Category: Ideas (Page 1 of 3)

How to think about Twitter (in the new Musk era)

November 4, 2022 / admin

There is so much going on with Twitter right now, that there’s no point in trying to summarise. Aside from to say – this is the early stages of the Musk takeover, November 4 2022.

If you want to think critically about Twitter, here are a few pointers.

Twitter punches way above its weight.

The thing about Twitter was never the numbers, but the quality of contributors. You have academics, agencies, politicians, policymakers, journalists, engineers, soldiers, thinkers, all mixing it up. That’s amazing.

But Twitter’s numbers were never that great, whether overall users, revenue, market cap. That was a problem for Twitter as a business. But as a utility, a service, Twitter was everything. Twitter was where the world broke news. This is and was its value. Facebook might have 2.whatever billion users, but had negligible impact in news-making.

Why? Let’s break it down into Content, Tech, Verification (blue ticks), and Advertisers.

CONTENT

One reason is journalists and the media. If Twitter has succeeded in anything, it’s harnessing the mainstream media (MSM). MSM might be ‘bad’, but actually, the MSM is how most people access the news, on whatever platform, even if it’s packaged as social. Social media’s greatest ‘trick’ was to convince the world that the MSM didn’t matter, when in fact, it amplified it, and gave it a bigger voice. I don’t watch GBNews, as I’m not interested in right-wing shitposts dressed up as news. But I’ve seen it on Twitter. Equally, I never tune in to GMB, or Jeremy Vine, but I’ve watched clips loads of times, when people like Owen Jones or Femi are debating some idiot like Ann Widdicombe about immigration or Brexit. It pops up on Twitter.

It’s not linear broadcasting, or traditional MSM. But most articles you see shared, most clips laughed about, are MSM. And if they aren’t, they get verified and amplified by the MSM, who repost them, so around it goes.

But the content isn’t just shared on Twitter – it IS Twitter. People like Trump, Musk, and others who are newsworthy in whatever they say, and say a lot, and say it on Twitter. Obviously, Trump’s gone, but his legacy is that saying X on Twitter, if you are important enough, IS a story. Not part of a story, evidence of X eleswhere, but X itself.

TECH

Rarely mentioned, but really important, is the ease of embedding. Almost all news websites embed tweets as source material. It’s part of the appeal. You can pad out your content easily with a few tweets, as well as doing serious journalism. Other social platforms are far harder in this regard – Facebook makes it very cumbersome. It’s also a function of aspect ratios.

What, you might ask? Well, embed an Insta story, TikTok post, snap or whatever, and it’s designed vertically. If you are embedding into a CMS, that’s annoying – it pushes down your content, tries to fill up the width, and generally looks too big. Tweets, on the other hand, are horizontal. That’s useful – they fit more neatly into the CMS, don’t clutter up, and their design is pretty minimal. Overall, a tweet in a story doesn’t screw up your page load or get in the way of ads. It’s a win-win.

VERIFICATION

Let me talk about ME for a minute. I have a blue tick. It took me a long time to get one. I have applied I think 3 or 4 times in my life. When I was at the FT, I was refused a blue tick as I didn’t use my FT address for Twitter – I preferred by personal address. As an author, I was refused one as I wasn’t part of an ‘organisation’ that Twitter recognised. As a freelance editor, I hadn’t accumulated enough bylined pieces – no name, no cigar. At Newsweek, I have accumulated bylines and – it seems crucially – an author page, so that worked. Boom, blue tick. Do I deserve one? I think so, I’m a sensible person with a public profile who has done some decent work in journalism and publishing over my career. Will I pay $8? Fuck off. I wouldn’t pay $1, once, for a blue tick forever.

The whole blue tick issue has become very toxic. Yes, you can argue it’s feudal. Or managed badly. But the thing Musk gets wrong, so utterly, totally wrong, is that it’s a reputational mark, and by definition you CAN’T BUY REPUTATION. You can improve the criteria, but reputation is nothing if you can pay for it. To make a blue tick (or white tick on blue badge, whatever) an $8 fee, makes the whole idea redundant.

So blue ticks were a good system. Not perfect, but good. They made people aspire to be credible. That’s useful on a platform where anyone can jump in to the debate. It helped Twitter stand out, create authority, which fed back into the small-but-important user base.

ADVERTISERS

Twitter gets revenue from ads. Any ad business is inherently tricky, for two reasons.

1) Ad revenue is pretty much a zero sum game, because ad spend is not exponential. Otherwise, Google wouldn’t have killed newspapers. Everyone is chasing the same ad dollar.

2) While everyone talks about network effects for users, which is how Facebook got to 2.x billion and MySpace didn’t etc, advertisers don’t give a damn. They aren’t locked in to Twitter any more than you are locked in to buying a brand of coffee. Switching is relatively easy. So if Musk allows free-wheeling hate speech to run rampant on Twitter – and he’s just fired half the company, so there’s every chance it will – then advertisers will flee. Suddenly, $44bn looks like a lot of money for a slightly-more intellectual version of Parler or Truth Social.

Social media has had a virtuous circle with the ad business, up until around this year. The next new thing attracted a keen audience; advertisers chase audience, especially hard-to-reach demographics. Ad revenue means investment in product, which makes system more attractive to audience, and round we go.

That revenue is needed to monitor content, because dangerous content can harm: harm people, communities, the environment, democracy. As a libertarian businessman, Musk hate moderation. It’s a black hole, in his view. But it’s key to keep the ‘good’ audience, and advertisers, engaged and happy.

The opposite, vicious circle, is also true. Platforms get stale; audience declines; ad revenues fall, so investment and moderation decline; and the degregation means more people leave (or become dormant). Shares plummet.

Meta is now the 25th most valuable company in America. It’s tanking. There are lots of reasons, which I won’t go in to, but the very fact it’s now below Pepsi is evidence to the fact that Big Tech isn’t a one-way bet. It’s an advertising vehicle, and people don’t like ads that much.

So what’s the answer?

There is no easy answer, in that Musk has control of Twitter, is clearly keen to change it in terms of less interference and more anything-goes; and I predict it will become a useless wasteland in less than a year. Advertisers will disappear, major voices will tire and find somewhere else.

The true value of Twitter was in authority. The fact that serious people used it. In that regard, it should have been protected like a utility, not left to the mercy of an eccentric firebrand billionaire with dubious politics and a penchant for spreading conspiracy theories.

If Twitter fails, what will the impact be?

One thing is that centrist/left voices will be potentially digitally homeless. Something should fill that void, something commercial. But it’s not the be-all.

More important is the public service element of Twitter. A digital, non-profit platform is needed for announcements, public broadcast, probably with no conversation around it, for people to follow as a service. Twitter is amazing in emergencies, for delivering news in the purest sense – not opinion, but up-to-the-minute facts. Where does that go without Twitter? We are left scrabbling around on a myriad of disparate websites.

And that’s where I’ll leave it.

I’m going to post this on Twitter, and then I may never post anything again. We’ll see.

A visual history of Coups

January 27, 2021 / admin

Was the violent invasion of the US Capitol on 6th January this year a coup? It certainly had the hallmarks of a coup, even it it might be expedient for politicians to refer to it as insurrection.

Because a coup is distinctly un-American, right?

Well, up until now.

The Cline Center of University of Illinois run the Coup D’état Project, and their data reveal a story of coups through the last 75 years.

The history of coups in the post-war period is dominated by personalities – strongmen such as Idi Amin and Col. Gaddafi. But those are the winners – leaders who took power and held it for many years.

So how successful are coups? According to the Project’s data, coups are a less than 50:50 shot – they are successful 45 per cent of the time.

The coup heyday was the 1960s and 70s, in the post-War, post-colonial settlement period where independent statehood was still nascent in many parts of the world. And although Latin America has a reputation for coups, fuelled by spy movies, sub-Saharan Africa is the most coup-prone region.

Since 1980 there has been a move to relative stability – the number of coups has declined, with the 2010s having the fewest of any decade. The last ten years has seen only 17 successful coups, with 30 attempted or conspired.

Some other insights… since 1945:

Although Sub-Saharan Africa is the most coup-heavy region, Bolivia is the most coup-prone nation with 37, including 16 successful coups.
Coups are more of a Spring / Autumn thing. November is the month with most coups, closely followed by October, April and March.
1975 was the busiest year for coups with 32. 1979 was the most successful with 18 out of 22.

Anyway, here is the visual history – click for the the full size image.

So was 6th Jan a coup? The Cline center say… maybe.

Euros, ATMs and the price of walking 150m

September 12, 2019 / rob

Imagine the scene. You are standing at the London Eurostar terminal in St Pancras. You need some euros. Yes, you could wait until you get to Paris, but you have a connection, or some reason to not mess around at the other end. You want euros, and you want them now.

You wander into the main concourse of the station. Left, or right?

If you turn right, you will pass some smart shops and, just before you get to the domestic train bit, you will come to a cashpoint (ATM). It will dispense euros. Great – job done.

But if you turn left, and walk just outside the station, across the busy Euston Road, you can find several bureaux de change. They do a quick turnaround of currency. Job equally done.

So which should you do?

If you turned right, you may have stayed in the comfort of the station and avoided the scary world outside, but you lost money. Big time.

Let’s say you wanted €100. No more, no less.

The ATM would have ‘sold’ you euros at a rate of 1.0105 (euros to pounds) as of September 9th, 2019. I know. I put my card in to check. (I didn’t complete the transaction, fwiw).

Outside? Shop around, and you could have got a much more agreeable rate of 1.065, or even 1.09. However, avoid the Post Office – they were offering 1.030. (All checked on the same day.)

Savvy travellers using a MoneyCorp payment card could have got 1.0873 that day. My Revolut card was offering an even better 1.1195.

If all these numbers sound a bit abstract, let’s break it down.

PROVIDER	euro rate (as of 9 Sep 2019)	£ spent for €100
ATM	1.0105	£98.96
Thomas	1.065	£93.90
Bureau de Change	1.09	£91.74
Post Office	1.03	£97.09
MoneyCorp card	1.0873	£91.97
Revolut	1.1195	£89.33

To get my €100, at the ATM I would have spent nearly £99. Outside, I could have got it for just under £92.

So I’m calling that £7, for the sake of simplicity.

How much more walking is it? According to Google maps measurement, to get to the outside Bureaux from the Eurostar entrance is 266m. To the ATM it’s 115m. So for the sake of walking an extra 150m, you’ve spent £7.

Is that worthwhile? Most people can walk at around 1.2 metres per second. So 150m is 125s or say 2 minutes. Add in 30 seconds of crossing the road, and walking back – that’s 5 minutes.

Is £7 worth 5 minutes of your time? That’s £84 per hour. The London living wage is £10.55 per hour.

Then again, this is for €100, which doesn’t exactly get you a full weekend in Paris. If you want €500, it’s suddenly a cash difference of £35, all for walking 150m. And that’s suddenly £420 per hour. We are getting close to serious lawyers fees here.

Why is the ATM so much more expensive?

It’s not the costs – they are minimal. Rent is a factor, but it’s essentially a 1.5m cube in the wall. No staff needed, compared to the bureaux outside. It needs to be topped up by a security guard now and then, but all banks and money shops need that anyway.

So why do Rafael’s Bank (the ATM provider) give such a poor rate? The answer is simply that they can. It’s a case of total price insensitivity. If some people aren’t going to shop around, you can over-charge them all you like. But next time you are tempted to use that ATM or a similar one, think about the location, your time, and whether you can afford £84 per hour – or far more – just to not walk that little bit further.

Jordan Peterson bandwagon: a media product

April 22, 2018 / rob

I don’t write to praise Jordan Peterson, nor to bury him. In fact, I don’t care about him at all. What I’m interested in is why everyone else is interested in him.

Lots of articles have been written about Jordan Peterson. If you haven’t heard of him yet, consider yourself lucky: he’s a one-man Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. You’ll see him everywhere now. Outside of the usual suspects of Trump and Megan Markle, he’s possibly the most-profiled figure of the last year, certainly of 2018.

His opinions aren’t important here. Sure, he’s got stuff to say that seems highly relevant in the current cultural climate. He opines on transgenderism, gender pay gaps, free speech, feckless male youth. He’s like a human Rorschach test – you can see whatever you want in Peterson. He’s a feisty Canadian professor fighting battles on campus, a self-help guru, a fraud, a clinical psychologist, an intellectual, an alt-right darling, a free-speech muscle-for-hire. Take your pick.

(The other thing to note is that Peterson has one key skill. Like Malcolm Gladwell, he makes the reader or listener feel cleverer, as if they are in on a secret. It’s the opposite of patronising. It might be superficial, or bogus – or insightful and brilliant. I don’t care. It’s very effective. )

He isn’t necessarily the “Intellectual we deserve“, as Current Affairs put it – he’s the intellectual we currently want.

Or he’s the intellectual we think we want. Or, perhaps, the intellectual the media think we want. I’ll show you how.

How curious about Jordan Peterson are we, and how has it changed? Let’s see what Google has to say:

Source: Google Trends

Worldwide, there’s been a big late January / early February Peterson interest spike. I’ll discuss why later.

And how many Twitter followers has Peterson had over time?

Source: Socialblade

Same again – late January he gains a lot of followers.

Is our interested piqued by the media, or do the media follow what we search? Here’s how many times he’s been mentioned in the press over the last year.

Source: Factiva

Again, 2018 is a big leap in articles mentioning Peterson. Crucially though, the spike here predates the online interest. There were 300+ mentions in November, way more than any other month, although January and March are second and third (with 225 and 198).

It all adds up for Peterson. Here are his book sales for 12 Rules for Life.

Source: Novelrank

Book sales in March catch up after the interest online and articles. (That’s not a surprise.)

In the charts above there is a clear spike. And that is one of the key moments of 2018, in late January. This is the date of the (in)famous Channel 4 interview with Cathy Newman. It’s been watched 9 million times. That’s a lot for a head-to-head.

The interview has been described in very unfavourable terms for Newman. Her questioning was, I agree, poor. But it has become more than an interview: it is now a rallying cry for those who see the media as biased; it gained Newman horrendous criticism and attacks; and it has been dissected to the nth degree, far further than it merited.

It also is a catalyst for Peterson interest. Without that interview, would we have had the flurry of articles, the profiles in the Telegraph, BBC and Guardian among so many others? The key thing to note here is that although the bigger profile pieces have come recently, the highest point in terms of article mentions was in November.

Peterson’s popularity has been talked of in viral terms. The data would suggest otherwise – the media articles came first, and the online spike in interest is clearly after the C4 Newman interview. He is a product of a traditional media bandwagon, not an online phenomenon.

I believe this is a case of filling a vacuum. Politics has become ever more polarised, distrust of media is high and rising, and there is a dearth of public intellectuals. We are crying out for this stuff. It’s intoxicating. But the media spotted it first, not the other way around.

The Olympics needs a new hosting blueprint. Here’s one.

August 2, 2017 / rob

Paris Olympics, earlier

The latest round of Olympic bidding has highlighted what has been known for ages: that hosting the Games is a BAD IDEA.

Paris and LA have been awarded the 2024 and 2028 events. No other cities were in the running, after several, including Rome, Boston and Hamburg dropped out.

The Winter Games bidding for 2022 was a similarly feeble contest, with Almaty and Beijing the last two standing. Beijing – a city with no snow – won.

Why has the Olympics become so toxic?

The main reason is cost. Who can sell the idea of spending anything from $10bn – $50bn to a population that is feeling the pinch? Even populist dictators might baulk at the expense.

But costs are OK if there are benefits. Clearly, the benefits have been exposed as a bit of a con. Soft power? There are cheaper ways. Tourism? It actually drops. Infrastructure boost? Do it anyway, if it’s worth it. Happy population? Not necessarily.

So what would be a better way of hosting the Games? Here are a few ideas that are frequently put forward, and my thoughts on their strengths.

Idea #1: pare it down

The Olympics is too big as it is. If you want to make hosting affordable, get rid of sports that don’t need to be there. Football, tennis, golf – there are bigger prizes in those sports. Politically tricky, but doable.

Problem is, that still leaves a lot of events, and in any case, the main costs always seems to be the centrepiece athletics stadium, the athletes village, and the infrastructure. Cutting out a few events won’t help here.

Idea #2: joint cities

This has a certain appeal. Joint city hosting would spread the cost, surely? Not quite. The only example of joint hosting of a recent major event is the World Cup of 2002 between Korea and Japan. That was not a great success, with both countries building expensive stadiums and infrastructure. Rather than splitting the cost, it merely added to it.

For the Olympics, it would present a tricky branding challenge – every Games is “City year” eg London 2012. I guess you could have Rome-Madrid 2036 or whatever, but it’s less appealing. The city backdrop is part of the experience – think Rio’s beach or Sydney harbour. While the World Cup hops from stadium to stadium, an Olympics has a ‘village’ and a base. Two bases would be odd.

Further, where do you have the opening and closing ceremonies? The 100m final? It would be fine to divvy up some events, but the location of the showpiece athletics would naturally make the Games forever associated with that host, not the other.

Idea #3: spread far and wide

An Olympics with events around the globe sounds inclusive and idealistic, but it would have all the problems of idea #2 and more. One of the main ideas is that spectators can visit the city and see a range of sports, not just one. There would be no cohesive experience which would annoy lots of fans. Broadcasters would hate it – it would be far more expensive and hard to cover.

The experience of the Euro 2020 will be interesting in this regard – it’s taking part in 12 cities. If it somehow works (big if), spreading the Olympics *might* become an idea that takes off. Unlikely.

Idea #4: permanent hosts

Some have suggested a single permanent Summer and Winter host. I think that’s a bad idea, for several reasons. One, monotony. Two – it places quite a burden on the host city. Instead, the IOC should pick five cities that rotate the Games. Each would represent their continent, and the IOC would be have the extra incentive to invest some of the broadcast revenue in keeping the infrastructure maintained.

This has a lot of appeal – theoretically no more white elephant stadiums, crumbling facilities or overspending.

There are downsides: with a gap of 20 years, it’s possible that things fall apart anyway. The Olympic roster changes, which means new facilities would always be needed; stadiums will still be unused (or underused) for two decades.

However, picking the right hosts would mitigate those downsides. Cities that are big enough to cope with the set-aside of facilities could easily be found – London, Tokyo, LA would be great candidates.

The downside is regional jealousy. China would want to be a permanent host, for sure. As would the US. That might annoy Canada or Japan. But given that there is a dearth of cities with the current system, it might be a better plan.

The other positives to a permanent city plan is that it would kill off the expensive bidding process, which also would stop the bribery and backhanders. The IOC would have to reform from a princely tour of spoilt delegates to a proper administrative commission – a far better outcome. Cities would have far longer to plan, meaning cost overruns should be a thing of the past, or at least less likely. Hosts wouldn’t have to cut corners to get the Games ready. In any case, it would be a question of upgrading facilities, not a rush job of building from scratch in 7 years.

The benefit of putting on an Olympics is pretty small. Tourism suffers, rather than getting a boost. Countries that want to boost their profile have any other number of ways to do it – host a world championships, finance a Grand Prix, host an expo or something. The Olympics is too big to be used as a political tool anyway.

The other upside of permanent hosts is that it is also closer to the original Olympic ethos, which was to have the Games in the same location each time. Evolving that into five Olympic hosts – one for each of the rings, which could be a nice marketing touch – makes sense.

Anyway. Don’t hold your breath.

The 10 best sports graphics / data visualisations of 2016: call for entries

December 14, 2016 / rob

As the headline suggests, I’m looking for the best sports graphics or data visualisations of the year. Here are the rules:

Link needed
Doesn’t need to be interactive at all
Only one per publication / blogger / writer
All chart types considered – doesn’t have to be fancy if it makes a great point
Winner and 2 runners up will get a prize. Really.

Leave a comment in the field below, or email me if you know my address, or I’m @robminto on Twitter.

TalkSport interview

October 25, 2016 / rob

Listen again to the TalkSport interview I gave to Hawksbee and Jacobs on Friday October 21.

We talk about football stats, the greatest boxer, north vs south in rugby, Bolt being slow, drugs in cycling and lots more.

Are Australia now too nice to be cricket winners? The run rate suggests so…

October 12, 2016 / rob

Here’s a thought to enrage a few alpha Aussies. Apparently, the Australian cricket team have become too nice.

This is the team that pioneered “mental disintegration” of the opposition; whose hard-nosed captain Allan Border declared that he would “rather be a prick and win”; the team of Michael Clarke’s “get ready for a broken fucking arm“. Nice? Nice?

Apparently so. According to an article in ESPNCricinfo, Australia have an identity problem, the current captain, Steve Smith, said that his team was at times too quiet and lacks energy.

Smith was quoted as saying:

“We’ve got some pretty quiet characters, so even if it’s not making noise verbally, it might be just about having a bit more presence and the old Australian way of puffing your chest out and making your presence felt for the quieter guys. It’s trying to do that, get into the game that way and try to provide some sort of energy that way.”

How does that translate on the pitch? It’s hard to measure attitude or hostility, especially in fielding and bowling. Maidens and wickets don’t reveal whether they were taken with guile or brute force. Catches aren’t graded on alertness.

But there is one measure that shows the attacking intent of a team: the run rate. Aggressive teams score fast. The Australians had a reputation of scoring hard and fast to put the game out of reach, and deliberately targeted opposition bowlers. If we want a proxy for hardness, this isn’t a bad place to look.

Of course, it’s is not a perfect measure – run rates can be influenced by the pitch, the opposition, the prevailing style of umpiring (restricting bowlers), and the match situation.

Still, it’s interesting to look at the run rate under successive Australian captains. I have averaged it over a rolling 10 innings to smooth out the effect of some of the factors above. What does it reveal?

The data is taken from Cricinfo for the following captains:
Allan Border (1984-1994)
Mark Taylor (1995-1998)
Steve Waugh (1999-2004)
Ricky Ponting (2004-2011)
Michael Clarke (2011-2015)
Steve Smith (2015-present)

(I’ve rolled Adam Gilchrist’s matches in charge into Waugh and Ponting’s figures – he was only captain for six Tests, rather than a long-term appointment.)

Source: ESPNCricinfo

What can we see?

Essentially, the massive change is from the Border-Taylor era to Waugh-onwards. That’s where the run rate goes up from around 3 per over to 4 and above. That’s the equivalent of an extra 90 to 100 runs per day scored, which is a big difference in terms of finishing games off rather than getting a draw. Waugh took Australia from hard to beat to utterly ruthless – and the run rate shows.

Under Ponting, the run rate starts to drop. When Clarke took over it had hovered around 3.5, and was getting close to 3. Clarke then presides over the greatest swing, from under 3 to over 4.5, and back to around 4, partly as the team’s fortunes swing from series whitewash to series whitewash, both victories and losses. As nice vs nasty goes, Clarke’s most comprehensive wins came when fast bowler Mitchell Johnson was at his mustachioed best.

And now under Smith, the rate is dropping fast again. The current decline under Smith is from 4.4 to 3.3 in just 10 innings – the most consistent drop on the chart.

While a lower run rate might not be conclusive proof of being too nice, you can certainly see that under Waugh the Australian Test side was a run machine. And under Smith, there is clearly a problem.

Perhaps the question is better rephrased: not whether nice teams can win, but whether winning teams are ever seen as nice.

Squawka podcast: Sports Geek interview

October 11, 2016 / rob

Check out the latest Squawka podcast via audioboom. Worth a full listen, but I’m on around 28 minutes in.

INFO:

Ozil? De Bruyne? Coutinho? Eriksen? The level of playmakers in England’s top division has skyrocketed over the past few seasons and Nic English is joined by Muhammad Butt, Squawka Dave and James McManus to discuss exactly who is top dog.

There’s also time for a very special interview with Rob Minto – author of Sports Geek – to discuss some of the myths in sport and why he’s on a mission to debunk them.