Social Media

Yup. I’m done with Facebook. However, it’s tough to delete your account. Read the message above. I exited out of this screen, suspended my account instead, but then went back 15 minutes later and actually deleted it. Well – I started the deletion process. I don’t know what day I’m on, but I think I’m close to 14 days. So, I’m still “deleting” apparently. The only inconvenience I’ve noticed so far are all the sites where I used Facebook as the sign-on authenticator (rather than setting up a separate email/password combo.) I think I’m through most of that – at least the sites I use on a regular basis. For the first few days, I accidentally ended up on the Facebook login screen which was pleasantly filled out with my login beckoning me to log back in. I resisted the siren song of restarting my Facebook account before the 14 days was up. ...

A few weeks ago I read Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now . It helped consolidate some thinking on my part and I sent a few copies out to friends who I knew would have thoughtful and interesting responses. One that came back is very worth reading as it has a healthy critique as well as some personal reflections. The note from my friend after reading Lanier’s book follows. ...

Yesterday’s post Relentlessly Turning Input Knobs To 0 generated a bunch of interesting private comments. It also generated a few public ones, including the link to the article What is the problem with social media? by Jordan Greenhall which was extraordinary. Jordan asserts that the problem with social media can be broken down into four foundation problems. Supernormal stimuli; Replacing strong link community relationships with weak link affinity relationships; Training people on complicated rather than complex environments; and The asymmetry of Human / AI relationships He then has an essay on each one. The concept of supernormal stimuli is straightforward and well understood already, yet Jordan has a nice set of analogies to explain it. Tristan Harris and his team at the Center for Humane Technology have gone deep on this one – both problems and solutions. ...

I’ve got a lot on my plate. I always do. Presumably, I like it this way because I’d change things if I didn’t. And yes, that’s continuous fodder for conversations with my therapist and with Amy. I have always tried to ignore the macro, especially short-term dynamics, in the context of my work. I collect a lot of data and like to be well informed. I get this data from lots of different inputs. I regularly play around with the volume on the inputs as well as try different inputs. ...

Jeff Clavier is hanging out with Amy and me in Paris for a few days. We had an incredible dinner last night at L’Arpege – we’d been there once before with another friend (Ed Roberto) about five years ago and it was even better than we remembered it to be. We got home five hours after we started dinner which included an epic cheese course and two dessert courses. ...

Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book The Thank You Economy came out today. Gary sent me an uncorrected manuscript a few weeks ago and I read it the night I got it. It’s dynamite and I highly recommend it for anyone who is doing anything in business today. I’m a huge Gary V fan. I can’t remember where I met him, but it was at a small dinner about five years ago at some event where I also met Tim Ferris for the first time. When I look back on the evolution of the gang in the room (I think Sacca was there and I’m now digging for some of the other attendees, but Gary fed me so much wine that my memory is now hazy) it’s pretty cool to see what everyone has accomplished. ...