Jan 23

FIR #312: The Social Media Press Release Redux

Everything old is new again, the saying goes. Despite touting the idea of a press release as a destination being a new idea, it actually dates back about 15 years — and retains all of its value. Neville and Shel explore the idea of defeating paywalls with destination press releases in this monthly long-form episode of “For Immediate Release.” Also in this episode:

  • Follow-ups to stories about Artificial Intelligence (AI) interns and facial recognition used for nefarious purposes.
  • The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer — and whether Edelman can claim to be trust experts
  • A roundup of news and commentary about ChatGPT
  • A decline in Mastodon users
  • Dan York’s Tech Report, which looks at some Twitter changes, good news for Mastodon users, a Mastodon instance for Medium users, Getty’s lawsuit targeting the generative AI image tool Stable Diffusion, Wikipedia’s new look-and-feel, and WordPress’s upcoming 20th birthday.

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Jan 22

Cory Doctorow on the enshittification of social platforms

If you read nothing else this week, I encourage you to read Cory Doctorow’s latest … rant? … essay? … article? Written in a style uniquely his own, he calls the article “TikTok enshittification”, giving us an ever so appropriate…

Jan 19

Midway Through 100 Days of Blogging – How Did I Do?

Back on December 1, 2022, I boldly said that I was going to attempt 100 consecutive days of blogging. Today marks day 50, the halfway point. So.. how did I do? Wellll… how many different ways can you say… FAIL!…

Jan 12

Measuring Stuff That Didn’t Happen

In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel tackle a question from listener Kris Hansen about developing a metrics dashboard for her organization’s leadership.
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The post FIR #309: Measuring Stuff That Didn’t Happen appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Jan 01

My Themes for 2023

As has been my practice for the past 14 years (see list), my first post of 2023 across all my sites is of three words that are my aspirations or “themes” for the year ahead. They are not “resolutions” so much as guiding thoughts or principles. Health Health (or a health-related word) has been one of my three words in 11 of these 14 years. 🙁 BUT… the truth is that I’ve reached an UNhealthy point where I MUST prioritize caring for my body. I’ve had a couple of minor health scares. I’ve been too sedentary. And I’ve continually made…

Dec 30

Mastodon Tip – Filter Languages To See Only The Ones You Understand

A tip for all the newcomers to Mastodon – if you are seeing a lot of posts in your timelines in languages that you don’t know, there is a very simple way you can filter those posts out. You just:…

Dec 28

Techmeme Now Highlighting Mastodon Posts In Addition to Tweets

In a sign of the growth of Mastodon in the midst of the continuing drama at Twitter, Techmeme, the news site I use the most to keep up on tech news, has started to highlight Mastodon posts in addition to…

Dec 27

ACM Launches Public Mastodon Server – Mozilla Planning To Launch Fediverse Instance in 2023

It’s great to see nonprofit organizations getting into the business of operating public Mastodon / Fediverse instances. Two announcements recently caught my attention. First, Mozilla, the makers of Firefox, announced that they would launch a public server (“instance”) in early…

Dec 26

Hallmark Christmas Movie Bingo Cards – and the Fascinating History of the Hallmark Channel

This past holiday weekend our older daughter brought a new fun activity – “Hallmark Christmas Movie Bingo”. If you are familiar with the “Hallmark Channel” here in the USA, they produce many seasonal romance movies. They vary widely in quality and some are a bit cheesy and cringe-worthy. Many of the movies follow a common formula … something like… high-powered marketing exec in New York City finds out her fiancé is cheating on her, and so goes away to spend Christmas with one of her old friends at her house in some rural location (often Vermont). While there, something happens…

Dec 26

FIR #305: We See You And You Can’t Come In

A petulant venue owner is using facial recognition software to keep people with whom he has issues from entering his spaces — including a mom with a Girl Scout troop. Also in this monthly long-form episode of the “For Immediate Release” podcast, Neville and Shel discuss the value of virtual goods and whether brands should start taking them seriously; business schools are exploring the potential for teaching in the metaverse — especially classes about digital technology; it hasn’t been a great year for metaverse activations, but at least brands are learning; it has been a year since Lush closed its Instagram and Facebook accounts, which means it’s time to see how that decision turned out; and the better ChatGPT (the AI text-generating chatbot) gets, the more worried some people get about its impact on truth; and Dan York shares a year-end Tech Report with a range of updates including using WordPress for newsletters, WordPress’s State of the Word 2022, and Tumblr Live.
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