thirteen thoughts December 11

December 11, 2024

1. Substack, what happened? It started with promise and actually has some great authors and pundits who are sharing their work on the platform. But the posts, well that is another story altogether you can go from some amazing long form work from NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Kareem Abdul-JabbarSubstack · Kareem Abdul-Jabbar144K+ followers) or Huddle Up by Joe Pompliano (https://huddleup.substack.com) to posts that feel like the most toxic tweets of modern Twitter.
2. thirteen thoughts was to be a Substack publication but it felt more important to centralize this content here on thirteen letter. It should be the focus of any brand to keep their content as close as possible. While sites like Substack make it easy to monetize content to get to the monetization point takes some effort.
3. Bluesky, have you tried it? Have you switched from Twitter? Many people did with recent changes enacted at Twitter that people you previously had blocked can see your content. 
4. Why did Twitter change this content policy when it comes to blocked profiles? There is speculation, there is candour but there is no definite answer to this.  Many of the changes since the company sold have not made sense. Reinstating people who have violated terms of service was one of the first changes. Regardless this is a service that saw the exodus of quality brands and now those brands are also removing their profiles to other services.
5. Hashtags, are they even a thing anymore? With more services coming online social media like Threads and Bluesky some use them, some do not and how Instagram has changed the way content is presented on their platform begs the question are they necessary? I do not think they are completely finished but hashtags are nearing the finish line.
6. Ever wonder about the history of Spirit of Halloween? 99% Invisible has a great history piece by Chris Berube and Jeyca Maldonado-Medina in which they speak to the founder and their real estate agent.  Imagine the challenges of being that businesses real estate agent. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/600-spirit-halloween/
7. Lots of noise on social media about the postal strike here in Canada. No side is ever correct in a strike. Union leadership have explained to members this should be effective. Management has an end goal that is never close to the unions. Who is hurt the most with this one, small businesses. So many small businesses on Etsy and Shopify and in so many industries rely on Canada Post for day to day survival. Social media of course has every opinion on the matter.
8. Businesses may not be able to afford the electronic banking fees that are associated with breaking fee from “letter mail”. They also might not have the accounting infrastructure either. For a country that has had ingrained electronic money transfer for so long this seems far fetched but the “why not” differs as much as what the businesses do.
9. Now in the fourth week the biggest loser in the postal strike is both parties. Businesses who thought the labour dispute was a short term affair are adapting. In some cases these businesses are finding cheaper alternatives. One business we interact with day to day estimates when Canada Post does return they are going to save $100 a week with their alternative and it offered better tracking. Regardless this business and many still ship letter mail, nothing replaces letter mail. What also can not be replaced is Canada Post and their service to rural and smaller communities. So with the recent death of Greyhound and the Saskatchewan Transportation Company and this labour dispute if you live in rural Canada getting anything delivered to these communities is next to impossible.  
10. 27,200 followers and a prominent account on Instagram, still this account posts website links in the write up. If you are new to Instagram or wondering why the comment, WEBSITE LINKS DO NOT WORK IN INSTAGRAM, never have. Beyond that they have offered marketing services outside of the main theme of their day to day content. Would you pursue working with them when they can not even execute their own content strategy effectively?
11. More and more the adage if you do not learn from history you are doomed to repeat it. One content creator who appeared in late 2022-2023 and gained some traction by posting well informed and researched content, so well received that they left a full time career in a field struggling to find people to create full time content. Content which is now more opinion based than fact based and  now they seem to battle everyone online. If your content, which was fact based and relevant was well received, it does not mean your opinion based content will be.  They are on the 2025 list of creators to ‘scrub’ from my feeds.
12. A relevant discussion last week with a business reporter about a ‘community news group’. When convenient to avoid criticism the group is a garbage company, when they are not criticised they are trying to be a Dollar Store TMZ.It was agreed community based news or not, journalistic principle should be a driving factor when trying to present information.
13. One final post office labour disruption missive. In converting the water bill from paper to electronic a huge design error on the bill was found. A website address to convert your bill was never tested. After 15 minutes of trying the address and getting a dead link but no 404 it was realized they never authenticated the domain to resolve without WWW. So adding WWW in front of the given address on the paper bill took you there, but being a civic authority you would expect they might test this especially when people are already apprehensive about online billing.