THIS WEEK IN THE DIGITAL MARKETING WORLD
- Big Tech Hearings Reports
- Google Discontinues the DayDream VR Headset
- The Social Dilemma on Netflix (documentary)
- What Facebook did to American Democracy?
- The Power of a Link
- A Story About Google From 1998
- A List Of Startups That Just Got Funded
- Fuzzy and Semantic Caption-based Searching for Youtube Video
- GPT-2 Writing Comedy Sitcom?
- TikTok competitor Triller Found Allegedly Inflating its User Numbers
- Microsoft Bing: The Search Engine That Gives Back
- App Store: 10 Principles to Promote Choice, Fairness & innovation
- Developing For The Semantic Web
- Google Is Testing A New User Interface
- Google is Broken (again)
- Outbound Links: Do They Affect SEO?
Big Tech Hearings Reports
You can download the whole .pdf here: Investigation of Competition In Digital Markets.
The subcommittee on anti-trust commercial and administrative law
of the committee, the Big Tech Hearings handed out the report, and it does not smell good. Will they take away Instagram from Facebook? Will they take away chrome from google? Will they make apple and amazon stop spying on competition and clients the way they are?
451 pages you need to read, or at least I will read them. I went through once, and I need to go back and take some notes and make a special edition video about this because it’s huge. It’s the biggest news right now.
Google Discontinues the DayDream VR Headset
On Forbes: Google Discontinues The Daydream VR Headset
Virtual reality or Augmented reality is where it’s at. It might be a little bit years ahead for all of us, the general public, but this news is a big move because the headset you put in your smartphone has minimal possibilities, it’s not the way to go. So they killed it, and they are finding new ways to help us enjoy the wonders of virtual reality. What’s next? I don’t know, but I’m eager to see what comes next in VR & AR.
The Social Dilemma on Netflix (documentary)
What ‘The Social Dilemma’ Gets Wrong
The documentary got a lot of positive critics especially because it brought in to the conversation some former employees of all these technology companies that we are scared of. I mean, the problem of social media, the impact of social media in our lives is a big debate it
might be the biggest debate of this century.
I went through all the arguments of the Netflix documentary and the responses from Facebook:
- Addiction: Facebook builds its product to create value not to be addictive
- You are the product: Facebook is funded by advertising so it remains free for people
- Algorithms: Facebook’s algorithm is not “mad”. It keeps the platform relevant and useful
- Data: Facebook has made improvements across the company to protect people’s privacy
- Polarization: we take steps to reduce content that could drive polarization
- Elections: Facebook has made investment to predict the integrity of elections
- Misinformation: we fight fake news misinformation and harmful content using a global network of facts checking partners thank you facebook for responding.
My point of view, in my opinion, be careful with former employees. You don’t know the context, you don’t know if that employee left the company in good terms or is that some kind of revenge? Is that real? Well, go investigate. Take that person’s name and look up the story.
And if you don’t find a story, be even more careful.
I don’t disagree with everything that facebook claims but there’s a middle ground here there’s definitely some flaws in social media but human beings make what it is. It amplifies it, accelerates human behaviors but humans do that to themselves this is just a tool like anything in life. If you abuse it, if you fall too much into it, it can be devastating and it can destroy your life like anything else.
You go too much, too hardcore, not good. Find balance.
What Facebook did to American Democracy?
On TheAtlantic: What Facebook Did to American Democracy & why it was so hard to see it coming?
Another good read. I think that the main point is that it was impossible to see it coming because it didn’t exist before. There is definitely, most definitely, some corrections made after what happened in 2016’s election so we’ll see. The elections are coming up we’ll see what happens.
Let’s meet up after the elections to debrief.
The Power of a Link
I love this title. Thank you Bryan Braun to write this piece about The Power of a Link. It’s not just a backlink, it’s not just a link that carries some page rank from one page over to the next. A link is way more powerful. It could be just a backlink for SEO to rank higher on a keyword but a real link is a reward. A real link is a bond. A real link is a connection. Whatever you do with a link don’t underestimate the power of a link whatever is the ambition: just pagerank or building a real connection with somebody else. It’s all up to you but this is where it’s still at in 2020 and the years to come for sure.
A Story About Google From 1998
Jon Erlichman is sharing a cool video about Larry Page & Sergey Brin, the founders of Google in 1998. They were 25 years old and are telling the story of how they started Google.
It’s funny seeing them so young and the low tech back in 1998.
It’s only one minute long so if you know about Google, you already know all the stuff they say in the video but still cool video. Thank you for sharing Jon.
A List Of Startups That Just Got Funded
On FundedVentures: The List of Startups That Just Got Funded
If you want to look for clients and how you can build connections, well, look a list of startups that just got funded.
What better prospecting list for digital marketing and SEO in particular than this list? This is a great gift I give to you because you
should most definitely prospect around this startups that just got money and I guarantee you they are not taking SEO in consideration
and if they are, they are not doing it well. 100% guaranteed.
Fuzzy and Semantic Caption-based Searching for Youtube Video
On Github, RameshAditya, shared a little bit if code, Scoper that is allowing search in the caption of a youtube video. Not in the video but in the caption and you canfind out when the keywords you selected pop up in the video. And it’s free so thank you for sharing.
GPT-2 Writing Comedy Sitcom?
Seen on DataSkeptic: GPT-2 Writes Seinfeld.
GPT-2 is writing comedy sitcom when GPT-3 from Open AI is all the buzz right now and will be in beta soon. It will be expensive when it comes out while GPT-2 is free, it’s on github.
GPT-3 is not a script that can write exactly like a human. It’s not yet. Maybe one day it will occur but it’s not right now, it won’t happen with GPT-3. It’s not either with GPT-2 but still very impressive. Go play with it, it’s fun.
TikTok competitor Triller Found Allegedly Inflating its User Numbers
On TheVerge: TikTok competitor Triller found allegedly inflating its user numbers.
The company said it had 13 million monthly active users last october, but former employees said different.
I didn’t report on TikTok recently because it’s just all like games about they’re gonna shut it down now they’re gonna buy it out.
I’m waiting for some real news to hit to report on TikTok the way it should but Triller is claiming 13 million monthly active users and 60
million app downloads well in fact apparently it has only 2 million monthly active users on iOS and around 4 184 000 monthly users on Android. What do you think? Triller or not Triller?
I haven’t downloaded the app so far and I just opened the TikTok account for SEOConspiracy so don’t jump in too early unless you want to be an early adopter and an influencer on the platform.
Wait a year and a half or two years, don’t jump in too late but don’t jump into early don’t invest time or money in everything because there’s so much stuff.
Microsoft Bing: The Search Engine That Gives Back
Seen on the official Bing Blog: Microsoft Bing: the search engine that gives back
With Give With Bing. It’s a good thing. They help out non-profit.
Qwant.com the french search engine that I used to support (I don’t support them anymore) and in fact they closed down Qwant Causes which is the equivalent of Give With Bing and I don’t know what they’re doing at Qwant but what I know is they’re doing the right thing at Bing and doing the right thing is always the right thing.
App Store: 10 Principles to Promote Choice, Fairness & innovation
On Blog.Microsoft.com: 10 app store principles to promote choice, fairness and innovation.
I love it the idea if the top 10 list. That’s most definitely head-butting Apple straight up.
Trying to do the opposite of what Apple is doing… Well, I got news for you Microsoft: it’s not by beating down on your competition that you will build something relevant. Especially something as complicated as an App store.
It’s not the right tactic, it’s not the right move you.
You should have these kind of values behind your project but what else? Don’t base your strength on negativity like this.
Developing For The Semantic Web
On SmashingMagazine: Developing For The Semantic Web
They wanted to explain that the semantic web is not semantic SEO. Semantic web is part of semantic SEO. We do use structured data. The goal here is to make the web understandable by the algorithms that don’t understand what they read. They are dumb, they are not like human beings, even google and especially Google. The brain of Google is like a worm or a dinosaur, that level.
So thank you smashing magazine for explaining in very clear terms what the semantic web is all about.
Google Is Testing A New User Interface
Yes they are and they are not only testing this, they are testing all over the place. And you will be happy because you will have a lot to report on all those changes google are making especially the integration between search ads and voice.
Google is Broken (again)
On the official Search Liaison Twitter account run by Danny Sullivan, a former SEO colleague.
It’s been a tough year for Google.They have had many many many technical issues. I told you my theory and especially this year because there is a big shift at the head of Google. There’s a new cowboy in town, a new boss.
He is the head of Search, Ads and Voice. And of course: Act Fast, Break Things. That’s what he’s doing. That’s the way it should be done. It sucks when you are taken into this bermuda triangle, where your site is exploded on google serp. It will work out, just be a little patient. The new boss and his crew will figure it out. If there is one guy who can save Google, it’s Prabhakar Raghavan, the new boss.
Outbound Links: Do They Affect SEO?
On SEMRush Blog: Outbound Links: Do They Affect SEO?
I didn’t need a blog post on SEMrush or the tweet that they are displaying from Danny Sullivan to be convinced that outbound links are a good thing.
If you don’t believe that linking others without the rel=nofollow, without the rel=sponsored or rel=ugc, don’t use them. Make real
links. Make outbound links like you mean them. Like you’re part of the web. Like you understand how Google algorithms works and how you are relevant because if you don’t build outbound links, you cut out yourself from the entire spirit of the web. From how Google algorithms work and it’s even life in general. The power of the link. You want them? Give them. Give them to receive.
That’s it for the news of this week 41 of 2020. Please let me know your opinion about all this!
Have a great week!
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