Web development trends 2020

Here are some web trends for 2020:

Responsive web design in 2020 should be a given because every serious project that you create should look good and be completely usable on all devices. But there’s no need to over-complicate things.

Web Development in 2020: What Coding Tools You Should Learn article gives an overview of recommendations what you learn to become a web developer in 2020.

You might have seen Web 3.0 on some slides. What is the definition of web 3 we are talking about here?
There seems to be many different to choose from… Some claim that you need to blockchain the cloud IOT otherwise you’ll just get a stack overflow in the mainframe but I don’t agree on that.

Information on the web address bar will be reduced on some web browsers. With the release of Chrome 79, Google completes its goal of erasing www from the browser by no longer allowing Chrome users to automatically show the www trivial subdomain in the address bar.

You still should target to build quality web site and avoid the signs of a low-quality web site. Get good inspiration for your web site design.

Still a clear and logical structure is the first thing that needs to be turned over in mind before the work on the website gears up. The website structure for search robots is its internal links. The more links go to a page, the higher its priority within the website, and the more times the search engine crawls it.

You should upgrade your web site, but you need to do it sensibly and well. Remember that a site upgrade can ruin your search engine visibility if you do it badly. The biggest risk to your site getting free search engine visibility is site redesign. Bad technology selection can ruin the visibility of a new site months before launch. Many new sites built on JavaScript application frameworks do not benefit in any way from the new technologies. Before you go into this bandwagon, you should think critically about whether your site will benefit from the dynamic capabilities of these technologies more than they can damage your search engine visibility. Well built redirects can help you keep the most outbound links after site changes.

If you go to the JavaScript framework route on your web site, keep in mind that there are many to choose, and you need to choose carefully to find one that fits for your needs and is actively developed also in the future.
JavaScript survey: Devs love a bit of React, but Angular and Cordova declining. And you’re not alone… a chunk of pros also feel JS is ‘overly complex’

Keep in mind the recent changes on the video players and Google analytics. And for animated content keep in mind that GIF animations exists still as a potential tool to use.

Keep in mind the the security. There is a skill gap in security for many. I’m not going to say anything that anyone who runs a public-facing web server doesn’t already know: the majority of these automated blind requests are for WordPress directories and files. PHP exploits are a distant second. And there are many other things that are automatically attacked. Test your site with security scanners.
APIs now account for 40% of the attack surface for all web-enabled apps. OWASP has identified 10 areas where enterprises can lower that risk. There are many vulnerability scanning tools available. Check also How to prepare and use Docker for web pentest . Mozilla has a nice on-line tool for web site security scanning.

The slow death of Flash continues. If you still use Flash, say goodbye to it. Google says goodbye to Flash, will stop indexing Flash content in search.

Use HTTPS on your site because without it your site rating will drop on search engines visibility. It is nowadays easy to get HTTPS certificates.

Write good content and avoid publishing fake news on your site. Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy,

Think to who you are aiming to your business web site to. Analyze who is your “true visitor” or “power user”. A true visitor is a visitor to a website who shows a genuine interest in the content of the site. True visitors are the people who should get more of your site and have the potential to increase the sales and impact of your business. The content that your business offers is intended to attract visitors who are interested in it. When they show their interest, they are also very likely to be the target group of the company.

Should you think of your content management system (CMS) choice? Flexibility, efficiency, better content creation: these are just some of the promised benefits of a new CMS. Here is How to convince your developers to change CMS.

html5-display

Here are some fun for the end:

Did you know that if a spider creates a web at a place?
The place is called a website

Confession: How JavaScript was made.

Should We Rebrand JavaScript?

2,361 Comments

  1. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Timothy B. Lee / Ars Technica:
    In a statement, Instagram says it does not provide users a copyright license to display images on other websites when using its embedding API

    Instagram just threw users of its embedding API under the bus
    People may need to get permission before embedding someone else’s Instagram photo.
    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/instagram-just-threw-users-of-its-embedding-api-under-the-bus/

    Reply
  2. Tomi Engdahl says:

    This is big news: Google’s search engine algorithm is going to change to emphasise UX. Forget SEO, there’s now talk of sites needing UEO (User Experience Optimisation).

    If you want to read more about Google’s change, here’s a post from Fast Company:

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90511044/google-search-will-now-favor-websites-with-great-ux?fbclid=IwAR0u9-PkBd8CjB7jm496X-sBcOEFFpeMSt9TDJny95L1Dw0jQyAfHo-KZOk

    Attractive by chance just launched a freemium and mid-tier package for testing UX to make the service affordable for everyone. You can try that right away at:

    https://attractive.ai/

    This is the first version that doesn’t use any human guidance at all.

    Reply
  3. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Making Intermediaries Liable for Encrypted Content Breaks Trust and Security
    https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2020/06/making-intermediaries-liable-for-encrypted-content-breaks-trust-and-security/

    In December 2018, the Indian Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) proposed a significant change to its intermediary rules. The draft Information Technology [Intermediaries Guidelines (Amendment) Rules] 2018 seeks to tie tech platforms’ (e.g., social media) protections from liability to an obligation to monitor and filter their users’ content. One of the proposed obligations is to ensure the traceability of messages, even if a service is end-to-end encrypted.

    India is just one of many countries around the world experimenting with the idea that Internet intermediaries – specifically social media companies, like Facebook and Twitter – should no longer have immunity from liability for the content shared by their users. Other examples include the U.S. Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2020 (the EARN IT Act), and the recent U.S. Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship.

    The motivation for changing the status quo varies, from wanting traceability of messages to counter the spread of disinformation or CSEM, to stopping objectionable content from being spread on social media, to preventing political messages from being labeled (e.g., as “misleading information”).

    Make no mistake, proposals to change intermediary liability to force content monitoring or traceability on end-to-end encrypted services will undermine security on the Internet.

    Reply
  4. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Huomioi nämä 5 kohtaa Magento 2 -päivityksessä
    https://www.ambientia.fi/blogi/huomioi-nama-5-kohtaa-magento-2-paivityksessa/

    Magento 1 tuki päättyy kesäkuun loppuun 2020. Tämän jälkeen verkkokauppias ei saa enää Magentolta uusia versioita eikä tietoturvapäivityksiä

    Magento 1 EOL (End of Life) eli virallinen tuki päättyy kesäkuun loppuun 2020. Tämän jälkeen verkkokauppias ei saa enää Magentolta uusia versioita eikä tietoturvapäivityksiä.

    Tilanteeseen voi varautua päivittämällä olemassa olevan verkkokauppa-alustan Magenton versioon 2. Versiopäivitys on käytännössä migraatioprojekti, jossa olemassa olevan kaupan ulkoasu, toiminnalisuudet ja tiedot siirretään uuteen verkkokauppaan.

    1. Tuotetietojen siirto
    2. Sisällön siirto
    3. Asennettujen lisäosien siirto ja yhteensopivuus
    4. Hakukonenäkyvyyden säilyttäminen alustan vaihdon yhteydessä
    5. Uudelleenohjauksien suunnittelu ja toteutus

    Reply
  5. Tomi Engdahl says:

    25 years of PHP: The personal web tools that ended up everywhere
    ‘PHP is not very exciting and there is not much to it’ = the secret of success?
    https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/08/25_years_of_php/

    On 8th June 1995 programmer Rasmus Lerdorf announced the birth of “Personal Home Page Tools (PHP Tools)”.

    The PHP system evolved into one that now drives nearly 80 per cent of websites using server-side programming, according to figures from w3techs.

    Well-known sites running PHP include every WordPress site (WordPress claims to run “35 per cent of the web”), Wikipedia and Facebook (with caveats – Facebook uses a number of languages including its own JIT-compiled version of PHP called HHVM). PHP is also beloved by hosting companies, many of whom provide their customers with PHPMyAdmin for administering MySQL databases.

    Reply
  6. Tomi Engdahl says:

    What’s New in PHP 8 (Features, Improvements, and the JIT Compiler)
    https://kinsta.com/blog/php-8/

    PHP 8 is expected to be released in December 2020 and will bring us a whole bunch of powerful features and great language improvements.

    Many RFCs have already been approved and implemented, so it’s time for us to dive into some of the most exciting additions that should make PHP faster and more reliable.

    As PHP 8 is still under development, we could see several changes before the final release.

    Reply
  7. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Digital self-service is easy, fun and lucrative
    https://www.etteplan.com/stories/digital-self-service-easy-fun-and-lucrative?utm_campaign=unspecified&utm_content=unspecified&utm_medium=email&utm_source=apsis-anp-3&pe_data=D43445A477046455B45724541514B71%7C26757479

    What comes to mind when you hear the word ’self-service’? “Great, I can get this done quickly and easily” or “They ruined this too and now everything is more difficult”? Various self-service solutions have been around for a while, but thanks to digitalization, they have evolved by leaps and bounds. For companies, digital self-service offers a new way to engage customers.

    At its best, self-service really makes things easier. The possibility to scan your purchases yourself means less time spent queueing at the till. And very few people would still prefer to pay all their bills at the bank desk during office hours.

    Smooth self-service is an advantage for a company

    When we talk about digital self-service, the focus is often on the end customer experience. This, however, omits an essential aspect: self-service is not only the customer’s privilege.

    Companies can enhance their operations and develop new business ideas by focusing on developing self-service. Self-service solutions also produce interesting data, which can be used to improve customer experience through analytics. They can, for example, provide data on how and when congestion builds up at the service outlets, which helps remove bottlenecks and speed up service.

    Reply
  8. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How to use ‘dot’ glitch to skip paywalls and watch YouTube without ads
    https://www.cultofmac.com/713895/watch-youtube-without-ads-bypass-firewalls/

    Adding a single character to a URL can let you bypass some websites’ metered paywalls and watch YouTube videos without having to endure those annoying ads.

    The simple hack — typing a “dot” immediately after the “.com” in a site’s URL — doesn’t work on every single website out there. But it does give you an advertisement-free pass to many of them.

    It appears to work without fail on YouTube. And it seems pretty effective at eliminating those “you’ve read all your free articles for the month” warnings that some websites serve up in a bid to push subscriptions.

    Workarounds like this come and go, as websites adapt to the latest developments. Ad-fueled websites and services constantly play a cat-and-mouse game with ad blockers and similar technologies.

    Reply
  9. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Aaron Holmes / Business Insider:
    Google cracks down on The Federalist and ZeroHedge for violating policies on race-related content and may permanently suspend their access to Google Ads revenue — – Google is cracking down on two right-wing outlets, ZeroHedge and The Federalist, for violating its policies on race-related content.

    Google is threatening to cut ad revenue from ZeroHedge and The Federalist for violating its policies on race-related content
    https://www.businessinsider.com/google-blocks-ad-revenue-zerohedge-the-federalist-blm-2020-6?op=1&scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4&r=US&IR=T

    Reply
  10. Tomi Engdahl says:

    “I have read and agree to the Terms” is the biggest lie on the web. We aim to fix that.”

    https://tosdr.org/

    Reply
  11. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Nobody reads privacy policies. This senator wants lawmakers to stop pretending we do.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/06/18/data-privacy-law-sherrod-brown/

    When was the last time you actually read a privacy policy? Most of the time, clicking “I agree” is just a speed bump to getting onto an app or website. Even when I make a project out of reading the privacy policies and terms of service for credit cards or apps, I can barely understand all the places my data goes.

    Congress has been debating a consumer privacy law since before there were Web browsers, but the United States still doesn’t have one. On Thursday, Brown broke with nearly every past proposal from Democrats and Republicans alike to suggest a more radical idea: allowing companies to take our data only when it’s “strictly necessary.”

    For an Internet economy built in part on tracking people, that’s nothing short of a call for revolution. Brown’s new Data Accountability and Transparency Act, released in discussion draft form, would prohibit most collection and sharing of personal data as its starting point. Data could only be used in ways stipulated in the law, such as providing a service you asked for — and no more.

    Reply
  12. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Germany tightens online hate speech rules to make platforms send reports straight to the feds
    https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/19/germany-tightens-online-hate-speech-rules-to-make-platforms-send-reports-straight-to-the-feds/?tpcc=ECFB2020

    While a French online hate speech law has just been derailed by the country’s top constitutional authority on freedom of expression grounds, Germany is beefing up hate speech rules — passing a provision that will require platforms to send suspected criminal content directly to the Federal police at the point it’s reported by a user.

    Reply
  13. Tomi Engdahl says:

    This website lets you subscribe to RSS feeds for websites that do not support RSS themselves, by using the respective website’s API and then translating that data to RSS feeds.

    https://rssbox.herokuapp.com/

    Reply
  14. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Understanding black and white as colors.
    https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/design/discover/is-black-a-color.html

    Explore color from a scientific and artistic perspective, discover what sets black and white apart from other hues, and learn about working with these fundamental shades digitally and in print.

    Reply
  15. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How to Clean Up Your Old Social Media Posts
    These tips will help you safely tidy up your Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts—or give your profile a fresh start.
    https://www.wired.com/story/delete-old-twitter-facebook-instagram-posts/

    Reply
  16. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Adobe wants users to uninstall Flash Player by the end of the year
    https://www.zdnet.com/article/adobe-wants-users-to-uninstall-flash-player-by-the-end-of-the-year/
    Adobe plans to prompt users and ask them to uninstall Flash Player
    from their computers by the end of the year when the software is
    scheduled to reach End-Of-Life (EOL), on December 31, 2020. The move
    was announced in a new Flash Player EOL support page that Adobe
    published earlier this month, six months before the EOL date.

    Reply
  17. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Mistä tietää, voiko verkkosivuun luottaa? Tarkista nämä 5 asiaa
    https://www.is.fi/digitoday/tietoturva/art-2000006545823.html?ref=rss

    Reply
  18. Tomi Engdahl says:

    On illegal hate speech, EU lawmakers eye binding transparency for platforms
    https://tcrn.ch/2Ypz6a5

    It’s more than four years since major tech platforms signed up to a voluntary pan-EU Code of Conduct on illegal hate speech removals. Yesterday the European Commission’s latest assessment of the non-legally binding agreement lauds “overall positive” results — with 90% of flagged content assessed within 24 hours and 71% of the content deemed to be illegal hate speech removed. The latter is up from just 28% in 2016.

    However the report cards finds platforms are still lacking in transparency. Nor are they providing users with adequate feedback on the issue of hate speech removals, in the Commission’s view.

    Reply
  19. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Now that Adobe Flash is about to reach its end-of-life date
    at the end of this year, it is disabled by default in all web browser
    and has pretty much been replaced with open standards such as HTML5,
    WebGL, WebAssembly.

    Reply
  20. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Google will start paying publishers to provide content for a ‘new news experience’

    Google will start paying publishers to provide content for a ‘new news experience’
    https://tcrn.ch/3i0fLnO

    Google announced today that it’s working on a “new news experience” that will launch later this year, for which it will pay publishers to license their content.

    https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/google-news-initiative/licensing-program-support-news-industry-/

    Reply
  21. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Down the rabbit hole: how QAnon conspiracies thrive on Facebook
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/25/qanon-facebook-conspiracy-theories-algorithm

    Guardian investigation finds more than 3m aggregate followers and members support QAnon on Facebook, and their numbers are growing

    Reply
  22. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Megan Graham / CNBC:
    Verizon joins the boycott of Facebook ads, pulling them until Facebook has “an acceptable solution that makes us comfortable”, the largest advertiser so far — – Verizon said on Thursday it is pulling advertising on Facebook and Instagram. — On Thursday, the Anti-Defamation …

    Verizon is pulling advertising from Facebook and Instagram
    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/25/verizon-pulling-advertising-from-facebook-and-instagram.html

    Verizon said on Thursday it is pulling advertising on Facebook and Instagram.
    On Thursday, the Anti-Defamation League released an open letter that mentioned, in part, that it had found an advertisement for Verizon “appearing next to a video from the conspiracy group QAnon drawing on hateful and antisemitic rhetoric.”
    Facebook’s stock was down nearly 2% Thursday evening.

    Reply
  23. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Suzanne Vranica / Wall Street Journal:
    Sources: facing growing ad boycott, Facebook told advertisers it will “not make policy changes tied to revenue pressure” but will invest more in tackling hate — Social network tells advertisers it takes civil-rights groups’ concerns seriously, but won’t ‘make policy changes tied to revenue pressure’
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-looks-to-contain-advertising-boycott-over-hate-speech-11593120639?mod=djemalertNEWS

    Reply
  24. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
    Facebook says it is globally rolling out a notification screen warning users if they try to share content that’s more than 90 days old — Facebook announced Thursday that it would introduce a notification screen warning users if they try to share content that’s more than 90 days old.

    Facebook will show users a pop-up warning before they share an outdated story
    https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/25/facebook-old-content-notification-screen/

    Facebook announced Thursday that it would introduce a notification screen warning users if they try to share content that’s more than 90 days old. They’ll be given the choice to “go back” or to click through if they’d still like to share the story knowing that it isn’t fresh.

    Facebook acknowledged that old stories shared out of their original context play a role in spreading misinformation. The social media company said “news publishers in particular” have expressed concern about old stories being recirculated as though they’re breaking news.

    “Over the past several months, our internal research found that the timeliness of an article is an important piece of context that helps people decide what to read, trust and share,” Facebook Vice President of Feed and Stories John Hegeman wrote on the company’s blog.

    The notification screen is an outgrowth of other kinds of notifications the company has experimented with recently. Last year, Instagram introduced a pop-up notification to discourage its users from sharing offensive or abusive comments with a similar set of options, allowing them to click through or go back.

    Reply
  25. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Sara Fischer / Axios:
    Google announces a licensing program to pay publishers for content for a new news product, launching later this year, as part of the Google News Initiative — In a major departure from its long-standing practice of not paying publishers directly to distribute their work …

    Google will start paying publishers to license content
    https://www.axios.com/google-will-start-paying-publishers-to-license-content-d05550e5-cc0f-4177-a7db-b085af9157bb.html

    Reply
  26. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Brian Fung / CNN:
    With top 100 brands contributing only an estimated 6% of Facebook’s revenue and Zuckerberg’s voting control over the company, ad boycott’s impact may be limited — (CNN)For years, Facebook (FB) has been viewed as one of the only truly indispensable digital advertising platforms for big …

    The hard truth about the Facebook ad boycott: Nothing matters but Zuckerberg
    https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/26/tech/facebook-boycott/

    For years, Facebook (FB) has been viewed as one of the only truly indispensable digital advertising platforms for big and small businesses looking to reach the social network’s vast audience. Even as the company lurched from one controversy to the next, and endured viral hashtags calling for users to delete the app, its advertising machine kept churning out money, making Facebook seem all but unstoppable.

    But in recent days, Facebook has looked a little less invincible. The social network is confronting a new pressure campaign from advertisers unlike anything in its recent history. A growing number of big household names has joined a Facebook advertising boycott over its handling of hate speech and misinformation, culminating on Friday with the news that home goods giant Unilever would halt ad spending for at least the remainder of the year on Facebook, as well as Twitter (TWTR). The move was enough to tank both companies’ stocks and prompt speculation of a possible domino effect among large advertisers.

    Unilever’s decision illustrates how quickly an ad boycott that began with socially conscious lifestyle brands, such as The North Face and Patagonia, has spread to some of the world’s largest corporations. The #StopHateForProfit campaign, which launched in the wake of Facebook’s decision not to take action on incendiary posts from President Donald Trump, is now a force Facebook cannot ignore.

    Nearly all of Facebook’s roughly $70 billion in annual revenue last year came from advertising dollars.
    A significant chunk of that came from big brands

    Facebook may be vulnerable, but Zuckerberg is not
    As each new company lends its weight to the boycott, the economic pressure is growing on Facebook to change — somehow. The campaign carries echoes of a similar advertiser rebellion against YouTube in 2017. Then, as now, major household names announced one by one that they would reject YouTube’s platform over concerns that its algorithms were placing ads beside hate speech. And ad executives say it led to some changes, including more controls to prevent ads from appearing beside controversial content.

    “We do not make policy changes tied to revenue pressure,”
    “We set our policies based on principles rather than business interests.”

    Whether the boycott will even have a measurable impact on Facebook’s bottom line still remains very hazy.

    The highest-spending 100 brands accounted for $4.2 billion in Facebook advertising last year, according to Pathmatics data, or about 6% of the platform’s ad revenue.

    Much of the rest of Facebook’s ad revenue comes from small and medium-sized businesses

    Since the #StopHateForProfit campaign asks for businesses to pause advertising only during the month of July, companies that stick narrowly to the campaign will only deny revenue to Facebook for a matter of weeks. That may show up as barely a blip, if at all, in Facebook’s quarterly earnings

    “For our clients, we would advise them to reallocate those funds,” said Smith. “Reallocating to other social media, potentially; reallocating to other digital publishers; reallocating to linear TV; reallocating to platforms like Hulu.”
    Then there’s the pandemic, which has already driven a slowdown in the digital advertising industry this year. Companies scaled back dramatically on ad spending in March and April,

    Reply
  27. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Wall Street Journal:
    Unilever says it will halt US advertising on Facebook and Twitter for at least the remainder of 2020, citing hate speech and divisive content on the platforms
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/unilever-to-halt-u-s-ads-on-facebook-and-twitter-for-rest-of-2020-11593187230?mod=djemalertNEWS

    Reply
  28. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Mark Zuckerberg:
    Zuckerberg says Facebook will now label content that violates its rules but was left up because it was deemed newsworthy and of public interest
    https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10112048980882521

    Reply
  29. Tomi Engdahl says:

    How to pitch to a (tech) journalist
    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/23/how-to-pitch-to-a-tech-journalist/

    The master list of PR DON’Ts (or how not to piss off the writer covering your startup)
    https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/23/the-master-list-of-pr-donts/

    Reply
  30. Tomi Engdahl says:

    We throw away 80% of our content ideas, and you should too
    https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/27/we-throw-away-80-of-our-content-ideas-and-you-should-too/

    Ask yourself these questions.

    Is the idea packed with emotion?
    Make a list of all the emotions associated with your idea. If you can’t think of any, it means the idea may need some tweaking, or you need to explore it in more depth.

    Even helpful how-to content is tied to emotion. Take, for example, “Give Your Kids the Gift of Automotive Repair Skills While You’re Home Together,” a genius piece of content by Car and Driver.

    Fractl did a study back in 2013 that explored which type of emotions were the most prevalent in viral images, and, as it turns out, positive emotions had more representation than negative ones. Most prevalent of all? Surprise. People enjoy being astonished, delighted and unexpectedly joyful. Do any of your content ideas fit this bill?

    Research: The Emotions that Make Marketing Campaigns Go Viral
    https://hbr.org/2013/10/research-the-emotions-that-make-marketing-campaigns-go-viral

    What Can Viral Marketing Actually Do?

    Break through the noise

    With 5.3 trillion display ads shown online each year, 400 million tweets sent daily, 144,000 hours of YouTube video uploaded daily, and 4.75 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook every day, posting a few blasé blogs on the corporate website just isn’t going to cut it. You’re going to need something that cuts through the clutter.

    Create massive brand exposure and free press

    Generate high levels of social engagement, sharing, and brand interaction, which can lead to sharp increases in digital brand advocacy.

    Massively improve organic search rankings

    Increase brand engagement

    How Any Business Can Create Successful Viral Content Marketing Campaigns

    Lesson 1: Create a Viral Coefficient > 1

    Breaking through the noise and going viral is the direct result having a viral coefficient above 1. For the sake of simplicity, viral coefficient can be thought of as the total number of new viewers generated by one existing viewer. A viral coefficient above 1 means the content has viral growth and is growing, and a coefficient below 1 means that sharing growth is diminishing.

    So how do you create content that people will share?

    Step 1: Write a compelling title

    Step 2: Use strong emotional drivers to make people care and share

    As Thales Texeira noted, it is important to create maximal emotional excitement quickly. Hit them hard and fast with strong emotions, but remember to keep the branding to a minimum. Heavy use of branding can cause many viewers to disregard the content as spammy or salesy, resulting in loss of interest, abandonment, or even backlash.

    When your content is in video form, be sure to give people an emotional roller coaster. This should be done by “pulsing” the emotionally heavy hitting points in your content with breaks or gaps. It is helpful to think of it as “cleansing of the emotional palate.”

    Step 3: Create content the strikes the correct emotional chords

    What we found was compelling:

    1. Negative emotions were less commonly found in highly viral content than positive emotions, but viral success was still possible when negative emotion also evoked anticipation and surprise.

    2. Certain specific emotions were extremely common in highly viral content, while others were extremely uncommon. Emotions that fit into the surprise and anticipation segments of Plutchik’s wheel were overwhelmingly represented. Specifically:

    Curiosity
    Amazement
    Interest
    Astonishment
    Uncertainty

    3. The emotion of admiration was very commonly found in highly shared content, an unexpected result.

    Lesson 2: Tie Your Brand to an Emotional Message

    If strong emotional activation is the key to viral success, how can brands best craft highly emotional messages with their content?

    First, think carefully about how your company, product or service is related to a topic or topics that taps into deep-seated human emotions within your target demographic.

    Lesson 3: Consider the Public Good

    Consider that one of the best ways to create an emotionally compelling piece of viral content that also works well with your brand is to tie your brand to a message for the public good. Brainstorm how your brand might be able to create content that does a public good or that creates awareness, but at the same time activates strong emotional drivers.

    Reply
  31. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Trump Signs Executive Order Stripping Social Media Companies Of “Liability Shield”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/white-house-plans-empower-fcc-regulate-american-social-media-giants

    Reply
  32. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Apple declined to implement 16 Web APIs in Safari due to privacy
    concerns
    https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-declined-to-implement-16-web-apis-in-safari-due-to-privacy-concerns/
    Apple said these 16 new Web APIs add new user fingerprinting
    opportunities for online advertisers.

    Reply
  33. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Yet, another service made for curl :) Compare AWS EC2 instance price from the CLI. This one is for all AWS fan boies/geeks and devs.

    curl http://ec2.shop
    curl http://ec2.shop/?filter=ssd,t2
    curl http://ec2.shop/?filter=t3
    curl http://ec2.shop/?filter=a1,ssd=a1,ssd,t2

    Reply
  34. Tomi Engdahl says:

    A plan to redesign the internet could make apps that no one controls
    https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/01/1004725/redesign-internet-apps-no-one-controls-data-privacy-innovation-cloud/

    Dfinity wants to allow the creation of apps that can run on the network itself rather than on servers owned by Facebook, Google or Amazon. Can it succeed where others have failed?

    In 1996 John Perry Barlow, cofounder of internet rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote “A declaration of the independence of cyberspace.” It begins: “Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”

    Barlow was reacting to the US Communications Decency Act, an early attempt to regulate online content, which he saw as overreaching. But the broad vision he put forward of a free and open internet controlled by its users was one that many internet pioneers shared.

    Fast-forward a quarter-century and that vision feels naïve. Governments may have struggled to regulate the internet, but new sovereigns have taken over instead. Barlow’s “home of Mind” is ruled today by the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu—a small handful of the biggest companies on earth.

    Yet listening to the mix of computer scientists and tech investors speak at an online event on June 30 hosted by the Dfinity Foundation, a not-for-profit organization headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, it is clear that a desire for revolution is brewing. “We’re taking the internet back to a time when it provided this open environment for creativity and economic growth, a free market where services could connect on equal terms,” says Dominic Williams, Dfinity’s founder and chief scientist. “We want to give the internet its mojo back.”

    Dfinity is building what it calls the internet computer, a decentralized technology spread across a network of independent data centers that allows software to run anywhere on the internet rather than in server farms that are increasingly controlled by large firms, such as Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud. This week Dfinity is releasing its software to third-party developers, who it hopes will start making the internet computer’s killer apps. It is planning a public release later this year.

    Rewinding the internet is not about nostalgia. The dominance of a few companies, and the ad-tech industry that supports them, has distorted the way we communicate—pulling public discourse into a gravity well of hate speech and misinformation—and upended basic norms of privacy.

    There is an economic problem too. The effective monopoly of these firms stifles the kind of innovation that spawned them in the first place. It is no coincidence that Google, Facebook, and Amazon were founded back when Barlow’s cyberspace was still a thing.

    On the normal internet, both data and software are stored on specific computers—servers at one end and laptops, smartphones, and game consoles at the other. When you use an app, such as Zoom, software running on Zoom’s servers sends data to your device and requests data from it.

    Dfinity is introducing a new standard, which it calls the internet computer protocol (ICP). These new rules let developers move software around the internet as well as data. All software needs computers to run on, but with ICP the computers could be anywhere. Instead of running on a dedicated server in Google Cloud, for example, the software would have no fixed physical address, moving between servers owned by independent data centers around the world. “Conceptually, it’s kind of running everywhere,” says Dfinity engineering manager Stanley Jones.

    In practice, it means that apps can be released that nobody owns or controls. Data centers will be paid a fee, in crypto tokens, by the app developers for running their code, but they won’t have access to the data, making it hard for advertisers to track your activity across the internet.

    A less welcome upshot is that a free-for-all internet could also make it difficult to hold app makers accountable.

    In fact, a decentralized internet may lead to a decentralized form of governance, in which developers and users all have a say in how it is regulated—much as Barlow wanted. This is the ideal adopted in the crypto world. But as we’ve seen with Bitcoin and Ethereum, it can lead to infighting between cliques. It is not clear that mob rule would be better than recalcitrant CEOs.

    This week, Dfinity showed off a TikTok clone called CanCan. In January it demoed a LinkedIn-alike called LinkedUp. Neither app is being made public, but they make a convincing case that apps made for the internet computer can rival the real things.

    Remaking the internet

    But Dfinity is not the first to try to remake the internet. It joins a list of organizations developing a range of alternatives, including Solid, SAFE Network, InterPlanetary File System, Blockstack, and others. All draw on the techno-libertarian ideals embodied by blockchains, anonymized networks like Tor and peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent.

    Some, like Solid, also have all-star backing. The brainchild of Tim Berners-Lee, who came up with the basic design for the web in 1989

    Even when Solid is ready for full release, Kagal expects that only people who really worry about what happens to their personal data will make the switch. “We’ve been talking about privacy for 20 years and people care about it,” she says. “But when it comes to actually taking action, nobody wants to leave Facebook.”

    Even within the niche communities of developers working to make a new internet, there is little awareness of rival projects.

    It’s possible that the internet may be forced to change whether the average user cares or not. “Privacy regulations could become so restrictive that companies will be forced to move to a more decentralized model,” says Kagal. “They might realize that storing and collecting all this personal information is just not worth their while anymore.”

    In the years since Barlow wrote his polemic, the data economy has sunk deep roots. “It would be great if it was replaced with Solid,” says Kagal. “But it would be great if it was replaced with something else as well. It just needs to be done.”

    Reply
  35. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Browser extension, called Behave! that monitors and warns users if a web-page performs any following actions:
    Browser based Port Scan
    Access to Private IPs
    DNS Rebinding attacks to Private IPs
    https://github.com/mindedsecurity/behave

    Reply
  36. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Casey Newton / The Interface:
    Reframing “tech vs. journalism” discussion as “managers vs. employees” shows why journalists who have called attention to workplace activism have become targets

    What’s really behind “tech” versus “journalism”
    https://www.getrevue.co/profile/caseynewton/issues/what-s-really-behind-tech-versus-journalism-260861

    Last week, the worlds of technology and journalism were transfixed by a conflict that played out across across Instagram, Twitter, and the upstart audio-only social network Clubhouse. One reason it generated so much attention — you can read thorough accounts from varying perspectives at Vice, on Quora, or this venture capitalist’s Substack — is that you can approach the drama from so many angles.

    Journalists and their allies rallied to Lorenz’s side, myself included — no journalist deserves to be harassed or threatened. Other investors and those sympathetic to Srinivasan’s anti-journalism threads joined in the shouting. From a distance, it seemed like little more than the latest salvo in a conflict between journalists and Silicon Valley that has escalated significantly this year.
    But what if you take the whole discussion of “tech versus journalism” and reframe it as “managers versus employees”? Then, I think, you get closer to the truth of what’s going on.
    After all, this conflict started with employees. They were the people who initially described their working conditions under Korey at Away, leading her to step aside as CEO.

    The employees made their comments at a time of increasing activism inside workplaces. Since the Google walkout in 2018, employees of venture-backed startups and public companies have become increasingly comfortable in speaking out — often using social media platforms to call out their employers. This trend has only accelerated since the Black Lives Matters protests swept the nation last month — which, among other things, led to the first-ever virtual Facebook walkout a few weeks later.

    Workers still face significant obstacles as they lobby to create more fair and equitable workplaces. But Twitter in particular has given them a place where not only can they be heard, but — crucially — employers can’t really fight back. If you tweet that you hate your manager, your manager is almost certainly not going to tweet back at you. (They can fire you, and say that it’s for unrelated reasons, and in fact they do this. But this often leads to more tweets about how bad the manager is, which means mostly they do nothing immediately.) Thus tweets have given workers an asymmetric advantage in the unrest — a one-sided argument is easy to win — and we’re seeing it play out in new ways all the time.

    This dynamic, which is tilted heavily against bosses, goes a long way in explaining the disdain that the managerial class has for what they call “hit pieces.” A “hit piece,” in angry Twitter parlance, is typically a piece of journalism in which one or more employees are granted anonymity to talk about their working conditions. Journalists, myself included, would simply call that reporting. But it’s the kind of reporting that tilts the balance away from managers and toward their employees — and in ways that are difficult to fight back against.

    It’s true that this dynamic raises questions of fairness. Not every person who hates their boss has been mistreated.

    Reply
  37. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Andrew Anthony / The Guardian:
    Profile of Stanford law professor Jim Steyer, who set up the Stop Hate for Profit campaign that has led to about 800 companies joining an ad boycott of Facebook

    Jim Steyer: the man who took on Mark Zuckerberg
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/05/jim-steyer-the-man-who-took-on-mark-zuckerberg

    With 800 firms now joining the Facebook advertising boycott, the man whose idea it was explains how the company could easily clean up its act

    With more than two billion users Facebook is bigger than Christianity,” says Stanford law professor Jim Steyer. “Their ability to amplify hate speech or white supremacy or racist messages is so extraordinary because of the scale of the platform.”

    It’s a typically bold statement from the man who set up the Stop Hate for Profit (SHFP) campaign calling on advertisers to withdraw from Facebook for the month of July. More than 500 firms have joined the temporary boycott, including Coca-Cola, Adidas and Unilever.

    Facebook’s stock price has taken a tumble, though it still remains high

    “Nick should be embarrassed for putting that forward,” says Steyer. “He and Mark would flunk a fifth-grade civics class with their libertarian ‘free speech trumps everything in society’ argument. The first amendment doesn’t apply to Facebook. The first amendment applies to government restrictions on speech in the United States.”

    He says the campaign is not afraid to “shame people who do terrible things to our society,” as long as it doesn’t involve ad hominem attacks.

    The newly formed coalition’s strategy was to “hit Facebook in the wallet”. But it’s a very large and deep wallet. The company generates more than $70bn in annual advertising revenues, and most of that money comes not from major brands but from small businesses.

    So far the boycott has been limited to the United States

    “It’s critical the UK and Europe speak up,” says Steyer, “because they’re incredibly important territories for Facebook and the big tech companies, and there should be a universal rejection of hate speech and racism and mass disinformation because they’re actually undermining the norms of our democracy.”

    Reply
  38. Tomi Engdahl says:

    Free Press:
    After meeting between leaders of Facebook, ADL, Free Press, NAACP, and Color Of Change, boycott organizers are unconvinced meaningful change will occur at FB — Contact: Timothy Karr, 201-533-8838 — WASHINGTON — On Tuesday afternoon, leaders of four of the organizations coordinating …

    #StopHateForProfit Sees No Commitment to Action at Meeting Between Campaign Leaders and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg
    https://www.freepress.net/news/press-releases/stophateforprofit-sees-no-commitment-action-meeting-between-campaign-leaders

    Reply

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

*