Overview: Content Creation & Marketing

"a markdown blog service using atproto... Your article is immediately delivered to all the federated atproto services" - basically the intersection of Bluesky & Obsidian, and a key building block for myhub.Basically a platform for posting blogs onto, using your Bluesky account: your blog is simply https://whtwnd.com/{Bluesky handle o…

Great piece on Substack, who "want to own your content and voice, too. You may not think you care about that today, but you will when you see what they want to do with it.... every single new feature ... is proprietary and locks you into their network... There is no such thing as "my Substack", there is only your writing, and a for…

"In physics... the Observer Effect. Electrons, photons ... behave differently when under our gaze... Social media has made us both the observed and the observers, trapped in a relentless cycle of performing and watching... the line between genuine human expression and algorithm-driven self-parody has dissolved into a soup of memes, virtue vs…

"The new social layer allows us to meet the needs of those who want a completely open “town square” and those who prioritize carefully managed and curated experiences... Private companies cannot be public squares, but protocols can be".While Nostr or Farcaster can be "censorship-resistant because ... no one can send them deletion re…

According to Mark Zuckerberg, "Consumers no longer control their social-media feeds. Meta’s algorithm... is showing users “a lot of stuff” not posted by people they had connected with... future feeds [will] show you “content that’s generated by an A.I. system.”" Fortunately, "Our legal system is starting to recognize this shift and …

"I rarely work for the same client for more than a year or two - generally enough to help them figure out their strategy, pilot and demonstrate it, and set up the team to mainstream it. But I make an exception for the Joint Research Centre"A few slides, repurposed for LinkedIn, setting out "some of the key innovations underpinning t…

As AI drives a flood of new content, "algorithms to help people sort through information must evolve rapidly" - ie, we need AI to solve AI-created problems.Today's algorithms belong to for-profit platforms, mainly social media, and lack transparency: while you can influence it through who you follow, "your ability to truly cust…

“About one in four people who began the experiment believing a conspiracy theory came out the other end without that belief... challenges conventional wisdom that evidence and arguments rarely help to change believers’ minds... [as they're] adopting such beliefs to meet various needs – such as a desire for control."The researchers develo…

Good piece on how "the free speech warriors... [behind] Truth Social and the ... decay of Twitter ... the “Festung” cities of unrestricted expression... still not happy... shouting into an echo chamber isn’t nearly as satisfying as they thought it would be... What they’re really after ... is our attention... The thrill of provocation quickly…

A podcast with Charles Broskoski. founder of Arena, which "boasts a healthy, creative community and stable finances while rejecting many of the hallmarks of popular social media".

Applying Dawkins' selfish gene perspective to the evolution of AI

The Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure's manifesto sets out the three legs upon which an open public sphere must rest.

Michael Foster's "top ten unfinished building blocks" are:trust & safety: "heart of an ethical social web... [currently] delegated to a small group of volunteers... [but] green shoots emerging"spam filters: "there are some amazing tools now... Pixelfed has shown what can be done"safe spaces / bridging & f…

"A deep dive into Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone", over 20 years later, by "former New_ Public Research Fellow Serena Chao".Social capital, according to Putnam, "is the “connections among individuals — social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them”... [making] a strong case for a…

Anuj Ahooja asks, on Threads' first birthday, the "existential question... Why does Threads exist? ... an alternative to Elon Musk's X. But ... a platform can't exist to be "an alternative." It should be able to stand alone with its unique purpose and be built to incentivize users to follow that purpose... [unfortunat…

"Channels enable any user to create a curated feed with a mix of post type, hashtags, lists, filters and mutes. Customised timelines which anyone can post to via their app or web UI, or by using a dedicated hashtag or emoji."This exists already outside the Fediverse: "The Farcaster app, Warpcast, has a fully formed and fast growing …

"easily transforming research into visually stunning, comprehensive content. Whether you're crafting in-depth articles, detailed reports, or informative guides... Search any topic, and instantly receive a well-structured, beautifully formatted article. Publish ... and share ... with a single click."The user can customise tone, stru…

Micro.blog ... combines blog hosting with a social media-style timeline and community" - yet another blogging platform, but interesting features and pricing for myhub:paid hosting from $5-15 / m, can use own domain, custom themes, css from short to full posts, automated photo gallery, podcast and videosbookmarking: an archive of web page book…

One of the snippets from a ZNLive interview I did in December 2023: "emerging social media platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky face a humorous yet real challenge - they're like "Twitter, but without your friends."With the European launch of Threads, the question arises: Can it offer a unique appeal to draw users? Will [they]...…

One of my favourite writers/thinkers on all things digital future is "finally, definitely, fully leaving X, and probably all social media..."

To avoid "robotic, cliche AI text that sounds fake" and get "AI-generated content to emulate your unique writing style", you have to feed the AI a sample of your writing. A good prompt:"Based on the tone and writing style in the seed text, create a style guide for a blog or publication that captures the essence of the seed…

Staying aware of the opportunities as they arise is a key element to being a commercially successful thought leader.

ChatGPT can be "a highly capable writing partner that never sleeps ... [if you] treat it like an editor, a proofreader, and a disgruntled reader... make it an enemy of my text and let it attack it as vigorously as possible."personal devil's advocate: ask it "to list the top three arguments that someone opposed to my thinking wo…

WritingGPT is an AutoGPT that "simulates an entire writing team, crafting high-quality blog posts [with] only a prompt and a target keyword... articles that provide genuine insights — and that rank on Google.""AutoGPTs are AIs talking to AIs... the output of one AI system as the input for another... chain together multiple AIs, enha…

A LangChain agent that:Asks what you are selling (powered by GPT-4)Conducts research on your prospect (via Google)Crafts an email (using GPT-4)Sends it (via Zapier)Using 42 lines of code.

"The project: to market the launch a new educational game... in 30 minutes it: did market research, created a positioning document, wrote an email campaign, created a website, created a logo and “hero shot” graphic, made a social media campaign for multiple platforms, and scripted and created a video".Key prompts, first with Bing, as it&…

A repost of one of my experiments with the massive.wiki team, where we "developed an approach ... which simultaneously enriches blogging by adding some of the best aspects of wikis, and allows wikis to better host something resembling blogs."

Interesting, illuminating (but contested) metaphor for thinking about LLMs from one of my favourite authors, Ted Chiang:"Think of ChatGPT as a blurry jpeg of all the text on the Web. It retains much of the information... but, if you’re looking for an exact sequence of bits, you won’t find it; all you will ever get is an approximation... nonse…

The second in my 1/1/2023 bundle of 5 posts exploring collective intelligence looks at the role of decentralised social networks: "A personalised, decentralised Social Knowledge Graph for each user multiplies the knowledge available to them via a trusted network of Followers and Friends, and creating collaborative possibilities more akin to w…

Starts with articulating I've been meaning to write for many years about the oncoming AI-driven content flood: "The dark forest theory of the web: ... life-like but life-less state of being online... overrun with bots, advertisers, trolls, data scrapers, clickbait... algorithmically manipulated junk... eerily devoid of human life ... liv…