thirteen thoughts – January 12

1. Google Trends, on the main search page for Google they always have something interesting, like the doodle taking you to new knowledge based on the art. For the final week of the year they had search trends: https://trends.withgoogle.com/en-gb/year-in-search/2024/ca/ You can browse by topic and even explore the terms even further. A nice way to look back.
2. Have you ever heard of If This Then That? It was a promising tool that you could program actions based on events in social media, smart devices and more. For example if someone followed your profile on a social media service and you were using IFTTT then it would trigger the action to send a note to thank the person or acknowledge they followed and would include an image. They soon made it a paid service where the price outweighed the value.  I can see it being of value for the smart device aspect but you can also ask your home smart devices to build routines like IFTTT was trying to sell.
3. How did your company handle your holiday hours being shared? A sign in the window is effective but what if the person didn’t visit you physically or there was a rush at the door when they arrived and they missed it?  Here is the hit list of how it should be shared. Your website, put this front and centre, haven’t touched your website since 2021 well figure out how to add this information for people. Google MyBusiness (https://www.google.com/intl/en_ca/business/) this is the management tool for the information you see on Google Maps.  You can add your temporary holiday hours here. Next would be Facebook business profile again another service where you can add temporary hours for the holiday season.  After this is the rounds of posting it on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads and all the others.  For multiple companies I could not find their hours without great labour, while I stop visiting them, I will not, but I will offer services to make their sharing of hours easier. 
4. Major chains have to revisit their ‘local strategy’ when it comes to hours. Masterfeed Cowtown did a great job of sharing the hours for their Saskatchewan stores by listing them all in one graphic and how they differed from city to city.
5. Our local major mall was open at 8am during the holiday shopping season up until and including Boxing Day. This knowledge would have passed me by if a clerk had not shared it when we were looking for a deal on a cell plan prior to Boxing Day. We went at 8am Boxing Day and the mall was vacant and we were in and out in less than 40 minutes with a revised cell plan and a new cell phone for a family member. We actually saved about $150 per month getting up early on Boxing Day, well worth it.  Regardless this mall should look at how effectively they shared these hours? I saw no mention of the hours on the doors of the mall or on kiosks throughout the mall. Based on the business most retailers were doing Boxing Day I think retailers would forego these hours if they could.
6. Holiday Shopping season is tough on staff in retail, changing hours to be more accommodating adds an extra toll. If retailers are not seeing the results they should ask why not instead of losing good staff to bad ideas or poorly executed ideas.
7. Have you reviewed your subscriptions? This was undertaken and in the course of a day nearly $400 in annual savings was had. Two services had not been used in up to a year, the other was a streaming service that has lost broadcast rights to something enjoyed weekly in these parts. Other suggestions about reviewing subscriptions included cancelling plans and then asking for a better deal it sounds a little to good to be true and likely involves using a new email address.
8. So META huh? Not to surprising the announcement Mark Zuckerberg made about their content moderation changes. From losing ground to newer social media sites, to the incoming US administration and to Zukerberg personally this was foreshadowed. I am not sure when but Zuckerberg had started practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and when talk was floating around about I’m ‘fighting’ Elon Musk in a real fight, Zuckerberg had legitimately hurt himself training BJJ and was likely would have made short work of Musk. BJJ is not to far removed from the UFC culture which is as toxic masculinity as there is. Dana White joining the Meta board? It fits… Zukerberg explaining it on Joe Rogan? It fits… How this plays out will be interesting as European law mandates fact checking on social media.
9. So this now has many people reviewing their future on social media, including some businesses. Unlike the Twitter exodus the Meta ecosystem is much more robust and not as easy to leave. Many individuals have packed it in on Facebook, Instagram and Threads and will only be found on Blue Sky now but for your local independent business Blue Sky has not reached a critical mass to be a useful platform for them. In fact many of those same businesses have also not pivoted to Threads or even left Twitter, so what next?
10. A what next is to see how the stock for META$ performs with this new ideology, if the stock starts ‘taking on water’ this new ideology might last as long as the new Coke did. Whether Zuckerberg is announcing this change because of the new administration in the White House and to avoid being called to testify before Congress is also key in this. Politicians bullying private or publicly traded business to fit political ideologies is as dangerous as can be expected.
11. A useful ally to thirteen letter on a long time former contract in Estevan ceased publication January 1, 2025. Estevan Mercury announced they are no longer publishing and this is foreshadowing the future of the rest of the Glacier Media holdings in Saskatchewan. They recently sold off their digital assets to Harvard Media and are selling or have sold their physical locations including the printing presses also located in Estevan. These printing presses though also print a number of daily and weekly newspapers in Saskatchewan beyond the Glacier Media properties, so now these papers face trucking in their product from Alberta with higher costs and potential weather delays. This had already happened to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix that one of their papers were not delivered because of a snowstorm closing highways.
12. The Mercury always published stories about coming events we worked with the city on bringing to Estevan, they would do advance media work, week of media work and day of media work including sending a photographer to shoot photos when they would do post event media work. In comparison to the Golden West media outlets with three radio stations in the market one little newspaper did far more. Not to belittle Golden West but early into this contract it was discovered they did not even have live human beings on air after the morning shows. Now the citizens of Estevan are left with Golden West and whatever bleeds into the market from Weyburn, Regina and further away.
13. One aspect of this closure and other media closures and shrinkage is the approach to journalism as a whole. Journalism is a public service keeping citizens informed of the happenings in their community. In the shadows of lack of proper information is where misdeeds can occur and accountability goes astray. A new model for effective journalism is needed and it cannot be tied to profits, it possibly has to be a non-profit model that still draws on ad revenue to fund the work. There was a post that likened journalism to firefighters and how they were services to the public and this has never been more true.

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