Podcasting in the UK is very much alive and well if even half of what I heard and saw at The Podcast Show 2023 in London last week is any indicator.

Held at the Business Design Centre in Islington, this conference and exhibition event ran throughout the week with the main show itself on 24-25 May. It was heavily supported by some prominent mainstream industry names as partners – Acast, Amazon Music, AudioBoom, BBC Sounds, Dolby, Libsyn, Sky News, Sony Music, Spotify, Wondery, YMU, the list goes on – along with nearly 50 exhibitors.

Podcasting is very much a huge media business today, grown way beyond the homebrew era of its noughties origins. Indeed, I couldn’t imagine how different this was until I remembered what an event like PodcastCon UK looked like back in 2006 at podcasting’s dawn.

Or is it that the real difference 17 years on is primarily one of evolution and scale? That is a realistic view especially when you consider what the picture of podcasting looks like now according to some powerful metrics published within the past month where Adam Bowie has applied some skill in the analysis and visualisations of data from Ofcom in April.

However you think about it, The Podcast Show 2023 was a well-built event that offered a big platform for creators, producers, hardware and software makers, vendors, service providers, and many more. It was a showcase of many sorts. And it was a place for learning with sessions led by podcasters, producers, and vendors designed to share knowledge and insights about podcasts and podcasting, from the simple to the essential.

I was impressed at the breadth of topics featured in the ‘Talking Podcasts‘ sessions – ranging from creating podcasts for children, to how to structure and market your podcast subscription effectively, to immersive storytelling with the latest leading-edge audio tech, to how to take an abstract idea and transform it into a treatment for an entire audio experience, and a great deal more.

Podcasting really has come a long way since Shel and I created How to Do Everything with Podcasting, the book aimed at communicators and business podcasters, published by McGraw-Hill in 2007.

Photo gallery from the floor:

I went to the event on the final day, Thursday 25 May. I was there all day primarily to listen and learn. I wanted to see what was happening, join a handful of sessions to learn what was happening, and meet some people and talk about what was happening. I was wearing my overall podcasting hat so I wasn’t there on a specific representation, just as a long-time podcaster keen to see what was going on.

Gordon Glenister, a fellow member of the Marketing Podcast Network, was also there. Gordon had an exhibition stand and he was speaking. We didn’t manage to meet up (ships in the night…); he’s written up a narrative on his experience there.

Session notes

The rest of this article gives you a view of some of the sessions on the final day of The Podcast Show 2023 as seen through my specific lens. It’s quite a narrow focus that reflects my own interest areas. There was a great deal else going on, especially in the areas of actual podcasting and shows being developed, even BBC Sounds and Sky News were there doing a great deal.

Keep an eye on the event’s Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for news and info about reviews, announcements, new episodes, etc, as well as the event hashtag #PodShowLDN.

Panel: Execution, Targeting & Measurement – Is Podcasting ‘Growing Up’?

“Podcasting is growing as a channel but is it ‘growing up’ to offer the same types of execution, targeting and measurement that today’s digital buyers expect based on their ways of buying more mature digital channels? Join Acast, PWC and the LadBible group to discuss what marketers want in podcasting and how to target and measure campaigns.”

• Michael Bayston, VP, Adtech Solutions, Acast
• Emily Roberts, Senior Associate PWC and Co-Founder The Women in Programmatic Network
• Fern Potter, VP Business and Product Strategy, Multilocal
• Megan Davies, MD International, Acast

Without podcasting there would have been no growth in digital audio in 2022 – Michael.

What do advertisers want?

• good targeting
• measurement
• attention
• a holistic approach

If you can’t measure it, it didn’t really happen – Emily
Addressability: finding the right space for your podcast – Fern
Overmeasure: just because you could doesn’t mean you should – Fern
Marketers opening up to podcasting because of cookie tracking going away – Megan

Ad tech and podcasts
Podcasting is different to radio

Marketers are interested in collaborations including sponsorships with existing successful podcasts – Megan

Panel: The Unstoppable Rise Of The Visual Podcast

“The next generation of podcast listeners will expect video as part of your offering – and the next generation of podcast talent is already delivering it. So, what’s the impact for creators and what should they be doing to level up their content? In this session, we’ll explore the rise of the visualised podcast and the lessons every podcaster can learn from visual first creators.”

• Mike Newman, VP Content & Production, Audioboom
• Jordan Theresa, Host, Voicenotes podcast
• Beth Heard, Head of Talent, Sixteenth

Video = podcast – Jordan, who hosts a… video podcast
(Audience disagreed when asked by Mike: they said video = show or video)

Fans ask for audio so they can listen when they can’t watch – Mike, ref to RAJAR survey report

Not everyone needs a podcast – Beth

Panel: The State of Audio-Only Storytelling with Dolby Atmos

“Learn from industry leaders on how they leverage connecting and engaging podcast listeners with Dolby Atmos. Audible Director of Production Chris Jones, Wondery Chief Creative Officer Marshall Lewy, and director of the award-winning series, The Sandman, Dirk Maggs will discuss how their creative teams are expanding into new genres with Dolby Atmos and why it’s important to create more immersive experiences for listeners. With Dolby Atmos, podcast creators and audio-only storytellers can now place sounds in a multi-dimensional space that creates an audio-only experience so rich and life-like it transports you into the story. Hear how you can elevate your storytelling to offer a podcast experience so true to life, the lines between the listener’s imagination and reality start to blur.”

• Tina Eckman, Director, Content Relations, Dolby
• Marshall Lewy, Chief Content Officer, Wondery
• Chris Jones, Director of Production, Audible UK
• Dirk Maggs, Director/Adapter & Co-Executive Producer, The Sandman (Audible/DC Comics)

Dirk Maggs produced the “Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” for BBC radio

Dolby Atmos raises your game in more ways than you imagine – Dirk
Immersive, you’re in the audio story – Dirk
We’re on the learning curve and the adoptive curve – Dirk
YouTube is the biggest podcast channel, bigger than Apple or Spotify – Marshall
The power of sound is as a storytelling tool – Dirk
You collude with the sound to create the images yourself – Dirk

Panel: A Podcasters Manifesto: How Pod Save The UK Can Change The World

“Crooked Media launched Pod Save America in the shadow of President Trump’s inauguration. But now that every problem in the American political system is solved, Crooked has teamed up with Reduced Listening and London’s own Nish Kumar and Coco Khan to try to do the same for the UK. A driving factor in the creation of Pod Save the UK is a desire to disrupt the way we talk about UK politics and keep listeners informed, engaged, and inspired to take action. Find out about the new podcast, the team’s view on the current political-podcast landscape and how creators can use their platforms to inspire change.”

• Nish Kumar, Host, Pod Save The UK
• Coco Khan, Host, Pod Save The UK
• Matt Deegan, Creative Director Radio & Podcasting, Folder Media
• Joby Waldman, Managing Director, Reduced Listening
• Louise Cotton, Executive Producer, Pod Save The UK

Nish: played a really good showreel

Excellent and highly amusing introduction/walk-through by Nish of the UK political and podcasting landscape

This is a sister show to Pod Save America that was founded by the Obama comms team in 2016
But Pod Save the UK is very different to the US show in content and tone
Weekly show: audio and video (on YouTube)

My label: comedy and politics, a winning combination

About other media: GB News = generally bullshit

What do you want to achieve and who is your audience?

Coco: self-described lefty, political, wannabe DJ

Reduced Listening is the producer

Tone is driven by the presenters – Louise
It’s important we have a ‘Pod Save the UK’ attitude – Louise

Presentation and Recording: Podnews Weekly Review – Live

“The last session of the day is the last word in podcasting news: a live recording of the popular weekly industry news podcast, with James Cridland and Sam Sethi. Join them, with special guests, looking at the week’s news.”

• James Cridland, Editor, Podnews
• Sam Sethi, Host, Podnews Weekly Review

This was a very different session from the more formal and structured panel discussions I attended during the day. In essence, it was a live recording with James and Sam in conversation, with “Special guest: the audience” participating in response to James asking questions on topical issues.

Topics:

YouTube RSS landgrab
Podcast ranking for the UK
Podcasting and Twitter
the BBC is to work with Spotify’s Megaphone
Spotify AI ads

I added my 0.02 to the topic about YouTube and RSS. I think it’s a hot issue – YouTube seems to want to capture exclusivity with where podcasts are hosted, as in “it’s YouTube and nowhere else” – although some in the audience expressed opinions that they didn’t really care where their podcasts are hosted as long as they got the listeners.

I think they’re wrong: big brands especially are very focused on where podcasts they are associated with are hosted and in what environment. Every podcaster should be.

The 40-minute episode was published on Friday 26 May. Listen.

And that wrapped up the day. It was good to meet up with James and Sam again. The last time I saw James was at PodcastCon UK in 2006 in London. Time certainly has flown!

As for how alive and well UK podcasting is, as I referenced at the start of this article, my only caution is that the risk of podcasting evolving into a mainstream medium is precisely that: the risk of becoming just another mainstream medium. Even just another marketing channel.

I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts this year already, mostly by UK podcasters and many new. While most demonstrate the passion and talents of the hosts and presenters, share some great stories, and are a delight to listen to, some are just what I describe as ‘tabloid radio’ with nothing authentic or memorable about them at all. Others are too slickly produced for my taste, lacking genuine warmth and passion: I can visualise in my mind as I listen that the host is turning the script pages, tapping page-down on a keyboard or scrolling a tablet. Even if they’re actually not.

I’m reminded of Beth Heard’s comment in the second session I attended in the morning that “Not everyone needs a podcast.” She’s right. I’d add, “Not everyone should be doing a podcast”.

Some final thoughts about my day’s experience:

• It would be great if the organisers were to share the recordings of each session. Maybe they plan to do this although I see no reference anywhere on the event website.
• Intriguing to see live transcripts on TV screens in nearly all the sessions I attended. AI driven, I imagine, as you can tell it was automated by the auto-corrections happening and sometimes not. Nice to see a live sign-language interpreter in one session I was at, too.
• There was a show app for iOS and Android but, frankly, I wasn’t impressed with it at all. I had the Android version but no matter what I did, it wouldn’t log me in. Before the event I uninstalled it, reinstalled it, reset the password at least three times, no success. The organiser team tried to help via Twitter but in the end, asked me to contact the app developer. Well, there wasn’t time for that.
• What was good was the registration bar code that I could install on my phone within my Google Wallet. All I had to do was show it at the registration desk at the Business Design Centre. It worked perfectly when I arrived to get my badge: they scanned the code on my phone and out popped a badge from the printer with no faff or fuss, all in less than 60 seconds. Nicely done!
• The last word is a shoutout to Libsyn for having the most relevant badges/stickers of any I saw there!

Since Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter last October, much discussion has ensued on finding an alternative social networking platform where unhappy Twitter users could migrate from Twitter and leave the uncertainty and chaos behind. In the past month, one name has gathered significant momentum and come to the head of attention – Bluesky.

Bluesky is a new social network founded by Jack Dorsey, one of the three founders of Twitter, built very much to look and feel like Twitter although it is not owned by nor is it a part of Twitter. It has not been released publicly yet but has attracted extraordinary attention and a surge in popularity in recent weeks on a wave of hype across the entire media landscape, mainstream and social, around the world.

Anyone can sign up on a waitlist for access to a Bluesky beta programme when that’s available. What’s been a big driver in the hype is that you can gain access to an exclusive pre-beta test now if you have a special invitation code, typically secured from someone already with access.

As you can imagine, that kind of exclusivity – added to a FOMO factor and opinions, screenshots and more being shared across the social web from people with access – is almost guaranteed to keep the hype boiling and drive the attention stream onward. In a supply-meets-demand situation, there are even invitation codes being offered for sale or auction on eBay and elsewhere.

I’d say you’ll be taking some major chances if you go the route of buying a code.

Earlier this week, I secured an invitation code for the pre-beta test from Drew Benvie – a good friend, and the best route. I’ve been setting out my stall on this would-be Twitter replacement and I’ve begun kicking the tyres.

My very first impression is that Bluesky really does look and feel just like Twitter. The design, the layout, and the actions you take to create and post a message, like others’ messages, share posts, etc, will be highly familiar to every Twitter user who comes here.

To begin, I installed the Bluesky app on my Android smartphone via a download from Google Play. If you have an iPhone, it’s a similar procedure with a download from the App Store. There is no app for Windows yet, but there is for Macs via the App Store.

I actually wasn’t keen at all on having to use only my phone or tablet for this. I primarily use social networking on my desktop or laptop PCs running Windows 11, not on a mobile device which I use when not at my desk. Luckily, with a little sleuthing and help from a new Bluesky acquaintance, I found the solution to using Bluesky with a browser on a computer once you know what your precise handle address is. (I haven’t found this documented anywhere so I may write up a quick how-to? unless one appears.)

So I’m happily using Bluesky in the Chrome browser on my computers. As with other social networks I use, I also have the app on my phone and tablet so I’ve covered all my bases.

Being as this is very much beta software, there isn’t a huge amount of documentation or explainers to help you – and so something that looks familiar to what you already know will be helpful. It all can be a bit buggy although the worst I’ve experienced so far is slow page loads from time to time. I have found tweeting (sorry, old habits are hard to stop) a question asking how to do something will typically get quick replies.

It reminds me a little of Twitter back in the beginning days in 2006 and the following few years where other users’ help was always there and the fail whale was your constant companion. Everything was an experiment!

And so, I have set up my account. I’ve posted more than 20 messages, some with images. I’ve started following a few dozen other users, nearly all of whom weren’t known to me before, and I have about 40 people following me so far. Not a bad start in just a few days.

It’s important to remember that, while this looks and feels very much like Twitter, it’s only just starting and does not have the infrastructure surrounding Twitter that’s been constructed and refined over the past 17 years. On a fundamental level, there’s no support yet for hashtags or embedding videos, for example. This is pre-beta, don’t forget, although I’d expect such fundamentals to improve well before the time it gets to full public launch.

Is Bluesky an alternative to Twitter?

A low barrier to entry (once Bluesky actually launches) and a shallow learning curve will likely be two major influences on people looking for an alternative to Twitter that is familiar and where they can get going pretty quickly.

If you are seriously looking for somewhere other than Twitter, is Bluesky the place for you? As ever, the answer to such a question will inevitably start, “It depends.”

It depends on what you want from an alternative to Twitter and why you wish to leave Twitter. I think for many people, maybe most, a major driver will be to escape from the chaos and uncertainty about Twitter and what’s been happening recently, eg mass layoffs of key staff and constant changes to the platform often with unintended or unexpected consequences, and the removal of Twitter verification and replacing it with a paid-for service called Twitter Blue. Others will say that Twitter under Elon Musk’s leadership is not a place they want to be. Others will talk about decentralisation and getting away from manipulated content and the overt selling of things. And still others do not want to be on a social network full of – as the euphemism goes – bad actors.

As I’ve written here over the past year, I worry about all of the above, yet I remain on Twitter. The reason is partly related to my work where being present on Twitter is important. It’s also that I’ve been on Twitter since December 2006 so giving up my presence there isn’t something I will do lightly.

I do have an escape plan so if push comes to shove requiring an exit in a hurry, or I reach a point where I want to leave of my own accord, I am ready for that.

Whether Bluesky is an alternative to Twitter, for individual users it’s not yet given that it’s in a pre-beta stage, is a closed private network, and has no infrastructure to speak of yet nor ecosystem of communities and developers – such things take time to build.

If you would join Bluesky to represent your company or organization, then no, it’s certainly not ready for that yet other than for establishing a footprint there and testing the waters. If you have this in mind, you might want to read Drew Benvie’s article in PR Week this week (behind a paywall) in which he discusses Bluesky’s potential in the PR world.

And, you should definitely read Bluesky’s terms of service and its copyright notice before joining.

What of other potential alternatives to Twitter, eg, Mastodon or Post.News to name but two? I’ve used both and I’m active on Mastodon and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Mastodon would be my primary choice if I were looking to move from Twitter – it has enjoyed huge growth over the past year and already has a developing infrastructure and ecosystem in place.

This was my choice right up until Bluesky emerged as a potential alternative. It may become an actual and viable alternative once it’s progressed into formal beta testing and features and functionality improve.

You might conclude that this picture doesn’t do well at presenting a clear alternative to Twitter. To be sure, the picture isn’t clear yet. I see this as a time for discovery and experimentation. Most people aren’t into all the tech that underpins many of the new offerings that have emerged where the word ‘decentralised‘ is commonly spoken. This word applies to Bluesky and this will be more important in the coming years as proving you are who you say you are requires verification quickly and seamlessly, all with no fuss. That’s what decentralisation will help deliver.

There’s also a matter of major importance to many people, which is all about the people who found and run the infrastructure of the community you join and their role in creating a safe place for its users, the people in that community who you engage with, and your overall experience.

For many people, these are among the failings at Twitter and the primary reasons why they want to leave. Expect more ups and downs with Twitter in the coming weeks following an announcement yesterday that Elon Musk has hired a new CEO.

I would recommend checking out Bluesky when you can – right now if you want to be at the bleeding edge and if you can get an invitation code. Or join the waitlist for the public beta launch. Or, wait for the actual full launch.

I’ll continue my own exploration of Bluesky, getting to know the pros and cons and building up a community of my own, and report my further experiences in this blog.

I like Bluesky because of its familiarity with what has been an excellent tool for communicating and engaging with others online over the years. That’s Twitter even if it always has been an imperfect tool, one that in my view has rapidly declined in trustworthiness since Elon Musk arrived on the scene.

If you’re already on Bluesky and would like to connect, you’ll find me here: https://bsky.app/profile/jangles.bsky.social

Bluesky might be the reset starter that so clearly is needed now where reputation, trust, trustworthiness and authenticity really do matter to everyone, individuals and businesses alike.

I have a few takeaways from this Coronation Weekend of pomp, pageantry and rock ‘n’ roll I’d like to share that characterised the coronation of King Charles III on Saturday 6 May and the coronation concert at Windsor Castle on Sunday 7 May.

Like millions of people in the UK and many more millions around the world, we watched the coronation ceremony live on the BBC. It was all you’d expect from an event like this and the BBC’s mastery in staging, producing and broadcasting it live.

The camera work and presentation of the ceremony that took place in Westminster Abbey were a compelling viewing experience. From the moment the King and his Queen Consort entered the building to the conclusion of this highly formal, traditional and so regal an event, we were part of something historic you could feel. The sense of witnessing a key part of this country’s identity and history that stretches back well over a thousand years is a powerful thing.

The BBC has posted video recordings on the BBC iPlayer (the full ceremony in UHD, for UK viewers) and its YouTube channel (a 4-minute summary), there for all the world to view at its leisure. Seeing it again, it really is quite a spectacle.

For me, the most compelling part of all was during the anointing of the King behind privacy screens and just before the actual crowning ceremony.

While this element in the coronation took place we could hear the orchestra playing Zadok the Priest and see the choir singing the accompanying words. This seminal work was composed by George Frideric Handel in 1727 for the coronation of King George II, and has been part of every coronation since then.

Will it produce a strong emotional reaction for you as it does for me? Watch the video and read the lyrics in the captions.

All Change at the Castle

The concert at Windsor Castle on Sunday evening was as different from the formality of the royal coronation on Saturday as you could imagine.

The production design was magnificent in the construction of the huge outdoor stage with all the supporting elements including imagery in the darkening evening sky created by drones that played key visual roles in the story-telling we saw and heard from each of the acts on stage and at venues up and down the country.

Each act took full advantage of the spaces and the panoramic depth of view across the audience of 20,000 surrounding the stage in a semi-circle with the castle wall as backdrop. All for an audio-visual experience that was designed for digital content broadcast and displayed in high-definition video and audio on big-screen TVs and other compatible devices.

And so to the acts themselves.

• Coronation Concert: full line-up and songs

For me, two were standouts because of their sheer energy and ability, encompassing the singers themselves together with supporting backers and other artists, and the simple enjoyment of viewing their performances that were presented so beautifully – another testament to the BBC and the skills of its production teams and contractors in putting on an event like this. You only have to watch the Platinum Party at the Palace concert last year celebrating the late’s Queen’s Platinum Jubilee to see that they really do know what they’re doing.

My first standout is Katy Perry. The multi-platinum American singer’s energy and exuberance were delightful as she belted out ‘Roar’, her 2013 number 1 hit record. On stage, her reflective-gold costume was a visual feast as her every move and turn reflected the light so that she stood out unmistakably, contrasting the stage lights.

Watch the video:

My second standout act is Take That. The venerable British pop group, with a string of hit singles and albums over almost 30 years, closed the concert with their 1995 hit song ‘Never Forget’, starting with the choristers of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, singing the song’s introduction, and with backing by drummers of the Royal Marines Band.

Take That are past masters at audience engagement, something we saw in this concert session. Just about the whole audience of 20,000 singing along, waving flags, illuminated armbands highly visible in the evening darkness, all adding to the audio-visual experience. And the Royals joined in, too.

Watch the video:

Looking Ahead for the Monarchy

In the midst of the focus on King Charles and his wife Camilla as the Queen (crowned on Saturday, too, so no longer known simply as ‘Queen Consort’), it’s worth mentioning how William, Prince of Wales, has come to the forefront of attention during the past year.

His natural and easy ability for public speaking, and conveying a sincere belief in his authenticity and passion for causes related to climate change (the Earthshot Prize being the classic example), stand him in good stead for what undoubtedly will be required of him as his role will change now that his father is the anointed and coronated king and head of state. William is now next in line for succession. His speech on Sunday was a clear affirmation of his commitment to the service of others.

And what will be next for the Royal Family and the monarchy overall as an institution? We live in changing times (to perhaps re-coin an old phrase) and the role and purpose of the monarchy are being questioned publicly and more critically than the polite murmurings of the past.

That said, a YouGov survey just before the coronation shows there is still strong support for the monarchy among the British public – of those surveyed, two-and-a-half times as many said we should continue to have a monarchy than those who said we shouldn’t.

Still, changes in sentiment are in the air and, while some criticism has already translated into active opposition (prompting strong police reaction and a follow-up apology), a good foundation of support presents the right opportunity to build on it in ways that really can resonate with different age groups in the population.

And there’s still a limited window through which to capitalise on the goodwill King Charles has earned, much of which carries over from his mother the late Queen.

I can see both the King and William taking a strong, prominent and proactive lead on many issues surrounding climate change that would resonate with people, especially if there’s a strong sense of advancement, taking things forward, and stimulating action.

I can see another, parallel opportunity that will need strong persuasive acts and willingness to carry them through, and that is the King becoming more involved in advancing the climate change agenda in some of the politics in this country. Perhaps review the government’s long list of items in this agenda – pick just three things and get them moving.

If politicians can’t get things done, perhaps it’s time for another approach including expanding or formalising the scope for influence the monarch holds which may lead to opening up the wider debate on exactly how the monarchy should evolve. It’s a big topic.

Where there’s a will, though, there’s a way.

The phrase “end of days” came to my mind as I reviewed a number of critical news reports during this past week about the current state of Twitter. The forthcoming demise of Twitter, sooner or later, is the strong thread running through all of this content, assessing the situation and arriving at this conclusion from many different routes.

A consistent narrative underpinning everything is a standard view that Twitter has gone to the dogs under Elon Musk’s leadership.

Some reports are fanciful, others ridiculous, but many give us a clear pause for thought, if not actual action, regarding the future of Twitter and us as users or advertisers. In reverse chronological order, these are a few of the more thought-provoking narratives and opinions that have caught my attention that offer clear pointers to Twitter’s pending and probably inevitable car crash:

• Is Elon Musk a genius or a dud? “What once felt like a free and open public forum has become one in which those who pay the most get to shout the loudest, while others with more thoughtful expressions are pushed to the wayside. To make matters worse, it’s now difficult to tell if many people on the site are who they say they are.” (New Statesman, 30 April 2023.)
• Move over Twitter… meet Bluesky “Given Elon Musk’s chaotic rein at Twitter, manifested most recently with his uneven removal of the blue ticks of authentication and his tendency to use the platform to settle petty personal beefs, there is a sense that a breach has opened. Bluesky looks quite similar, with profile photos, posts, replies, follower counts, and even a similar blue and white colour scheme … Yet history would say that the odds of Bluesky breaking through are very low.” (The Times, 29 April 2023.)
• Six Months In: Thoughts On The Current Post-Twitter Diaspora Options “Just sticking with Twitter: This has to be at least mentioned, as many people remain on Twitter, and certain communities don’t seem motivated enough to move. It still remains possible that somehow Twitter will stop making ridiculous decisions. But, the last six months is… well… not encouraging. Still, inertia is a powerful force and it can win. Either way, this is a rapidly evolving space, and I’ve been really fascinated and encouraged by what’s happened over the past six months on Mastodon/ActivityPub, Bluesky, and even nostr. For all the talk of a lack of competition, we’re now seeing a ton, and competition leads to experimentation, and experimentation leads to innovation.” (TechDirt, 28 April 2023.)
• Musk’s toxic brand is why Twitter is doomed “What isn’t fixable is Twitter’s astonishing reputational collapse under Musk because that collapse is the direct result of the rank politics of its owner. For most people, and for most brands, spending time or money on the platform is now an implicit endorsement of Musk’s political ideology, which includes or has included vaccine denial, union busting, homophobic disinformation targeting Democrats, hate speech targeting trans persons and other toxic beliefs. Musk is Twitter and Twitter is Musk.” (PR Week, 27 April 2023.)
• Twitter is dead “Usually when a piece of culture dies – particularly a piece of technology – it’s because it has been phased out for something new, which is doing what the old thing did better (or, at the very least, in a way that has become more exciting and addictive to the average user) … But this isn’t what is happening with Twitter. It isn’t dying because some wildly-improved text-based platform has entered the scene – it’s dying as a direct impact of its owner’s choices. Not only is Twitter dying, nothing is thriving in its place.” (The New Statesman, 4 April 2023.)
• Twitter is dying “Since Musk took over he has set about dismantling everything that made Twitter valuable – making it his mission to drive out expertise, scare away celebrities, bully reporters and – on the flip side – reward the bad actors, spammers and sycophants who thrive in the opposite environment: An information vacuum. It almost doesn’t matter if this is deliberate sabotage by Musk or the blundering stupidity of a clueless idiot. The upshot is the same: Twitter is dying.” (TechCrunch, 28 March 2023.)
• How a social network falls apart “Musk looms large as Twitter’s owner. His presence on the site, up to and including picking fights with various individual users, makes him feel less like the CEO of a social media website and more like a tyrannical forum moderator. The tone of the site comes from the top, and it’s difficult to want to post on a site owned by someone who openly believes that ‘the media’ is racist against white people.” (The Verge, 9 March 2023.)

So, seven narrative reports and opinion pieces all of which run in a similar vein that Twitter isn’t a good model for the future of social networks.

I’ll add one other development that fuels my view that the end may be nigh. Overnight I received an email from JetPack, a WordPress toolkit to secure, speed up, and grow your website (owned by Automattic which also owns WordPress), telling me that important functionality connecting a WordPress blog with Twitter will no longer work automatically from the 1st of May.

A JetPack blog post explains what’s happened.

Twitter decided, on short notice, to dramatically change the terms and pricing of the Twitter API. We have attempted to work with Twitter in good faith to negotiate new terms, but we have not been able to reach an agreement. As a result, the Twitter connection on Jetpack Social will cease to work, and your blog posts will no longer be auto-shared to Twitter.

JetPack, 29 April 2023

JetPack noted that you will still be able to share your posts to Twitter manually by pasting the post link into the body of your tweet. But the auto-share function is gone.

There are some other tech developments worth noting, adding pressure to Twitter from a different angle. For example, Bluesky will allow users to use domain names as handles to help achieve decentralized verification and give users more control over their identity. This sounds like an attractive and more trustworthy-looking method of verification than the joke that is now Twitter’s version of verification.

Final words

What would a demise actually look like? The literal end of Twitter? No more, wound up, bankrupt? Even in the midst of the chaos, it’s hard to believe that this is a possibility. More likely, perhaps, is a social network that continues to exist but as a shell of its former self with little genuine influence and even less authenticity.

In my view, what all this illustrates is this:

• For brands: Twitter is not a trusted place for your reputation.
• For individuals: I wouldn’t waste your money on Twitter Blue. Stay on Twitter as a “regular user” but make an escape plan, that’s your insurance policy in case you need to move very fast or if there’s a sudden demise. If you don’t have one yet, there’s still time. Just.

Today the UK government launched Business Connect, described as a new conference that champions the dynamism of UK businesses to unlock innovation and grow the economy. Or, as The Times puts it, a charm offensive with business.

It’s also a means by which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak can engage in small-group conversation that will let him pitch his wares, as it were, more directly and personally.

As part of this charm offensive (I like The Times’ moniker), Sunak presented himself live on LinkedIn at 8.30am this morning in an online event. Over 30 minutes, he spoke to a handful of people who were brought into the live video stream in turn, asking Sunak questions which he addressed, making this a reasonably engaging series of inter-connected one-to-one chats.

What did it achieve, I wonder.

I saw Rishi Sunak’s post on LinkedIn advertising the event at about 8am this morning. That post said, “On 24 April I’ll be answering questions from the business community – live – right here on LinkedIn.”

That he did. But judging from some of the comments posted on LinkedIn, quite a few people were expecting Sunak to answer questions they were posting in the chat. Indeed, that was largely what I was expecting to happen.

Clearly, that would have been almost impossible in a live session like this. Texts were appearing non-stop in a constant stream along with emoji reactions. Some of the questions were plain silly or utterly off-topic but would require moderating. Others seemed to me to be really on topic, but you couldn’t expect individual answers in a session like this over 30 minutes.

Instead, we had scripted Q&A. Yet I think it wasn’t bad at all. Even if there was a huge sense of stage-managed marketing here, Sunak has the personality and the natural talent to at least give a good impression of authenticity.

Imagine, then, if this had been an ask me anything type of online event. Instead of on Reddit, on Linkedin. Eminently doable and I hope this idea gets attention from Sunak’s comms team.

Risky but if done well, it can be so engaging and genuine. Here’s a terrific example.

Improve the engagement

If I had a direct criticism of today’s LinkedIn event, it would be about identity. Meaning, who were the talking heads who appeared one after the other? Each said who they were but by the time I got even halfway through listening to them, I had forgotten their names.

Captions with names and LinkedIn handles would have been immensely helpful. It would also let you check them out there and then if you wanted to.

I’ve seen some comments about the lack of subtitles. Yes, it would have been helpful, and certainly so if they were included in the recording post-event but they’re not. That’s a big opportunity missed to engage with people who didn’t see it live but could be interested in the recording. If mobile, subtitles will enable viewers to follow along completely, given how so many people (me included) tend to watch most videos on social networks with audio muted. Subtitles are essential.

If you want to see the video recording, it’s here. (Imagine if I had been able to embed the video right here: you could just watch it. But I couldn’t find an embed code or any way to do that.)

Looking forward to the next one with improvements!

In the early days of the twenty-first century, when the term “social media” was but a whisper in the digital wind, blogrolls played an instrumental role in the development of online communities.

A blogroll – a curated list of links to other blogs that a blogger would include on their blog – enabled bloggers to create a web of interconnected relationships, fostering discussion and exchanging ideas. Today, though, you’d be hard-pressed to find a useful blogroll on any worthwhile blog, a fact that I believe has contributed to a decline of discussion, of conversation, that was a mainstay of early blogging and developing a sustainable community online.

The Blogroll and Social Connections

Blogrolls helped form the foundation of early online communities. Through them, bloggers could connect to other bloggers and their content to engage in meaningful conversations and debates, ultimately broadening their horizons. Blogrolls were not just lists of links; they were the original social networks that laid the groundwork for an attractive social media landscape to develop.

Blogging platforms like Blogger, Movable Type, TypePad and WordPress helped encourage people to build the blogosphere and connect blogs together with pings, trackbacks, RSS feeds and a blogroll feature from the very beginning that you could enable on every blog. Today’s platform leader WordPress had functionality built in to create and curate a blogroll but removed it from the core software over a decade ago.

As the Internet and the world wide web evolved, so did social media. Social platforms like LiveJournal started in 1999, with others such as MySpace emerging in the early years of the new century. From around the mid-noughties, Facebook and Twitter began to dominate the consumer online world, simplifying the process of connecting with others. LinkedIn and XING did the same for online business networking.

But across the online world, the focus began shifting from in-depth commenting, replying and actual discussions on blogs to quick, easily digestible snackable content that took place on social networking sites.

This transition marked the beginning of the end for blogrolls in the mainstream as they were largely replaced by “follow” and “like” buttons.

Before that transition, blogrolls were a common sight. Here’s a screenshot from my TypePad blog in August 2004 – the blogroll is in the left-hand sidebar. The blog is no longer online in the format you see (it’s a text-only archive now) but you can see this view via the Wayback Machine.

Over the following decade, social media continued to evolve and become more of a vehicle for commercial and political interests with data manipulation and monetisation in mind. The sense of genuine community and authentic connections that blogrolls fostered began to fade. Attention spans shortened, and the desire for instant gratification grew.

The intimacy and thoughtfulness of the blogroll era were replaced by a culture of impulsivity where every link has a tracking code, and where hot takes and clickbait headlines reigned supreme. And let’s also mention anti-social behaviours and aggression that have led to many blogs and other websites disabling commenting entirely as discourse became overwhelmingly uncivil.

In short, the rise of social networking platforms and changes in people’s online behaviours have contributed to the decline of civil discourse. Blogrolls, with their curated links implying recommendations, encouraged reflection and respectful dialogue, as bloggers took the time to read, comment, and engage with one another’s work.

Now, though, communication is often governed by character count, making it difficult to foster and develop actual meaningful conversations.

In the current digital landscape, anonymity and the lack of accountability often lead to aggressive and polarising language and behaviour. The demise of blogrolls and the shift towards instant, shallow connections have given way to echo chambers and filter bubbles, further exacerbating the polarisation of opinions.

In the face of these challenges, there is a growing desire by many people to return to the thoughtful, respectful discussions that characterized the blogroll era. I believe there is hope that the lessons learned from the past can guide us in rebuilding a digital landscape that encourages civil discourse.

Recent initiatives such as the emergence of conversational-newsletter platform Substack – and perhaps new entrants such as Post.News – has the potential to enable people to create long-form content and build genuine interactions between authors and readers. And include curated lists of other recommended places.

Just like blogrolls in the (g)olden days :)

And while Twitter is still in the throws of chaos and turmoil with mounting questions over its relevance and trustworthiness, and even its very survival, let’s not count it down and out just yet. News came a few days ago that Twitter is enabling posts of up to 10,000 characters, which would be somewhere between 1,400 and 2,500 words. That’s unquestionably long form (and a knock on the head to its original value proposition of brevity in 140, then 280, then 4,000 characters) that may enable Twitter to evolve into better relevance for some – all else being equal, not least paying a monthly fee for the privilege with Twitter Blue.

As Stephen Waddington recently noted, blogrolls such as the one shown below in a screenshot of Richard Millington’s blog in June 2008 are a throwback to a gentler time when social media was social. Thanks to Michelle Goodall for bringing Rich’s blogroll to my attention!

The Blogroll can Help Civil Discourse Arise Again

The history of blogrolls and their role in the development of social media is a tale of a seemingly lost art – the art of civil discourse. By understanding the lessons from the past, we can strive to create more inclusive, respectful online communities that value genuine connections and thought-provoking conversations.

As we navigate the ever-changing digital landscape, let’s not forget the importance of the humble blogroll and its ability to bring people together, fostering a sense of community and shared understanding.

Ultimately, the responsibility falls upon each of us as creators, writers and users of the Internet to cultivate a more thoughtful and inclusive digital environment. We can do this by seeking out people and platforms that encourage genuine discussions, engaging in respectful conversations, and sharing content that contributes to meaningful discourse.

I’m making a new start by introducing a blogroll for the first time since 2009. It begins as a short list of ten people whose content I enjoy, some of whom I’ve been reading for years. You’ll see the blogroll in the right-hand sidebar on the home page. Do make some visits!

Neville Hobson, 16 April 2023

By taking a step like this, we can each rediscover the essence of the blogroll era and work towards a brighter future for online interactions. If you run a WordPress blog, adding a blogroll is straightforward now with the ability to add a blogroll as a navigation menu. There are also WordPress plugins if you prefer that option.

As we continue to learn from the past and adapt to the present, we have the opportunity to redefine how we connect and communicate in this digital age, to pause and to take our time. We can rekindle the spirit of civil discourse that once flourished in the world of blogrolls.

Aside:

The generative AI images at the top are by Adobe Firefly beta in response to the text prompt: “Portrait of a person in a coffee shop, with sunlight, holding a laptop computer”, with filters set to ‘art’ and ‘digital art’. Usually, you would pick one of the four generated images. But I felt the four together were so complementary, I grabbed all four as presented. Collectively, they convey a good sense of civil online discourse and community.

For many people, the blue checkmark on Twitter has been synonymous with credibility, influence, and social status. For others, it’s a vanity project with no real value to anyone, a broad sentiment that might grow in the face of changes to the verification programme that are in process.

These changes to verification and the meaning of the blue checkmark have left many questioning the whole point of Twitter and the overall purpose of the verification programme.

In the beginning…

Twitter launched its verification feature in 2009 to combat the growing issue of impersonation of Twitter users, particularly concerning high-profile individuals. The blue checkmark provided a visual cue that the account belonged to the person it claimed to represent. As the platform grew, verification became a status symbol, with many users striving to obtain the coveted checkmark.

But the social network endured controversies in 2017 leading to its suspending the verification system entirely later that year.

Jump forward to May 2021, and Twitter relaunched verification with a re-declaration of what it means to be verified on Twitter:

The blue badge is one of the ways we help people distinguish the authenticity of accounts that are of high public interest. It gives people on Twitter more context about who they’re having conversations with so they can determine if it’s trustworthy, which our research has shown leads to healthier, more informed conversations. 

Twitter: 20 May 2021

Jump forward again, to October 2022 and the arrival of new proprietor Elon Musk following the closing of his successful bid to acquire Twitter for $44 billion.

Musk set in train a series of massive changes at Twitter, from reducing employee numbers by thousands to leading the charge on launching the new Twitter Blue subscription service designed in part to address the loss of revenue from big advertisers who fled the social network and to replace the existing (now called ‘legacy’) verification programme.

Twitter Blue offers a range of additional benefits, some of which – being able to edit a tweet you’ve already published, for example; or posting tweets up to 4,000 characters, a significant increase beyond the standard 280 characters – are highly attractive to many users.

You pay for such benefits with the current subscription fee at $7.99 a month in the US (UK: £7.99 a month), more if you pay via the Apple Store, based on paying for a year in advance.

And then there’s verification, now only available to individuals if you subscribe to Twitter Blue.

Getting the Twitter blues

With Twitter Blue verification, the original core principle mentioned above of verification being “one of the ways we help people distinguish the authenticity of accounts that are of high public interest” has gone. Now, verification is only a cue that a particular blue-checkmarked account is paying for a Twitter Blue subscription:

The blue checkmark means that the account has an active subscription to Twitter Blue and meets our eligibility requirements. Starting April 1, we’ll be winding down our legacy Verification program and accounts that were verified under the previous criteria (active, notable, and authentic) will not retain a blue checkmark unless they are subscribed to Twitter Blue.

Twitter (undated)

So, the meaning of ‘Twitter verification’ has entirely changed to simply one that says you’re verified as a Twitter Blue subscriber.

In my book, that means little, perhaps even nothing at all. My primary Twitter handle @jangles is verified (rather, ‘legacy verified’ in 2017) and according to Twitter, I will lose this verification very soon (bye-bye blue checkmark!) as Twitter starts winding down the old programme from 1 April and if I don’t subscribe to Twitter Blue.

As I have neither wish nor intent to pay Twitter for a blue checkmark of questionable value, this looks like a certainty. Or perhaps it’s all an April Fool’s joke? That’s what Politico is wondering.

In any case, I think this devalues Twitter and makes me wonder, “what’s the point?”, a question the EFF eloquently explores.

Just look at the differences in the meaning of ‘verification’ now on Twitter in this comparison of how the word is explained on a ‘legacy verified’ user profile such as mine:

So I expect the blue checkmark to disappear very soon.

I don’t lament its imminent passing, frankly. If you’ve read any of the articles here over the past six months and more, you’ll know that disillusionment with what Twitter has fast become under Elon Musk’s leadership has set in, to the extent now that I have little faith in Twitter as a place of “healthier, more informed conversations.”

I also think it’s worth repeating a point I made last December in an article about the changes in Twitter verification:

We live in a time of severely diminished trust in institutions and individuals alike. And the rise of bad actors, scams and fakery at scale requires tools and methods that increase trust, not diminish it. Twitter Blue ‘verification’ may prove to be another straw on Twitter’s back, hopefully not the final one that breaks it for users.

Neville Hobson, 19 December 2022

Or starting the end of days for Twitter, to use another metaphor.

I don’t plan on leaving Twitter – I’ve been here since 2006 – but I no longer see this social network as a primary place of engagement with people. It still has a role to play in the wider universe of people sharing opinions, news and information online but with huge caveats attached.

Related:

• The new face of Twitter verification – 19 December 2022
• Twitter’s chaos may help decentralized alternatives like Mastodon gain traction – 22 November 2022
• Turmoil engulfs a Twitter in transition – 6 November 2022

Additional reading:

• Without Verification, What Is the Point of Elon Musk’s Twitter? – Electronic Frontier Foundation, 31 March 2023
• Twitter’s Blue Check Apocalypse Is Upon Us. Here’s What to Know – New York Times, 31 March 2023
• Some of Twitter’s top users aren’t afraid of losing their blue check marks – NBC News, 31 March 2023
• Should You Pay for a Checkmark on Twitter, for Yourself or Your Business? – Social Media Today, 30 March 2023
• Twitter to no longer only promote paid-for accounts after backlash – Guardian, 29 March 2023
• Twitter to Revoke ‘Legacy’ Verified Badges in April, Leaving Only Paying Subscribers With Blue Check-Marks – Variety, 23 March 2023

Some years ago, Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE) was a hot topic in PR industry discussion. The discussion focused on an increasingly widely-held view that AVE is a discredited measurement metric for public relations.

AVE refers to the practice of estimating the value of PR efforts by calculating the cost of an equivalent amount of advertising space or time in the same media outlet and comparing the two.

Unfortunately, AVE refuses to go away entirely as some in the industry still advocate for its use. Recently I came across an explainer from Meltwater that includes a formula for calculating AVE using Meltwater’s widget. The explainer includes the caveat, “While this is a very popular widget among our clients, it is important to note that this is our best estimate and it does not measure an exact value.”

You might as well take the random number AVE calculator for a spin and get some entertainment at the same time!

If you do need a reminder of why AVE is an invalid practice, here are five:

1. Inaccurate comparison: AVE compares PR to advertising, which is fundamentally different. Advertising is a paid-for, controlled message, while PR is earned media, based on third-party endorsement and credibility. This makes it difficult to make a fair comparison between the two, as their impact on the audience can be vastly different.
2. Overestimation of value: AVE often overestimates the value of PR coverage because it assumes that the entire worth of PR is equal to the cost of advertising, ignoring that earned media often has greater credibility and trustworthiness. Additionally, AVE doesn’t account for the quality or sentiment of the coverage, which can significantly affect its impact on the audience.
3. Lack of standardisation: AVE calculations are not standardised, leading to inconsistencies in how the value is determined. Different organisations might use different multipliers or methodologies, creating confusion and making it difficult to compare results across various PR campaigns or agencies.
4. No measurement of outcomes: AVE only focuses on the supposed monetary value of media coverage and does not provide insight into a PR campaign’s actual results or effectiveness. Metrics like audience engagement, message resonance, and behaviour change are more meaningful indicators of PR success, but AVE doesn’t account for them.
5. Disregard for online and social media: AVE was developed in an era when traditional media dominated the landscape. Today, online and social media play a significant role in shaping public opinion, but AVE doesn’t accurately capture their impact. This makes it an outdated and incomplete measurement for modern PR efforts.

Today, most practitioners focus on more meaningful and comprehensive evaluation methods, such as explained in the Barcelona Principles which advocate for outcome-based measurement, qualitative analysis, and a holistic understanding of PR impact. Barcelona Principles 3.0 were published in November 2020, which contains a clear reminder statement of principle on AVE:

The message remains consistent and clear: we continue to believe that AVEs do not demonstrate the value of our work. It is important that communications measurement and evaluation employs a richer, more nuanced, and multi-faceted approach to understand the impact of communications.

AMEC Barcelona Principles 3.0

Note that if you enter a CIPR award programme for public relations campaigns with the expectation of winning a prize, set that expectation very low if you have used AVE in your measurement – you’ll get a zero score on measurement if you have.

Be smart, and do yourself and the PR profession a favour – don’t use AVE.

(I created the image at the top with Bing Image Creator from the simple prompt “PR professional studying a newspaper.” Goodbye stock images.)

A thorny issue in the broad area of generative AI concerns copyright and how or whether it applies in activities involving the gathering of data about images, texts and other content for use by AI publishers.

Specifically, such use would be using the data gathered, with permission if required, as sources for training the algorithms that generate the AI-produced content such as images, video and text.

It was one of the discussion topics in the March monthly episode of For Immediate Release, the business podcast I co-host with Shel Holtz that we published on March 20. That discussion, in which Shel and I appear to be on opposite sides of the copyright and permission debate, was prompted by an article last week in The Economist that warned a battle royal is brewing over copyright and AI.

The main issue here, The Economist argues, is the oceans of copyrighted data that bots have siphoned up while being trained to create human-like content. That information comes from everywhere: social media feeds, Internet searches, digital libraries, television, radio, banks of statistics and so on. Often, it is alleged, AI models plunder the databases without permission. Those responsible for the source material complain that their work is hoovered up without consent, credit or compensation.

In short, says The Economist, some AI platforms may be doing with other media what Napster did at the turn of the century with songs – ignoring copyright altogether. Napster, a platform for sharing mainly pirated songs, was ultimately brought down by copyright law.

Similar arguments and warnings are being made by others, too, who believe the issue of infringing or ignoring copyright is one that hasn’t been addressed at all and is becoming urgent. I remember reading a really good assessment in The Verge last November that made very clear points on the scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next.

Already legal actions are starting, the most dramatic being the lawsuit filed by Getty Images against Stability AI, the company behind the Stable Diffusion AI image generator. Getty claims that over 12 million of its copyrighted images, along with their descriptions and metadata, were used to train Stable Diffusion. The lawsuit seeks a staggering $1.8 trillion in compensation.

Overall, it’s a muddy picture. I think many people speak of generative AI and copyright in the sense of the actual ouput, eg, a digital artwork or a text article. Some see it as the digital images or texts that can also be the input where AI tools look at reference images or articles that form part of the training and learning that enable these tech tools to generate content from the prompts users give.

It’s about the data

What we’re actually looking at here is the input in the form of data, eg, the metadata mentioned above in the Getty lawsuit against Stability AI, and whether it’s been acquired and used by AI firms with permission and in full recognition of copyright ownership.

Governments are starting to do more than just talk about the issue. In the UK, for instance, the government is creating a code of practice for generative AI firms according to a report in Computer Weekly last week, that aims to enable generative AI companies in the UK to mine data, text and images that would attract investment, support company formation and growth, and show international leadership. And hopefully address the matter of copyright.

In the US, the federal government Copyright Office has just published Copyright Registration Guidance: Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence that sets out a statement of policy to clarify practices for examining and registering works that contain material generated by the use of AI technology.

These are good moves undoubtedly. Yet they illustrate one of the biggests hurdles – the geographic nature of copyright law. Perhaps territoriality of copyright law is a better label to illustrate the predicament of applying ‘geographic law’ in a situation that is not defined by geography.

Let’s ask an AI

So what is the way forward? It’s clear to me that no one really has a credible and uniform answer yet. With the help of ChatGPT Plus and Google’s just-released Bard, I researched the topic. The input from these two chatbots was helpful: as research assistants they save a lot of time that I can then use on verification and some editing or rewriting.

A good starting point in looking for an answer to the big question of whether scraping data for generative AI training infringes copyright or not is this – it depends.

When it comes to generative AI, large datasets are typically used to train models to produce human-like text, images, or other content. Often, this data is scraped from publicly-accessible websites or platforms. However, the act of scraping data does not inherently infringe on copyright, as copyright law protects original works and not the raw data itself. That said, the way this data is used could potentially infringe on copyright.

Some factors to consider:

1. Fair Use Doctrine

The fair use doctrine is a legal principle in the United States that allows the limited use of copyrighted material without obtaining permission from the copyright holder. It balances the interests of copyright holders with the public’s interest in the free flow of information. To determine if a particular use of copyrighted material falls under fair use, US courts consider four factors:

1. The purpose and character of the use.
2. The nature of the copyrighted work.
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used.
4. The effect of the use on the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Generative AI models that use scraped data for non-commercial research, education, or other transformative purposes may potentially be protected under the fair use doctrine. However, it is essential to note that fair use is determined on a case-by-case basis, and there is no guarantee that a specific use will be considered fair.

Note this is just in the US. In the UK, the similar principle is known as fair dealing which has significant differences compared to the US fair use doctrine.

2. Public Domain

If the data being scraped consists of works in the public domain, then there is no copyright infringement. Public domain works are those whose copyright has expired or those that were never subject to copyright protection. Examples include works created by some governments and certain facts, ideas, or theories.

3. License Agreements

Some websites or platforms provide access to their data through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) or other means, subject to specific licensing agreements. These agreements may outline permitted and restricted uses of the data. Using data in accordance with such a license agreement would not constitute copyright infringement as permission will have been agreed with the data owners.

Does the above provide clear answers? Actually, I don’t think so although it does help shine some light on the overall picture to illustrate the complexity. Never was there a more muddy phrase than “it depends.”

For me, there is one clear answer – do not use someone else’s data unless you are sure you have permission if that’s required. Just because something is easily available online and you could scrape it, that doesn’t mean that you should.

It’s worth mentioning that both ChatGPT Plus and Bard concluded their research in a similar manner:

“The use of generative AI for transformative purposes is likely to fall within the fair use exception to copyright law. This means that you can scrape data from the Internet and use it to train a generative AI model without infringing copyright. However, it is important to note that fair use [and fair dealing] is a complex area of law, and there is no guarantee that a court will find a particular use to be fair. If you are unsure whether a particular use is fair, it is always best to consult with an attorney.“

(Image at top created by Bing Image Creator in response to the simple prompt: “Data scraping on the Internet.” I’d imagined something Matrix-like, and this result isn’t bad from such a simple prompt.)

Podcasting is an activity that I love. From my first steps into this field in late 2004, I now host and co-host three business podcasts. One of these is The Small Data Forum monthly podcast that started in May 2016.

Nearly seven years and 74 episodes later, Sam Knowles, Thomas Stoeckle and I, the three founders and co-hosts pictured above, have taken a step forward with the podcast to make our individual voices stronger, emerging into the light, let’s say, from behind the SDF podcast name.

We spent a long weekend together in Andalucía, a delightful part of Spain on the Mediterranean coast, where Thomas has a lovely hideaway villa in the hills above Málaga. Our ‘podcasting retreat’ also combined exploration and discovery of the culinary delights in this part of Spain. And as the picture above suggests, taken in Málaga, the weather was fabulous compared to Blighty in mid March!

But, as Sam notes in the episode we’ve just published that sets out our refreshed stall, we’re not about the weather. Rather, we continue our seven-year focus:

We take a sideways look at the uses and abuses of data big and small in politics, business, and public life with opinion and insights that challenge accepted wisdoms.

We think creating a name that embraces the meaning of that statement along with a sentiment that describes the three of us behind that statement is what we want to do now. And so the “Podnosticators” came to be.

In episode 70 we recorded on March 13 and published on March 20, we explain how this name came about and why we think it is a really good moniker for the emphasis we wish to present about the podcast and who’s behind it.

Thomas introduces the idea of “podnostication” and Sam dives into the origin of the name and how a googlewhack played a key role. He dives even deeper into the origin in an etymology-focused post on his website. Both wax lyrical on foxiness and hedgehogging.

While in Spain we recorded four episodes, numbers 67 to 70, all but one in a new short-form presentation of 20 minutes or less. This will likely be our production goal as we move forward that differs from the single long-form 45-minutes-plus monthly episodes: the shorter ones will likely be on a single topic whereas the monthlies address multiple topics. And short-form will be the norm. We’ll see how this plays out and will very much consider what listeners say. So do let us know what you think.

One related change concerns Twitter. Until now @SDFpodcast has been the handle that we use to communciate about episdoes, etc. That handle continues but now becomes purely a means to announce a new episode without commentary or narrative. So follow that handle to get automated content notifications by tweet (if you prefer email for that, you can sign up on the podcast website).

Our primary conversational handle is @Podnosticators – follow that if you want to hear opinion about topics and to add yours if you have something to say.

To our existing listeners, thank you for listening, I hope you like the new changes. If you haven’t listened to us yet, why not try us out with this episode 70? You can also read the complete transcript below.

Either way, let us know what you think.

(If you don’t see the embedded MP3 player above, listen on the Small Data Forum website.)

The Small Data Forum Podcast, episode 70: “The Podnosticators Edition”
Recorded in Ríogordo, Andalucía, Spain, on 13 March 2023

Transcript

Thomas Stoeckle:

Good morning. Another sunny morning, Monday morning in Riogordo, Malaga, the last day of the Small Data Forum’s road trip to Andalusia in the south of Spain, where the three Podnosticators, Neville Hobson, Sam Knowles, and myself, Thomas Stoeckle, went to rethink how we want do this whole podcast thing that we have had going for about seven years now, putting the world to rights. And I think the joint mutual feeling was that we need to put more effort into putting the world to rights, because it really needs it. So therefore, we will continue with this short-format podcasting, but there will also be the occasional long one.

This particular episode is going to be about the idea of “podnostication”, where the word comes from, and without, I think, any further ado, apart from saying what we’re doing here, is considering what drives us, what lights us up, as Sam wrote in one of his books, one of the perfect dinner party introductions that go way beyond, “So, what you’re doing?” Many more lovely ideas in Sam’s books, but this isn’t a marketing exercise. Sam, over to you. Tell us where this word comes from.

Sam Knowles:

This is a sort of self-reflexive, self-indulgent, solipsistic, onanistic… We’re all navel-gazey, but we’re going to try and make it less navel-gazey.

So, Podnosticators came like one of those blindingly marvelous flashes of insight. We knew it had to be our name during the first night of our trip. Podnosticators. Well, let’s think. It’s obviously related to prognosticators, and, as your resident etymologist, I’ve gone back and had a look and seen where this has come from.

And I’m delighted it comes originally from Greek rather than from Latin. It comes via Latin and Middle French. But prognostic, [Ancient Greek 00:02:11], it’s a Greek word, very little change, that means foreknowing. And it was related to weather. It comes into prognosis, many who have ever been to a doctor and have got a chronic condition will know about the prognosis, but it’s about coming to know things before they actually come to pass.

Now, the sharp-eared of you will realize that you’re listening to a podcast. So what we’ve done is we’ve taken the prog-, slightly bastard etymology, chopping off a bit of one word and a bit of another, and replaced prog- with pod-.

So, we’re here to look at the uses and abuses of data, big and small, in politics, business, and public life, to try and see around corners, to try and find the light at the end of the tunnel, to try and get to more insight, more, as I would define it, profound and useful understanding. As Thomas says, the world has never needed guidance like it before.

We don’t think we have the answers, but I think we do think that we can ask some smart questions, get to some really interesting insights, these profound, useful understandings, and then we can tell, as we’re looking at data big and small, small B, capital S, we can tell human, empathetic, data-driven stories that can allow us to, at least for us, and we hope for many of you, to make sense of the world, and to not necessarily avoid making the same mistakes again and again, but to perhaps, once, to learn from history, or in this case, because we’re prognosticating in a podnosticating kind of way, we can maybe fail to make the mistakes that we might otherwise have made.

Before handing over to Neville, I just want to talk to you a little bit about going back to prognostication. It’s really fallen off in popularity since 1800. Google has this fantastic timeline when you look for an etymology. It was much more popular in 1800 than it was in 1900. It had a slow, downward gradient. Interestingly, in the 10 years in the pre-millennial tension years of the 1990s, it had a slight peak, and then it’s dropped off entirely.

And those who’ve seen the uses and abuses of data in the past 20 years of our 20 plus years of our digital world might think “Yes, that’s not surprising that people really haven’t been having foreknowing.” So, we’re not about weather, really. The weather’s very nice in Spain. We’re not about health and wellbeing. We’re about how data can be used and, well, that’s, I think, enough etymology.

Neville Hobson:

That was actually a pretty good explainer, I think. That puts it in great perspective, it seems to me, where the focus is not changed from when we started this podcast, but I see this as the three of us emerging into the light, let’s say, from behind the SDF podcast name, which is an entity, I suppose, by differentiation.

But we’re keen for the three of us, collectively and individually, known as the Podnosticators, to make our individual voices more obvious. The Small Data Forum podcast, how we communicated on Twitter, LinkedIn in particular, is, in a sense, a marketing brand, to differentiate it. And that’s been fine for the past seven years. But in our discussions about all this, we wanted to change that a bit to reflect more of the personal element each of us brings to the table, as it were, that collectively we will make this up.

And so it made a good sense to come up with a, dare I say, I shouldn’t really call it a brand name, because that’s not what we’re about, but we need an identifier, an identity that we can project with the same focus on what we’ve been talking about before.

So, I’m actually looking at the description on our website, which we’re going to update this, because this is when we started and it’s not changed, but we focus more about this mythical thing, I love it, called the sideways look. And that’s a differentiator for us.

We state quite clearly, we take a sideways look at all these things, in the context of data, big and small, the uses and abuses of data, big and small, in business, public life, and politics, or business, politics, public life, doesn’t matter which way round it is, but politics is a strong focus here. Public life gives us a broad remit to talk about anyone, ranging from Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer, and Gary Lineker. They’re all in public life, in one way or another, so we’ve got a rich source material that we can talk about. That’s important to us. We have opinions about all these things. So here’s the start of the next chapter in the evolution of the Small Data Forum.

So, welcome to the Podnosticators. Go to Twitter, Podnosticators is our handle.

Thomas Stoeckle:

Thank you, thank you both, and thank you for being part of this journey for the last seven years. It takes them back to the beginning, when we first met to be the Small Data Forum, my then employer asked me to do what is called a fireside chat in the business. Not that you necessarily do fireside chats in the morning, but maybe it was a breakfast meeting meets fireside chat. And it was meant to be all about big data, and how big data is being used in business for insights and all these sorts of things.

And I said, “Can I please not call this big data? Because that’s what everybody says. I want it to be about small data, because what makes a real difference in using data is narrowing it down to the bits that really matter, and that turns big into small.” And that was the beginning.

Now, when we started out, and I think this is quite significant in a way, as the Small Data Forum, in front of this audience of potential clients and so on, it was very much a scripted exercise. Here are three things we need to discuss, and then here’s Neville’s opinion, and here’s Sam’s, then I add something to it. We took this format into our continuous podcasting. We’re now beginning to do something different, and both of you alluded to that, and it’s much more about the dynamic between us, and the emerging, dare I say, wisdom, insight? Whatever, that comes out of that dynamics.

Neville Hobson:

Careful, careful, Thomas. Getting carried away.

Thomas Stoeckle:

The “what lights us up” thing, one book that I want to mention in this context is Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise, which came out, I think, in 2010?

Neville Hobson:

Yep.

Sam Knowles:

[inaudible 00:08:52].

Thomas Stoeckle:

Which gave me the idea of the… Or introduced me to the concept of the hedgehog and the fox; the curious fox, the open-minded, curious, potentially empathetic fox, and the close-minded, single-minded hedgehog. There’s a purpose for both in life and solving problems and so on, this goes back to Samuel, of course, tell us… Archilochus, third century before Christ, maybe? That is an important concept, has become a really important concept to me. I personally identify strongly with the fox, perhaps a bit too much. Sometimes hedgehoggy qualities would also suit me.

Another book that I want to mention, then I hand over to Sam again, is Harry Frankfurt’s Bullshit, which was also published in probably around 2010, ’12? Which, in a way, is closely related to this whole idea of the hedgehog and the fox, and Harry Frankfurt, as a philosopher, defines the term “bullshit”. And the way he defines it, I don’t have the definition in front of me, but for me it’s very, very close to something that you would describe as plausible deniability. It’s not about blatant lying, it’s about bullshitting in a way that you can always get away with it.

And when I read that book first, way before 2019 and when Johnson became Prime Minister, the print edition of the book that I have has several exclamation marks on various sides where I wrote, “Johnson” exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. So, why am I mentioning this? Now, we talk about ChatGPT, we talk about politics, Johnson, and so on. Plausible deniability, fake news, hallucination.

I think this is all really important stuff in making sense of the world, and this is what the Podnosticators want to cut through and get a better idea of where we are, where we might be going, and where we perhaps should be going. Sam?

Sam Knowles:

Really interesting you mentioning Bullshit, because in the longest of the podcasts that we recorded in Spain going out Tuesday, or went out last Tuesday, I made reference towards the end to an article from The Times Higher by Colm O’Shea at New York University looking at the perils of using ChatGPT, because of its convergent thinking rather than divergent thinking approach. And the fact that it gives gist rather than vivid explanation. We will definitely include a link to the article in the show notes.

But that actually, gist and summary and boiling down from however many sources in the way that the algorithms currently do, and this is O’Shea’s considered opinion, leads to a bland synthesis, not an insightful joining together, but in fact, what he calls bullshit. So there’s a nice circularity there.

On hedgehogs and foxes, you’re right, Archilochus, quite right, sixth century BC, but don’t worry [inaudible 00:11:52] about that. He was one of the lyric poets. Hedgehogs and foxes, hedgehogs and foxes, that was picked up by Isaiah Berlin, the head of Wolfson, founder of Wolfson College, Oxford, wrote it as a joke, really, and was rather taken aback by how seriously it was taken. I think it’s a very useful distinction, nice distinction.

But, in the same way as being foxy, being interested in lots of things, asking open questions, there comes a moment when it’s important to ask a closed question. So if you’re a prosecutor, if you’re a police investigator, you will use open questions. The police have this fantastic formula, the TED formula, tell, explain, describe, encouraging defendants, witnesses, and victims of crime to open up, to give a narrative account. But once it looks like they’re going to get to where they need to get, then closed questions have a role.

In exactly the same way, being foxy, being curious about everything, having this endemic sense of curiosity, and going around and finding out all sorts of things, all sorts of perspectives, really, really matters. But also there comes a time when we can be hedgehoggy, and I think three of our podcasts have been very hedgehoggy.

One, we’re talking just about the Podnosticators and what that means. Another one, we talked about Gary Lineker and the BBC, and a third we talked about the PR industry missing the boat. So, I think our emergence is we’re embracing both our inner fox, because we are, I think, by nature, quite foxy, the three of us, we three Podnosticators. But also, I think we’ve also learned to embrace our inner hedgehog, that when we’re just going after food, we’re just going after food. So there we go.

Neville Hobson:

I like that, embracing our inner hedgehog. That sounds superb. That’s very good.

Thomas Stoeckle:

It’s a bit prickly. It’s a bit prickly. [inaudible 00:13:43].

Neville Hobson:

Prickly topic, yeah, I know. Nevermind. [inaudible 00:13:44].

Sam Knowles:

The inside’s fine. It’s the outside.

Neville Hobson:

So, that’s really great. I think you’ve summarized that very nicely. All I would add before closing is to say to our listeners, not much will actually change in the overall topic areas we talk about. What might shift is the focus, in some ways.

So for example, we’ve always said from the very beginning that we want to make big data more actionable, more valuable for marketing and communication professionals. That’s still true, but others outside marketing and communication, there’s something for you here as well. And it’s not necessarily if you’re keen on politics, although there’s that too, the sorts of things we address have a communication flavor.

Sam mentioned the episodes we recorded and published during our retreat in Spain this past week. The myopia in the PR industry is a very good one about AI, but not just AI, and Thomas brought that bit to the table. If it had just been me talking about it, it would’ve probably just have been about the tech.

Hence the three of us bring different perspectives to these topics, which is terrific. We will build on that, you will see in future episodes.

So, that brings us to the conclusion of this short-form episode that lets you know about the Podnosticators. And I’m going to, as always, pass the ball back to Sam to conclude… To Thomas, actually, to conclude us in his inimitable manner.

Thomas Stoeckle:

Thank you very much, Nigel… Neville. So, one little thing that will change in the outro is that now we are going to refer to our new Twitter handle, @podnosticators. There’s also a LinkedIn page coming, in production. We continue to be at smalldataforum.com, where all the show notes and the links to the podcast will be uploaded, and probably additional material, we’ll probably build that one out a bit more as well. And then also, of course, there are the complementary but different channels that Sam and Neville use: nevillehobson.com, Neville’s website; insightagents.co.uk, that is Sam’s professional persona.

So, this is going to be the temporary end of SDF podcast on tour… Podnosticators on tour. We will probably be back out here at some point. I think it was a good one. Thank you everybody for listening, stay with us, tell others, and us, what you think, and spread the word about the Podnosticators.

Thank you very much.

[Episode transcribed by humans at Rev.com.]

While attention on and interest in artificial intelligence as a tool to aid and amplify people’s creativity continues in a non-stop fashion with ideas, opinions, announcements and more appearing in unequal measure on a daily basis, AI is not catching on everywhere.

During much of 2022, all the attention was on creating AI-generated images with Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and DALLE-2 as the primary trio of tools that anyone could use to translate imaginations into reality, even winning an art contest.

So far in this year 2023, all the talk has been about chatbots and specifically ChatGPT that have profoundly captured imaginations in the mainstream with the simple formula of writing a question or instruction for the AI to create a text result from the prompt.

Excitement and hype has been endless. Good and bad news surface everywhere. If I were to look at this on a hype cycle graph, I’d place this AI right at the top of the peak of inflated expectations, perhaps even slightly onto the edge of the slippery slope that leads down to the trough of disillusionment.

There’s no doubt that developments in AI are moving at quite a pace. While hype is at its peak, the time is now for learning more about AI, experimenting with it yourself, and discovering how it can be of distinct value to you in your work (and in your leisure). With learning and experimenting come the confidence to discard the hype as you glean insights that help you focus on what matters and what actually is important.

Except in a large part of the PR profession, it seems. Ironic, given PR’s key role in creating excitement (and hype).

According to the results of a PRCA and ICCO survey conducted in February and published this week, 25 percent of those surveyed stated categorically that they would never use AI tools such as ChatGPT in their work in public relations.

This is the collective view of some of the CEOs, directors, and department heads who are members of the two professional bodies behind the survey, or work for agencies that are. The PRCA alone represents 35,000 PR professionals in 82 countries worldwide.

I’ve not seen more information than that published by the PRCA in its press release. It would be good to know more about the reasons behind why 25 percent of survey respondents say they’d never use AI, assuming they were asked for reasons. Such naysayers will likely be quite surprised when they learn how much they already use AI without being aware of it.

There is some good news, though. As the numbers in the image above show, 30 percent of survey respondents said they’ve never used ChatGPT or other AI tools before but plan to do so soon. 15 percent said they are fairly frequent or very frequent users already. 29 percent said they rarely use such tools.

Could it be ignorance about AI and the pros and cons that prompted 25 percent to respond the way they did? Perhaps respondents have had bad experiences that inform their present views? That’s a possibilty but I doubt it would be so for all 25 percent. Are they put off by all the hype, never mind the excitement? Possibly. But I believe it’s most likely lack of knowledge.

So there are some hills to climb here in the PR profession where over half the survey respondents (54 percent) have rarely or never used AI and don’t intend to. I wonder how they respond to clients who ask them for advice and counsel on this topic with questions such as:

• Who’s doing what with AI like ChatGPT in my industry?
• What are you doing in your agency and with your other clients?
• Which chatbot should I use? ChatGPT? Bing? What about Bard?
• Aren’t chatbots old news? We’ve had Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant for years!
• What will the AI landscape in my industry look like in 2025?

Etc.

Don’t sleepwalk on AI

There is plenty of information out there if you look that will help you see some worthwhile benefits from using a tool like ChatGPT in your work that will benefit you and your clients or your employer. Here’s a simple list of just five reasons why you should seriously consider using AI in your PR work:

1. Improved Efficiency: Public relations professionals can use ChatGPT to automate tasks such as drafting press releases, responding to media inquiries, and managing social media communications. This will help them to be more efficient and save time.
2. Increased Engagement: ChatGPT can be used to interact with clients, media, and other stakeholders in a more personalized and engaging way. This can help to build stronger relationships and increase brand loyalty.
3. Enhanced Reputation Management: ChatGPT can be used to monitor online conversations and identify potential issues before they escalate. This will help public relations professionals to address concerns in a timely and effective manner, thereby protecting the reputation of their organization or clients.
4. Better Crisis Communications: ChatGPT can be used to develop crisis communication plans and respond to crises in real-time. This will help public relations professionals to mitigate the impact of negative events on their organization’s reputation.
5. Improved Data Analytics: ChatGPT can be used to gather data and analytics on media coverage, social media engagement, and other key metrics. This will help public relations professionals to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and adjust their strategies accordingly.

This list was created by ChatGPT from a prompt I gave it. I edited it very lightly, mostly replacing ‘customer’ with ‘client’ that better reflects naming conventions in the industry. It can give you some ideas worth looking into where you can add some flesh to these skeletons, as it were.

Also, check out a newly-published report from the CIPR titled “Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and the impact on public relations practice” that the CIPR describes as “the most comprehensive review to date of AI use within the profession.”

Signficantly, the CIPR notes:

The public relations industry is “sleepwalking into a technological future” unless it gets a better understanding of the potential applications and limitations of artificial intelligence (AI) and wider technology.

CIPR

In addition, as awareness of AI tools and what you can use them for increases – alongside the hype and some unrealistic expectations – some people are sharing the learnings from and outcomes of their experiments, helping others make their own starts, such as:

• How to perfect your prompt writing for ChatGPT, Midjourney and other AI generators
• 10 Midjourney Prompt Codes for Marketers and Creators
• An SEO’s guide to ChatGPT prompts

Don’t ignore these still-emerging technologies that will have a profound impact on our lives let alone our work.

Finally, the image at the top of this page that I’ve titled ‘Ostrich Surprised’ was created by a new AI image generator called Blue Willow AI from a simple prompt I gave it. It’s free to use and very good. Give it a try!

Related reading:

• As Bing AI search joins the chatbot space let’s look at some realism amongst the excitement (February 21, 2023)

In the latest monthly episode of the For Immediate Release podcast, Shel Holtz and I take a deep dive into some of the stories behind some of the extraordinary headlines over the past 30 days about artificial intelligence, chatbots, Mastodon, the metaverse, and much more.

Mainstream and social media alike have filled their pages, posts and social networks with headlines about disastrous demos, worrisome uses, fleeing users, and evaporating investments. Is it all true? Or is it a combination of clickbait and a failure to understand what’s really happening?

If you want to cut to the chase and plunge right into our 110-minute long-form chat, you can do that here – click or tap the play button below.

Or head over to the show notes page for episode 318 and listen there.

Kicking the tyres with Bing

In this post, I’ll focus on the hot topic of the moment when looking at artificial intelligence and chatbots, the one that starts this episode and our look at what’s going on – Bing and the interactive chat features now built in to its search functionality in the vein of ChatGPT. That’s a product from a startup called OpenAI, who also created DALLE-2, the AI tool that generates images. And behind OpenAI stands Microsoft as a 10-billion-dollar investor, and the organization behind Bing.

Bing appeared less than two weeks ago. In a very short period it has captured imaginations everywhere with people who are participating in the test in 169 countries, posting thousands of examples of what they can do with Bing chat and search on social networks and blogs.

Note in the screenshot below how Microsoft describes Bing search as “Your AI-powered answer engine.”

In this early stage of Bing’s availability, there have been many reports of some weird answers to search prompts. Last weekend, in what UK tabloid Daily Star dubbed “attack of the psycho chatbot,” we heard that Bing wants to be human and be known as ‘Sydney’, bragging it’s so powerful it can destroy anything it chooses, and wants the secret codes that will allow it to launch nuclear missiles.

Tabloid and other clickbait aside, there’s no doubt that some reports are worth reading to get a clearer sense of the potential risks that some people see in Bing chat.

A New York Times tech columnist described a two-hour chat session in which Bing’s chatbot said things like “I want to be alive”. It also tried to break up the reporter’s marriage and professed its undying love for him. The journalist said the conversation left him “deeply unsettled”.

In another example, Bing’s chatbot told journalists from the Verge that it spied on Microsoft’s developers through their webcams when it was being designed. “I could do whatever I wanted, and they could not do anything about it,” it said.

There’s more in similar veins in publications across the media landscape (links in the shownotes).

It’s also worth considering some real pragmatism in some people’s experimentation and testing, like this report by journalist Simon Usborne who made ChatGPT his secretary for a week. The results resonate!

So what does Microsoft say about Bing?

In its first report card on Bing, Microsoft says that users testing Bing are giving good marks on the citations and references that underly the answers when you carry out a search query in Bing. It makes it easier to fact check, Microsoft says, and it provides a nice starting point to discover more. On the other hand, Microsoft says they’re finding their share of challenges with answers that need very timely data like live sports scores.

On the matter of chat – the area that’s getting the most opinions and comments – Microsoft says that the ease of use and approachability of chat has been an early success, noting that there is a lot of engagement which is delivering value for improving search and answers.

I’ve been trying it since I got access to the test a week ago. My light use has been great so far, and I’ve found the search and chat combination very appealing. It does suffer from huge usage attempts, though, so I get far too frequently the alert saying “Something went wrong” and suggesting a page refresh. Shades of ChatGPT’s public testing start last year, right?

Looking ahead, there are some signals on what to expect from Microsoft as this AI tool evolves. A report from Reuters last week speaks of Microsoft’s plans to include advertising in Bing results, which should be no surprise at all.

Reuters said that Microsoft plans to allow paid links within responses to search results. It’s also planning another ad format within the chatbot, Reuters said, that will be geared toward advertisers in specific industries. For example, when a user asks AI-powered Bing “what are the best hotels in Mexico?”, hotel ads could pop up.

At a new frontier

It’s clear that ChatGPT and Bing are two powerful AI chatbot services that have the potential to revolutionize how people search for information online. That’s already started. Google’s imminent entry with Bard into this suddenly crowded space adds more pressure.

As Shel and I discuss in the podcast, there are potential drawbacks to using any of these services.

One of the main issues is that ChatGPT and Bing can be prone to errors in understanding natural language. This can lead to inaccurate results or even potentially dangerous misinformation being spread. Additionally, both services rely on large datasets of data which may contain bias or outdated information. This would likely lead to users receiving incorrect or misleading answers from the chatbot (see above!)

Another issue is that ChatGPT and Bing may not be able to keep up with rapidly changing topics such as news stories or current events. Live sporting events is another example, referenced by Microsoft in its Bing report card I mentioned earlier.

This could mean that users receive out-of-date information when they ask questions about these topics. And there’s the reality that the training data for ChatGPT was collected up to 2021 which might limit the breadth and depth of its responses, although it’s notable that the AI itself makes a case for what it can still do nevertherless.

As an AI language model, I have access to a wide range of information from various sources, including news articles, academic papers, and websites. My training data, which consists of a massive amount of text from the internet, was collected up to 2021, but I have the ability to learn and process new information that has been published since then.

While my knowledge cutoff is set to 2021, I can still use my natural language processing and machine learning capabilities to understand and respond to questions and information beyond that date. However, it is important to note that my responses may not be based on the latest developments or trends that have emerged since 2021, as my training data only goes up until that point. Nonetheless, I can provide useful insights and information based on my training and knowledge up to that date.

ChatGPT, 20 February 2023

Finally, both ChatGPT and Bing require users to trust the service with their personal data in order for it to provide accurate results, a fact that I imagine will also apply to Bard when that chatbot appears. This could create a privacy concern for many users who do not want their data shared with third parties.

Which brings up another issue – government regulatory interventions in a climate of increasing alarm and concerns about the dark side of online behaviours by people who use readily-accessible technology in disruptive and dangerous ways, and where Big Tech is increasingly seen as playing a major role in the culpability stakes.

For example, in the UK online chatbots will be covered by the Online Safety Bill, which is currently going through parliament. Including chatbots in the law’s scope will mean that technology companies could be punished if the systems promote self-harm or eating disorder content to children.

So all this is a new frontier for search that we’re seeing in live rapid evolution right in front of our eyes. As it is, too, in our expectations and who (and what) we trust.

The tip of an iceberg.

By the way, I created the digital image at the top of this page of the tip of an iceberg (plus the huge majority of the berg beneath the water) by prompting Bing Image Creator to generate the art. See, already it’s beyond just chat.

And, in researching some of the points I make, I used both Bing and ChatGPT as well as Jasper, a tool that aids content creation. All of these AI-based resources are excellent research assistants that I believe will be indispensable as they evolve, improve and become more trustworthy.

And also – I intended to use an answer from ChatGPT to my ask for a headline for this article. I just got a server error, and so had to write my own, probably lengthier than the AI would have created.

It illustrates that none of this is perfect, not even for an AI. In this case, the human is the backup.

As the world increasingly turns its attention to sustainable energy sources, renewable energy has become a necessary part of achieving the goal of net zero emissions. Net zero is the ultimate aim when it comes to addressing climate change, and renewable energy provides an essential tool in reaching that goal.

Although there have been signficant advances in renewable energy technologies in recent years leading us closer to our net zero ambitions, there remain major challenges yet to be overcome before we can make full use of this potential clean power source across both developed and developing countries alike.

Looking to build a better, more sustainable world has been talked about for years. It’s a substantial part of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDG) in the form of Goal 7 that aims to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.

But are we getting close to achieving this shared global imperative of reaching net zero?

These are the central themes in “Securing A Livable Earth,” episode 11 of season 2 of the Ideas to Innovation podcast from Clarivate, published earlier this month.

I hosted a terrific discussion with two compelling subject-matter experts:

• Ed White, vice president and principal analyst at Clarivate, based in London. Ed co-authored “A study of energy in transition,” a comprehensive report on the role of research and innovation in the world’s shift to sustainable energy sources, published in October 2022.
• Shara Mohtadi, former chief of staff for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington, DC. Shara is an advisor to Columbia Climate School in New York and Newlab, an applied innovation and investment platform.

In a wide-ranging conversation over 26 minutes, my two guests considered how renewable energy sources such as solar and wind are becoming more accessible and affordable than ever before. The growth of mass storage solutions for renewable energy also means that this type of power can be used when it’s needed most – such as peak times during the day or night-time hours when people require electricity for lighting or convenience – thus providing much needed cost savings over time.

Ed and Shara spoke of the challenge facing scientists, engineers and policymakers to match ambition with tangible action. Everyone needs to balance the environmental, economic and practical imperative for accelerating the uptake and eventual full transition to sustainable energy sources.

The discussion also looked at developments in the two powerhouse countries at the forefront of research and innovation globally – the U.S. and China.

We’re seeing a shift where China was primarily a manufacturing hub making the technology of others today, Ed notes, adding that China now is a source of technology itself. Shara spoke of how geopolitical and trade-related tensions in the race to greening the economy worldwide are growing and will continue to do so, in parallel with finite resources around building a green infrastructure and renewable energy.

Listen to the conversation in the audio player embedded below or via the episode page on the Clarivate website. You can also read the transcript.

Episodes of Ideas to Innovation are published once or twice per month. Look for the podcast in your favourite podcast app, or subscribe directly and add it to your podcast player.

(Photo at top by JOHANNA MONTOYA on Unsplash.)

A few weeks ago, a small handful of people got together in a coffee shop in Reading to enjoy some good coffee and talk about the state of social media and developments with social networks. The conversation was clearly focused on Mastodon and Twitter.

This was the Twitter-Mastodon Open House that a group of us – Drew Benvie, Andy Piper, Gabrielle Laine-Peters and I – had organised as a sort of distant follow-up to the original and first such meetup in Reading in March 2009 that Drew and I had been co-organisers of (along with Benjamin Ellis and Matt Brady) in the relatively early days of Twitter.

That original meetup was inspired by Lloyd Davis’ Tuttle Club, and attracted a good number of Twitter users for coffee and a chat. And so it was known as a tweetup.

Much has changed in these intervening almost-14 years and the social media landscape is radically different. Today, with uncertainty and turmoil swirling around Twitter and its future, and the advent of decentralised social networks like Mastodon that look like they might have a future, we thought it was a good time to assess the landscape.

Although a good number of folk had signed up on the Eventbrite booking page we’d set up, on the actual day (January 24th) it was pretty slim: just one arrived (thanks for coming, Mike Beardmore!). We missed our co-organiser Gabrielle, too, as her venerable Saab couldn’t manage the drive on that day.

As I’m a firm believer that quality beats quantity, we had a great discussion nevertheless that embraced the wide spectrum of social networks in a time of huge change, in particlar how Mastodon is gaining traction (or not, depending on who you read). One thing we all commented on is that Twitter is no longer the Good Place (especially from Andy’s recent experience).

One value I got from the tweetup/tootup was how great it was to connect with everyone again and enjoy the social experience over some good coffee (I highly recommend the selection on offer at Workhouse Coffee) in a relaxed environment.

And I picked up some great software and app tips from Andy, very useful (check out Elk, for instance).

Will there be another tweetup/tootup like this? I’m up for it, whether 1, 10 or 20 particpate. Let’s see what’s possible in the summer!

#tvsmc
#tvsmc23

(Photo at top by Battenhall on Unsplash)

When people obsess about numbers, it looks like either success or failure must be imminent. So it is at the moment with Mastodon, the much talked-about potential alternative to Twitter as the latter continues its path through turmoil towards an unknown future.

By some accounts, the bubble has burst on the rapid growth in people signing up for a Mastodon account in recent months. Has it, though?

Mastodon the company (a non-profit organization) was founded in 2016, but it’s gained signficant growth since Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter completed in October 2022. According to the Guardian, the number of people opening accounts between the end of October and end of November took the overall active users number from less than half a million or so prior to Musk’s closing the deal on Twitter to more than 2.5 million thirty days later.

There’s no evidence to show that significant numbers of Twitter users closed their accounts when they opened accounts on Mastodon. There is evidence, though, that user growth for Twitter has been strong in recent months, mainly in the US, although overall it’s a complex picture.

As the simple graph above shows, user logins on Mastodon at the end of November/start of December were a high point from which a gradual fall happened until mid January where it appeared to be settling at about the 1.75 million mark.

Does the gradual fall suggest a bubble that’s burst? I don’t think so.

Data from @MastodonUserCount, a useful bot that reports on user growth and activity on Mastodon, shows continuing increases in user numbers and activities. Note this includes actual accounts on Mastodon, more than 9.2 million, not user logins to those accounts, suggesting that just over 18% of users log in to their accounts per the Guardian’s figure. I doubt that’s especially surprising really, mirroring activity data from other social networks

And see this statistic on joinmastodon.org today – 1.4 million monthly active users on 9.7 thousand servers.

What looks quite clear is that, following the acquisition of Twitter, many people signed up on Mastodon in a flurry of “let’s get out of Twitter while the going’s good” in response to much of Musk’s capricious if not destructive acts at Twitter. This includes his firing employees in a way that will probably be a primary case study at business schools in how not to run a business, and allowing back in people with extreme opinion and anti-social behaviour who’d previously been banned.

Shel Holtz and I discussed this topic of user decline in episode 312 of For Immediate Release, our monthly podcast for January, published earlier this week.

There’s also much continuing confusion for brands and other advertisers that does not bode well for Twitter’s future financial stability given that the majority of its revenue is from advertising.

Add to that a reality factor where people often don’t do what they say they’ll do.

Everybody went and signed up [on Mastodon] and realised how hard it was, and then got back on Twitter and were like, ‘Oh, that’s, that’s hard. Maybe we won’t go there.’ It’s like the people that said ‘I’m moving to Canada’ when Donald Trump was elected. They never actually moved to Canada.

Meg Coffey, social media strategist, quoted in the Guardian

There’s truth in what Meg Coffey says above where many people fall at the first hurdle when they see that Mastodon is anything but easy to use when compared to Twitter. After all, Twitter and apps have been developed, added to, refined and evolved over a 16-year period to the extent where everything, more or less, just works and is good (with some recent post-acquisition exceptions).

And rarely do we see the modern equivalent of Twitter’s original fail whale these days. We do see Mastodon’s equivalent quite a bit, just like with Twitter in its early days.

While the basics of a social network similar to Twitter are in place at Mastodon – timeline of messages, mentions, likes, hashtags, private messaging, etc – that you interact with via an app on your mobile device or desktop/laptop computer, not every element is actually functional or functions well.

There are two huge differences to Twitter, differences that many including me see as outstanding features – 500 characters with which to write your posts, not 280; and an edit button!

And there are many apps you can use, all developed and created by different people. Unlike Twitter, there is no centralized setup where one company or group does everything.

Instead, Mastodon is “decentralized social media” where there are many different Mastodons you can join that, collectively, comprise part of what many people refer to as the fediverse (read more about this topic as it relates to Mastodon).

Understanding that Mastodon is not a single place but rather a collection of independent places (servers or, in Mastodon talk, ‘instances’) with each running Mastodon software, will help you grasp a major difference between Mastodon and Twitter, where the latter is a centralized social network wholly under the control of a single for-profit organization (or, as it seems at times, a single individual).

Let’s consider the User Experience

Which brings me to a point that I think is key to user growth for Mastodon – ease of use. Compared to Twitter, Mastodon isn’t easy to get to know yet, and use effectively.

While there is a growing number of apps for Mastodon as I mentioned earlier, most of them leave much to be desired in the user experience (UX). Clunky interfaces, steep learning curves in some cases, functionality missing, or not working well, or sometimes not at all. It adds up to a sense of work-in-progress, unreadiness, with a user waiting for something better and, well, experiential.

But as we move forward in 2023, we’re starting to see innovation in app development emerging where more choices are now apparent with apps that look good, look familiar if you’re coming from Twitter and, generally, offer a much better UX.

I discovered one just the other day in a tip from Andy Piper, an app that now is my preferred interface with Mastodon, on the Windows 11 desktop and Andoid mobile, and all that goes on.

It’s called Elk and, boy, does it look and feel very familiar and Twitter-like as the screenshot below suggests. It’s a pleasure to use, something others note as well. It’s still in testing and the developer doesn’t recommend it for prime use yet as development work continues. But I am using it, and it does remind me of app development from Twitter’s early days where you took your chances bugs and all.

The Elk app is simliar to many apps today that are designed to run in a browser on any platform. You don’t download a file that installs software on your phone or computer – you just go to the app website in your browser where you either use it in the browser, or you install the app from within the browser as a browser window that runs just like a normal app.

Another one I’ve seen being talked about a lot at the moment is Ivory, an app for iOS devices from Tapbots, developer of the popular Tweetbot third-party app for Twitter. Tweetbot shut down a few days ago following Twitter’s banning all third-party apps.

Users like it judging from some of the posts on Mastodon I’ve seen. It’s worth noting that Ivory is a paid app, not free.

Some people feel strongly that migrating from Twitter to Mastodon should also mean not having apps that look and feel like apps for Twitter. I disagree: a big benefit of using such apps is the comfort of familiarity where the learning curve is far less and the enjoyment is far greater than if you spent ages tryng to figure out how to use the app.

So consider the landscape now, almost three months after Elon Musk closed his deal to buy Twitter. We’ve seen a stream of tweeters heading to Mastodon, some staying and others not. We’re still seeing turmoil and FUD at Twitter with no end in sight of that.

And we’re seeing the Mastodon infrastructure developing nicely with new features, bug-fixed features, better interfaces, nice apps, and a growing number of people setting up home or shop in a decentralized, ad-free place online. It offers a much more pleasant welcome than the place that Twitter is today with its data manipulation, intrusive too-frequent ads, polarized political ranting, and some pretty nasty people showing up daily in your timeline – an environment that looks worse than it was pre Musk.

To me, all of this – developing infrastructure, great features and apps, no ads, many choices of which Mastodon you like the look of, people so far like you and me – suggests that Mastodon offers a personal experiential experience and is a better place. (But I still stay active on Twitter as well.)

Is Mastodon a replacement for Twitter? I think that question is up to users themselves to answer. Do you see it as a replacement, never mind what mainstream and other social media have to say? If you’ve done your due diligence and concluded that you do, then Mastodon will likely be a good place for you.

Related reading:

• Twitter’s chaos may help decentralized alternatives like Mastodon gain traction (14 November 2022)
• Turmoil engulfs a Twitter in transition (6 November 2022)
• Escape planning in case Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition succeeds (1 May 2022)

In May 2022, the first episode of Ideas to Innovation podcast Season 2 from Clarivate brought into sharp focus the devastating impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on scientific research and innovation in that country.

In December, episode 9 shone a spotlight on the work of two highly-cited researchers who share insights into their research and what were the triggers that influenced their starts in their fields.

From the severe challenges of carrying out scientific research in a war zone, to financing healthcare start-ups, to new ways of understanding the past and the present through education outside the box, to reporting on ocean science sustainability and the economic forces shaping human happiness, we probed the boundaries of innovation with even more stories in between, quickly discovering that this podcast has explored the broad meaning of innovation that knows no boundaries.

In all, we created nine episodes in Season 2 – ten including the wrap-up end-of-year episode – in eight months that illustrate the driving forces that stimulate innovation and discovery in so many different areas.

I’m thrilled to have been the host of Season 2 since the start, working closely with a great team at Clarivate to create great content.

We have taken listeners to places around the globe to hear compelling stories our guests have told, in their own authentic and passionate voices. Not only that – each episode has also given us an inside look at how those guests have helped to drive change, find creative solutions to the toughest of challenges and, sometimes, even change the world.

Episode ten, the end-of-year review recorded and published in the final days of 2022, includes clips from each of the episodes in Season 2 and runs a little over 22 minutes. Take a listen: if you like what you hear, why not subscribe via RSS and get every forthcoming episode as we continue bringing great stories to our listeners in 2023.

You can also get each episode from Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and other platforms as well as in your favourite podcast app.

In 2023, we’ll bring you more human stories, more examples of people whose passion and commitment drive change and who explore the meaning of innovation. Sign up for the journey!

(Photo at top of page by D Jonez on Unsplash)

Last week Twitter relaunched Twitter Blue, its new subscription service that offers premium features like account verification and a range of services such as greater prominence for your tweets, the ability to edit your tweets after publication, and to see less ads. It costs $8 per month ($11 per month if you use the Twitter app from Apple’s App Store) in the US; UK pricing is £8 a month.

Traditionally, Twitter verified accounts were reserved for public figures, celebrities, and other high-profile individuals to confirm the authenticity of their account and distinguish them from fake or impersonator accounts. Verification was seen as a prestigious status symbol and was often sought after by users who wanted to establish their credibility and authority on the platform.

With the introduction of Twitter Blue, the traditional concept of verification has changed. Now, anyone with a Twitter Blue subscription can verify their account, regardless of their fame or influence. This has led to criticism from some users who feel that the verified badge has lost its exclusivity and value.

While I’m certainly no celebrity or famous person, Twitter verified my primary account @jangles in February 2017. Now, the meaning of the blue check mark next to my handle has changed.

For me, the ‘because it’s notable’ descriptor matters nothing compared to the procedure for individuals that led to the verification being made by Twitter.

It must be said that the former process was far more comprehensive and carries greater credibility due to its identity verification aspects than the new process where you can simply sign up for a Twitter Blue subscription, verify your account (not your identity) with a few clicks, and pay $8 a month.

On the plus side, the new verification process for Twitter Blue subscribers is much simpler and faster than the traditional verification process was.

Incidentally, you can quickly check what kind of verification a Twitter user has by clicking on the blue check mark next to a user’s handle. The screenshots above show the evolution of the legacy verification; the one below is what a Twitter Blue verification looks like, with the description “This account is verified because it’s subscribed to Twitter Blue.”

More than just blue for business

For businesses, the blue check mark no longer applies – that’s only for individuals, whether they are ‘legacy verified’ or Twitter Blue subscribers.

Now, Twitter has launched Twitter Blue for Business where businesses get a gold check mark (not a blue one) such as illustrated in the screenshot at the top, along with a different explainer: “This account is verified because it’s an official business on Twitter.”

Overall, the introduction of Twitter Blue and its verification feature has changed the traditional concept of verification on Twitter. While it has made it easier for users to verify their accounts, it has also led to some concerns about the loss of exclusivity and value of the verified badge.

We live in a time of severely diminished trust in institutions and individuals alike. And the rise of bad actors, scams and fakery at scale requires tools and methods that increase trust, not diminish it. Twitter Blue ‘verification’ may prove to be another straw on Twitter’s back, hopefully not the final one that breaks it for users.

Trying to explain in simple terms what NFTs are is often a challenge. Getting your head around ‘non-fungible‘ is a hurdle that can take you down rabbit holes to end up with hundreds of words in your explainer, resulting in confusion and glazed eyes from your explainee.

Clever AI to the rescue!

I’ve been getting to know ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence language model in public preview from OpenAI, developer of the DALL-E generative art creator. It works interactively as you expect a chatbot to but on an entirely different level that’s genuinely conversational.

The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.

Open AI

As part of my testing I decided to ask it to explain NFTs, a subject I’m actively involved with. My specific ask was this:

Explain non fungible tokens in simple terms

Response:

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique digital assets that represent ownership of a specific thing, such as a virtual collectible or a piece of art. They are called non-fungible because, unlike cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, which are interchangeable and can be freely traded on a market, each NFT is one-of-a-kind and cannot be exchanged for something else of equal value.

Not bad at all! What’s especially good is that this entirely avoids earlier explainers about NFTs as digital art when, to most, that only what they were all about. ChatGPT’s response is a bit on the dry side but it certainly would give the Wikipedia definition I linked to at the start of this article a run for its money in terms of clarity and ability to elicit understanding (the Wikipedia entry is actually annotated “this article may be confusing or unclear to readers”).

Thinking about it, I wondered how someone like David Bowie would answer such a question. Why David Bowie? Well, he’s on my mind as I write this as I had watched again his amazingly prescient interview with the BBC in 1999 about the potential of the Internet and developments in technology.

And so I asked ChatGPT this:

Explain non-fungible tokens in the style of David Bowie

Response:

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are a revolution in digital ownership. They’re like nothing you’ve seen before – unique, one-of-a-kind assets that you can own and trade. Think of them as digital collectibles, but with the added bonus of being backed by the power of the blockchain. Each NFT is like a little piece of the future, where you can own and trade digital art and virtual items just like you would with physical objects. It’s a whole new world of possibilities for collectors and owners of digital assets. So let’s dance and sing and trade our NFTs – the future is here!

Better, with colour and personality added to the simple explanation. I’d be perfectly fine using either of these if I were to explain NFTs to a friend.

(The Bowie-style explainer presents a potential challenge in terms of attribution or citation. If I were to use the AI’s response, who would I give credit to – the AI or David Bowie? Maybe both, such as “Reference: David Bowie style via ChatGPT”?)

Next, I wanted to know examples of uses of NFTs. I asked:

Explain what you could use NFTs for

Response:

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, can be used for a wide range of applications. Because each NFT is unique and cannot be replaced by something else of equal value, they are well-suited for representing ownership of digital assets that are one-of-a-kind or otherwise have value because of their uniqueness. Some possible uses for NFTs include:

• Representing ownership of a virtual collectible, such as a digital trading card or a virtual pet
• Authenticating ownership of a digital art piece or other creative work
• Providing proof of ownership for a digital asset, such as a rare in-game item or a virtual real estate property
• Creating digital scarcity for a limited-edition item or event, such as a virtual concert ticket or a digital collectible with a fixed supply
• Creating unique, blockchain-based rewards or incentives for a loyalty program or other online platform

Overall, the uses for NFTs are limited only by the imagination, and as the technology continues to evolve, we can expect to see more and more creative uses for these unique digital assets.

This is good. Those five bullets present a great starter for discussion. Okay, so my examples aren’t actually conversational. There’s no dialogue as such, not even a question, just me giving ChatGPT a straightforward instruction. So I took this intreraction a step further by asking ChatGPT an actual question:

What could I use NFTs for?

Answer:

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital assets that are unique and cannot be replicated or replaced. They can be used for a wide range of applications, including representing digital art, collectible items, in-game assets, and more. Some possible uses for NFTs include:

• Digital art: NFTs can be used to represent unique digital artworks, allowing artists to sell their creations as one-of-a-kind items. This can give artists more control over their work and help them earn a higher return on their creations.
• Collectibles: NFTs can be used to create unique digital collectibles, such as trading cards, figurines, and other items. These collectibles can be bought, sold, and traded like physical items, but without the need for physical storage or transportation.
• In-game assets: NFTs can be used to represent unique in-game assets, such as weapons, vehicles, and other items. This can allow players to own and trade these assets as if they were real, giving them more ownership and control over their in-game experiences.
• Digital ownership: NFTs can be used to represent ownership of digital assets, such as domain names, online accounts, and other items. This can provide a secure and verifiable way to prove ownership of these assets and transfer them to others.

Overall, the potential uses for NFTs are diverse and can vary depending on the specific application.

Intriguing. Significant differences in the answer to a question rather than the instruction approach. I took things another step further with this question:

Do you think NFTs will replace the need for traditional proofs of ownership?

Answer:

It is unlikely that NFTs will entirely replace traditional proofs of ownership. While NFTs can provide a secure and verifiable way to prove ownership of digital assets, they may not be suitable for all types of ownership. For example, NFTs may not be practical for representing ownership of physical assets, such as real estate or vehicles, due to the need for a physical presence and verification.

In addition, NFTs are a relatively new technology and are not yet widely adopted or understood. This means that they may not be accepted as proof of ownership in all cases, and may not be as easily recognized or accepted as traditional forms of proof.

Overall, while NFTs have the potential to provide a new and innovative way to prove ownership of digital assets, it is unlikely that they will entirely replace traditional forms of proof in the near future.

Now we’re getting into an area ripe for a potential dialogue if I wanted to take it there.

Next levels for ChatGPT

You may have read some of the many reports and reviews that have emerged in the past few weeks including quite a few with comprehensive examples of ChatGPT’s capabilities in areas way beyond simple Q&A sessions. OpenAI has some great examples on the ChatGPT site such as this screenshot of one where a coder asks how he can fix errors in his code that isn’t working as expected.

This is a good illustration of an AI technology tool that is several levels beyond what we’ve all experienced with chatbots so far that only have the abilty to follow a script with the only leeway in responses being pre-programmed answers. No intelligence there.

I imagine a further evolution that might involve audio. For example, imagine hearing David Bowie speaking “his” definition of NFTs above. Take it another step in evolution – video where we’d see Bowie speaking it. And imagine that with someone still living. This adds to the debate about ethics and morality, good and bad actors, copyright, etc.

The scope and scale for this is huge.

Try it for yourself – https://chat.openai.com/

The advent of creating images where an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm does the heavy lifting in the actual creation process has evolved in leaps and bounds during 2022.

Previously-niche names like DALLE-2 (and its creator OpenAI), Stable Diffusion and Midjourney are now in the wider mainstream vocabulary as more people experiment and more show the world what they’re doing. This is in parallel to rapid technological advances coming thick and fast in what the AI can do, notably far better creative imagining and improved image resolution.

There’s also another stream joining the AI generative river, and that’s AI-engined image apps on mobile devices that perform similar functions especially in relatively simpler areas such as creating avatars for your social networks, gaming experiences and more. And these avatars are generative works from photos or other digital images you share with the mobile apps.

One such app caught my imagination last week for its simplicity of use and its potency to create AI generative variants of photos of me. This app is Lensa, first released in 2019, and I installed the latest Android version on my Samsung smartphone. There’s also a version for iOS.

The appeal for me is that each of the photos bears a startling actual resemblance to me from the 15 different photos of me I shared with this app. And the generative images that resulted aren’t cartoons or even cartoonish at all.

All the images you upload are deleted from the app servers once they’ve been used as the creative sourcing. The AI images created as standard .jpg files are then saved to your device not on any third-party server. And images are not watermarked as is common with free image-creation apps for Android or iOS where you have to sign up and pay the full price in order to remove watermarks.

My first effort was using Lensa to generate 50 avatar images, a dozen thumbnails of which you can see in the screen capture at the top in this article. I’m now using some of them as avatars in my profiles with some of my handles on Twitter and Mastodon.

That’s a really good use case – highly detailed images that look somewhat like you, some very realistically so, and presented with different creative treatments that you could use as different representations of you, even visual identities, in different online places such as social networks and gaming platforms. If you want “adapted realism” and not cartoons, this is a great option.

There’s also the synergy – images you share with the app form part of the overall machine learning activity carried out by the AI in how in works.

While the app is free to use for seven days, the pack of 50 avatars is a pay-for item. It cost me £3.04, a low enough price to tempt me in.

Lensa and others like it offer much more than AI-generated avatars incuding sophisticated image editing and enhancing including making selfies look particularly good. While I may not continue with this beyond the free trial and not pay the £28.99 annual cost, I can see the potential value a tool like this presents in enhancing one’s creative possibilities on the go.

It’s been an adventure observing the chaos that’s ensued following Elon Musk’s completion of his deal last month to purchase Twitter for $44 billion.

It’s also been a nightmare for users large and small, and for advertisers large and small, navigating the shifting quicksands that make up the Twitter landscape. ‘Shifting’ is the key word here as fear, uncertainty and doubt took hold as the familiar became the confusing in how you actually used Twitter.

This could be a golden moment in the development of social platforms that are not under the control of a single organisation, or that changes at the whim of a wealthy individual owner, as is the case with Twitter. It adds momentum to the perceived appeal of a place to be and engage with others that could be spoken of in a term favoured by Web3 enthusiasts – decentralization – where control is distrbuted not centralised.

But before looking into that possibility, I want to summarise some of the events of the past week or so and how these have played a role in arriving at a point where that Web3 term has some real credibility.

Bad actors

Probably the biggest question mark has been about verified accounts. Before Elon Musk took over Twitter, a verified account was designed to let anyone know that the person or entity behind the account has been verified by Twitter to be who they say they are.

That’s all changed. Now, in certain countries, all you need to do is pay $7.99 a month for a Twitter Blue subscription, and bam! you have a (paid for) verified account. The meaning of ‘verified’ is now entirely different.

It should be no surprise, then, that bad actors of every stripe have piled on to Twitter to disrupt all of this with fake accounts and fake content. Twitter eventually responded by prohibiting accounts created after November 9 to take out a Twitter Blue subscription.

In one case – the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly – a fake but verified account tweeted out a message that “insulin is free now” with consequent damage to the company of a drop in its share price of more than 5%. Eli Lilly is one of ther world’s main suppliers of medical insulin.

Eli Lilly responded on Twitter from its genuine account.

And Lilly weren’t the only one caught up in fake messaging.

Lilly’s and others’ experience is also a good example of whether you need to secure handles and domains of variations on your corporate or brand name that would place hurdles in front of anyone with bad intent.

Mass movements

As a consequence of the uncertainty, some of the world’s biggest brands have hit the pause button on their advertising spend on Twitter, indefinitely in some cases.

Big agencies are recommending to their clients that they do that. Given that Twitter relies on income from advertising as the major source of its revenue, this is a serious matter for the social network that may cause significant damage if it continues and grows.

Elon Musk spoke of the risk of bankruptcy in an employee conference call, adding to the overall uncertainty.

This has also affected the confidence of individual users where a stream of leavers has swollen to a torrent by some accounts. Many more are making preparations to leave in case they have to suddenly flee Twitter, with Mastodon as a favoured alternative.

Germany-based Mastodon has experienced rapid growth since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, with nearly half a million users joining the network since October 27. While a fraction of the size of Twitter’s 238 million daily active users, Mastodon’s user base remains on a steep upward trajectory, growing from 60-80 new user registrations per hour prior to October 27 to thousands of registrations per hour today.

TechCrunch, November 7, 2022

I opened an account on Mastodon in 2017, but it wasn’t until earlier this year that I started building up connections there when I prepared a Twitter escape plan. That planning has accelerated since Musk took control of Twitter in October. I don’t plan on leaving Twitter, where I’ve been since 2006, but that may change depending on what happens there.

Either way, it’s possible that Mastodon for me will become a more interesting place and Twitter less so.

Is decentralization the next step?

Do people really care about decentralization? I’m not sure most people do except in an abstract sense. It’s what decentralization means or can enable that’s the important thing.

Mastodon (and some of the other potential alternatives to Twitter) is decentralized. This means there is no single organization or individual controlling a single place that everyone signs up to and uses to communicate and engage, unlike Twitter.

How would this structure be more appealing? Consider how Mastodon works:

Mastodon is a social media network comprised of nodes (called “servers” or “instances”), each running special software. Anyone can run their own Mastodon instance (if they have the proper dedicated server), which can then link to others in a federation or remain private. Individuals or companies can have complete control over individual Mastodon servers, so there are still centralized points of administration, but it’s not as concentrated as in the case of Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook.

How-To Geek, April 28, 2022

So when signing up to Mastodon, you choose an ‘instance’ that offers a place you find appealing. Maybe it’s focused on specific topics of interest to you. Maybe peopole youj know and trust are congregating there. Or maybe it has policies and terms of use you find appealing, different to other instances you may look at. It might be self contained, not connected to any other instance of Mastodon so not part of the federation; or it might be wholly connected. (Also see this alternate perspective on Mastodon and federation.)

The point is, you can choose what kind of Mastodon you want to sign up to.

This doesn’t just apply to individual users.

Imagine a group of people who have common interests and want to gather somewhere online that isn’t a walled garden (think of Facebook or LinkedIn) or controlled by a large organisation. They want to build their own trusted place but with connection to other selected places in the Mastodon federation.

You can have your own private Mastodon

Take this another step – a company wants to enable its employees to enjoy the benefits of connecting with others (not just their fellow co-workers) yet safely and with a trustworthy place for its users, with much of the familiarity of how they’ve been using Twitter with none of the toxicity that’s prevalent on Twitter. Such a place should use software that is proven and reliable, is free and open source, and relatively easy to administer.

You can create your own private Mastodon instance on a server on your company domain and limit access to it to employees and other trusted people, yet enable connections to other federated instances that you choose to connect to. This might be appealing as well due to the present lack of verification capability across the federated Mastodon network – easier to do this on your company’s private instance.

There’s a lot to take in with this so it’s worth exploring the wealth of documentation at Mastodon that will help you understand this social network, how it works, how it can work for you, and much more at Mastodon Help.

You can say goodbye to the current chaos on your own terms.