Wednesday 22 July 2015

Very Softly Catch The Monkey; influencing your social networking behaviour, millions for ello & a large lunchbox is a place to eat.

Are you a nice person? A daft start to this, right? 

Wrong. Not when the doyen of social networking, facebook is involved :-

This Is How Facebook Is Secretly Trying To Make You A Nicer Person

As if allegations of news feed manipulation, content vamooshing ( I couldn't think of a word more hyperbolic to represent the deletion or disappearance of user post content) and all sorts of other fun and frolic isn't enough, facebook are here to now provide some respite in the form of secret reportage for cyberbullying.

The irony isn't lost on me here, but in all fairness they've allowed you to report incumbent nastiness on there, for quite some time using the system itself. I've not had a chance to verify this new algorithim, as my main machine ( a laptop) had to be system restored and ultimately rebuilt in software terms ( ie. reinstallation of lots of programs etc). In the process I've lost my logins for a lot of applications online  When I'm more free timewise, I'll request my logins and check things out.

Notwithstanding some of the articles available online about every move it makes and the consequential knock on effects to everything else ( i.e. some of it is quite doom laden), I think facebook is well into it's maturity phase, and quite possibly entering into it's decline phase. I've written about this elsewhere on other posts, so this in itself isn't news to me. I'm not basing this on absolute fact, but on a more measured sense of analysis; this is more about the natural order of things, and although they are now close to 1.3 billion users,  the main user base, is the under 30's (in the USA) .

And the rest of them? They may well be going over to here :-

Investors Give Ello $5.5 Million Even After It Bans Its Most Obvious Revenue Source

Ello has been around a short while, but long enough to make an impact. In short, it could be looked upon as a 'facebook lite', with the exclusivity ( you have to request an invitation to join up) and the pseudo anonymity factor in comparison to facebook, is part of the appeal. But if you look at their homepage and read the manifesto, then that's where the difference lies :-

Ello's charter makes it legally impossible for it to display ads

This is commendable for now, and a brave move. Obviously it remains to be seen what happens in the future, but where other social networking tools are all trying to maximise ROI ( return on investment), Ello are bucking the trend. It'll be interesting to see what they do for revenue, in the months or even years ahead.

Speaking of the future, when was the last time you opened up an actual retro-style lunchbox to have your lunch? More to the point, when did you last walk into a place that looked like one? :-

McDonald’s Sets Up Huge Lunch Box-Shaped Restaurant To Promote New Items

Now that's what I call brave, bold and smart marketing. I hope this works out, as it looks magnificent.  I can already hear the odd voice of dissent due to their supposed food quality and practices, of which I have to admit I'm not much of a fan either.

However, they have made recent moves to disprove some of this, via reportage and videos, which are available online.  As already stated, this is such a bold move that I commend them on the courage to do this. It'd also be interesting to see how something like this would be recieved in the larger american towns and also in the UK. Let's wait and see.

On a related note, I'm waiting for a call. It's odd how when you know someone's supposed to call you, the phone can become an object of anticipatory suspense and excitement.

It's just like waiting for your food or friend ( or both) to arrive at a restaurant. The smell hits you immediately, and the sensory encapsulation goes into a higher gear.

Time out.

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