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  • Worth Reading – The Last Days Of Social Media

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    They may not be the perfect medium for connecting with other people online or staying informed, but at least we get to choose what we subscribe to and what fills our readers’ and inboxes. As an internet user, I’ve always been a fan of RSS as a way to stay informed and follow my favorite sources. As a creator, I’ve learned to love newsletters as social media has become less effective for sharing my blog posts. As someone with many friends in faraway places, I’ve been a fan of social media as a technology that can keep us connected, but it seems to be doing less and less of that these days. 

  • Linked – The growing CEO pay gap is killing workplace culture

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Workers aren’t ignorant about what their companies do and how their work contributes to the company; they don’t care. Nor should they. Not when the company’s profits can reach astronomical new highs and workers are lucky to get a raise that matches the cost of living increase for that year. Not when we can work our asses off to be successful remotely and continue to make the company all that profit only to be told that we have to come back to the office every day at our own expense. Not when 10% of them got laid off to ensure that the shareholders and CEO’s got theirs. 

    People aren’t detached from the company because it hasn’t explained what they do correctly. They simply don’t give a flying fuck about a company that hasn’t given a flying fuck about them their entire careers. 

  • Linked – The Plan To Sunset Section 230 Is About A Rogue Congress Taking The Internet Hostage If It Doesn’t Get Its Way

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    How many companies that provide hosting or build platforms for other people to communicate can’t afford to defend themselves every time someone posts something that results in litigation? Many will be forced to shut down due to the risk. Many will be targeted specifically in the hope that they will have to shut down.

    When that happens, more and more voices will be silenced online. Only the rich can afford to build their platforms and keep lawyers around to defend themselves. Google and Meta will be OK. The rest of us will no longer have any outlets for ourselves. Our opportunities to communicate online with each other will be limited to what Big Tech says we can do.

    It’s hard not to assume that is the goal, though.

  • It Feels Like Facebook Punted on Pages

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 5 minutes

    So, when I saw that Facebook was going to start letting people create multiple profiles and that it was really targeted toward people with different interests, or small business owners and freelancers who wanted a Facebook presence for their work apart from their personal profile, I immediately thought, isn’t that what Pages were for? Isn’t that exactly what Pages were promoted as being, a place for the “brand” apart from your personal profile? And isn’t this just a tacit acknowledgment that, outside of huge corporate brands, Facebook broke Pages for everyone else?

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    Linked – What If the Next Big Social Media App Is … Nothing?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    At some point, everyone who wants to have an Instagram account has an Instagram account and is using it as often as they want to. You can’t have huge growth spurts. You can only play around the edges and manipulate users to stay online to grow and that’s not a winning strategy. Yet it’s what shareholders and venture funds require. They’ve created a world where growing less than 20% per year might as well be failing. It’s sure going to look like failing when you start cutting jobs and doing stock buybacks. Those used to be desperate measures, but now they’re just a Tuesday at the office.

  • Even Younger Employees Come In With a Skills Gap

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    One of the things I have talked about for years regarding college education is that, by its nature, it will always be behind. Think about it. You start a four-year degree program to learn technology skills. By the time you complete the four years and maybe even an advanced degree, everything you’ve learned is outdated. Technology changes that quickly. You enter a workplace using the next versions of everything you know. A version you don’t know much about because it’s so new that college programs haven’t even started incorporating it yet.

    And by “so new,” I’m saying it’s been updated within the last few years.