Categories: Articles

Can Twitter Change? Should It?

Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed:

Have you declared voicemail bankruptcy? I have… back in 2007! I am terrible at leaving and responding to voicemails at my office. What’s the solution? I tell people to email or text me in my greeting. Much more efficient, right? Well, what about if we just got rid of voicemail all together? Think that’s crazy? JPMorgan Chase (a major bank… and traditional one) is doing away with voicemails. I say, good riddance. That… and the fax machines too!
Are we at the end of Twitter? Are people leaving/not using it and simply unifying everything at Facebook? The folks at Twitter would disagree.. or would they? Chris Sacca, one of their biggest investors, says that Twitter needs to be fixed. He wrote an 8000+ word blog post about everything that’s wrong and how to fix it. There’s a lot of good insight in there (Sacca is an investor in some of the best businesses out there – Uber, Kickstarter, Medium, Slack, Facebook, Instagram and more), but – even more interesting – is also how social media enables people to really say what they’re feeling, even about the things that they’re heavily vested in.
Would you pay for Facebook? I’m not sure that I would. There are some people that would pay to have a Facebook that wasn’t using/selling their personal data. Is this a business model? Would people pay for this? Are people smart enough to know what their data means (and what it’s worth). Is Mark Zuckerberg leaving money on the table by not selling this option to users? This was the topic of a fascinating op-ed piece in The New York Times. There’s a saying: “if you can’t see the product, you’re the product.” So, how many people know that on Facebook, they are the product?
App of the week: Grammarly for Google Chrome.

Listen here…

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.