Browsed by
Category: Social Media

What People Are Missing About Gen Z

What People Are Missing About Gen Z

Comments 0 Comment
Photo by Kyle Glenn @ unsplash

Gen Z, aka the Zoomers, that generation born between roughly 1997-2012, are hitting the workforce and it seems that it’s not going well at all. “Bosses are firing Gen Z grads just months after hiring them—here’s what they say needs to change,” Fortune reported.

“Employers’ gripe with young people today is their lack of motivation or initiative—50% of the leaders surveyed cited that as the reason why things didn’t work out with their new hire.

“Bosses also pointed to Gen Z being unprofessional, unorganized and having poor communication skills as their top reasons for having to sack grads. Leaders say they have struggled with the latest generation’s tangible challenges, including being late to work and meetings often, not wearing office-appropriate clothing, and using language (in)appropriate for the workspace.” Read More...

X Marked the Spot

X Marked the Spot

Comments 0 Comment

Before you get your backs up, this is not about politics, and sung to the tune of ‘Let’s Talk About Sex:’ It’s about tech, baby, it’s about you and me, it’s about all the good things and the bad things that can be, It’s about tech. Let’s talk about tech.

At the dawn of the Age of Social, it was widely proclaimed that we, the users, were the product. Is a shift underway at a tectonic level?

Two men engaged in a conversation on X’s Spaces last week and the audience numbers were off the charts. Live, watched later, or simulcast over various sites, it was reported that between a quarter billion to a billion people tuned in. Read More...

Meta Under the Microscope

Meta Under the Microscope

Comments 0 Comment
Image by A3DigitalStudio from Pixabay

The social networks love kids. That especially seems to be the case with Meta nee Facebook, with its many social platforms. The company has a long history of engaging children – the more the merrier and cha-ching!

Just how engaging and by what methods is at long last coming under scrutiny. How Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Failed Children on Safety, States Say, the New York Times reported. The C.E.O. and his team drove Meta’s efforts to capture young users and misled the public about the risks, lawsuits by state attorneys general say. That’s not exactly a news flash, but then again, it’s the New York Times – all the news that’s fit to print…eventually.

There were more than a dozen lawsuits filed since last year by the attorneys general of 45 states and the District of Columbia, the Times reported. “The states accuse Meta of unfairly ensnaring teenagers and children on Instagram and Facebook while deceiving the public about the hazards. Read More...

Tik Tok, Tik Tok, Tik Tok

Tik Tok, Tik Tok, Tik Tok

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Benjamin Zocholl from Pixabay

Due to the purported national security concerns posed by China-based ByteDance’s ownership of Tik Tok, the video sharing app which is used by around 170 million Americans and more than a billion people globally is in the spotlight. Congress is attempting to pass a law requiring that ByteDance divest itself of its interest in the company.

The ban would go into effect in six months.

“These countries have blocked or restricted it (Britain, EU, Canada, India, New Zealand, Afghanistan and Pakistan and note – primarily on government-issued devices),” the Washington Post reported. “The federal government already bans TikTok on government-owned devices.” Read More...

The 23 Memorable People & ‘Peccadillos’ of ’23 – Part One

The 23 Memorable People & ‘Peccadillos’ of ’23 – Part One

Comments 1 comment
Image by Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay

Remember all the dumb things you did when you were 23 and thought you knew everything? No, the year wasn’t all bad. Then again, when you were 23, you had your moments, too…

We’ve made our list and checked it twice, so without further ado, the people and peccadillos of the year that’s coming to an end, but the real question is, in many cases, when – and where – does it stop?

  1. Sam Bankman-Fried. He held our attention for quite a spell, as tales of his exploits were revealed: defrauding investors left and right and spending money like it grew on trees. Which it did for him: shake the tree and there were even more funds in the FTX coffers. The one-time crypto king believed that his true strength was in his hair and that those carefully unkempt locks made all the difference in his meteoric rise. Maybe they did for a spell, but speaking of locks, fraud is fraud and the former wunderkind is heading to prison for an even longer spell.
  2. The new cryminal class. SBF tops long list of crypto hot shots facing legal reckoning. “His case was far from the first — or last — time that crypto founders and executives found themselves in legal hot water related to their digital-asset activities,” the Toronto Sun pointed out. There was also Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon; Alex Mashinsky, the former chief executive of Celsius Network; Su Zhu, co-founder of the bankrupt Three Arrows Capital hedge fund and Thomas Smith, Kyle Nagy, and Braden Karony — the people behind the crypto token SafeMoon, who were accused by federal prosecutors of using millions in investors’ funds to buy luxury homes and McClaren sports cars. When you can live that large is so short an amount of time, chances are there’s a small cell in your future.

Biometrics collection is certainly growing. Read More...

Speaking of Terrorism, Let’s Talk About Tech

Speaking of Terrorism, Let’s Talk About Tech

Comments 0 Comment
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Given the present situation in the Middle East, it’s not easy to write about something like, say, the FEMA emergency broadcasting system test alert that we all experienced October 4, like it or not, and attention does need to be paid there – coming!

The invasion by Hamas into Israel and the attacks and wholesale murder and/or kidnappings of innocent civilians was amoral, to put it mildly. The world is gobsmacked, no matter which side you’re on, and since we opine on tech rather than politics, there is very much a lesson here for us all in tech overreach.

Huh? Read More...

The Return of the Dark Lords of Social

The Return of the Dark Lords of Social

Comments 0 Comment
Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

From what we’ve witnessed about the tech space to date, tech is all about invention and reinvention.

Example: it’s a communications tool. How long has the telephone been around, meaning landlines? Instead of calling, we ping or email or Zoom. Nothing new, really: only the words and devices and delivery mechanisms have changed to deceive the clueless.

Tech is also about glorification and vilification – and sometimes both, in the same person. Everyone’s (former) hero Elon Musk bought Twitter and the tech media banded against him – no matter that Twitter had been a platform for propaganda and surveillance under Jack Dorsey’s tenure. Yet, no matter what, Dorsey, for some reason, can seemingly do no wrong. Read More...

Charge!

Charge!

Comments 0 Comment
Image by mohamed_hassan from Pixabay

We recall back in the day when Facebook hit the zeitgeist in a huge way, it was suggested that the company charge a nominal fee for the service, and we believe it was a dollar a month. Easily affordable in most countries, and why not to bring family and friends closer. Of course, there are countries where a dollar a month is quite steep, and the company opted for eyeballs uber payment and they’d make their money via tracking you and offering up adverts.

As a note to self and a cautionary tale to founders: best to bake in the revenue model/premium services early in the game, as did, say, LinkedIn, who, when they hit a tipping point long ago – a year or two after funding – the company did maintain a free version, but also introduced a premium model and people were willing to ante up. It seems to have worked. We do believe that the company is still around. And with multiple revenue spokes. Also a good idea.

Re Facebook. Well, times change, as has Apple’s advertising policies: the company’s anti-tracking protections cost Facebook, now Meta, some $10B in ad revenue last year. Read More...

Everything You’ve Been Told About Tech May Be Wrong

Everything You’ve Been Told About Tech May Be Wrong

Comments 0 Comment
Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

At the dawn of the Age of Social, tech bros built promised the world  goodness and light – to bring the world closer together; to give everyone a voice – built walled gardens, amassed billions of users, made themselves more or less the only game in town and became a vital part of life. Which made them too big to fail.

Or so we’d been told. Often.

Yet by the end of September, Facebook’s Meta Lost Two-Thirds of Market Cap Value From 2021, NewsMax reported. Mark Zuckerberg Admits He ‘Got It Wrong’ as Meta Lays Off 11,000 Employees. At Least He Signed His Name. Twitter laid off 7500 employees – but at least Zuckerberg signed his name??? Which will no doubt make all the difference, especially once the benefits run out. Read More...