Does Social Media Make Us Lonelier?

Here's a story that starts with a guy who didn't talk for 17 years. I don't know if I'll understand why he did that but apparently he lasted for 17 years. Now he's an established author and speaker.

This story look at how social media makes us lonelier. Based on studies from the US it does make us lonelier. With the Philippines being one of the biggest users of social media I wonder how true it is for us Filipinos. I feel it's not as bad though because as a culture we really have closer relationships with family and friends. Social media probably helped expand the number of close friends you have. The case can be made though that maybe Facebook may have created small 'secret' rifts among friend where you secretly despise a friend because of political affiliations, humble brag posts or just irritatingly active on the platform. I've unfollowed and even unfriended a bunch of them.

Maybe at the onset everybody was trying to get as many friends as they wanted. But as we grew with the platform we probably just realized that we just don't need that many. Actually, I think we've created smaller cliques with the messaging apps. I have a small basketball clique that I enjoy where for some reason we never invited more to it. Probably because adding people will just ruin the dynamic we enjoy in that group. That group can beat out the starters with NBA insights anytime.

Happy Valentines! I hope everyone has real connections!

Will Facebook Disapear?

I seem to be seeing a lot of articles and press out about trouble in Facebook. The video below asks "What will replace Facebook?". I see a feature on CNN about power struggles and internal politicking happening in Facebook. The privacy issues and breach in user data were the big problems of the platform last year. Some have went of the 'grid' (I actually just know of one person) or maybe they just limited their use. It's hard for me to imagine 2 billion users getting of a platform and Facebook simply going away. Social networks going away already happened though with Friendster and  MySpace (let's include Multiply as well, if people still remember that). Based on articles I went through the issues of these networks were they couldn't innovate fast enough. All these network started around 2003 - 2005 and only Facebook came out and is overly dominant.

My biggest issue personally with Facebook is that it was and is still being used by those with power to influence people. In the Philippines and in the US, digital marketers found out that you need only a noisy few and some fake news to spread and you can win elections. Facebook has to own up to this and remedy the situation. Maybe having a free for all platform still makes the strong stronger. People should start being more aware of this and do their own fact checking before spreading content. Unfortunately it might be to much to ask of people.

What happened to Friendster?
What happened to MySpace?

Are you buying the brand or the product?

Below is an interesting video on why Apple isn't making it big in India and China. Simply put Apple products are just too expensive for these markets. If the consumers probably has the capacity to buy maybe thing would be different.

Apple certainly led the market in innovation with superior technology, user interface and user experience. This created the fanboys of Apple which to this day are diehards for the brand. Unfortunately technology and other brands have caught up. While I think Apple still has superior tech, it's not that much and Android may be better in some aspects. For markets that look for the value of the product over brand names Apple will have a hard time to compete. People buy brands for the image and not the function, whereas the Indian and China market seems to buy the functions over the brand.

Android simply covers the whole gamut of consumers, people who buy the product and people who value the brand. Xiaomi and Samsung covers the market with superior low end to high-end phones with superior quality across the market. Xiaomi has positioned itself as an innovative high quality value for money brand. They are known as the "Apple of China" minus the high cost of products.

Toyota or Lexus? Same products different brands.

Adding from a recent article: Apple is thinking of adjusting its international pricing strategy. Click to see article.

Lost Opportunities: Snapchat

Snapchat was one of the "unicorn" apps that startup communities love. These are one the that grows its user base rapidly and gets a lot of influencers to use it. It didn't get much traction locally but as all hip apps are local internet celebrities tried to jump into it. For some reason, Filipinos really didn't get into it. This is probably due as the video says, it was quite complicated to use. You have to know the username in order to follow that person - this was one of the reason I found it hard to use it. Instagram simply had a better user experience for me.

The feature that drew people in to Snapchat was that your photo disappeared after a few hours. Facebook tried to buy Snapchat but it was declined. Instead Facebook just copied all the features of Snapchat to Instagram which probably lead to its downfall. While it tried to adapt some of the changes they did failed. In the world of social media platforms it seems the big ones can simply kill the competition.

Know more about Snapchat lingo here.

Check out this video by Tech Insider about Snapchat

Biohacking, will this be the key to longevity?

I'm trying to be active with this blog once again and I'll do it via "baby steps" by posting interesting videos I find mostly in YouTube. There's a lot of trash there used for propaganda so I'll try to get stuff that I find interesting from reliable sources - this one from BBC.