Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you are having a wonderful early Spring! Weather in March is so weird, it’s been in the 40s the last couple of days here, and is forecast to be in the low 80s later this week. Hopefully the weather will get warmer and stay warmer. But not too warm, Summer and high humidity in the South will be here before you know it! Here’s 3 business stories that I have my eye on this Monday:
One of the only rules I have about the content I create here is that I try my best not to discuss politics. On almost any political issue, half of you will love my take, and half of you will hate it. So there’s really no point. However, I did want to mention the Fed’s move toward launching a digital currency, or CBDC, because I think this is an issue that we ALL should be in agreement on. What the Fed wants to eventually do is launch its own digital currency. This will be offered as being of great convenience to the user, instant payments, etc. There may even be an inducement of free currency offered when it rolls out.
But the end game here is to replace paper money with digital currency. That will move all monetary control to a centralized source: The US government. That’s a bad idea, because it will pave the way for the government to place controls on who can access their own funds. Other countries have already been trying such measures over the last decade or two, adding a ‘social credit score’ to your money, saying if you are engaging in certain behaviors, your access to your own cash could be restricted.
I would ask all of you to PLEASE do your research into CBDC, FedNow, and where this could be headed. I see no upside whatsoever to the average American. This will likely devolve into a partisan political issue, but it really shouldn’t be.
NEWS: The Fed’s instant payment service FedNow is slated to go live in less than 4 months.https://t.co/teimY6VN7E
— Blockworks (@Blockworks_) March 16, 2023
Elon recently announced that Twitter will open source the code it is using in its algorithms (I can never spell that word correctly) for Recommended Tweets. This is an important step toward re-opening its source code, and giving developers the ability to build apps that expand the functionality of Twitter. I do think Twitter will find a way to attempt to monetize many additional features that could spring from this effort, but in general, more features are better than fewer, as long as the core (free) experience doesn’t degrade.
Our “algorithm” is overly complex & not fully understood internally. People will discover many silly things , but we’ll patch issues as soon as they’re found!
We’re developing a simplified approach to serve more compelling tweets, but it’s still a work in progress. That’ll also…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 17, 2023
Just as I was getting ready to write this post, I got an email from Paper.li notifying me that the service will end in April. I am saddened to hear this, Paper.li had been around since 2010. They sponsored #Blogchat on Twitter, and I am lucky enough to call them a former client, working with them for almost a year in 2014 and early 2015. That year working with Paper.li’s team, especially my good friend Kelly Hungerford, was a joy. Paper.li, at its core, was such a good idea. It was at the forefront of the content curation movement, and even to this day I am constantly getting pings from people sharing one of my posts or tweets in their Paper.li, I think this should serve as a lesson for all of us, especially entrepreneurs, that just because your company or idea doesn’t work, doesn’t mean you should give up. Keep pushing, and just because you have a good idea, doesn’t mean that’s all you need. I will miss Paper.li and I honestly don’t say that often about social media sites that sunset.
So that’s it for this edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! Today I wanted to close with a pair of verses from the book of Matthew in the Bible, specifically verses 27 and 34 in chapter 6. Verses 25-34 discuss why God does not want us to worry, and why it is pointless:
Verse 27: “Which of you by worrying, can add one cubit to his stature?”
Verse 34: “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
I hope all of you have a wonderfully productive, and worry-free, week!
