Episode 291 Social Media Today and Looking Towards the Future.

Show Summary

On the Pod Rob Cairns sits down with friend of the show Jeff Brown and talks all things social media.

Show Highlights:

1. What is the next best thing.
2. Should I be on Tik Tok.
3. Changes are happening at Facebook.
4. The Twitter Mess.

Show Notes

Everybody Rob Cairns here and today I get to be joined by my amazing friend Mr. Jeff Brown, who’s a workplace education trainer. How are you Jeff? We’re doing well and we’re just in a season now where we’re onboarding participants into many programs. Many workplace education programs, so we’re doing I and A’s, which is initial needs assessments. For trying to. Figure out what they need and how we can customize the program for them to get the maximum benefit. And see real skills transferred. Yeah, and and Nova Scotia’s got that unique program and I’ve had the pleasure over the years of being in a number of those classes. And you guys have something pretty special out there. I think absolutely and it it works. Yeah, it certainly does. So Jeff’s a friend of the show. He’s been on the show multiple times. For those of you who don’t know, Jeff and I collaborate pretty well every day or every second day. We have a friendship that goes beyond work and word press and all that good. Stuff and one question. I’ve never asked Jeff and I’m going to put him on the spot because I told him there was a question coming is 1. I asked many guests and that’s what’s your WordPress origin story. How did you end up in the world of WordPress? Well, as I originally started with Microsoft Front page and then I went to Dreamweaver and hand. Code it, but everything took time and so I looked at WordPress as a way to get more done where it had a still a lot of flexibility so I could code. I could do a lot of elements in, but that’s where I started right there after Dreamweaver went into it, I saw that I could do more. You can make a site look better with less effort, and that’s how I got into WordPress and I’ve been a WordPress fan ever since. And that that’s a great story and I remember front page all too fondly, or not fondly depending on the flavor of the day. Yes, and many hours with Dreamweaver. Back in the day too. And you know it’s funny. I think the first website I ever did was hand coded and the only reason I did that website. Because I was tired of people calling me, asking me for resources so I put them all on a web page. And said go. Here leave me alone kind of deal so. Absolutely, and it’s every every change I made. It made it easier for me to deliver to the end user and it was WordPress enabled things to happen quicker, better information. It just was a better overall end user experience. So true, so true. So today I thought you and I would do what we try and do yearly and kind of revisit the world, the social media and. Depending on who you talk to, social is really good or really a mess, and I thought we’d dive into a couple of sites. We’ll talk probably a little Facebook or with a Twitter, a little TikTok a little everything else, and I think I’m going to start with TikTok, just me. I knew you were going there, I know. So we know the parent company that to talk is 50% owned by the Chinese Government. And I have been one of those people for the last couple of years. Said, I’m not sure I like TikTok as a platform because of who owns it. And then I took stock in the last six months and said wait a minute here. 90% of what I buy comes from China. So does it really matter? And the. And then to go even one more with TikTok is we do know there’s censorship. That goes on there. So what’s your feelings on the whole TikTok mess. Well for me I’m looking at if I invest into it. Am I going to get out of? It and you and I have had the same kind of ideas on TikTok as far as is it really going to be around? Is it going to offer value now? I’m saying that TikTok is in a place where there’s a lot of great video coming out of there and a lot of people doing a lot of great things. But on the other side of the coin, we’re starting to see more and more TikTok band. And so for me, it’s about if I’m going to invest my time, am I going to get a good return? And my biggest concern right now is that I’m watching in the states like a lot of the state government agencies are banning TikTok and it’s starting to spread to academia. Which means is that? The ball could be rolling on this platform and. I’m thinking the moment. It starts to really gain momentum all of a sudden. The carpet. Is pulled out. Now there’s a lot of people doing great things on TikTok. They’re getting some great visibility. They’re creating some great business outcomes from there, but I’m I’m still wondering where all these bands are going to settle and. As the way the United States goes, a lot of times, a lot of people follow. You’re seeing whole countries ban TikTok, I believe was Italy that if I’m correct been tick tock and I I’m not a real big fan of investing time in and then. Correct, correct? Losing my investment and so. I want to see where this is going. Before I really delve in. Yeah, I agree with you and in Canada, for those who don’t know, the CRT C, which is the equivalent of the FCC and the US, is now looking at TikTok and saying do we have to make a national decision? So don’t don’t kid yourself folks. The Canadian governments already got their hands and the concerns here. I think the problem becomes is I don’t like investing time in platforms that I’m concerned about so. And I also think TikTok is not a typical social media network. It’s a consumption network like YouTube is a consumption network. Instagram is a consumption network and by that I mean most of the people on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram aren’t even putting out. Content they’re scrolling through other people’s content they’re consuming or intaking that content. So I think if you’re trying to have true social. Those aren’t the networks where the conversations happen. What I will say is on YouTube and Instagram it does drive traffic back to other spots, so I think that’s important, though most people who post on those three aren’t even doing their own content. And it makes it really interest. Interesting because at the end of the day your brand your brand. Voice, everything’s key to building objectivity with these platforms. No, I love I love the brand comment so I’m going to segue into somewhere I wasn’t going to go. Should you be doing a corporate brand or a personal brand and? My big belief is you actually should do both. What are your thoughts on that? I do both because I want to have a brand that eventually down the road. Maybe I want to sell it, build that brand up to the place where you could sell it, for example, but I still love a lot of these social media platforms for friends and family and and connecting with others. And I still want to have the ability to continue that on as long as it exists. I like both and I think a good way to do. Who personal brand it’s to show who you are, so I think think things like Facebook lives. Things like Twitter lives, things like podcasting, which I do. And we’re doing right here. I think they help the corporate brand as much as the personal brand as anything personal. Absolutely, because people want to know who. You are irrespective of your of your business. They want to know what you’re like, who are they doing business with and live stream and podcasts convey a lot of what you’re like through. I mean the the lives they see you when they hear you, and that’s very formative and them making an impression about you. But even. In podcasts, the tone of your voice, how you conduct yourselves, the word you use that can open up the door for even more connection down the road. And people want to deal with people that are real. We all know. And we’ve talked about over the years. Business is based on trust. And not not just cost, and that’s a big deal. Absolutely, because at the end of the day, people want to feel good about doing businesses with people they do business with and so. It’s not always about the almighty dollar now people love a great sale and they’ll that still motivates them. But there’s other things creeping into the picture that are more than just cost, because a lot of times we’re so competitive. In pricing that it then becomes well, what’s the difference in this brand compared to this brand and a lot of times who’s there and what are they doing? What other things are they doing besides in business and and how are they investing like a business that invests back into the community that they’re in, for instance? So these are things that I really look forward and brands that I deal with. Are they doing? Positive are they giving back as well as just taking for instance. This podcast is already starting to derail where I wanted to go with conversation because we talked about trust and they think I, you know, where I’m going to go with this next thing. Oh, I can read your. Mind there’s a trust right now at the time of this recording, we’re looking at a company called LastPass, a security password firm, and the latest one I saw was my dear friend, Kathy Zen, over at stellar and runs marketing for Cadence. And I themes so disclaimer. Cathy posted a video about concerns about LastPass and interesting enough, the same day that posted I dropped a a podcast about passkeys, but the point I was going to get to a class pass is here’s the company that’s changed. Ends or change the way they function. At least four or five times. And I said very publicly on a Facebook post, I wouldn’t trust them in the world with my passwords right now, because personally I don’t trust the company anymore. I’ve lost faith in them because of the way they’ve handled things. What do you think about that? I’m still in the valley of decision on that one because I I watched the recent video from Steve Gibson and him talking with the technology part of it. The what he would take to get into an account. For instance, I do have concerns that they have. Other components that. Personal nature, your e-mail, your name information, your phone number, for instance, that has been divulged, and they do have, from what I understand the vaults. I don’t know if they can get into it. I’m still thinking about it, but how the information dripped out probably wasn’t the best for last. Pass in that now LastPass has been very forthcoming previously in previous years when they’ve had issues and I and I have a hard time understanding why they. Didn’t come to the party and let all the ugly out and then talk about the good the the fact that it still is. Very secure, from what I understand based on the technology now the other component AI could factor in it. That could be. Be something to consider, but I’m right in the value of. Should I stay or should I go and the other concern is if I’m going where am I going to go and how good are they? What potential issues could they encounter? Because I really think LastPass is not. AA1, and only I’m I’m going to see that these password managers are going to take a lot of brute force attacks and. People are gonna try to get in there cause those. Are literally the passwords for a lot of key players globally. Yeah, and so. So true. But it’s coming back to your answer or question about trust. Trust is everything we know that people make mistakes. We know this stuff happens. We don’t mind when people get wrong as long as they fix it. Now, this makes LastPass a better company because they’ve employed new things fine on them, but right now. The lack of information now we’re not talking proprietary stuff, but we’re talking about you know what are we doing to make this thing right? What are we doing to protect our customers? Some hand holding? If you want to call it that, it seems to be. That information is breaking that they didn’t reveal and now they have to reveal it. That’s not how you want to get. An information information from a company that’s had a breach. You don’t want it to get it from others. You want it to get it from them, and when it doesn’t come, I understand why you’re having a trust issue with them because it’s business is about ethics, and in my book and my understanding, if you can’t be in ethical business, then. I’m not going to do business with you. My my biggest thing was with this whole mess is. I’m not so sure they’ve been upfront with the information, so I’ve read a couple articles. One is on the Verge couple, others have actually said vaults have been come from us and they haven’t come out and admitted that and I’m hearing there’s some multiple places right now. And that concerns me when companies decide to kind of play around with the facts a little bit. So much so that I personally made a choice a year ago to switch away from LastPass and. I mean, it’s all in the communication and for me communication is a big deal now. I think Steve Gibson has changed his tune a little bit in the last week. From what I know, but. It will be seen in January his great podcast security. Now I’m sure they’re on hiatus with the holiday break at the time of this record, so I think they’ll he’ll address it like the first podcast back in January. And I I truly think there’ll be a I don’t miss podcasts because he’s usually pretty sharp on the wall. So yeah, the other thing I would love to be in Steve’s DM’s cause. That’s where a lot of action is happening right now. And and the problem with the overall thing is, if there is an avalanche of activity away from LastPass, it could tank the company. Yeah it could. That alone, regardless of whether they kept the vaults secure or not, a massive herd exodus from LastPass could not only damage the brand, it could burn them to the ground. So true, so let’s get back on the track on social because I’ve already derailed my own podcast, but what else is new? Nothing we’ve we’ve had so many great conversations, why not another one. Is all I could say, so let’s. Jump to the Facebook ecosystem. So in that ecosystem we’ve got Facebook. We’ve got Instagram. We’ve got WhatsApp. I’m kind of in and out of that ecosystem. I still have this ongoing issue. ### Facebook and Instagram. That I can’t post my own links. As a result on Instagram, I’m a consumer. I generally don’t post any very little anymore Facebook. The only thing I’m posting is my podcast link and I’m actually using the anchor link, not my links because of that. And then we’ve got the whole political unrest and the whole. If you want visibility, you got to pay to play. Let’s have some thoughts on the whole Facebook monster as I like to call. Well, when I first started off, visibility was 16% then it went to six. We went to three, 1, 1/2 and. It seems to be even worse than that, and you are literally fighting for every bit of visibility that you can get now deploying great. Organic strategies is great, but it’s still not going to give you massive reach, you’re going. To have to. Pay to play to get that visibility. At that point, you have to ask yourself, you know who is my market because we can’t market to the masses because it’s just too darn expensive. Who do I need to market to? Am I local or am I far away from local and that my territory, my area where I can sell is? Charge and these are things that you have to factor in when you are beginning to pay for marketing and at the end of the day it’s going to. Take a little. While to figure out who your ideal audience is, that will actually be inspired to purchase or interact with your business. So right now the visibility is pretty poor. It used to be better and even the marketing paid ads used to be better now. It’s not quite the same anymore due to different factors. For instance, the I OS 14 and onward, where literally Facebook was. They had to start guessing it on the results so they really weren’t able to get them off of those devices. For example, and safari, the Safari browser, and a lot of people that are really increasing the. In their browsers, the security and the. And the blocking, for instance it’s getting. Harder and harder. And Facebook is having to guess more and more as to who they should serve that up. So it’s it’s it’s getting tough. It really is. And and. Are starting to consider whether they should be on Facebook at all and Facebook has had tons of issues where they paid massive fines. I mean the last one was, I think, $740 million, fine like like 2 days of revenue for Facebook. But these are things that affect the. The longetivity, the effectiveness of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. They’re having some incredible challenges. I I agree with you and. You know it’s. Not just safari. I mean there’s a browser out there called 2 Chrome based browsers. One is for Volding and the other is the bigger known brave and they are designed actually to stop all these scripts running in the background. So we’re kind of at a crossroads. I think with social and the Internet that. The end user or the Internet consumer has to realize. Giving up your data is the cost of getting all these services for free. And the oldest program out there is the store loyalty program and the oldest one in Canada is Canadian Tire. And can entire money dates back to like 50 years and even Canadian Tire has recognized that customer data is valuable so they don’t hand out Canadian Tire bills anymore. They tell you to go to the app and get it. And the reason for doing that is so they have their customers data. What customers gotta kind of look at is what’s the value of that data and where it is so for example. Let’s go to another loyalty program I know well, PC Optimum which is the loyalty program that Shoppers Drug Mart and. And Labos has intended basically the concept they work on is every point. Is a dollar and once you hit $10 you get $10.00 of free money to spend. But the way. They market is their data. They do two things. Once they give you offers in the store based on what you’re buying, so there’s value to that as far as I’m concerned. And the other thing they do is they market in groups so they can’t be on the offers they’re churning you their stuff. Those in the pool, so to speak, so they’re not pulling out individual stats, and I would take giving away a little bit of privacy for the offers any time of the year. What do you think about that? That sounds great. As far as I can see, and I’ve I’ve seen McDonald’s do the same thing where I used to love the stickers on the coffee and now they’ve gone completely to the app because they want the information. I mean, we’ve seen that with that, and we’ve seen. Scene cards come out and replace a lot of. What is that? Now Sobeys was the latest one Sobeys now uses. Dean Card I believe. Staples, a lot of them went that way and and they’re literally gathering data because they need that to effectively gain information about where is the best place to market and what are the customers typically buying so that they can be a more effective in their marketing. Yeah, staples. Dollars and so. But it’s not just what they’re buying, Jeff. It’s also the frequency, so I’ll give you an example of that. I have a client who runs a spa. And the way they run their marketing. Is if you go in today and you get a massage and you’re a monthly massage, they emailed that customer a coupon after two weeks and said for this week only. We’ll give you 25% off your next massage book it now and it’s got to be booked in this spirit. And the reason they’re doing that is they’re giving up 25% in the short term. What what they’re doing is increasing the frequency that you go into that spa. So once you say, oh, geez, I’m doing well going in every two weeks, you’re going to start booking every two weeks. Mission accomplished. Absolutely, and that’s smart on their part, which is good business. Because you’re trying to change a pattern. Of a customer. It’s about this marketing is all about disruption and people don’t realize that. So let’s jump in. So we’ll talk to about Facebook. And I agree Facebook’s lost it’s luster. I’m saving the. Big one for last because I know once yet we get there. I know, I know. There’s a whole pile of issues there. One of my favorite platforms has become LinkedIn. And I managed Co manage a large WordPress product group where about 99,400 with Courtney Robertson who works over at GoDaddy, shout out to Courtney and all the work she does and. One of the problems LinkedIn has is they have this engine that allows you to pay basically. To DM anybody that’s not in your contact list, and that’s one of the things that drives me nuts and I just at the point. Interestingly enough, in the last couple of weeks, my DMS of people trying to sell me stuff have. Calm down dramatically because I’ve made that Nolan that I’m not gonna buy. On the 1st. Fail first message, so to speak. Beyond that, I think LinkedIn is a really good platform for social and for marketers because there’s a lot of amazing business conversations that happen. So I think a lot of this on LinkedIn as with other platforms, is to follow the right people and. Converse with the right people. Absolutely, and I I think of what my grandfather, brilliant businessman. He said, it’s not what you know, it’s who, you know the accounts and business. And when you think of LinkedIn and you think of the stability there you think of the opportunities to connect with movers and shakers connecting groups and and work your way into. Building a connection with someone that could open up the door to other networks. Clearly LinkedIn is a great stable network and I think it’ll be around for a while because there there’s just not a lot of drama on LinkedIn compared to the other networks. You hardly hear anything bad about LinkedIn. And yet it provides some really good connecting opportunities that literally generate the lead and then off you go and try to see what you can. Build with those individuals. And create some strategic alliances, so to speak. It’s true and I’ve got I have to tell you, running a LinkedIn group that’s got visibility and that group is sanctioned by LinkedIn itself. I’ve met some amazing people, some of them who I didn’t know before. I started running group have become good friends and colleagues. Several become podcast guests and jumped on the pod with me so. And there’s conversations. I was in one this morning with somebody that I reached out and helped on LinkedIn some time ago and she was just checking in to see how I was doing with all of this and everything else. And I mean, there’s valuable connections there. There’s, there’s no question on that one. Yeah, bringing the social back into social media, so to speak. Yeah, so true. So I’ve avoided this monster and I need to go there because we all know the story of the year in 2022 and socialist. Twitter, there’s no question. And it goes everything from Elon buying the network to the jobs to what’s going on. And we talked a little bit about the job issue. I listened to a really good edition of this week in Google. Which is another one in Leo Parts podcast. Any add on. The artist that was fired from. Twitter for calling Elon out. I don’t disagree, but I also think Twitter, like many other Silicon Valley startups and we have large startup community in Toronto was probably people top heavy. So people are complaining that they let all these people go and I think. I don’t think that’s. Necessarily a bad thing. It is for the people because they got to find some work, but for the organization it’s about making it lean and mean and the business decision. Where do you sit on that fence? Well I look at it from this way from Facebook to Amazon to there isn’t one major company that’s not preparing to lay off if if haven’t already laid off a lot of people because they know that 2023 is probably going to be a leaner year, which means that they need to get through this, and so they need to. Lay people off. And I for instance I like Twitter, but I want Twitter to be stable and stick around. And from all the things that I’ve been seeing and reading, they were way too top heavy on employees because at the end of the day, one of the questions that I saw, Leo LaPorte and others answer is how many people do you really think? And they were talking and asking Musk this how many people do you really think you would? Take to run Twitter from running the servers and running the. And they were talking hundreds, and so Twitter was incredibly top end heavy and they were hemorrhaging money. So it was you and I and it this was our household and we were hemorrhaging money like that. We would absolutely have to pull on the brakes and make some tough decisions and a lot of Canadians. We already had to make tough decisions over the holidays for their hostels, so why would it be different in an organization where they’re hemorrhaging millions of dollars per day and they needed to turn the thing around and survive? I, I know. That nobody likes to be laid off, but at the end of the day, if if a social network doesn’t stay sustainable, they’re going to go under and then everybody’s jobs gone, and so. I I agree with that so much and there’s there’s so much going on there, so. We know we on bought it. We know he ended up in a fight with the board. He’s been made out to be the social media bad guy. And what I would suggest is he’s not. I think Mark Zuckerberg is a bigger social media bad guy than Elon Musk in my opinion. And I’ll tell you why, I don’t think he is. One of the things that’s gone on in the middle of the war with the Ukraine. Between Ukraine you see on SpaceX company put out extra satellites up in the air so the Ukraine could keep their Internet all. Does nobody see that? And I think people like to focus on what some of these. Billionaires too bad and I’ll give another example. Bill Gates for his years when he ran Microsoft was one of the most hated men out there. Even though he ran a successful company, so I think it’s always easier to pick on the individual and lose sight of what good things they do in amongst all the crap, so to speak. Absolutely, and I I know. From watching, learning and having others talk about long, I mean he’s he’s made some big mistakes, but he’s also made some great moves as well and so. I’ve literally heard him say I will make less mistakes moving further on, and if you and I were to take over Twitter, we had to turn the ship around you and I are guaranteed to make some mistakes. It’s just going. To happen as smart as we are. Not as smart as we are, we’re going to make mistakes, and then as we do stuff, we’re going to adjust and try to make the company even more viable because the one thing about Twitter, compared to all the other social networks, it’s a net. It’s a social network. That it has a lot of communities in it and it has a profound reach of which allowed the other social networks don’t have and it has the ability to change society. Trying to make it survivable time to turn it around, try to get some semblance because there’s a lot of stuff the Twitter files have revealed a lot of stuff that. Should never have happened in the 1st place and now trying to right the ship so that as much as possible it can be a business. First and foremost, that’s where it’s got to go, and. There’s going to be some good moves. There’s going to be some bad moves. Elong has to make Twitter profitable. And so. We’re just going to have to see and wait. Probably in January. We’ll see a little bit more. This year 2023 is going to be a taxing year on social net. Works, and that’s why in my workplace education programs I’m not specifically teaching people how to do this, and one network and how to do that. I’m trying to teach them general posting strategies that wherever they find themselves, they’re going to know how to interact based on posting best principles for example. There’s no network in 2023 that’s guaranteed to survive unless they literally make some dramatic changes, and this is going to be a a year of change. We could. No one wants to hear, but we could see the end of Facebook in 2023, for instance. There’s no guarantee that any social networks are going to survive. But what businesses need to learn is some basic fundamental posting practices and some marketing strategies that can transcend anything that comes forward. Any new networks? For instance, they’ve got to learn strategies and techniques that can go across all these social networks. That makes July 2023. I don’t agree. And I think people are jumping around so the the other the open verse network. That’s kind of cut on out there with their radicals is mastered on now. I’ve created an account. I’m on the WP build server. Thank you Nathan. I haven’t done much with it. I’m going to just because there are some of the WordPress people have gone there. But the problem the nice thing about Mastodon becoming popular is all the pain in the butts. I’ve left Twitter and gone to Masternaut, so from my feed and if you do Twitter right, you can control who you follow and what list you follow. Stuff and who you block and all that good. Stuff all the. Pains are all gone all of a sudden. And it’s such. Refreshing that I don’t have to deal with them right now, so I’m. I’ve got Twitter and enjoying it more and more every day because all the pains have gone. Phoned the coop and gone elsewhere, Jeff. Yes, and there’s that too. And and. Having a Mastodon account is like having a Twitter account from the very beginning where the possibilities are endless. You get to create whatever you want, but on the other side of the coin. I still love Twitter. I still value the conversations. I like to talk to people, new people. I like to talk about different conversations I like. Literally talking to some of the smartest minds on the face of the earth. I’ve got some really good friends on there. That we. Connect we talk about some things that literally you can’t talk about on Facebook or any other network, and the conversations that we have are very informative and I love the idea of connecting with some of the smartest people in the face of. The Earth, it’s just. It really suits my personality. I like to talk to smarter people than. Me no I I. Agree with that philosophy. So much so. And you know Twitter’s. Also, the place to go for breaking news. Is there something going on in the world that I want to hear it now? That’s where I go, and one of the things I would suggest to people is make yourself a Twitter list of all the journalists and the media it’s in your area and makes it really easy to find out what’s going on when something pops, for example. The shooter in Nova Scotia. I was just gonna go there. Yeah, go ahead. The the news broke on Twitter before it ever became an emergency alert, so to speak, and it didn’t become an emergency alert. I remember that day being in a building with the buddy of mine and my daughter texted me dad where you locked the doors kind of deal and so literally the message came on Twitter and unfortunately. My wife has a relative that literally was one of the the victims of the shooting, and I’m going to guess that they didn’t have Twitter or else they would never have ventured out that day, and so Twitter still is a major outlet for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They still use that to get notifications out. Now use every now and then you’ll see an emergency alert, but Twitter is still the social app that literally going to find out stuff literally as it breaks, and I’ve got a good friend who’s in the media that. Literally, in the news, he cut his bread and butter on Twitter, so much so that he was teaching a lot of the big name. Journalists and people you would regularly see and recognize because he’s just the way he did. Twitter and News was was blue ocean. It was so forward thinking that it’s set a lot of the industry standards and so Twitter is not going away. Unless it absolutely tanks and I, I think elong is done. A great job to stop the hammer chain. A lot of people don’t like. Him, but at the end of the day. I’m going to take a wait and see approach because I think. My gut was that Twitter has an opportunity to be the number one social media network. Period, bar none, but it has to be. It has to have some really. Deep changes in it to get there and survive, and right now what’s happening around the Twitter files? What’s happening around the employees? It’s kind of a SHOT Show and a lot of people are not happy, but at the end of the day, well, it could not continue as it. Was there needs to be changes made and people intervening in Twitter and causing? And this is a near and dear topic for you causing censorship. Regardless, right or. Left or middle? That’s just not right, and that has that kind of stuff should not be and. You may not like what people post, but if if. If governments can get in and they can shut one side down, that’s even worse. And so Twitter needs to be the town hall. Where we can have various different conversations. We there’s conversations we don’t like them, don’t go in those things, but at the end of the day it’s a great place when you’re doing it right to connect with brilliant minds. I mean, I love Twitter for business because I get to connect with people I mean. The first eight days on Twitter, I connected with a business coach and he coached me at 140 characters. I was naive enough that I literally. Took the tweet, I executed what he told me to do. I had no idea that you can’t do business coaching on Twitter. I was successful. I was one of the top finalists in business in my area because of all the great information this individual gave me and and a host of other other factors. But it was powerful and it still remains. Powerful used in a right way. Yeah, so true and. Since you opened the door, we’ll go to censorship, so we’ll go to censorship and we’ll go to free speech and we’ll go to sharing of information we’ll want. Them all in together so one of the things I’ve been very anti about is censorship. One of the things that separates democracy from the rest of the from communist countries is free speech and and I’ll say that and I’ll say that and I’ll say that beyond that there’s not much of a difference. We elect our leaders, they don’t. Once the party gets empowered, they do what they want, yada yada. Yada it goes on. So that is the big thing. But we’re also seeing. So here’s the problem. I don’t think Elon Musk has figured out the balance yet, so a good example would be. Allowed some people like Donald Trump back onto the Twitter platform, no matter how much I hate Trump. I’m in favor of that cause he’s entitled to say what he wants to say. And I’ll say that you can send me hate mail now or later. And by the way, if you just want the conversation, tweet at me at Rob Karenz and. I can have that conversation publicly with you. I’d be glad to, so there’s some of that going on, but then. There’s a new policy that says if you shared the link in your profile of another social media service, we might just. Get rid of the link and there’s some. Of that going on. Which is, I think some of its free speech. But I also think some of its terms of service which nobody read. And then we’ve got this whole issue that surfaced this week about suicide prevention information and I don’t know what those people know. There’s some suicide prevention measures on Twitter. Elon turned them off thinking it was a good idea. And he actually learned from his mistake in public pressure and turned them back on. So there’s a lot to digest there, and there’s a. Lot going on. Where do you? Where do you sit on? Well, I like the fact that Elon is is learning. He he he very much from what I understand and see, is very respectful of the opinion of others. He’s made some really big changes based on. Polls and based on querying because at the end of the day he’s done some really quick changes, some of them been good, some of them have been bad, but. Who else do you hear has quickly changed the bad policy and turned it right around. We don’t hear that with Facebook. We don’t hear that with a lot of other social networks. He’s very proactive and at the end of the day, he’s only been there a little time and I love John Maxwell’s comment about failing forward. We learn by failing. If we can’t fail, we will. We can’t have. We can’t be allowed to fail. We can’t learn from our failures. And so the outcome is that Twitter will be much better. It’s clunky, sometimes it’s not pretty, but he long is very responsive to and he’s trying to figure this thing out. Literally, in real time and just think about it, if you and I were placed in that position, how well would we do? How well would would we? Would we make mistakes? For instance, sure, we would. But at the end of the day, I I think he’s his heart is in the right place. A lot of people don’t. Like him, I’m Neither here nor there. I would still love to ask him questions. I would still love to sit down with him and like the thing about Twitter that it’s afforded me is the ability to talk to people, have conversations and ask questions because a lot of people, whether I like you or not, I still want to. You have. The ability to ask you questions and you take that from me, that’s not good. That is so. And we have a mutual friend, Scott Mills, who’s considered in law enforcement circles. One of the best at social media, and he’ll tell you Twitter’s is a favorite platform. And if you want to fall Scott at graffiti BMX. Up, he’s now retired as a police officer and worked for the. OPP Police Association in communications. But he’s a guy who knows his way around this landscape. And when you mentioned Facebook told me just kind of cringes, he’s got to be there. But he he cringes. Right? Yeah, but the problem with Facebook. If you could think of it, the simplest way is you post it, get get it could get to people three days later and that’s one of the fundamental flaws in Facebook. It’s good. It’s not known for its speed, whereas Twitter is. So true, so moving forward. I think we need to remind all small businesses and all businesses. Small or large? That you better have a website and you better maintain a mailing list. I know people on this podcast are going to. Hear it like I’m a broken record, but you need to own something you don’t own. Social media so that can change and we’re seeing some of that going on. We’re seeing a lot of figuring out. Certainly on Twitter going on. I don’t think Facebook’s figuring out they’re just doing the same old thing and just. Trying to make more money. UM? What you like or not like going into next year. Well, right now we know that there’s a lot of things that are in flux. There’s a lot of things that are changing, and so the innovation, I believe that elong is going to innovate and it’s going to force the other social networks to innovate as well. Either they keep up or they become. Yesterday’s news, so to speak. And so I await with some interest to see what buttons he’s going to press. What features is he going to bring out, and how is he going to transform? The social media sphere. He’s a. If there’s anybody that’s a disruptor, it’s Elon, and and I like that because at the end of the day, whether it’s right or wrong change is going to. Happen and we think about Thomas Edison, the guy. He failed 1000 times before he can make the light bulb man, that’s a lot of failure to get to what everybody has right now. And so Elon can be pretty much in that mode. I think Twitter is going to survive. I think they’re they’re getting healthy. They’re starting to turn or they’re starting to make a profit. I’m not quite sure about what Facebook and Instagram are going to be like by the end of the year I have some concerns about their survivability. And again, it all comes down to ethics. It all comes down to. Putting the Community first and I questioned that. Snapchat, I’m not quite sure where that is going to go. I’m thinking that. It’ll be around, but whether it will be the business tool that they envision it to be, I don’t know. I think LinkedIn is going to be remains strong and I think you need to have a strong presence there. I think that at the end of the day. It’ll do well. The other things. What I look at is the ones that are on the side, for instance. Let me take a look here. The other networks are we, for instance Telegraph. Like the OR are we talking like decorus to reddits of the world and that type of network? They have a place too, but I’m also looking at Telegraph because there’s some interesting things going on there, and it’s kind of a little thing off to the side. But I I see them starting to generate some momentum for individuals and businesses and so on telegram and so. On Telegram yeah yeah. But I I think one of the problems not to cut you off on Telegram is they got to do something about the scams and the spam and that side of it. So absolutely, I’ve actually I actually like telegram on the way it transfer files, but they can’t. Handled the spam every time I reactivate my Telegram account. Pardon my French and it’s my podcast. I ohh, ****, I say. Why am I getting and I’ll get more spams on Telegram than I am on Facebook on anywhere and the standards spam scam is ohh is this Dan. No it’s not Dan. Ohh, can we have a conversation anyway? And my standard answer is go away because yeah, that’s a that’s the big. Let’s hope the people at Telegram are listening and. I like to remain hopeful because I’m thinking that there’s going to be something in the wing that is going to be fresh now, Mastodon. I don’t think it’s going to be the hit that everybody hoped it would be just for the simple nature of how it’s set up where you can literally ban a whole server, for instance, and shut everybody down. No, I don’t either. But again, I remain hopeful. It’s kind of like the the original days of Twitter starting off. Even though master none to the open verse, the way it works with the Federated servers is you can choose not to interface with another server. So here we go. All these people screaming Elon’s doing a mess with. With allowing free speech and Mastodon is not any better. The way I look at it personally. Now it’s and it’s going to be interesting there’s. 2023 is going to be interesting in that there’s no. Apart from LinkedIn doing well and as long as Twitter continues to. Not lose money. And continue to evolve. There’s a lot of other networks that are very questionable, so because of the visibility and and some of the things that they’re doing and. Yeah, I. I agree, I agree. So it’s going to be an interesting year. 2023 is going to be a year for belt tightening for a lot of these social networks. And as you know in business, one wrong move could literally be. Potentially the the move that takes you right out of the game so. To speak, yeah. I so agree. Hey Jeff, thanks for the conversation. As always, if somebody needs to get a hold of you, probably Twitter’s probably the best way, right? Sure, my Twitter handle is the #4 Jeff Brown with no E. That’s one quick way or. E-mail me at jeff@workplaceeducation.ca. I’m usually pretty receptive, but if you’re going to spam me. I use e-mail rules just to keep you on the other level. With that, as you do Rob too. Happy New Year to you and sue and. Thanks so much and you have a wonderful day. And let me say one last thing Rob, I want to encourage all small businesses to be the driving force that changes the economy. Be encouraged. Small business. It’s not government that’s going to come to the rescue. It’s going to be small business that literally continues to cause the economy to thrive. And if you’re a small business entrepreneur or small business, my head is off to you. Keep up the good work and if I can ever do anything to help you out. By all means reach out to me. Thanks so much again Jeff, and be well, we’ll talk soon. OK, take care Rob, thank you.

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