Death & Habit

The death of the click, as such, sounds dramatic:

For the past 10 years, we’ve operated on the premise that the most important digital metric is the click that refers a person to a website. That click usually comes from a social distribution channel, like Facebook or Twitter, or a search engine, like Google or Bing. But according to industry experts, the click referral is becoming an idea of the past, soon to be replaced by content exposure.

It would behoove us to pay attention. To the one, it is already happening. To the other … er … ah … well, yeah, there is, in fact, a point to wondering what the big deal is. But that’s the thing. As the Axios report explains:

Clicks look like a high-performing tactic, but a lot of work is done to get you to type something into a search bar to begin with,” AdRoll President Adam Berke tells Axios. Marketers are starting to attribute marketing success towards content exposure that drives you to click something, instead of the click itself. Two key formats increase content exposure: video and passive scrolling. Google and Facebook are investing heavily in products that embody these formats: YouTube and Instagram.

The bottom line is that your daily habit isn’t going to change for evolving necessity; rather, how you interact with the world will become more and more bound to theses of behavioral economics applied within a marketing context intended to backfill its justification post hoc―that is to say, your behavior will change to suit someone else’s business model.

And, yeah, that might sound a bit dramatic, but most people probably won’t notice, except to grumble a bit, like they did with Apple and … I don’t know, that dating app.

Meanwhile, for the business community the definition of success becomes even hazier. Good enough for government work, is better redefined as, Good enough for the tech sector. Then again, the definition of government work might well be unsettled for the momemt, as well, so … you know.

Whatever.

____________________

Fischer, Sara. “The death of the click”. Axios. 20 February 2017.

I Can’t Actually Recall the Solar Flare Song Right Now

So, I’m really, really curious: What happened? No, seriously, it’s enough to make sunspot and solar flare jokes, but in truth I might as well be checking lucky numbers.

Okay:

• Perhaps yesterday was ominous, because my car suffered a bizarre, one-time symptom by which everything else was working, but there was no signal to the dashboard gauges. No tach, speed, temp, or fuel, but all the lights were working, and the odometer continued counting. It was a quick run down the hill to the grocery store; so the test was simple enough to shut the car off and then start it again, and yes, everything worked fine.

• This morning my bank’s phone system failed; as near as I can tell, when they updated for the holiday weekend, someone forgot a switch. For all the system asked for the usual information to access the account, it simply could not receive, and thus disconnected for lack of anyone to communicate with. Perhaps the problem is the phone.

• To wit, the iPhone lost its preferences and histories today, and could not write new data to either. This was a mysterious symptom not apparently concomitant to an update, and seemed easily enough solved by shutting down and rebooting the phone.

• By the time weirdness hit the laptop it was easy to feel superstitious. But this collapse of basic shell functions like copy and paste was easily enough remedied. The problem was, of course, HTML 5, and as with most such problems these days, shutting down browser tabs or windows running website applications will eventually allow your system to copy information to its own clipboard. So, hey, there’s one that isn’t a mystery.

• The Samsung television can no longer access its own system features. At the very least, the power switch and input selector still work. And the volume buttons. But anything that requires that candy-looking, branded button in the middle of the remote? Sorry, it’s a Samsung, so you can’t have it. The most likely solution is to disconnect all cables including power supply, leave the thing to wallow in its own oblivion for a few minutes, and then put it all back together and turn it on again. And then the system will work long enough to automatically update, and then collapse. Some products are like that, and apparently no part of watching television can be done these days without a software update.

Memo to Google: Why You’re Horrible People

To: Google

re: Just admit you suck

As we go from computer to computer, resetting our passwords because you want us to, the question also arises why you won’t let us.

Yeah, we know you “weren’t hacked”, but you are being a bunch of incompetent, insulting assholes.

In the first place, don’t tell us it’s something suspicious about us. Until every last account is verified and you no longer feel the need to demand we jump through these hoops, the message should not be that there is something suspicious about your users. Just tell the truth: “Sorry, but we at Google really, really fucked everything up and we’re really, really sorry for putting you through all of this bullshit like asking to to reset your password on every computer you ever use to get your email, which in turn is why we still like to pretend that you’re suspicious. After all, we’re Google, and we just proved ourselves incompetent, and we recognize that it is really, really wrong of us to treat you like that just because we can’t do our jobs properly.”

And, you know, honesty might help your image. I mean, it’s not like this makes Google employees terrible people. No, that would be the candy-named, botched-up operating system on “smart” (ha!) phones.

Of course, that much you can blame on users; after all, the hideously mistaken decision to trade out an iPhone for an Android was my own, and I damn well should have known better.

But it’s true. Google’s inability to do its job as relates to account management does not make the company’s employees horrible people. Rather, the OS should do the trick. And, you know, in the end, so does the fact that they work for Google.

Your users would be considerably less annoyed with your fuckups if you would just be an honest, decent (corporate) person for once.

That, however, is something we recognize is beyond your faculties. Which, in turn, is why you suck.

Phone Etiquette

Okay, so here’s one of those fun ones.

This evening as I was grabbing my coffee, my mother was finishing a phone conversation. And then we started talking about … er … um … really, I don’t know what. Small talk. Chit-chat. Oh, right, schedules for the next day.

Anyway, at about the same time, we look down, and her phone has been activated for an incoming call. The clock says fifty-three seconds and counting.

For whatever reason, my mother sits there with the phone in her hand, expressing her astonishment at the call, and the one thing she won’t do at that point is put the phone to her ear and say, “Hello?”

And I stood while she talked to me, expressing her puzzlement about this incoming call for over a minute, while tacitly refusing to answer it.

What the hell? No, really, just one of those slightly surreal moments.

Just skip this one

File under “Duh“.

Jeremy Caplan reports for Time:

Apple may be golden because of the iPhone, but the soon-to-be-updated device is also increasingly the source of forbidden fruit. Steve Jobs’ company is keeping a civil, if embarrassed, silence on one of the potentially most lucrative and controversial uses of its handheld jewel: porn.

The technological feats of the 3G iPhone are key to the coming pornucopia. To date, mobile porn has consisted largely of still images, racy text services and “moan tones,” which are sultry-sounding ringtones. In Europe there is an active market for video chatting; customers pay on average $50 a month to exchange dirty messages with actresses. But now, thanks in large part to the iPhone’s video dexterity, short clips are becoming a staple of the mobile porn business ….

…. Leading porn purveyors see the iPhone as a dream come true. Its relatively ample screen size, speedy Web access and ease of use are just part of it. The device’s miniaturized version of Apple’s Safari software simplifies mobile access and streamlines the process of tailoring dirty sites for optimal viewing on the go. “It’s by far the porn-friendliest phone,” says Devan Cypher, representative for San Francisco–based Sin City Entertainment. As evidence of the gadget’s rocketing popularity in California’s porn capital, the San Fernando Valley, numerous iPhone-specific porn sites have been launched in recent months. “There are a few hundred iPhone porn sites now in use,” says Farley Cahen, vice president of business development for AVN Media Network, the adult industry’s trade body ….

Add to that the usual trappings for a story like this. Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock (seriously) says of course the company doesn’t condone porn distribution, and will take measures to restrict adult content. The development community does nonetheless have certain potential. The porn industry sees a huge new market. And, of course, the children: won’t somebody please think about the children?

The not so obvious question

I have to admit this one had not yet occurred to me:

Thanks those who found it first. (What? It’s not like I’m a good, faithful YouTube beachcomber.)