Twitter Developments
Once upon a time, Twitter closed its legs on third-party developers. I thought that made sense in terms of controlling how people accessed Twitter – and could see ads, but obviously developers, who helped make Twitter what it was in the early days, were put off. The great developments (Tweetdeck et al) were acquired, others were put at arm’s length. All, perhaps, in the name of making Twitter more streamlined, usable, and – oh yes- easier to sell to advertisers.
I have no idea if that was successful, though as a user I found the official apps easier and better to use, so I’m pretty happy. Now, with new CEO (and founder) Jack Dorsey, Twitter is looking to kiss and make up with developers. Hey, why not? Maybe Twitter needs to get more interesting. I don’t know jack. But this is an interesting change.
YouTube Red
YouTube has always been red, as anyone who has seen the mobile app icon knows, but now it has a product called Red. For ten bucks a month, you get ad-free YouTube. Hooray. (?) Hey now, you can watch cat videos without those pesky ads. That’s all we really need to know, right?
The process is not without its bumps. There are podcasts with embedded advertising that are wondering about what Red means to them; meanwhile, The ESPNLand section of Disneyland* took their channels private, presumably until rights deals for sports clips gets worked out within the terms of the new regime. If some popular video series are locked out because of the way they advertise, that will generate a ton of complaints- I suspect the end result will be simpler than that, even if there is initial confusion.
Meanwhile, I am annoyed by many YouTube ads, but probably not enough so to pay $10 a month.. If I wanted Google Play music, however, that would be another story (spoiler alert: I don’t).
Question: will there be a YouTube-free ad service? I might check that one out for the right price. Some ads are cool, even if I never remember what products they are pushing.
* I know I used the West Coast Disney reference for east-coast ESPN, but I hear reversing field is good in soccer, so why not?
Instagram Boomerang App: King Migraine in Reverse
So, now you can create 1-second video loops on Instagram that can run in reverse. I welcome any creative uses of this, but I think I will sit out the initial shiny object phase. I can’t even bear to seek out a current instance to embed here.
By the way – Instagram’s regular app lets you make 0-second video loops, which I like just fine. #getoffmylawn
Since Facebook search has been nearly useless to users like me (even searches within groups have been unreliable at best), if this works it could be a chance to leapfrog Twitter in this regard- or at least be as good.
Baseball Fun on Twitter
I love this so much – public libraries in Kansas City and Toronto got to trash-talking on Twitter. Why not? More institutions should have fun online. The key is to knowing the line between fun and offense, but how can you go wrong with showing off book tiles in creative ways?
Some #bookspinepoetry for our friends @BlueJays & @torontolibrary #TaketheCrown #GoRoyals #ALCS pic.twitter.com/Zj5ZvhFljv
— KCMO Public Library (@KCLibrary) October 20, 2015
Content Shocker
This ids #6, which means I can get away with slacking off and doing 4 soon.
Anyway, I saw this post from the Bufferapp folks; an attempt to face up to a loss in referral traffic from social media. Brave talk from a company that is founded on social media content management, so th post brings the promise of some insights on the challenges of social media.
BUT
…as i clicked on the post, they brought up the notion of “content shock” or “content crush” or whatever meaningless buzzword you would like to apply – which I still think is a silly notion in many aspects. If you are worried about competing with the tons of content out there, you are playing the wrong game and will lose. If you are creating excellent content, and it serves your audience, then “content shock” is irrelevant, and can be left for the vacuous and shallow, where it belongs.
The people with the best content are not complaining about content shock. Still, the alternate solutions in the post, such as paid placement and, well, being more relevant and high-quality, make this a better post than the initial diversionary talk of content shock promises.