Disclaimer: This transcript was generated automatically and as such, may contain various spelling and syntax errors

Germaine: [00:00:00] Hello, Future Tribe, and welcome to this week’s episode of the show. It is Thursday. It’s a bit early because we’ve got one of the co-hosts Kelsey taking the day off for good reasons. But man, like this, this episode is all so full and we’re like on a Thursday, not even a Friday, I couldn’t imagine there were a fair few things that I left out because, there’s probably more information to come and more that we can talk about in future episodes, but we’re going to be talking about Facebook inflating their ad numbers. I think this applies to Instagram as well. Brands caught stealing user images. Don’t update to windows 11, just yet. That’s from me and a few other people, apple releasing their new Mac books with a notch.

They did it for phones. They’re going to do it to laptops. Apparently Intrepid gets a new all interpret Intrepid travel gets a [00:01:00] logo update. Google releases their Pixel phone’s using their own chip. Google calendar has a few new feature additions, including something we had picked up on during the week.

Kelsey: Yep. We’ll also be chatting about a new logo from Nielsen or for Nielsen.

Instagram is going to be allowing partnered posts, talking about two things from Netflix, updating how they rank popular shows and something about some filtering that we have the some thoughts on. BBC has some new brand assets as well, and Facebook might be changing their name.

Germaine: Let’s roll the intro and start talking about all these different topics.

all right. So let’s get it started with the, with the big one. Facebook inflating [00:02:00] ad numbers. Now, I’ve heard a little bit about this. I think inflating ad numbers is probably a little unfair. Is it more accurate to say that Facebook will now count a Facebook view and an Instagram view as two separate views? Even if they know that you’re the same person, because you’ve linked to your accounts, is that what.

Kelsey: Yeah. So I think it’s it’s a little bit of a semantics kind of thing in that. Yeah. Facebook will count if I’m on Facebook and I see an ad and I’m on Instagram and I see the same ad that’s counted as two views.

So it’s one of those things where it’s like, technically it’s two views, but is it twice as effective? Are you getting two different audience or two different people? So I’m unsure on that.

Germaine: With the costs around that. Whether, you know, you’re, you’re counting it twice, but are you, or when I’m saying you is Facebook, the big company not the, not the platform going to count that twice and charge you twice, [00:03:00] or are they going to be more genuine about it. My guess is that it’s going to be the former, we’ve talked about this many times, especially Facebook. I think people will say it’s one company that stands out as an organization that just wants to make money. Rather than. Some of the organizations, some, some take companies, I think you could point to at least instances where they genuinely want to make the world a better place or have an impact past financials.

But I think Facebook is one area, one company that you can’t necessarily say the same thing. So this is going to have an impact on your advertising. If you, if you listened to last week’s episode, we talked about how ad spend is being wasted, and the stats around that, just in Australia. It’s going to affect how you’re going to do advertising and how you’re going to do your targeting.

There are also a few other changes when it comes to Facebook advertising that has have come up. But again, as I hinted to [00:04:00] in the intro, there’s, there’s not a lot of solid information around that yet. So a bit early to talk about that. It’s a, it’s an evolving space as, as these platforms always are.

Did you have anything else to add about that, Kelsey?

Kelsey: No, it was more, just a, yeah, just a note on that change. There’s all sorts of ethical questions we could go into about it, but yeah, nothing to add.

Germaine: Yeah. Moving, moving on to Delta airlines, using a hashtag in order to grab rides, to use customers images. What’s this about?

Kelsey: It’s essentially just a comment on how some brands can be quite sneaky and work around the rules. So I think a lot of people have this impression that they can upload the images to, you know, Instagram, wherever, and they’re still their images. What Delta’s doing is they’re basically asking customers to use particular hashtags and this certain, I guess terms and conditions around those hashtags that will then waive any rights to the original users ownership of those images. So it’s kind of a sneaky way [00:05:00] for Delta to be able to legally take those images and use user generated content for their own marketing purposes.

Germaine: I’m willing to bet though, that this hasn’t been tested in a court of law.

Kelsey: Yeah, I think it’s one of those things like we discussed last week where you know, you end up with what was the conversation we were having about it.

It was you know, the tech space not being regulated Yes. I think it’s that same issue that we were discussing last week.

Germaine: Yeah. Like who has jurisdiction, who has control because the is, I mean, that’s the benefit of say cryptocurrency in that no one can regulate it, but then when you’re applying it more for a, rather than a tool, more for something that can collect information about you and synthesize that information, how does that apply?

And how does. The consistency of the lack of consistency apply across the world. We’re seeing at this stage companies having to essentially modify their service based on the country that you’re, you’re in like CNN leaving [00:06:00] Facebook in Australia. Probably isn’t a good long-term solution. It’s, it’s easy when it’s a big market like Australia, but you could imagine if smaller countries with very tiny population started imposing their own legislation, that these companies will have a decision to make.

And we’ve had, I’m not a fan of it, but we’ve had geo blocking of content for awhile from streaming platforms. I wonder if we’re going to get to a point where. You know, you can use X, Y, Z functionality or feature, but only if you’re using LinkedIn in this country or, or, you know, if Facebook in a specific region, even because I don’t see why it couldn’t become state-based as well in the U S you get that from a financial perspective and taxes.

So why wouldn’t that happen from a tech perspective as well? Not good though, to be essentially quote unquote stealing, but I don’t know how you [00:07:00] can set rules or have ownership over a hashtag. I think that’s probably the biggest gray area for me. Hashtags are a wonderful way to have a common thread around a campaign and get people sort of rallying around a campaign and get your CA community contributing as well.

But user generated content in general is a bit of a gray area because. Yeah. I mean, there are platforms where you can very clearly licensed that, that sort of content, but at the same time, where do copyright laws fall? Where do they exist? Whether, do they stop many questions that somewhat un- answered at this stage.

Jumping to talk about talking about unanswered things, windows 11.

Oh my goodness. You’ve been using it for a while Kelsey, yeah. You jumped on the release candidate accidentally, I think accidentally and Damiane swears by it, but I have found it to be so buggy. I just, and it’s just lacking in [00:08:00] simple things, like being able to see your multiple windows in the task bar, just simple things like that, or even swapping to a, like a small task bar as it used to be called in windows.

But I’m not the only one who’s having this issue either. Jarrod’s Tech who we’ve interviewed on the podcast before, along with many other content creators, YouTubers tech influences have mentioned that there are limitations around windows 11. There are some CPU’s and some systems. I have up to, I think it’s 30% less performance.

If you install windows 11 there’s some, it’s, it’s a bunch of sort of hardware and software things that can and cannot be, fixed or amended, but there’s, you know, the Adobe creative cloud suite, as far as I know, isn’t guaranteed to be a hundred percent stable on windows 11 yet. Your experience may vary and it, I think will [00:09:00] depend on your manufacturer as well, to an extent and the sort of underlying technology, but this is really just a PSA the way I see it. Just hold on, wait until the next iteration of windows 11 is released. Microsoft will probably do that pretty quickly. I think they’ve, they’ve got into a pretty quick or pretty rapid iteration sort of structure. So we should have something new fairly soon, but if you get that pop-up messages, especially if you want to get work done reliably, despite everyone else’s sort of experiences, I would just hold off for the moment. The same thing applies to the first generation of anything, whether it’s software, hardware, whatever it may be.

Speaking of which Apple’s released a first-generation of something new of their Mac book first-generation in the sense of the novel.[00:10:00]

Kelsey: It’s a funny one, when you talk about first generation though, because my understanding is they’ve obviously brought out this Mac book that has the notch, but they’ve also rolled back changes from the previous laptops they’ve brought out in terms of bringing back all these ports. That charger I don’t know the name of the type of charger they use.

Yeah. That’s the one. And I think people are obviously happy, but also. Having a laugh cause it’s like apple, what are you doing? You know, you’re going on about all of these amazing changes and then go, oh, sorry, did the wrong thing. We’ll bring it back.

Germaine: Well, they never said that what they were doing is patting themselves on the back for bringing back features that they took away in the first place.

The way I see it, it is. If companies, if mobile phone manufacturers started to bring back, the headphone Jack can make a big deal about it. I think it’s in the same, same line, but what I don’t understand is the apple fans. I’m not going to say fanboys or anything like that, but the the people who like apple products [00:11:00] just loving it.

And they’re like, oh my goodness, it’s got so many ports, you know, so on and so forth with. I all I can say is apple has struck some sort of gold where they can intentionally take things away and then bring it back and convince you that it is new and fantastic.

Kelsey: Yeah. It’s kind of a funny one because it’s, it’s almost like they broke something that, I mean, they fixed something that didn’t need to be like, it wasn’t broken.

It was fine. Yeah. And yeah, and now they’re coming back and saying, we’ve fixed it again, but actually they could have skipped that whole middle bit and just had all the ports in the first place.

Germaine: And everyone’s loving. Everyone is

Kelsey: fair enough. I mean, it’s, it’s sort of proven through any other product, isn’t it? That actually having ports and being able to access things and do things easily is a good thing

Germaine: I had to hop on the work MacBook today. We’ve got one just for testing purposes when we’re, when we’re working on websites, especially to make sure that we’re, we’ve got that [00:12:00] that device covered, but it’s only got two. USB-C ports and I kid you not Kelsey, I’ve got two different adapters connected along the chain to make it all work. And even then it’s working, I would say 90% of the time and questionably and it’s very fussy. The biggest thing for me though, is the notch. Have you looked at any, any content or any, any sort of

Kelsey: I haven’t, but I was actually chatting to my dad about this the other day. And he’s very anti-Apple, but he was sort of saying that the notch actually is in line with the menu bar. So it sort of actually just sits within that menu bar. You’re not really losing screen space and I haven’t verified this, but credible source

Germaine: is correct. Yeah.

I didn’t, I don’t understand how you don’t use that part of the screen because when I have multiple tabs open, that’s exactly where those tabs sit

Kelsey: the tabs [00:13:00] on, on where?

Germaine: On, well, okay. Okay. I get actually know on, on a Mac, you have. Yeah. Okay. On a Mac, you have a second row on windows. You don’t have that second, like, because on Mac’s you have a row where you control everything and then you have, but then you could go if you’re full screen on a, on a browser though, your tabs will end up up on there.

Kelsey: Yeah. I feel like that might be a slight niche case though. Cause I mean, I was using the Mac book for a couple of weeks. The one that we have at the office and I don’t, I can’t think of a single time. I actually went full screen with anything.

Germaine: But when you’re talking about Mac book pros, pros professionals, that’s not really niche when the product, I mean, I get the product or the use cases, niche, but not when a product is targeted exactly at that demographic. I wouldn’t think that having, you know, it wouldn’t take many tabs, like looking at the Mac in front of me, I think four tabs and you’re sort of encroaching on the [00:14:00] middle of the screen.

So four rabs isn’t even I wouldn’t say that’s a particularly niche or high high-end use case. What, what also is interesting and we’ll see how they, well, one is they use background images. And they’ve done this in the past that hide the notch because it’s dark in the, in the background, like wallpaper on the device, in the photos.

So you don’t actually notice the notch. And that’s a classic thing that people companies do when they have all sorts of notches. My biggest question is with the new Mac books, how does a mouse. So on a phone, it doesn’t, this wouldn’t be an issue as much, but how would a mouse go through as in computer mice go through a notch. Would it just, if you start on one end of the notch, would it just go through it as if it isn’t there and then how it screenshots?

Kelsey: Yeah, look, I’ve got no answer for you there. It’ll [00:15:00] be interesting to see what happens with it. Whether there is a little notch, notchy screenshots, or if people keep getting the mouse stuck on the notch or something. I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.

Germaine: Is it also a case in an, in my opinion, it’s a, it’s a yes. A matter of form over function or, well, I actually no a. It’s a matter of what were they thinking and why they haven’t needed it in the past? Maybe, maybe just

Kelsey: surely function then, like there’s got to be a reason for the camera to need that space.

Germaine: It’s it’s apple though. I, I would say it isn’t and we’re not, I’m not apple bashing, but they’re the, they’re the company that built a rechargeable mouse with the recharge with the port to recharge them on the underside of the mouse. So, yes. I mean, it looks sleeker. Don’t get me wrong, but if that’s the most functional way to do it, [00:16:00] I would disagree so we can leave it at that. I feel like I can go down this road of, you know, not apple bashing, but at least getting a bit grumpy with apple.

So let’s just change, track all together and talk about Intrepid.

They’ve got a new logo. I have heard of them, but I couldn’t tell you much else about them.

Kelsey: Yeah. So Intrepid it’s, I mean, it’s a travel company, so I think their target audience is sort of maybe millennial age at this point. This is off the top of my head. I haven’t actually looked into it, but I came across them a lot when I was traveling sort of through Europe and doing the classic Australian abroad situation.

Yeah, Intrepid, they’ll do different tours and things. You know, you jump on your seven day wherever around Europe, for example, and you’re on buses and all sorts. So I really like this rebrand for people that maybe aren’t familiar or share the screen. So they’ve got previous logos, as you can see that sort of used they kind of look like, I’m not sure where specifically in Asia, but an Asian temple Maybe [00:17:00] a mosque as well in there.

A few different things that you might obviously come across while you’re traveling. And what I love about this rebrand or refresh I should say is that they’ve carried across that like iconography put it into a new frame in that circle. I also love that they’ve kept the red, cause I think red is quite bold and it really helps with, you know, you’re exploring and it’s exciting and things that happening that sort of the association, I think people have with that red color as well.

Yeah, I really love it. I think it’s simple. It’s clean.

Germaine: It’s interesting that they’ve kept that the buildings essentially since the start they’ve kept that consistently more or less. All the way up into this iteration though. Funny enough, the most recent iteration is it is almost the exact reverse of how they used to have the have the buildings.

Kelsey: I’m not sure how old that black and white one is or just black. One is. But I’m in the past two iterations have the same sort of layout. And I liked that [00:18:00] they’ve put more focus into that icon in this version because obviously the previous one had that Intrepid text through the circle and that tiny little you know, building thing at the bottom.

So I like that it’s got more focus and now they, I think they have a lot more versatility with it as well. Cause they can use the word mark or they can use the icon. They don’t have to necessarily use them together.

Germaine: Well, plus again, social media usage. You can see it. I stopped here intentionally because you can see it in the little profile picture for the channel on YouTube.

And it works really nicely. It’s they’ve even managed to get the little cutout from the circle sort of sitting fine. Like it doesn’t look awkward.

Kelsey: Yeah, I really like it. And I can imagine they would have put focus on to that social media side of usage, just because obviously millennial and young travel isn’t, any travellers, is it’s all about the images and, you know, I’m sure they’ve got massive audiences through Instagram and YouTube and where they would have all the beautiful [00:19:00] imagery of different locations and blogs and all that sort of stuff.

So that would have probably been a very large consideration for them when they were designing this.

Germaine: Yeah, they’ve really targ we’ll look to the target market, which is of course what you want to do and what is recommended. So they’ve, they’ve done a fine job, I would say. And the colors as well, a quite nice, it’s not, it’s bold without being too bold, if, if I could go there. But ultimately fantastic result I would say, and, and a great example of a good, nice, solid brand refresh while keeping elements that they’re known for.

Now jumping, jumping through to the next one, talking about elements that they’re known for, Google, they’ve released their new Pixel which is the first Pixel to actually feature a chip Designed by Google.

Now that’s they’re sort of marketing it strongly as a, the [00:20:00] first fully Google phone. Talk is that the chip is actually manufactured by Samsung using that sort of process. It would be manufactured by one of the big, big players in there, but what I wanted to sort of put out there is one, Google every time they release a new Pixel there’s talk about how little market share Pixel has and how much more Google is going to market it this time around. And I was watching TV for the first time in a long time yesterday, and they’d already started advertising the Pixel on TV ads. But my biggest question is I feel like phones have, a lot of technology has hit a plateau of late.

And now our phone manufacturing is from a business point of view and a marketing point of view, starting to look at how they can essentially just, rather than moving forward, move sideways and [00:21:00] introduce their own chips, their own, you know, fully Google phones as a matter of differentiation in the market.

Kelsey: Hmm, it’s interesting. Cause I I’ve sort of thought this over the last few years that the hit a, it’s to me as a sort of average consumer, I suppose it doesn’t understand a lot of the background tech stuff. I feel like phones did hit that plateau and it was a case of like the only thing that you’re competing on at this point is better cameras, more cameras, different AI cameras, whatever that looked like, that was the focus. And now I feel like that’s really just hit a spot where. You know, how much better can you make a camera on a phone we’re already at such high debt. Yeah. And like what, how often do you actually use those cameras? How helpful is it for people? And I think that now people have had the hands on, you know, three or four cameras.

You don’t use them that often you just want a simple shoot, click and shoot kind of situation. So it is interesting to see I guess companies like Google are now looking to those chips and things, but. [00:22:00] Whether that has an impact on the average consumer or whether it is really that sort of niche market that understands that stuff.

Is that a good strategy? I’m not sure

Germaine: Well the way they’re pitching it is, and that’s why I mentioned that Samsung actually is producing the chips, because the way they’re pitching it is that it’s the first like fully Google phone. So then, I would say that sort of language is really tailored to the average consumer rather than the tech person, because, you know, for me, I, I looked into it it’s as it turns out, it’s, it’s come up in previous benchmarks as an extended processor, so, okay, they haven’t real… They’re not really doing anything different. Saying that though the final the best outcome I think is, Google can guarantee updates, software updates for longer. So your phone’s going to be more useful for longer. And then there’s new reports that that’s only if you buy the pixel six pro and not the pixel six, [00:23:00] which seems like a weird distinction because I don’t think the chips are that different.

So. Maybe that maybe again, differentiation, maybe they’re just saying you A more, get a nicer phone and you can update it for you know, 66% longer.

Kelsey: Interesting one. Yeah. I mean, I can see how that would appeal to the average user, especially with all these reports of apple, for example, it’s that classic thing of like apple start, can’t remember what the joke is now, but they’ll basically like break your old iPhone so that you have to buy a new one, that kind of thing. So it’s probably a good move from Google. Yeah.

Germaine: Yeah, definitely. Talk, talking about Google, staying on topic. There’s a new feature called focus, focus, blocks that auto decline meetings for you in Google calendar.

And essentially, we’ve been playing around, I mean, I think you use Google calendar a lot better, a lot more [00:24:00] than I do, Kelsey where you book, you know, out of office. So the fact that you’re working on things, but still available, and this is just another iteration of that, which I think is really handy.

And I, I could probably use a lot more just being able to just stick to it and just say, no, I can’t make it versus a client sort of calling out of nowhere and then bending over backwards to make it work. But in reality, I should have been working on something else.

Kelsey: It’s, I haven’t looked into this too much, but when you’re explaining it, it kind of just sounds like a formalized process of putting in your own calendar entry.

So like, for me, when I use my calendar, it’s going to sound weird, but I use it as my daily plan, which is kind of what it’s meant to be, but I sort of will put in. I’ve got these four tasks to do for the day. And I’ll set two hours for this task, blah, blah, blah. It kind of just sounds like a version of that. Cause there is options, I think, to decline meetings or, you know, you can just see that you’ve got that scheduled in.

So I mean, I guess it’s [00:25:00] formalizing it and making it more accessible for people that maybe wouldn’t think through to get to that point.

Germaine: That’s right. I think it’s making more of a feature, like a standalone feature that they can sort of make a bit of a deal about. One thing, it wasn’t, it wasn’t in the notes, but I actually got a call yesterday for Ft studio, our photo studio that we use.

And we’ve got for hire, not so much at the moment with the lockdown or with the restrictions, but and it was, it sounded, so the phone rang, I picked it up and it came through to the FT studio number and. It sounded like a human. And what threw me off though, was it was an American accent one and two, it said I’m just double checking your times that you’ve got on your website.

Can you just tell me what times you’re open? I’m an automated Google like robot.

Kelsey: I think I’ve had one of those before. I think it was for future theory. It was a like months ago now that I think of it and I [00:26:00] think I might have just hang up. Cause I was like, I don’t know what this is.

Germaine: That’s what I did.

Kelsey: Yeah. Cause I think they basically check your Google My Business kind of listings, or just to double check that your website, like if you’ve got your hours listed on there so that they can list it as an answer or something in Google search, don’t quote me on that. That’s just my assumption, but yeah,

Germaine: I wonder. Do you think they’re just trying to make it easier for the average person, because obviously an email can accomplish a similar thing, but if I got it as an email, I would never respond. But saying that I thought about if I should respond for 10 seconds, then hung up on this phone, like on this call anyway,

Kelsey: Yeah I feel like I would not, well, I didn’t trust it when it called me, I, I know it was a human voice and I know that they were admitting it was automatic and everything, but you sort of.

I don’t have any context for this. I don’t know what you’re gonna use this information for. I just don’t understand, therefore see you later. So there probably needs to be more background work done before that call. [00:27:00]

Germaine: Yeah. And also should, is there any point that it sounds like human, is there any benefit for, it sounded like a human, like you’re confessing that you’re a robot unless.

Unless at some point they want to, or, or actually, maybe they’re just trying to refine their, the human voice algorithms. So down to such a, such a fine art that they can sell that as a product or a service, maybe new pixels, they can screen calls for you, and it will also start being on hold for you.

And when you read a number that gives you. Options. It will actually listen and list those out on your screen. So you don’t have to remember all the options as well.

Kelsey: That’s helpful because I’m constantly like I’ll start listening and then I’ll tune out and I’ll be like, go listen to the whole thing again.

Germaine: Well, and they’re also apparently doing a lot of this stuff on device, which sounds more secure because your information isn’t being like exchange live, but I refuse [00:28:00] to. You know, believe they Google isn’t spying on this information. Yes, it’s on device, but it’s just, you know, it’s just not traveling back and forth as much.

It’s just, they just do one big dump when they feel like it. All your information that would have to be to use, they worked through it. Okay.

Next ones. Next one’s more. Design-focused we’ve had a few sort of tech topics today. We did talk about the Intrepid logo though. This one’s for Nielsen.

Have you heard of Nielsen before?

Kelsey: The name is familiar? It makes me think of like a research group. Is that correct?

Germaine: That’s effectively what they do. They measure audience data analytics, you know, Nielsen reports on like what, what TVs channel is doing the best or. So on it, like that’s essentially what they do.

Let me share for those who are watching the video, what the new logo [00:29:00] looks like. I mean it’s night and day, I would say yes,

Kelsey: I like it. I don’t know I like about it?

Germaine: It’s a bit, it’s quite fun. So like for a data collection company.

Kelsey: Yeah. But at the same time, I think it’s nice having sort of those full colors in this full pieces of that icon.

Because you know, when you think about data and you think about reports, you’re wanting to see graphs and whatever else. And usually they have those kinds of color differentiations or like little segments and. So I feel like that kind of represents that and it’s, well, I mean, looking at further, down into all these like gradients and things, it’s definitely fun, more fun than I’d expected from the logo itself.

Germaine: I don’t know why they’re being fun though, because

Kelsey: but they’re breaking the convention though.

Germaine: Yeah, yeah, [00:30:00] yeah. Maybe, maybe that’s maybe that’s where it starts and stops in terms of like, why you would go down this road. I’m not, I’m not against it. It just seems like. They’ve also fallen for the trap of, you know, all the colors being brand colours

there’s just, no, the consistency is that there’s a lot of.

Kelsey: That does seem to be a common trend. But yeah, I do like that. I think, as you said, you don’t know why they’ve gone fun. And I feel like that’s definitely a mindset a lot of people would have the like, oh, it’s data collection. It’s gotta be boring and blend and gross.

But I think that they’re sort of saying, well, no data collection doesn’t have to be boring. It’s actually quite exciting. It has all these incredible information that you can use and especially if you’re using it for your own branding or you’re in company, applying those to real world situations, I think is quite fun and exciting.

When you get past the real depths of the data, but once you sort of get X amount of people want to hear this, it’s like, well, that’s awesome. Let’s do something with [00:31:00] it. So I do like that it’s fun.

Germaine: I, yeah, I, I sort of agree, but at the same time, they’re not really targeting consumers as a, as a brand. So differentiation again, might be the big one, but then again, it doesn’t hurt that they’ve gone with something so unique.

Looking through the, the visuals, I think I really like how they’re using the play button sort of symbolism all the way through and how they stack it, and I mean, the law, the logo as a window sort of treatment is, is a classic usage, but they’re doing it quite nicely. But again, very, very sort of consumer focused with the, with the language around doing stuff together.

Kelsey: I think on that sort of consumer versus business. You know, B2B or B2C kind of approach. I feel like a company like Nielsen, they would be working with quite large companies in most circumstances. And those large [00:32:00] companies are full of humans and consumers and people. So I feel like just because you’re going B2B, it doesn’t need to be a traditional B2B approach because I think ultimately you are still communicating with individuals who will be those decision-makers. So if you can communicate to them in a simple way that you would a regular consumer, but maybe we’re slightly higher level information that can only be good thing. I don’t think it needs to be boring and bland just cause it’s database.

Germaine: Yeah. And that’s not what I, what I was saying, I guess maybe, I dunno, maybe Nielsen should have just left a few colors for everyone else because it was like, they just take it all and we just don’t have anything to, to You know, use it on our own branding and branding when Neilsen tries to take them all.

But at the same time, it is fairly, it’s a fairly B2B business. So it’s not, they’re not going to step on many toes, I don’t think. But nonetheless, a nice approach, an interesting approach. And I think if there were a [00:33:00] smaller sort of data science company, they probably couldn’t have taken such a bold step in, in that sort of colorful direction. Like if a small company was, was to come to us, I probably wouldn’t suggest that they try and differentiate so much if they’re just trying to submit themselves as a market leader or at least, you know, a real competitor. But again, when you’re, when you’re at the top of the market, sometimes you just try something different for the, for the sake of it, or because you can afford to sort of go against the trends, whatever they may be.

The next one we have is Instagram. Letting users co-author posts and share likes.

Kelsey: Yeah. It’s it’s an interesting one that I came across the other day. I just thought it was interesting to note because it’s kind of like a new evolution of, you know, they brought out sponsored posts where you could tag the person that sponsored you or whatever it is.

So this is like a new level where it’s really, co-creating a post that [00:34:00] will appear in both users’ accounts and appear on the feed for all of the followers of both users, or I don’t know if it’s more than two, it could be more than that, even. So it’s a I dunno A new feature, I guess that really does focus on that monetization side of things and the content creator side of things.

Because again, Instagram is really pushing that side of instagram.

Germaine: Yeah, it’s called they’re calling it collabs and you can, co-author a post or a reel and as you’ve mentioned, it appears on both. If you share the same comments, thread, same views likes, and it does seem to be limited to two different users at the moment.

The heading down very much a like social media platform direction with those sorts of things. Again, though, I don’t know. I mean, maybe, maybe again, they’ve sort of plateaued in terms of what they can add. So all that, all they can do is sort of introduce [00:35:00] features like this that I don’t think people were asking for.

But especially when you could just tag someone, I just don’t see how we could use this because from the screenshots, I won’t share them because they don’t really say much, but it just looks like you create a post and you invite someone and they have to accept it. So while you’re, co-creating, you’re more just being tagged in it, but, you know, kicking it up a notch instead of just being tagged in it.

You also get to be, you know, share in the likes and the comments. Saying that when we do work for clients, for example, I think that could, that could lead to interesting outcomes from an agency, client collab kind of perspective.

Yeah. Or in the content creator, like a photographer, like, you know, you get head shots done and you’re going to post those images anyway.

And you know that the person who took the photos, the, the makeup artists, they’re all going to share them anyway. So you might as well just share it [00:36:00] together. And then. Maybe, maybe that’s it like you get to aggregate, like if a big, if you have a big following and you get someone else with a big following and a lot of engagement, you can only assume the market that doesn’t cross over there will just contribute to the overall like comments likes whatever else it is.

Kelsey: I think it’s a cool feature. Obviously not something I’d be using because I think it really is like influences. Brand’s it might also add more transparency with sort of sponsored posts because you’ll actually see here’s the two people that were working together. You can only assume there was some sort of monetary thing involved happening versus an individual just posting about a cool product.

I think it might add a bit more transparency in that space.

Germaine: Yeah. Potentially, potentially yeah, where they add. Interesting. I think, again, Instagram, just most of these platforms, I think have plateaued paths or at least hit a point where yeah. You know, it’s all good. Like, what you do is [00:37:00] good and they just go shake things up.

Even just the face Facebook sort of what, what they’ve done with the With the data with the newsfeed and I’m still not, I still haven’t forgiven them for it where they changed it from the chronological order. So maybe that’s, that’s just as simple as it is from, from one platform to another big platform.

Netflix, talk about plateaued as well. I think it’s shifting the way it ranks its most popular title.

Kelsey: Yeah. So I came across this one again the other day, and I think previously what they’ve done is that they’ve been ranking. So, you know, you have your top 10, or you have like most popular Netflix at the moment list. They were ranking them using a couple of minutes of viewing data. So if you’d watched, I think it was two minutes of a show from memory of the article. Yeah. The two minute metric, then that counted as a view. And I think Netflix is realized that that’s not a good metric to use because that’s such a small amount of time.

Like you sorta just get through the intro and you go, now I’m bored. I [00:38:00] don’t wanna watch this. So I’m not a hundred percent sure what the new metric is, but I think that they’re probably putting more onto the longer view. It’s actually rank those popular shows, which I like, because I mean, I’ve definitely found when I scroll through Netflix and I come across the popular titles and I’m like, who is actually watching new shows.

This can’t be like, it just doesn’t feel accurate. So it’d be good to see more accuracy in the feed there.

Germaine: I wonder if it’s also, they’re doing it now because they’ve gotten big enough that they can afford to put the money behind all this data aggregation as well. All these, the, the social tracking, I’ve always wondered.

And I always wonder when I see it, because how they, how they sort of collate that data or what, what data they take into consideration has a real effect on the outcome. Right. There’s talks about, I look at it from like a bestseller list, point of view as well. There’s talk of, I forget. You’re really like you have to sell a lot of books, but really not that many books, for example, [00:39:00] hit, hit a top seller list.

And now it doesn’t matter so much when it comes to Netflix, because I would say like, that’s just within the platform, you don’t really win awards within Netflix. It matters when you talk about streaming numbers, most popular shows, but not so much when it comes to Netflix. It could also, I think sort of tie in with my, with my point about the fact that they could probably improve their filtering of shows and they don’t. And I think I certainly have clicked into shows, watch it for a couple of minutes and then jumped right out’. And that is because they’re filtering, I think intentionally bad to drive you, to want to click into shows, just to check them out because it’s easier than, you know, trying to refine it down further.

Kelsey: Yeah. I can understand that thought process, but I just sort of go, that seems very counterintuitive to Netflix offering a service that they want people to enjoy. If they’re constantly being [00:40:00] led to shows that they’re not enjoying because of a crappy filtering system, that seems like that would not be beneficial for anybody.

Well, it’s not like they get money from, well, I mean, they probably do, but from viewership hours, but surely they put that into the actual successful shows.

Germaine: So.well not so much viewership hours, right? Thinking about it from a discovery point of view. They want you to discover as many shows as possible, right? And there’s a limit to how much, how much they can push those shows to you.

So if they make the searching process, not as great, what are the chances that you will stumble across something else that you’d want to watch? And watch that and watch what you are looking for in the first place. It’s sort of like on Amazon, you know, they’d want you to be able to narrow down your search to a certain degree, but then it wouldn’t hurt for them to show [00:41:00] you a few products that aren’t quite right.

That might change your mind. That’s sort of the logic unfold, because otherwise why like, from. From memory. The last time I checked, all you can do is narrow down by genre, but that’s not very narrow.

Kelsey: I think, I mean, again, being on Netflix defense side here, I think that when it comes to genres, I’ve noticed it through other streaming apps as well, like Amazon, they’re never accurate. And I feel like maybe it’s really a subjective kind of thing where it’s really hard to actually put these things into genres. And there’s like titles that might fall into multiple genres. And it’s just, I feel like it would be a hard job.

Germaine: Well, Netflix does like tag multiple genres, but I guess the, my point there is why can’t they add a filter for languages, for example, I mean, that’s pretty straight forward. Yeah. [00:42:00]

Kelsey: So do you mean you know, filtering, I think surely they’ve got like a Bollywood filter or something. Is that the kind of thing you’re after,

Germaine: but does Bollywood mean that it’s going to be in Hindi or does it mean it’s going to be in Tamel or does it mean it’s going to be an English that’s they, they could do better there, but again, they don’t want you to, because squid game, et cetera, has shown that a show doesn’t have to be in English for it to be really popular.

Kelsey: Yeah, that was sort of going to be my next thought in that you can, you know, filtering by language. Maybe it’s a bit redundant because you can watch any show and put most languages into sort of a subtitles or dubbed sort of situation. Yeah.

Germaine: Saying that Squid games, probably the squid game. And then what’s the other one.

Alice in borderland really shows I’ve watched dubbed. Recently the last time I watched a show dubbed was when I was living in Sri Lanka as a 10 year old, watching him the movies and TV shows dumped in [00:43:00] Singalese. So until recently there’s no way. And even now you, there’s no way I’m going to watch a dub show. I just can’t be bothered.

It frustrates me more than anything else. So. I get your point, but that, that actually speaks more to my point. I think that Netflix, just guys, you can watch, like, if you like it, or if it looks cool, you can watch it, you know, not quite as the original credit intended, but not far off either. Yeah.

Kelsey: Fair enough.

Germaine: Just, just a point I wanted to bring up, you know, if Netflix has. We’ll get back to us. Tell us why you do this. I just think it’s a, it’s a sneaky, sneaky marketing thing onto another TV, TV, or content provider producer, BBC reveals new logos in a, in a modern makeover. Take me through this.

Kelsey: Yeah, so I think it was a little while ago that the BBC brought out their refreshed logo, [00:44:00] which was very minor changes that spaced some squares out a little bit more nothing super major, but they brought out some new brand assets which, that’s not on brand new this one, but that’s actually from the BBC website. I don’t know when I first came across it, I was like, this is surely not real.

This, this has to be a joke, unfortunately. Yes, it is. It’s from the BBC website itself. This is their release of here’s our new things. It’s essentially just, they’ve, they’ve taken a rectangle. They’ve changed its colors and sizes and rearranged it differently for the various offerings that they have to me it just feels

Germaine: it’s a bad version of what Google does I think

Kelsey: yeah. It really feels like a school project where the teacher said, all right, here’s your shape. Try to make all of these things and make it work. You know, it’s one of those like challenges where you’re limited with what you can do. I just, I don’t understand it at a really, like, there’s some applications that work most of them though. [00:45:00] They’re not working. I don’t like it.

Germaine: Like iPlayer was a, was a bad logo. Oh, bad name, sorry, their logo. Sorry, let me reshare it. Here we go. The iPlayer logo just makes it, like, I play a sounds old school and then the logo just makes it worse.

Kelsey: It doesn’t even look like a triangle or play button

Germaine: No, and then the sounds thing I sort of get it, but at the same time, to me, it looks more like a, like a camera.

Kelsey: Oh yeah. I can see that. I feel like sounds needs to sit on a flat surface rather than coming from the center. Yes. Stick old school volume going up kind of thing. Yeah.

Germaine: And then sport don’t know where to start

Kelsey: Don’t understand

Germaine: whether, okay. I can see it, but how horribly. Balanced is that

Kelsey: like, and it’s meant to be a sun, I think, but it’s blue, like rain, so that’s confusing.

Germaine: And then I just don’t even know what this [00:46:00] is.

Kelsey: And then by the size it looks like it’s got the biggest blocks of all. So I don’t know why it’s bite-sized but anyway,

Germaine: and then in this one, is it just me or is, is the first B square sitting a bit, a little bit higher than the, the other two square. I might just be an optical illusion.

Kelsey: I think it might be an obstacle illusion, but it’s, now that you’ve pointed it out, I can say it. It might just be at the scale though, because I’m sure that it’s, it’s definitely aligned. There’s no way they’d let it go out without it being aligned.

Germaine: You’d be surprised.

Kelsey: I mean, they’ve released these assets, which is just crazy.

Germaine: Yeah. It’s not getting great feedback either. Is it not? Not surprisingly. Yeah.

Kelsey: No, it’s, it’s really kind of, it’s disappointing. I would say, I feel like they could have done so much more. They didn’t mess up their BBC logo refresh when they did it. They just simplified it and, you know, had a whole thing about it, which was probably unnecessary.

But I feel like they’ve just missed the mark with, [00:47:00] with this one.

Germaine: Yeah. They really have, and let’s finish off with a really, really. Kind of big thing, which is that Facebook is planning to rebrand the company with a new name. Now, I think it’s big in that Facebook, the company is changing its name, but I also think it’s small in that it’s Facebook, the company not faced with the platform, but again maybe a sign that they’re gonna use their money to do more than just.

What they’re doing at the moment. I think that’s probably a fair goal. Mark Zuckerberg, I think wants to, you know, he, they, they own they own augmented reality companies. They own all sorts of companies. So maybe, maybe that’s their goal, but still big news. One of what they would change it to, we saw Google restructure the company to be called alphabet.

What do you, what do you think.

Kelsey: I honestly, I have no idea. It’s, it’s the classic case of you [00:48:00] started off with Facebook as the one products, and now they’ve built to this absolute giant thing, obviously. And you’ve been riding on the Facebook name for so long, and I understand why they would want to now change it so that they can, you know, expand further and do all of that sort of stuff.

But it’s also like, would you. Would you lose a lot of I don’t know, clout or whatever, because you’re not having that Facebook name anymore or will it be beneficial? I don’t know. I don’t know what they would rename to either. That’ll be interesting to see.

Germaine: We haven’t been calling alphabet alphabet. At all at all, I still call them Google.

So it would just, yeah. Be, be a nothing sort of thing. But it’s just reminded me talking about Google. I’m little bit talking about the new pixel a little bit earlier. Something I wanted to bring up is this changing track changing sort of topics a little bit was Snapchat, actually, they announced that Snapchat’s going to be, or snap is going to be integrated into Google pixel phones.

So you can get in snap really quickly. And [00:49:00] we’ve talked about this, if not in an episode, at least around the office about like I thought, you know, they cease to exist already. I don’t see that the value proposition, but Damiane was mentioning that they can. Identified dog breeds, I think on the app that sort of getting a bit funky with that sort of thing.

So, yeah, I just wanted to make a note that maybe, maybe snap the company’s real value proposition is that they’re going to get really good with images and recognition and, and, and go to go down that road. Yeah,

Kelsey: maybe it’ll be less social and more of an actual phone application kind of thing, something that’s practical and useful.

Maybe that’s where they’re going.

Germaine: Aligning themselves closely with like providers like Google as well and giving them that opportunity, maybe they’ll just get bought out by Google in the future. If they’re, if the algorithms get good enough, because we’re definitely going down that road, right. Where you want to be able to take a photo and we’ve talked about it with Pinterest, we’re seeing it with a [00:50:00] lot of other companies is just take a photo, able to understand what’s within that photo and do something with it.

So Yeah. Just wanted to bring that up. And on that note, I think that’s, that’s about it for this week’s episode. Is there anything we’ve missed?

Kelsey: No, I think that’s everything. all discussed.

Germaine: Awesome. All right. Well thank you for listening everyone. Thanks for having this conversation with me, Kelsey, and we’ll catch you all next week.

Yep.

Catch you all next week. See

1. Bye .