Disaster Girl Cashes In

Beyond Social Media - Disaster Girl - Episode 348

BL and David discuss Disaster Girl’s big payday; Nerf’s new chief TikTok officer; Clubhouse’s NFL draft partnership; Clubmarket’s Clubhouse influencer exchange; digital product placement; Spotify’s paid podcast subscriptions; Flipboard flips to sponsored newsletters; vaccination public service tweets; Punch Pizza’s recruiting marketing email; a clever social media and visual communication tactic; Facebook’s failure; slander for profit; Basecamp’s ban; Apple’s privacy sanctimony exposed;…and much, much more.

Read More

Siri, Do I Have Coronavirus?

Beyond Social Media - Coronavirus Crisis - Episode 300

Episode 300: Co-hosts B.L. Ochman and David Erickson discussed the coronavirus crisis, including: The contrast in leadership between governors Andrew Cuomo and Tim Walz and Trump; Siri’s response to Do I Have The Coronavirus?; Smart thermometers that may be able to identify local outbreaks; Covid 19 pandemic maps; Twitter helping brands communicate during the crisis; a New York-based Chinese immigrant stepping up to manufacture personal protective equipment for health care workers; the responsibility of the media in broadcasting the White House coronavirus “briefings” live; Moe Williams’ daily doodles; Willie’s American Guitars offer two-minute guitar lessons on Facebook; Amazon limits non-essential shipments; the ENKI Brewing Company taproom goes curbside; coronavirus resources and free entertainment; pandemic gallows humor; Google’s California-only Covid 19 triage website; the two faces of Fox News; the Army’s social media manager gets canned; idiots that will cost lives; TV commercials that have not aged well in the coronavirus era; live webcams broadcasting deserted public spaces; the Department Of Justice wanting to suspend costitutional rights; …and much, much more.

Read More

Alexa’s Brand Voices

Beyond Social Media - Alexa Brand Voices - Episode 296

Episode 296: BL and David discuss Google’s Project Witness that uses virtual reality to generate empathy for jailed children; Amazon’s program to create actual brand voices to play on its Echo smart speaker; ASCII art of refugee programmers; tech titans’ efforts to combat coronavirus misinformation; augmented reality Google Maps; Facebook’s bug bounty program; Chrome’s website security deadline; reviews in Google Search Console; a glaring user experience fail in Adobe Acrobat; Target’s Minnesota Badgers miscue; …and much, much more..

Read More