user directories" severely limits the ability for new entrants to enter the messaging and communication scene.
It's definitely concerning... but it's also amazing.
Congrats to all the people at Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram for hitting these incredible numbers! It will be curious to see what next quarter brings!
P.S. Those who want deeper details can dive into Facebook's 2015 Q4 Earning Report. LOTS more data...
