Category: TechnologyCategory: Technology

About a week after hosting Break Up 💔 With Social Media Day, and deleting the YouTube and Substack apps from my phone, I reinstalled YouTube.

It was a moment of weakness, and there I was, flipping through YouTube shorts, consuming the digital cotton candy. Twenty minutes later I deleted it again. “Progress, not perfection,” as the AA saying goes.

Lately my phone is sits plugged in while I take walks or make coffee. I read a book while eating lunch instead of watching videos. I use the phone app to talk to people, but use my computer to reply to messages, or watch a movie, or write a post like this one you’re reading.

I haven’t written many (any?!) posts about my personal screen time or phone habits, but I figured this might be a good time since I don’t want to come off like I’m perfect, or beyond temptation. I’m also inspired by Manuel Moreale’s posts about reducing screen time.

We’re all just trying to figure this out, and I fully believe it’s better when we do that together.

From Lincoln Michel’s “Surf’s Up in Slop City,”

If the old institutions are crumbling, that is also the perfect time to build new ones. I’m not saying this is easy. But, what choice do we have?

This is response to the Washington Post gutting their book coverage.

Building our own networks and platforms to promote books, or music, or art is hard, as mentioned above, but who else is gonna do it? And if we don’t, the vacuum will be filled by the next venture back techbro operation, then we’re right back to where we started.

Start a website around something you love. A blog. Buy a domain name (affiliate link). Reach out to my buddy Tom to set up a WordPress site.

Write about the things you love in the way only you can. Don’t worry about getting traffic yet. Update the site every day. Every week. Month after month.

When people discover you, it’ll feel like finding a magical bookstore down a moss-covered alley with string lights, the opposite of a flashy ‘content hub.’

I first saw Sleevenote on Substack. It’s a new music player with no streaming option, playing only music files you’ve bought and own. From their website:

The time has come to get serious about supporting music makers and valuing the music you love. Audition stuff on your phone and what you LOVE, you buy and put it on your Sleevenote.

I’ve been emailing with CEO Tom Kell a bit, and we’ve definitely hit upon the irony of the statement “nobody buys music,” and that everyone just does streaming now. Says Tom:

The statement “nobody buys music” is not true with the relatively healthy vinyl resurgence. The thing is people aren’t buying things that they don’t need to buy, and when buying vinyl (and to a lesser degree merch), music fans are often compelled by the motivation that they are “supporting the artist” with these purchases, and getting some form of physical and tactile experience (for however fleeting) in response. When subscription-based music access came along it cut the legs off the need to buy digital music, for a like-for-like experience – music on your phone. With Sleevenote, all our efforts are going in to making digital music feel more special, and now our ethical responsibility is, if we’re helping make it feel more special, it should now be worth more, and we do everything we can to put friction in the way to achieve that. In the topsy-turvy digital world, people pay for the removal of friction, ads are added so an ad-free version seems valuable.

(more…)

I’ve been saying we should be get back to blogging and updating our websites for awhile now. Here’s some feedback from a recent Email Guidance client who added a blog to their site:

“Literally within one week (of adding the blog) this led to an invitation to give a talk (you know the old-fashioned way, you introduce yourself to someone cool, they look you up, find your website and boom).”

If someone needs an account to see your work, it’s not really public, so make sure your best work is available for everyone to see on the world wide web.

In a recent Email Guidance session, someone told me about spending too much time on social media promoting their podcast.

Promoting our work on social media leads to likes and replying to comments and responding to DMs.

Thus, our marketing efforts on social media lead to more work on social media; we keep feeding the machine, and the machine gives you more busy work.

Eventually our work suffers because we’re also cos-playing as a social media manager.

Instagram and Facebook love all the time that we devote to promoting our work, all while we’re spending less time doing the work. We’re on their platforms engaging and interacting in the hopes of getting more likes, views, impressions. Pull the lever, win a prize!

But the prize we’re looking for rarely comes. We’re hoping for the click, which could lead to the subscribe. We engage, we like, we spend another 20 minutes interacting, hoping for the elusive click.

Let’s stop hoping and realize the truth: RSS exists.

Podcast players pull in new episodes via an RSS feed, and “feed readers” like NetNewsWire (my favorite) let us subscribe to blogs (even Substack newsletters and YouTube videos).

So when we publish a new piece, people get it without interference from algorithms, spam folders, or promotions tabs.

And if we devote time to making great work instead of feeding social media platforms, it would seem that our work could grow by delivering it directly to the people who care.

More on RSS:
“In defense of RSS” by Seth Godin

“The ancient technology of the RSS feed” by TK (YouTube short)