In October 2021, Facebook experienced an outage which also meant that Instagram and Whatsapp also went down. And everyone turned to Twitter to complain. In early February 2022, Twitter also experienced some problems with loading Tweets. When these outages happen, I am always reminded of discussions I have had, over the years, with various corporate and media platforms on the importance of owning your platform – in other words a website that you pay for - and using social media as a way of amplifying your stories. Social media has become pervasive in ways that we initially couldn’t imagine....
The Power of Social
Social media makes us less social. This is a common argument against social media and the digital world. And there is some accuracy to this. Many of us access the following on our smartphones: Twitter, Facebook, Email (with multiple addresses, Whatsapp, LinkedIn, sms, WeChat, BBM, Instagram, Messenger, Skype, Snapchat, Hangouts, etc. If you have push notifications for each, your device probably buzzes, beeps and rings every couple of sections. At the same time, depending on what operating system you are on, these notifications probably pop up on your lock screen, drawing your attention away...
Mind Your Words
Day One. We are curators of our lives, whether consciously or unconsciously. Our digital persona tells our individual stories as they unfold. If you take the time, regardless of how created it is, you can discern the root of a person simply by following them on social media from both what they talk about and what they leave out. When I am to meet or have met someone, I generally go through their online persona, exploring Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, About Me and any other platform I can find them on. In fact, I use Charlie App, which “combs through 100s of sources and automatically...
The Art of Life (Episode 1)
Steve Slotow is someone who I've been bumping into at, primarily, tech launches over the last two years. We'd chat briefly about this and that and get back to our lives. We both write and engage with content, particularly technology and digital related, from a more inclusive lifestyle perspective, rather than the solely geeky, nitty-gritty spec driven one - don't doubt we do like specs and features as well. So, when he approached me about starting a web series engaging with all of these spaces and more, I jumped at the opportunity. We've decided to call it The Art of Life. A director,...
In Retrospect
6 Powerful Social Media Persuasion Techniques Let’s be honest, you don’t just want your voice to be added to the conversation; you want your voice to be heard, repeated, and valued—and your message to be influential. Ultimately, you’re after influence ... [more] Reminders of a Boy Returned to Russia SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. — The toys in the backyard suggest generous parenting: a swing set, its green paint shiny and new; a red tetherball covered in cherry-red glitter; even a trampoline... [NY Times] Spoken Word & Music: Poet LKJ The legendary dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson live on tour...