The Lighthouse IT Podcast - July 1st, 2022
This week, Matt & Griff discuss Facebook & Twitter's new directions, Lego building new things, the latest app for influencers, tech workers thoughts on surveillance, Harmony's major blockchain blunder and more!
Listen here!
News
Lego Building a Plant in the US! Commence Road Trip Plans
- Demand is high in the US for Legos (probably because of my revived love affair)
- Factory located in Chesterfield County in Virginia making it the second in NA and just the 7th in the world.
- Factory will be a $1bn investment to shorten supply chains
- The factory will open carbon neutral with most, if not all of its power coming from a renewalable energy park on the property.
- Lego also aims to replace all oil-based bricks with sustainable materials by the end of the decade.
- Will they build the factory with Lego?
Have a lot to Say on Twitter? How about a Note?
- Can't say what you need to in 280 Characters? Well rather than post to your blog, you could tweet a note
- Notes go beyond the character limit by allowing more long form text
- The feature is currently being rolled out to limited groups and can be uncovered by viewing Note Cards, which is simply a preview of the Note itself, Click/or tap will open the note right there within Twitter. There is also a Notes tab on the web for profiles of Twitter users with the feature enabled that allow you to view their published notes.
Scout App Takes Advantage of Least Favorite "Career"
- Let's face it, influencer marketing is gonna be around for a while, so when taking that sups cute selfie or Reel - you better come correct.
- Inspired by influencer Emma Rose Leger (and co-founded with Justin White) because they had spent a ton of money cruising Miami trying to find the right place as backdrops (I feel really sorry for them...)
- Product is simple though - you can upload photos of backdrops and tag geolocation under your profile.
- Influencers can browse and "unlock" the information for $1.99. Half goes to the uploader and the other half to Scout.
Technies no likey Surveillance...y
- A survey of 750 tech workers found that more than half (56%) would resign if their employer began recording audio or video through their computers.
- 51% would quit if there was productivity monitoring software
- Similar results were noted about workers would not join a company that did any monitoring
- 70% felt that they were not being monitored, with 75% of those would be shocked if they found out they were.
- The reality? It's pretty common, especially in larger organizations. The stats? Well, we don't have them because businesses don't like (nor are obligated) to disclose workplace monitoring.
A Leaked Memo Reveals that Facebook employees were recently given a new goal, to make the app's feed more like TikTok.
- Simply bringing Reels, the company's short-form video feature, from Instagram into Facebook wasn't going to cut it.
- In an internal memo from Tom Alison, spelled out the plan: rather than prioritize posts from accounts people follow, Facebook's main feed will, like TikTok, start heavily recommending posts regardless of where they come from.
- Facebook's shift to be more like TikTok is an indictment of what the News Feed has become. The News Feed failed to be a lasting, safe place for people to share their lives. People have figured that out, and they've moved those conversations to places they're more comfortable in, such as private messaging.
Which leads us to the idea that the next big social platform might be the smartphone's homescreen.
- Engaging users through a combination of push notifications and homescreen widgets, instead of forcing people to spend a long time browsing their app, scrolling feeds or watching creator content, seems to be were the world is moving.
- The popularity of this homescreen-based form of social networking is, in part, tied to Apple's move to launch a widgets platform for the iPhone with the release of iOS 14 in 2020, but also the large number of apps and their huge user-base adopting this style. eReal, LiveIn, Locket are just three examples, all of which hold high spots on the App Store.
Harmony blockchain loses $80m because... private keys were hacked.
- While we don't know much (Harmony is curiously silent... everywhere), we know that they are trying to do this discretely to save face. Offering opportunity to not advocate charges (in this instance, they can't choose to not) and have contacted the hacker via ether blockchain
- Transactions were successful because, despite requiring "multiple signatories" to approve, the attackers were able to get the sufficient number of "multisigs" (2/5) by compromising the private keys needed to authorize.
- Harmony now requires 4/5 - but if 2/5 were so easy, does that do anything?