Category: Technology

Check out this recent story on Politico discussing Twitter pitching the Russians (RT) to advertising in 2016. Compare that with their announcements about preventing manipulation by the Russians. Hypocritical? Dishonest? You be the judge.

Years ago I had a startup, JockSpin, that aggregated sports news from thousands of sources and tweets that users could view specific  to their chosen preferences. As we developed the app, I was stunned to find in our analytics that users views pages of Tweets less than 5% as much as headlines.  I didn’t believe it, actually; the difference was more than seemed possible. I reviewed the activity tracking code carefully to make sure there was not something incorrect, then ran isolated tests to make sure pages were being counted correctly. All was correct.

I realized then that Twitter, was for the most part, was junk, and that all the hype about it was just that. It struck me, “oh yeah, I don’t use Twitter either.” It feels a little bozo-esque in hindsight, but in the shadow of all the Twitter billions, I assumed many did use Twitter. After all, I’m not much of a customer for McDonald’s, but they seem to do alright without me.  I also recall evaluating – and to a small extent using – their advertising options. It looked to me like the ROI would be but a small fraction of that of Facebook advertising, itself considerably less than Google. Twitter, simply, sucked. Still does.

Thus, of course they were pitching the Russians. They need the business. Their business model just doesn’t work. Sure, when our President sends out one of his controversial tweets, everybody is using it, but do you know of any commerce related to it whatsoever? Twitter is fueled by a VC community that assumes there must be some pivot just over the horizon that will allow Twitter to monetize its user base. Enough time has passed that one has to doubt this. It is surprising, actually. One would think there would be some way to turn this into a profitable beast, but maybe there is just something about Twitter as it is that keeps is from becoming anything worthwhile.

Email was a killer app, as was Facebook, and Google, even Yahoo (for its day). Twitter, instead, is just junk getting in the way of something else that would have developed but for the attention and mental energy allocated to it.

Die, Twitter. Die. Get it over with; get out of the way. Just freaking die already.

This article from CNN discusses iPhone Touch Disease, with which I found my iPhone 6+ “infected.” Even worse, when I filed a damage claim, the insurance company sent me a refurbished device (don’t recall reading  this in the terms and conditions I nor anybody read – seems implied that it would be a new device) that itself had a worse case of Touch Disease. The replacement phone was so bad, in fact, that it took me 2 hours to get the touch screen to work well enough to get data off of it that I’d then put on it. Glyde buyers and the like considering used iPhone 6 or 6+ models should look to other models. Learn from me.

The good news is that in this article it discusses how owners can have the phones repaired by Apple. If you have insurance, as I did with AT&T, note that you should be able to file a damage claim and receive a replacement device with the payment of some deductible. If you have this problem, make sure it is backed up NOW, as it may be impossible to use the device soon.

Steve Jobs is rolling over in his grave. Just saying…

Read the article.

Looking at the fairly steady decline in hours worked per week, one has to wonder whether we are witnessing the earliest stages of a world where automation requires less hours of time spent working, for humans, at least.

“Alexa, get to work!”