Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 169

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #347

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, HBS; chair of Strata, Startupfest, Pandemonio, and ResolveTO; Author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another: 

Forbrukerinspektørene - NRK TV . "No, that isn't a typo. Watch this Norwegian talk show. It takes a while for the video to load. Skip to 5:36. Why can't we all have these please?" (Alistair for Hugh).
Asking the wrong questions - Benedict Evans . "Benedict Evans has a thoughtful post on how we get the future wrong, and why it's so hard to see the big trends. I particularly liked this part: 'Lots of people have pointed out that vintage scifi has plenty of rocketships but all the pilots are men - 1950s society but with robots. Meanwhile, the interstellar liners have paper tickets, that you queue up to buy.'" (Alistair for Mitch).
Documentary Now! Season 2 Episode 3 Parker Gail's Location Is Everything - YouTube . "If you were a certain kind of arty-ish teen in the late 80s or early 90s, you probably watched, and pretended to like (or even legitimately liked), Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia, the film of his one man show, directed by Jonathan Demme. I debated whether Alistair or Mitch would be more likely to have liked Cambodia, and settled on Alistair. If I got that right, then this is a kind of spectacular and pitch-perfect send-up of Swimming to Cambodia. If I got that wrong, then, this will be totally baffling, but, well, hopefully some of you out there might have been Swimming to Cambodia fans." (Hugh for Alistair).
John Cage - 4' 33'' Death Metal Cover by Dead Territory - YouTube . "Experimental composer John Cage's 4'33" is one one of the world's most famous abstract music pieces. Mitch is a heavy metal fan. Here's a death metal version of John Cage's 4'33". Make sure you are wearing good earphones for this." (Hugh for Mitch). 
Scientists Find First Observed Evidence That Our Universe May Be a Hologram - Big Think . "There's a lot on wonky news out there. Most of it is political. Don't let it divert your attention from the mind-bending science and technology that we're uncovering, developing and inventing with each passing day. Plus, if you're stuck in that political spin cycle, it may all just be a hologram anyway..." (Mitch for Alistair).
Robot Cars Can Teach Themselves How to Drive in Virtual Worlds - SingularityHub . "That just blew my mind. We're getting it all wrong, aren't we? There's a ton of fear out there that self-driving cars can make mistakes and - even - wind up killing a bunch of human beings as they learn to co-operate and be better than us on the roads. Why didn't I think of this? Put these cars into virtual worlds and let them run in there until they get it right. Think about how much constant learning can be done. Attention robot cars: go into that virtual world and don't come out until you've got it right!" (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

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Don't Confuse Growth For Relevance

Just because something does not post Wall Street growth, it does not mean that it is dying or no longer relevant.

This may seem obvious, but it doesn't look so obvious if you study the current marketplace and business climate. In fact, if you take a pure Wall Street perspective of things, we will wind up being in a place where it will be hard for all businesses to succeed. Take a step back. Take a deep breath. Put Wall Street aside. Put your brand's performance aside. Don't think about your quarterly earnings. Just stop and think about what the business of Wall Street preaches: each and every quarter we want your business to tell us how much you grew and how much more money you have made. That's it. Each and every quarter. Without fail. We take this as the only acceptable metric, but think about your life for one second in relation to this model. What if I told you that each and every quarter, you had to report to the world how much more money you made, how much weight you lost, how much better your mental wellness is, how much stronger you have become, how much better looking you are, etc... How would you perform? Could you do this? Could you improve (without fail) each and every quarter... repeatedly... forever. There are no margins for error. There are no moments in time, when you can adjust the business model, change things up and/or try something new. If you do, you will be punished by the markets. 

It's a tough place to be. This is where we are.

Twitter is having a rough go. There are a myriad of reasons why this is happening. There are a myriad of armchair quarterbacks who will tell you where Twitter veered off course. Many people will call for those in power at Twitter to give up their positions. The media and markets are claiming that Twitter is no longer a growth story. If you dig in, you will see that shares have dropped more than 10% as ad revenue fell by 7%. With that, its monthly user base increased 4% to 319 million, and daily users were up 11%. Still the money is not following (this is the headline), as revenue grew only 1%.

There is a business philosophy and new way of thinking that needs to be discussed.

Close to 320 million people use this platform. There is still - without a doubt - many people who know, like and use it. There is still - without a doubt - many people who might still join or use it for different reasons (Facebook is getting close to 2 billion users, so the market is open). There is still -without a doubt - things that Twitter can do (more than text, different marketing solutions, premium services, data and analytics plays, etc...). If you abide by the Wall Street world (massive growth, multiples and huge ad revenue), it looks like Twitter is in a death spiral. If you abide by a different philosophy (large media platform, strong user base, strong technology, a part of our cultural fabric, etc...), it's a relevant business that is not growing at the speed of Wall Street's expectations. And, that's the thing. Is Wall Street metrics everything? Think about your brand... think about your personal brand. Do you gauge each and every quarter by how much growth there was (money only), or do you also measure and value things like relevance, what your customers are doing with your products/services, etc...

It's not perfect. It's business. It's not just Twitter.

It would be easy to confuse this post as being about Twitter's performance, instead of the real focus: how do you define business success. Is success growth or relevance for a brand... for your business today. I think of relevance online all of the time. I think of quality brands like Quora, Pocket, Quartz, Medium and many more. Are they - quarter by quarter - driving massive growth or chipping away at relevance and a solid business model (for today and tomorrow). It's easy to say, "well, you can't compare a private company to a public one," or that "you can't compare a company that was expected to be huge, against ones that are taking a much more conservative approach." Are all fair and well-worth debating, but there is still a business philosophy that often gets clouded: being relevant is (and should be) as valued as growth in business today. Could you argue that the more relevant a brand is, the more growth they should experience? Yes, one could... but at what multiple and scale?

If you had to choose... what would you choose?... growth or relevance? 

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Pump And Dump Does Not Generate Great Content

"Let's share everything. There's lots of good stuff here. Did you catch that?"

Put aside the issue of narcissism (and, this is both brand and personal brand narcissism). With the persistence of live video and push to real-time marketing, there's not just an inflection point between those creating content and the saturation of content on media channels. There's also this ideology that if you capture an idea, that the idea should be shared... instantly. You see this often - especially in video content. Something is said in passing in a video, and then an entire diatribe goes off along the lines of, "did you catch that? We should turn that into a blog post? Maybe turn the quote into an image and post it on Instagram!" More than often even the content that is being recorded is also being filmed/streamed on another platform. I kid you not. Do you know how many times there are posts on Snapchat and Instagram of people creating content for YouTube? 

Content has become very meta. It doesn't have to be that way. Maybe it shouldn't be that way?

You could easily dismiss this as a quantity over quality argument. That argument has been made. That argument could still be made. There's something else - that most people who create content across multiple formats at a frenetic pace - don't, necessarily, know and/or respect about content. Sometimes, you need to actually spend time thinking and digging deeper into an idea that you have for it become valuable content. Just because a concept floated across your mind and out of your mouth, does not mean that it doesn't require some time to sit.

Pop that cork and chug that wine or pop that cork and let the wine breathe?

We let the best of everything sit. Always (or mostly). Content is no exception. This arm's race to pump and dump out content has not only created a vacuum between consumers and the brands that they love, but it has also created a mis-understanding on the brand side. Brands (mistakenly) believe that consumers just can't get enough of them. Brands pump out content with the attitude of trying to capture everyone's attention everywhere. It's not working. You have to give consumers a reason to care. Few brands do this.

Just how bad of a content strategy is it? 

If you go back a few years, and look at how Facebook really started generating the massive revenue that they're now pulling in, it is directly correlated to this pump and dump content strategy. In the early stages of getting brands on to Facebook, they allowed anyone and everyone to open a page and post whatever they wanted. The hunt for likes was a game of intensity. Brands wanted more "likes" and "fans" than their competitors. Brands compared their fans and likes to celebrities. Brands would post and post and post. Then, it got to the point when every brand had a Facebook page, and would chase likes and fans with increasing expense. They would offer up prizes and run contests to up the likes and fans. They would pull stunts to get people to share and like their content. It got so crazy, that many brands ran out of content to post. It got so crazy that brands would (and, I'm not joking here) post a picture of the sun (yes, the one in the sky) and write: "Like this is you like the sun." In short, they would do anything for attention and - because Facebook offered up that attention and impressions for free - they went for it. There were no "wasted" impressions. On Facebook, every impression was a way to get into the consumers' feeds and fight for that attention (and, of course, a picture in a post would be much bigger than just a text post, so you can imagine how big these images wound up being). Consumers pushed back. The numbers told the tale. Consumers were following brand pages that they had long forgotten about, but were still being assaulted with their content. Consumers were starting to mistaken the brand pages content for advertising and complained to Facebook about how polluted their feeds had become. Facebook had a serious problem. Facebook's solution was two-fold: They started throttling the content on Facebook pages and limiting how much of that content made it to the consumer's feed. They also started amping up their sales program, by allowing brands to "boost" pieces of content by paying to do so. So, on one hand, brands now had to pay to reach the audience that they had worked so hard to build. On the other hand, Facebook knew that they could both charge the brands (and make lots of money), while instantly cleaning out their consumer's feed. Brand started to think (seriously) about what they wanted to pay for in terms of feed worthiness. Quite the elegant solution.

A lesson for brands from Facebook's earlier revenue model.

If you could not immediately post everything that you're creating, what would happen? What if you had to wait 24 hours before posting content to your feeds? Would you still post this content if you had to pay to do so? These may seem like trivial questions. They are not. Try this: pull together all of your content, and take a serious look at the value, quality and power of the content. Then layer on top of if the two questions from above (what if you had to wait to publish it, and what if you had to pay to put it out there?). What would you really do? It's easy to make a run at impressions. It's easy to post everything you record. It's easy to pump that all up with some ad spend. Great content is not easy. Great ideas take time. Not only to breath in your mind, but to breath on the page, on the screen or in your ears. Yes, some people have an easier time pumping out quality. Most do not. There is a grace and elegance in thinking before publishing. Look at each piece of content that you see. How often do you wonder how much effort, thinking and patience went into it? How much care? Does the brand really care about the content - and what it represents - or do they care more about how many people liked and shared it? 

What kind of brand do you want to be?

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The Brands That You Live For

I watched the documentary Citizenfour the other night.

It was on Netflix. It's from 2014. It's a documentary about Edward Snowden. There are lots of movies about this topic. I haven't seen them all. You know how it is... you save a bunch of movies to your list on Netflix, and you eventually get tired of the endless scroll. I clicked on it. I didn't know what I was getting into. I just wanted to watch something that would be mentally stimulating. As the opening credits started to roll, I saw that it was produced by Participant Media. I got much more excited about the movie. I became... hopeful.

I said something to myself. It was under my breath. I remember saying it.

I said, "I'll watch anything by Participant Media." I don't know where that line came from. But, I saw the brand "Participant Media" and I thought about the movie, An Inconvenient Truth, and the many other films that I have enjoyed from this company. They're not all documentaries, they're not all top-shelf... but they do make you think about culture, society, justice and more. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I paused the movie (yes, before it started) and grabbed my notebook. I started listing out other brands that I feel this way about.

The list was short.

The list was powerful. I really, really like the brands on this list (I love them). How about you? Are there any brands that you will (basically) blindly follow? I've written before about my passion for note taking and the products that Field Notes put into the marketplace. I like that brand so much that I subscribe to their products. Literally. I pay an annual fee - up front - to get whatever they put out. It doesn't end there. Field Notes will often add different lines of notebooks and pens. I'll pick those up too. I don't just trust the brand. I want everything that they put out. I want to support them. I want to be their customer. I want them to be successful. We see this behaviour more commonly with fashion, sport and music brands, but there's an attitude... an ideology... that we should not so easily dismiss about the power of brands.

Think about this: do your customers feel this way about your products or services?

Probably not. It's probably not a reasonable expectation. It's not like customers will buy anything put out by an accounting software package... or their dry cleaners. Or... would they? I don't really need another notebook. There are plenty of other producers and films to watch on Netflix. Maybe you can create things - products and/or services - that truly capture your consumer's love and affection to the point that they're buying based on the brand and not the product or services. 

Tell me what you want... what you really, really want.

It's often not the really big things that grab the consumer. It's the little things. It's the smart and nuanced ways that a brand connects their consumers to the products and services. It's easy to think that you probably can't make consumers have that mindset of, "whatever you put out, I will buy from you..." but why not start there? Why not imagine what you could do, if you didn't hold those preconceived notions about your brand? You don't need everyone to feel this way about your brand, either. You just need your costumers to connect and expect that kind of experience. This is where most brand planning falls down. The optics are focused on the current quarter, the running campaign and the quarterly earnings... and not on what the brand is doing - day in and day out - to make their wares connect in a more profound way with their consumers.

Digital marketing won't save you. 

Your marketing and advertising is all about how your message gets placed in the marketplace. Being witty with content or quick to respond on Twitter is core to the brand experience, but it's not the entire brand experience. Too many brands think that they can save themselves and win favours with a viral Super Bowl ad. They won't. But this is a new day. You can decide... now... today... in this moment... to think about this tremendous branding opportunity. Few brands do it. They're trapped. They feel that that they either need to spend ad dollars against their work, and make more noise in the marketplace, or that they try to do something completely new and different. You can brand better. You can brand more. 

Make your brand a brand that others live for. Why not try?

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A Lesson From Facebook That Every Brand Should Learn

How hard is it, really, for your brand to change and adjust to new times?

The public answer is, usually: "If we don't disrupt ourselves, someone else will. We have a top-down approach to innovation that comes from our CEO's office and instilled into all of our business units. We are actively acquiring startups and scaling our teams with new product launches and developments."

The real answer is, usually: "We're being disrupted by the competition, startups and those outside of our industry. We never expected it to happen so fast. We are large and slow to adapt. Our current revenue models are strong enough that innovation is more like a skunkworks project, and few pay all that much attention to it as we continue to drive sales and milk the business model that we have. Plus, anything that we have truly attempted to do well has been stuck in an IT and planning roadmap that puts us two years into the future. It's hard to be nimble when you're not all that nimble."

Change is much harder to do than it is to talk about.

We have seen this before. We sit in these amazing day-long conferences watching all of these brands talk about how innovative and disruptive they are being. Then, we go home and we become consumers. We try to find out information about these brands on our iPhones and we're stuck with terrible mobile experiences. You realize that their Facebook brand page is nothing but corporate content layered in between customer complaints that are not being attended to with a timing that could be even close to "real-time." In short, the brand just kind of falls apart in the real world of consumers, technology and how they connect with a brand. You could think that this was the anomaly, but it's not. Do your own research. Look at these real brand experiences, and report back if they look and feel like the brand experiences these consumers have when using Uber, Snapchat, Instagram, etc...

Facebook was at the edge as well.

Many may not remember this, but Facebook took their time when it came to shifting to a mobile experience. For years, consumers complained about their mobile experience. It was limited. It was not even close to the desktop experience. It was, in short, frustrating. Facebook could have reacted by  slowing adapting, adding in more features and moving towards a mobile-first experience. They did not. While they were white hot, they made a concerted effort - in the middle of that crazy growth - to do an about-face and run at mobile. Hard. Nearly four years ago, I wrote an article titled, The Mobile-Only Strategy Imperative. From that post:

"The event horizon for the PC - as we have known it to date - is not far off. Just look at what Facebook did to switch their browser-based online social network over to a mobile-first strategy. Whether it was forced by consumer demand, Wall Street or their own pro-active realization is irrelevant. Facebook responded. Facebook responded well. Just look at the past six months. They have made massive strides in shedding their PC-based legacy for this brave new world, where we're all connected, sharing and more in the palms of our hands. That experience is fundamentally differently from the PC and Web browser-based experience. It's something that brands are going to have to double-down on now. As bullish as I was on the Internet, e-commerce and social media in their nascent stages, I am an unabashed die-hard evangelist for the post PC and post Web browser world. The only difference is that the others could have been a fad. This is a reality."

This was four years ago, so let's look at Facebook's not-so-early move to be mobile focused...

This past week, Facebook announced their quarterly earnings and they were staggering. While they warned of a pending revenue slowdown, the company generated more than $10 billion in net income in 2016. Its Q4 2016 earnings report showed that the company generated $8.8 billion in revenue during the last three months of the past year. Facebook now reaches 1.86 billion monthly active users - they added 70 million users in the last quarter.

But, here's the big news: mobile advertising accounted for 84% of its 2016 fourth-quarter revenue (up from 80% last year). 

There is no doubt that Facebook was not only slow to mobile, but falling behind. Badly. Just look at what that course-correction and effort has done in four years. It would be easy for any brand to say that a move like that is easy when you're Facebook (they made the shift in about six months time). I do not agree. Facebook was a rocketship back then. They were, literally, printing money and growing exponentially on their Web-based advertising model. There was no sign of this letting up. Still, Facebook saw the changes. They saw the movement. Contrary to what most people think, they did not have these resources lying around. They knew that by making this move, it could be very disurtiptve to both their current business model and future growth... and it was.  

There is a powerful lesson here.

Even the brands that are disrupting are not safe. Even the brands that are seen as the innovators will struggle to turn a large ship around, and go in a new direction. Even one of the coolest brands doesn't have the resources just sitting around waiting for what's next. So, if Facebook was able to make such an obvious move to the public, but such a risky move inside the organization, who are we to sit idly by on the sidelines? It doesn't end there, either. The other telling piece of Facebook's story (and it's very relatable to every brand today) is that they are getting much more focused on video. This, too, was not their strength. This too is happening after the fact (look at what YouTube, Snapchat, Netflix, Amazon and others have already done in the space). Still, Facebook has been very successful in growing video and - as you can read in the quarterly earnings call's transcript - are focused on growth and shifting their content thrust to being about video. Again, they're doing this and it could be very risky to current business models and operations.

What are the rest of the brands waiting for?

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Facebook's Wild Revenue Run, Snapchat's IPO And More On This Week's CTRL ALT Delete Segment On CHOM 97.7 FM

Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio out of Montreal (home base). It's not a long segment - about 5 to 10 minutes every week - about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly on iHeart Radio, if you're interested in hearing more of me blathering away about what's going on in the digital world. I'm really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry DiMonte morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed: 

Very sad to report that Heather B. is no longer with CHOM FM. Wishing my buddy all the best. She's a star.
This week, Terry was feeling under the weather and Pierre Landry stepped in.
Facebook had their quarterly earnings call... and HOLY WOW! The company generated more than $10 billion in net income in 2016. Its Q4 2016 earnings report showed that the company generated $8.8 billion in revenue during the last three months of the past year, compared to $5.8 billion during the same quarter in 2015. Here's the big news: mobile advertising accounted for 84% of its 2016 fourth-quarter revenue (up from 80% last year). Plus, Facebook now reaches 1.86 billion monthly active users - they added 70 million users in the last quarter. That's an 18% increase from the year prior. It makes their $500 million cheque to cover damages from its VR subsidiary Oculus seem like not that big of a deal!
So, will Snapchat be the next Facebook? The company filed for IPO last Thursday. Some are thinking this could be a $25 billon company out of gate, and one of the biggest tech IPOs we have seen in years (not bad a for a company that crazily said "no" to Facebook back in 2013 for a $3 billion acquisition). Snap made $404.5 million in revenue during 2016, up from $58.7 million in 2015. They have 158 million daily users. More than 2.5 billion "snaps" are created and sent every day through the app, and the average daily user opens Snapchat more than 18 times every day. With that, they also posted a net loss of $514.6 million in 2016, and went on to say that it "may never achieve or maintain profitability," as it plans to continue investing heavily in its business. 
So, if Facebook and Snapchat can be successful with a social network, why can't LEGO? Last week the toy brick manufacturer and one of the most powerful brands in the world launched LEGO Life - a safe social network for kids under the age of 13. This is currently a mobile-only experience that is image and video driven. Kids can do everything from LEGO building challenges and games (make your own LEGO figurine) to sharing their work and connecting to other enthusiasts.        
App of the week: Viable.

Take a listen right here.

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Technology Provocations With Nicholas Carr - This Week's Six Pixels Of Separation Podcast

Episode #552 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

His latest book is called, Utopia Is Creepy And Other Provocations. It could, literally, be translated as "Our World Is Creepy"... and that's the point. Nicholas Carr is one of the brightest thinkers on how technology impacts our lives. His perceptive on how culture and technology come together can best be understood by reading his best-selling books, The Shallows, The Big Switch, Does IT Matter? and The Glass Cage. Carr is also a writer for The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Wired and many more. His book, The Shallows, made a serious impact, because of the popularity of his article, Is Google Making Us Stupid?. His latest book, Utopia Is Creepy And Other Provocations, is an awesome collection of his best essays, blog posts and other musings with word. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast #552.

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4 Ways To Lead With Authenticity In Uncertain Times

There is something that all great leaders do.

There is something that all great leaders do that we can all learn from. Many of the best leaders (in business, community, politics and entertainment) study leadership traits like presentation skills, body language, persuasion with a depth and riguer that few of us do. There are countless bestselling business books and TED Talks that tackle these subjects. Professionals will spends thousands of dollars each year to attend conferences where these specific topics are covered. From overall strategies to very specific tactics, those who know how to present an idea - in a powerful way - tend to get ahead. Personally, I've had the great pleasure of being able to grow my business from a small startup in 2000 to being acquired by WPP (the world's largest marketing and communications network in the world) to turning that business into a now-global brand called Mirum. With over 2000 employees in over 20 countries and under the WPP banner, I still get to travel the world and present on stage to businesses (small, medium, large, b2b and b2c). In short: I get to watch some of the world's best brands and leaders present their ideas. I also get to sit in the audience and take notes. I get to see which ideas take flight... and which ideas flop. Which leaders can convey a semi-decent idea that gets mass buy-in verses a leader who can't get their team around a very powerful and transformative concept. Yes, it's about communications and presence. Still, there are four key components that make ideas connect, and we have seen this in everything from a new business pitch to an investor, to a global brand looking to shift business models, to a politician attempting to take office and beyond. 

Here are the four way to lead with authenticity in uncertain times:

I See You. Your audience has to know that you are not talking at them. Your audience has to know that you are not talking to them. Your audience must feel like you are talking with them. Every audience member has to not only feel - but know - that you see them. You know them. You understand their day-to-day, and that you're not there to float your own ideas, but rather create a solution to what they (truly) face - day in and day out. Without judgement. "I see you." When someone is in trouble (emotional, physical or spiritual), they want you to see them... not feel bad for them. This is my number one motivation before clipping a microphone on my shirt. I want my audience to know this: I see you.
I Understand You. This does not mean that you have listened to their feedback or asked for input. This does mean that you understand their challenges, because you have seen them, experienced them and are not just compassionate about those challenges, but that you have thought long and hard about what it means to be them. A lot of leaders think that they understand the situation, when - in reality - they have a thought about how to solve the challenge - at a leadership level - without understanding how it truly affects each and every person on the team and in the work that they do.
This Is Now Yours/Ours. Think about the businesses that offer employees ownership opportunities. Think about the businesses that constantly attempt to cut out the layers of management and rules/regulations to allow people to flourish. These are bold and powerful first-steps. Now, think about the leaders that remove themselves from the pedestal and truly empower everyone to take part in the success (and, let's be clear: financial success is only part of this equation). Think about the leaders who truly build a team... a movement. Great leaders don't build great companies or great teams. Great leaders turn everything into a movement that everyone takes ownership and responsibility for. Great leaders make it everyone's for the taking.
You Are Not Forgotten... And Never Will Be Again. We are all worried about the effort that we put into our own lives. Are we doing enough? How are we performing? We are all worried how we are perceived by our peers and by our leaders. All of us have our own set of insecurities. All of us have moments where we feel like we're not a part of something meaningful or bigger than us. Along with "I See You," many people do feel forgotten (either a lot of the time or at some moment in time). From not getting that promotion, to being let go and beyond. The best leaders remind their audience that they are not forgotten, and that they won't be forgotten moving forward. It's powerful. It doesn't always come to fruition, but if you can make your audience acknowledge the moments when they have felt forgotten, and honestly reassure them that this is going to end, you can - and will - win them over. It can't be a platitude. It has to something that they live and breath.

These are ambiguous tools, so do no evil.

All tools of presentation, persuasion, influence and beyond can be (and have been) used for evil. These same tools have been used to make partisan groups more divided than united. The tools are ambiguous. Before presenting ideas (on stage, in a board room, over a meal), the 4 concepts above are meant for the leader to equalize his thinking in terms of the relationship between presenter and audience. Great leadership moving forward feels inclusive. Brand, innovation, transformation, dealing with disruption, building better experiences... this is what we do.

This is what great leaders must do. 

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #346

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, HBS; chair of Strata, Startupfest, Pandemonio, and ResolveTO; Author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another: 

The Epic Guide to Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch -- By Yourself (Part 1) - Clifford Oravec - Medium . "Starting a company is hard. But you can maximize your chances of success by being careful and methodical. The problem is, most of what people talk about is glib showmanship and Chicken Soup for the Startup Soul. This post, on the other hand, is practical and straightforward. Good reading for anyone building a SaaS company." (Alistair for Hugh).
The absolute worst technology predictions of the past 150 years - FreeCodeCamp . "Let me first say, that I'm going to wilfully ignore posts about the current state of US politics in our Six Links. There's simply too much of that in every other tab on my browser right now. Otherwise, I'd be sharing the Bad Lip Reading of the inauguration. But instead, this: I am terrified that in a few years something I say will be on this list. But - as I pointed out when we met this morning - those who do not understand the Internet are doomed to believe it. So, here are some cautionary tales for futurists." (Alistair for Mitch).
Bill Gates and Warren Buffett at Columbia University January 27th, 2017 - YouTube . "Listening to Uncle Bill Gates and Grampa Warren Buffett talk sure makes me feel a bit better about the state of the world." (Hugh for Alistair).
Once More, With Feeling - This American Life . "Mitch, Alistair and I were recently invited to spend a few hours talking with a group that is trying to grapple with cyberviolence against women and girls. I'm not sure that we came to any great conclusions, but during our discussions, I mentioned this piece from This American Life. In it, a woman records a series of conversations with a man who enjoys cat-calling women, while she tries to convince him that cat-calling isn't just 'good fun'." (Hugh for Mitch).
Why children ask 'Why?' and what makes a good explanation - Aeon . "It's funny, there's this one word that can make you the most successful person in the world, while that exact same word can also make you the most annoying person in the world. It's an old joke, isn't it? Your children will break you down (and make you think that you don't know anything) because whispering this one little word - over and over again. So, it makes perfect that someone (someone smart) took that one word and asked 'why'? Honestly, aren't you dying to know why? I know that I am..." (Mitch for Alistair).
New Trends In Getting Mad Online - The Outline . "As you read above, it's a rare treat for the three of us to be in room and act as philosophers and theorists around how to make the Web a safe(ish) place. It's a tall order. Still, to find the solution, you must know the landscape, the people and the issues. Well, it turns out that we are a mad, mad world online (and otherwise). With that, our culture changes as we interact through these digital channels. We are, truly, creating a new kind of 'us' because of this new technology, connectivity and language. Here's a crazy read about just that." (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

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Facebook Is Not A Media Company (Today). Facebook Is The Mass Media (Tomorrow).

What makes a piece of content a television show, a movie, a YouTube clip?

It's not a new discourse. It's something that many (including little old moi) have discussed, dissected and drafted articles about (for years). The thought is simply this: it's all just video content at this point, isn't it? The way that content gets distributed and displayed is becoming less and less about the format of the media, and more and more about the content. When you stream a movie on Netflix, what makes it a "movie"? How is that any different than watching an episode of Sherlock (which, sure looks, feels and act like a movie... in the traditional definition)? You can pay/watch a movie in YouTube? You can watch a movie in a movie theatre... or not? They play movies on television. You can pause, rewind and archive your television shows. There are so many nuanced ways that we define any medium used for transmitting moving images in two (or three) dimensions with sound that they all seem to have transcend their own definitions. 

Where do you watch your video content?

This only makes our ability to define video content by the platform it is viewed on to be more confusing. More often than not, many people are watching a "movie" on their television sets, but it's through Apple TV or Netflix. They will then continue watching it on their smartphone or tablets later. They may continue watching the movie at their office, on their computer, during their lunch break. A myriad of experiences across multiple screens, platforms, environments and distribution channels. All for one piece of content that we have defined as a "movie."

It's an important concept for business professionals to think about.

If the type of video content, screen that a consumer is watching it on, size of screen, fixed or mobile screen, location, time, etc... no longer define the content, there is only one thing left: where that content is coming from is what matters. In fact, it's not hard to see that the video content battle is happening - on the front lines - with the famed FANG group of businesses (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google). Each company is making the case for why they will be the dominant player in video content. Some of these dragons even have multiple platforms that are making a run for it. Facebook has integrated video more and more. Instagram is running at video (owned by Facebook). Amazon Prime Video, iTunes (streaming, downloading, etc...), Apple TV, Netflix, YouTube, etc... Look at where all of the time consumers are spending with video (and where the ad dollars are flowing), and it's a handful of companies battling for what is quickly becoming a trillion-plus dollar industry.

Facebook is not a media company.

That's what Mark Zuckerberg said is November 2016. Then, in late December 2016 Facebook said that it's "a new kind of platform. It's not a traditional technology company. It's not a traditional media company... we build technology and we feel responsible for how it's used. We don't write the news that people read on the platform. But at the same time we also know that we do a lot more than just distribute news, and we're an important part of the public discourse." Whether Facebook concedes that it's a media company or stays focused on being a technology company, one thing is clear, Facebook had 30% more revenue per user in the fourth quarter of last year and grew it's advertising revenue beyond anyone's expectations in an ad world that has seen a slowdown. In short, Facebook's revenue shot up more 51% to $8.81 billion dollars this past quarter. They may be a technology company, but that money is coming from advertising, which makes it feel like a media company to anyone with a critical eye.

More time on video means more focus on video.

Facebook is thinking deeply about video. So much so, that it's starting to feel like Facebook thinks it could become your next TV (read: It's official: Facebook wants to be your next TV via Recode). Not just video content. Not just a TV channel. Not just a network. The entire platform. It's easy to scoff at these kinds of grandiose claims. It's easy to feel like this is just some pundit trying to accumulate clicks and likes by making brash statements. It's also easy to see just how true and obvious this can be. The first sign of this happened years ago, when Facebook's small (but growing) sales team would not compare digital efficacy, their platform and analytics as a better advertising solution, but would often compare themselves to television in raw audience size and attention. They were looking for the big brand advertisers, and using very traditional media metrics to sway the dollars. On Facebook's quarterly earnings call yesterday, Zuckerberg spent a lot of time talking about how they want users to use Facebook for watching video in the now... and always. Meaning, disregard the usual scheduling of TV and movie content and move towards live, now, feed-based and on-demand for everything. From Zuckerberg...

"The goal that we have for the product experience is to make it so that when people want to watch videos or want to keep up to date with what's going on with their favorite show, or what's going on with a public figure that they want to follow, that they can come to Facebook and go to a place knowing that that's going to show them all the content that they're interested in. That's a pretty different intent than why people come to Facebook today. ... The experience is designed to deliver on that promise -- [that] you want to watch videos, you want to keep up with the content that you watch episodically week over week. This is going to be the place where you go to do that."

Big claims that can be backed up.

In the past, we have seen other companies (small, medium and large) make a run at concepts like this. From a business perspective, it always seems like a tough line to tow. If you look at Facebook, their plans for video (a push for more high-quality content, a push for more long-form content, a push for original content, a push for Facebook video apps, a push for testing more formats of video ads, etc...) are profound and far-reaching.

It feels like Facebook could not just disrupt television, but become the television.

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