#its not like every single social media platform collects data

[honeytonedhottie]

HONEYS IT GIRL MAGAZINE july edition⋆.ೃ࿔*:･🎀

welcome back to honeys it girl magazine, this is the july catalog. get ready for the inside scoop on data that i've collected, things i've learned/started doing, and just general info like that organized in kind of a teen-magazine inspired fashion. a magazine for it girls ✨ and now please enjoy, the it girl magazine.

in this addition i've experimented with new sections (like the horoscope section) so i hope that u guys look forward to it and if u have any more suggestions for the magazine feel free to share and without further ado, lets get into it with some beauty talk…💬🎀

BEAUTY SHOPPING LIST ;

♡ kiko milano lipgloss

♡ L.A girl glitter spray

♡ cotton candy baby lipgloss from victorias secret

i've gone for more tubes of cotton candy baby because its just SUCH a good lipgloss but i recently lost mine and its been on my list to get next time i go to the mall…💬🎀

♡ crispy marshmallow bars body wash from philosophy

ugh just the NAME of this soap sounds absolutely delicious and im dying to try it out. im a big fan of the philosophy body washes anyways because of the quality and scents…💬🎀

♡ coconut craze lipgloss from victorias secret

♡ pink mimosa lipgloss from victorias secret

another thing that i wanted to talk about in this months beauty column is the DIFFERENCE that blush placement makes. so i was scrolling on pinterest when i came across this chart that talked about blush placement.

when you apply blush a certain way it balances out ur beautiful features and plays around with proportions in such a way that can make ur features more prominent. also the way that u apply ur blush totally changes the way that ur makeup looks.

for example when u apply blush to the apples of ur cheeks it gives a more youthful and glowy effect. when u put blush high on ur cheekbones it gives a more lifted and sculpted look which is where the blush chart comes in. depending on ur face shape u can determine which style of blush placement complements ur pretty face the best 💗

WHAT R WE LISTENING TO? ;

the most listened to album i've listened to all month has been butterfly by mariah carey. it was released in 1997 and every single song on that album is a total MASTER PIECE. some of my favorites include

♡ honey (DUH)

♡ babydoll

however that album is from 1997 so lets talk about some new music that i LOVED that also dropped this month…💬🎀

♡ brat- charli xcx

♡ muse - jimin

another album that has been gathering lots of attention on lots of social media platforms is ice spice's Y2K album and i've seen a lot of mixed reviews about it. personally im not a fan of the album, my favorite song on the album is did it first but im not a fan of the album as a whole. im curious though to hear what your thoughts on the album are…💬🎀

FASHION FLOPS VS FASHION BOPS ;

in this column, lets look at some old and new fashion trends and see which trends are flops and which ones are bops. my sources include vogue, and glamour magazine…💬🎀

according to vogue, statement gowns are OUT and discreet chics are IN. discreet chic is mixing basics in minimalist yet compelling ways. this includes things like trench coats, pencil skirts, trouser suits and good jeans.

according to glamour magazine, crisp whites and butter yellows are trending this summer. along with sequins and basics like denim pants and white t-shirts, polished kitten heels and mary jane flats also. the styles that are trending for this summer are boho 3.0 and little white dresses.

something i can DEF get behind is little white dresses. its like a blank canvas on which u can make the outfit into whatever you want. personally i would style a tiny white dress with chunky bracelets and wedges/kitten heels…💬🎀

LETS TALK MANIFESTATION ;

manifestation techniques are overrated - all you have to do to manifest is affirm -> persist. thats essentially all you have to do and when i first started i was so caught up in techniques and routines that i wasn't even affirming/persisting. i was doing anything and everything and i saw manifestation as a process and manifestation is NOT a process. when i shifted that and realized that manifesting is instant and all techniques are for funsies, the pressure was taken off.

this is an excerpt from my manifestation opinions post and i've released this poll to talk about what manifestation topic you guys would like me to talk about and the winner was saturation so lets talk about it. so what does it mean to saturate? i got this question a while ago in my inbox so im just gonna copy and paste my response.

saturating is simply soaking ur mind in the fact that u already have what u want. i do this with affirming, some people do other things to saturate but affirming is the most simple for me. just think as if u have it over and over and over again…💬🎀

you can saturate for hours at a time or a little bit everyday it doesnt rly matter its just thinking over and over again. i saturate while listening to music, playing video games, doing mundane tasks etc. all i do is think my affirmations and thats all! if theres something specific that u guys are curious about with saturation lemme know in the comments but its super simple bcuz MANIFESTING is super simple.

JENNIE KIM STYLE DISSECTION ;

jennie kim is a fashion ICON. i swear every photo that i see of her, her outfit, hair, face, everything is absolutely perfect. jennie's style is very posh and feminine. and a rly great example of this would be her look below. i love how she color coordinated her hair accessories to her outfit and the black and pink is so ICONIC cuz she was a black pink member.

shes rocking her trademark chanel in the form of a waist chain and everything just goes together beautifully. jennie knows how to mix posh and hyper femininity in her outfits super well and we can see that in her next outfit…💬🎀

THE CHANEL CHAIN AHHH IM OBSESSED. in the next outfit shes rocking a red two piece with buttons that just add that very chic and posh look. her chanel chain is such a statement piece and her matching chanel purse, shes literally chanels princess atp.

WHATS MY HOROSCOPE (JULY 22-29) ;

♡ its leo season and leo season is all about TIMING. you will receive ur answer very soon, listen to ur intuition and notice how everything is coming together for you. while you’re shining in the moment, remember to think about the future when mercury enters virgo and your value zone on thursday. you’ll want to go over details with a fine-tooth comb, so take your time making decisions. don’t rush into anything!

♡ for aries the next four weeks are ideal for enjoying entertainment, starting hobbies, and expressing yourself. indulge in the pleasures that summer has to offer without burning your life down.however, while you enjoy the rest of your summer, consider getting your life in order when mercury enters virgo and your productivity zone on thursday. the retrograde will be here shortly, aries, so take this time to get your ducks in a row. 

♡ for taurus, start the week by practicing self-care when the sun enters leo and your home zone on monday. the next few weeks could be a little hectic, so try to spend as much time as you can with your loved ones. be generous with your time by hosting family dinners and small parties.despite the upcoming retrograde, you’ll still have plenty of opportunities for some fun when mercury enters virgo and your creativity zone on thursday. this is a great time to busy yourself with creative projects, flirt with people, and entertain yourself with concerts and movies. have fun!

♡ for gemini, you’ll have a flair for the dramatic over the next few weeks once the sun enters leo and your communication zone on monday. everything you do and say will be bold and vibrant. your social calendar will be full of summer activities, so enjoy yourself without getting exhausted.get ready to become the family problem solver when mercury enters virgo and your home zone on thursday. it seems like everyone is coming to you to fix their lives before the retrograde, so this is a great time to focus on domestic issues. remember to set boundaries so any family drama doesn’t bring you down, gemini.

♡ for cancer, as your season comes to an end, your mind will be on your financial security when the sun enters leo and your value zone on monday. however, if you want any luxury in your life, you’re going to have to work for it. this is a great time to start side hustles and invest in things that matter to you. say what you mean and mean what you say when mercury enters virgo and your communication zone on thursday. this transit gives you the ability to cut through the chaos and get to the truth of any issue.

♡ for virgo, spend the rest of your summer break away from the madding crowd when the sun enters leo and your privacy zone on monday. over the next few weeks, you might feel the need to retreat from the world and focus on yourself. give yourself a mental and emotional cleanse before your season begins. your communication skills get a major boost this week when mercury enters your sign on thursday. while this is a brief reunion before the retrograde, this is a great time for new beginnings and getting your point across. speak with confidence, virgo.

♡ for libra, you’ll be feeling like a social butterfly over the next few weeks once the sun enters leo and your friendship zone on monday. this is a great time to hit the summer parties and make some connections. you could even meet your new besties. have fun! however, you might feel the need to retreat into yourself when mercury enters virgo and your subconscious zone on thursday. perfectionism could lead to your undoing as you come to terms with what’s working and not working in your life. focus on how to fix these areas without overcorrecting, libra. analyze your dreams to find clarity.

♡ for scorpio, despite being in the heart of summer, you’re more focused on building a reputation and making a name for yourself when the sun enters leo and your public image zone on monday. over the next four weeks, go after your ambitions and stand out from the crowd to get noticed by the right people. you’ll be especially interested in your personal aspirations when mercury enters virgo and your humanitarian zone on thursday. you have some big dreams, so lay the groundwork to get them going. make a wish, scorpio. it might come true.

♡ for sagittarius, start the week on an adventurous note when the sun enters leo and your expansion zone on monday. the next few weeks will give you opportunities to expand your horizons, for better or worse. this is a great time to travel or interact with people from different walks of life. as we get into the heat of summer, start thinking about your future when mercury enters virgo and your career zone on thursday. this is a great time to think about your professional goals and how you can get ahead in the workplace. think smarter and harder, sagittarius.

♡ for capricorn, the start of the week brings changes to your life when the sun enters leo and your transformation zone on monday. you might feel like a phoenix over the next few weeks as you sit with the ashes of your former life. while the sun shines a light on everything that is hidden, you’ll need to decide what to let go of, capricorn. class is in session when mercury enters virgo and your expansion zone on thursday, especially since this transit will give you plenty of lessons to learn, for better or worse. this is a great time to expand your mental horizons through education. it could change your life.

♡ for aquarius, “me” turns into “we” over the next few weeks when the sun enters leo and your partnership zone on monday. this is more than just a summer fling; it’s the real thing, so lock it down now. however, make sure to balance your time together and apart or it could cause some drama. read between the lines and you can uncover hidden meanings when mercury enters virgo and your intuition zone on thursday. trust your gut, aquarius, because it can guide you through the hidden motives others might have for you. be careful, and don’t make any big decisions before the retrograde.

♡ for pisces, even in the heat of summer, you’ll still have plenty of work to do when the sun enters leo and your productivity zone on monday. work on taking care of yourself through self-improvement. what do you want to get better at, pisces? try it out now. the rest of the summer could be intense, so make sure you have a buddy to help you through when mercury enters virgo and your partnership zone on thursday. this is a great time to end all conflict and work on agreements before the retrograde hits. compromise is key, if you’re willing to work at it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Social Quitting

In “Social Quitting,” my latest Locus Magazine column, I advance a theory to explain the precipitous vibe shift in how many of us view the once-dominant social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, and how it is that we have so quickly gone asking what we can do to get these services out of our lives to where we should go now that we’re all ready to leave them:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

The core of the argument revolves around surpluses — that is, the value that exists in the service. For a user, surpluses are things like “being able to converse with your friends” and “being able to plan activities with your friends.” For advertisers, surpluses are things like “being able to target ads based on the extraction and processing of private user data” and “being able to force users to look at ads before they can talk to one another.”

For the platforms, surpluses are things like, “Being able to force advertisers and business customers to monetize their offerings through the platform, blocking rivals like Onlyfans, Patreon, Netflix, Amazon, etc” and things like “Being able to charge more for ads” and “being able to clone your business customers’ products and then switch your users to the in-house version.”

Platforms control most of the surplus-allocating options. They can tune your feed so that it mostly consists of media and text from people you explicitly chose to follow, or so that it consists of ads, sponsored posts, or posts they think will “boost engagement” by sinking you into a dismal clickhole. They can made ads skippable or unskippable. They can block posts with links to rival sites to force their business customers to transact within their platform, so they can skim fat commissions every time money changes hands and so that they can glean market intelligence about which of their business customers’ products they should clone and displace.

But platforms can’t just allocate surpluses will-ye or nill-ye. No one would join a brand-new platform whose sales-pitch was, “No matter who you follow, we’ll show you other stuff; there will be lots of ads that you can’t skip; we will spy on you a lot.” Likewise, no one would sign up to advertise or sell services on a platform whose pitch was “Our ads are really expensive. Any business you transact has to go through us, and we’ll take all your profits in junk fees. This also lets us clone you and put you out of business.”

Instead, platforms have to carefully shift their surpluses around: first they have to lure in users, who will attract business customers, who will generate the fat cash surpluses that can be creamed off for the platforms’ investors. All of this has to be orchestrated to lock in each group, so that they won’t go elsewhere when the service is enshittified as it processes through its life-cycle.

This is where network effects and switching costs come into play. A service has “network effects” if it gets more valuable as users join it. You joined Twitter to talk to the people who were already using it, and then other people joined so they could talk to you.

“Switching costs” are what you have to give up when you leave a service: if a service is siloed — if it blocks interoperability with rivals — then quitting that service means giving up access to the people whom you left behind. This is the single most important difference between ActivityPub-based Fediverse services like Mastodon and the silos like Twitter and Facebook — you can quit a Fediverse server and set up somewhere else, and still maintain your follows and followers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

In the absence of interoperability, network effects impose their own switching cost: the “collective action problem” of deciding when to leave and where to go. If you depend on the people you follow and who follow you — for emotional support, for your livelihood, for community — then the extreme difficulty of convincing everyone to leave at the same time and go somewhere else means that you can be enticed into staying on a service that you no longer enjoy. The platforms can shift the surpluses away from you, provided that doing so makes you less miserable than abandoning your friends or fans or customers would. This is the Fiddler On the Roof problem: everyone stays put in the shtetl even though the cossacks ride through on the reg and beat the shit out of them, because they can’t all agree on where to go if they leave:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

So the first stage of the platform lifecycle is luring in users by allocating lots of surplus to them — making the service fun and great and satisfying to use. Few or no ads, little or no overt data-collection, feeds that emphasize the people you want to hear from, not the people willing to pay to reach you.

This continues until the service attains a critical mass: once it becomes impossible to, say, enroll your kid in a little-league baseball team without having a Facebook account, then Facebook can start shifting its surpluses to advertisers and other business-users of the platform, who will pay Facebook to interpose themselves in your use of the platform. You’ll hate it, but you won’t leave. Junior loves little-league.

Facebook can enshittify its user experience because the users are now locked in, holding each other hostage. If Facebook can use the courts and technological countermeasures to block interoperable services, it can increase its users’ switching costs, producing more opportunities for lucrative enshittification without the risk of losing the users that make Facebook valuable to advertisers. That’s why Facebook pioneered so many legal tactics for criminalizing interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/cases/facebook-v-power-ventures

This is the second phase of the toxic platform life-cycle: luring in business customers by shifting surpluses from users to advertisers, sellers, etc. This is the moment when the platforms offer cheap and easy monetization, low transaction fees, few barriers to off-platform monetization, etc. This is when, for example, a news organization can tease an article on its website with an off-platform link, luring users to click through and see the ads it controls.

Because Facebook has locked in its users through mutual hostage-taking, it can pollute their feeds with lots of these posts to news organizations’ sites, bumping down the messages from its users’ friends, and that means that Facebook can selectively tune how much traffic it gives to different kinds of business customers. If Facebook wants to lure in sports sites, it can cram those sites’ posts into millions of users’ feeds and send floods of traffic to sports outlets.

Outlets that don’t participate in Facebook lose out, and so they join Facebook, start shoveling their content into it, hiring SEO Kremlinologists to help them figure out how to please The Algorithm, in hopes of gaining a permanent, durable source of readers (and thus revenue) for their site.

But ironically, once a critical mass of sports sites are on Facebook, Facebook no longer needs to prioritize sports sites in its users’ feeds. Now that the sports sites all believe that a Facebook presence is a competitive necessity, they will hold each other hostage there, egging each other on to put more things on Facebook, even as the traffic dwindles.

Once sports sites have taken each other hostage, Facebook can claw back the surplus it allocated to them and use it to rope in another sector — health sites, casual games, employment seekers, financial advisors, etc etc. Each group is ensnared by a similar dynamic to the one that locks in the users.

But there is a difference between users’ surpluses and business’s surpluses. A user’s surplus is attention, and there is no such thing as an “attention economy.” You can’t use attention to pay for data-centers, or executive bonuses, or to lobby Congress. Attention is not a currency in the same way that cryptos are not currency — it is not a store of value, nor a unit of exchange, nor or a unit of account.

Turning attention into money requires the same tactics as turning crypto into money — you have to lure in people who have real, actual money and convince them to swap it for attention. With crypto, this involved paying Larry David, Matt Damon, Spike Lee and LeBron James to lie about crypto’s future in order to rope in suckers who would swap their perfectly cromulent “fiat” money for unspendable crypto tokens.

With platforms, you need to bring in business customers who get paid in actual cash and convince them to give you that cash in exchange for ethereal, fast-evaporating, inconstant, unmeasurable “attention.” This works like any Ponzi scheme (that is, it works like cryptos): you can use your shareholders’ cash to pay short-term returns to business customers, losing a little money as a convincer that brings in more trade.

That’s what Facebook did when it sent enormous amounts of traffic to a select few news-sites that fell for the pivot to video fraud, in order to convince their competitors to borrow billions of dollars to finance Facebook’s bid to compete with Youtube:

https://doctorow.medium.com/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video-adbe09319038

This convincer strategy is found in every con. If you go to the county fair, you’ll see some poor bastard walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that he “won” by throwing three balls into a peach-basket. The carny who operated that midway game let him win the teddy precisely so that he would walk around all day, advertising the game, which is rigged so that no one else wins the giant teddy-bear:

https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html

Social media platforms can allocate giant teddy-bears to business-customers, and it can also withdraw them at will. Careful allocations mean that the platform can rope in a critical mass of business customers and then begin the final phase of its life-cycle: allocating surpluses to its shareholders.

We know what this looks like.

Rigged ad-markets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

Understaffed content moderation departments:

https://www.dw.com/en/twitters-sacking-of-content-moderators-will-backfire-experts-warn/a-63778330

Knock-off products:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/08/twitter-is-the-latest-platform-to-test-a-tiktok-copycat-feature/

Nuking “trust and safety”:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-dissolves-trust-safety-council-2022-12-13/

Hiding posts that have links to rival services:

https://www.makeuseof.com/content-types-facebook-hides-why/

Or blocking posts that link to rival services:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go

Or worse, terminating accounts for linking to rival services:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2022/12/twitter-suspends-mastodon-account-prevents-sharing-links/

That is, once a platform has its users locked in, and has its business customers locked in, it can enshittify its service to the point of near uselessness without losing either, allocating all the useful surplus in the business to its shareholders.

But this strategy has a problem: users and business customers don’t like to be locked in! They will constantly try to find ways to de-enshittify your service and/or leave for greener pastures. And being at war with your users and business customers means that your reputation continuously declines, because every time a user or business customer figures out a way to claw back some surplus, you have to visibly, obviously enshittify your service wrestle it back.

Every time a service makes headlines for blocking an ad-blocker, or increasing its transaction fees, or screwing over its users or business customers in some other way, it makes the case that the price you pay for using the service is not worth the value it delivers.

In other words, the platforms try to establish an equilibrium where they only leave business customers and users with the absolute bare minimum needed to keep them on the service, and extract the rest for their shareholders. But this is a very brittle equilibrium, because the prices that platforms impose on their users and business customers can change very quickly, even if the platforms don’t do anything differently.

Users and business customers can revalue the privacy costs, or the risks of staying on the platform based on exogenous factors. Privacy scandals and other ruptures can make the cost you’ve been paying for years seem higher than you realized and no longer worth it.

This problem isn’t unique to social media platforms, either. It’s endemic to end-stage capitalism, where companies can go on for years paying their workers just barely enough to survive (or even less, expecting them to get public assistance and/or a side-hustle), and those workers can tolerate it, and tolerate it, and tolerate it — until one day, they stop.

The Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, the mass desertions from the gig economy — they all prove the Stein’s Law: “Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop.”

Same for long, brittle supply-chains, where all the surplus has been squeezed out: concentrating all the microchip production in China and Taiwan, all the medical saline in Puerto Rico, all the shipping into three cartels… This strategy works well, and can be perfectly tuned with mathematical models that cut right to the joint, and they work and they work.

Until they stop. Until covid. Or war. Or wildfires. Or floods. Or interest rate hikes. Or revolution. All this stuff works great until you wake up and discover that the delicate balance between paying for guard labor and paying for a fair society has tilted, and now there’s a mob building a guillotine outside the gates of your luxury compound.

This is the force underpinning collapse: “slow at first, then all at once.” A steady erosion of the failsafes, flensing all the slack out of the system, extracting all the surpluses until there’s nothing left in the reservoir, no reason to stay.

It’s what caused the near-collapse of Barnes and Noble, and while there are plenty of ways to describe James Daunt’s successful turnaround, the most general characterization is, “He has reallocated the company’s surpluses to workers, readers, writers and publishers”:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-barnes-and

A system can never truly stabilize. This is why utopias are nonsense: even if you design the most perfect society in which everything works brilliantly, it will still have to cope with war and meteors and pandemics and other factors beyond your control. A system can’t just work well, it has to fail well.

This is why I object so strenuously to people who characterize my 2017 novel Walkaway as a “dystopian novel.” Yes, the protagonists are eking out survival amidst a climate emergency and a failing state, but they aren’t giving up, they’re building something new:

https://locusmag.com/2017/06/bruce-sterling-reviews-cory-doctorow/

“Dystopia” isn’t when things go wrong. Assuming nothing will go wrong doesn’t make you an optimist, it makes you an asshole. A dangerous asshole. Assuming nothing will go wrong is why they didn’t put enough lifeboats on the Titanic. Dystopia isn’t where things go wrong. Dystopia is when things go wrong, and nothing can be done about it.

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. The social media barons who reeled users and business customers into a mutual hostage-taking were confident that their self-licking ice-cream cone — in which we all continued to energetically produce surpluses for them to harvest, because we couldn’t afford to leave — would last forever.

They were wrong. The important thing about the Fediverse isn’t that it’s noncommercial or decentralized — it’s that its design impedes surplus harvesting. The Fediverse is designed to keep switching costs as low as possible, by enshrining the Right Of Exit into the technical architecture of the system. The ability to leave a service without paying a price is the best defense we have against the scourge of enshittification.

(Thanks to Tim Harford for inspiring this column via an offhand remark in his kitchen a couple months ago!)

[Image ID: The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah 397. The Israelites collect manna. Exodus cap 16 v 14. Luyken and son.]

[saezurumurmurs]

A BL Platform For Everyone

NB: Please reblog this for visibility!

A little over two years ago, me and my BL crew were in our little chat sharing recommendations. 

Cat had an impressive spread sheet, Marcie and I had iCloud Notes, and it was pretty much chaos.

I looked at it and said out loud, "There has to be a better way for us to keep track of our reads and share recommendations. There has to be right?"

Cat said she wished someone would build a BL app with everything already there. Me, a developer of almost thirty years, paused while a floodlight (not a light bulb) went off in my head.

“Well I could maybe build one… cause like, I build stuff. How would that be?”

By the end of the conversation Cat had invited me to build an app for BL. 

Four weeks later, in late February of 2022, digitaljuicy.com was online. 

In the last couple of years, I’ve been listening to the fandom, paying attention to feedback, poured over analytics, read your responses to the Reader’s Survey and continued to craft a platform with all this in mind.

What I have been building is 100% for us... there is nothing but BL and it is an attempt to encompass ALL of BL. Not just the bits and pieces.

But for two years I've been struggling. Struggling in many ways, but specifically to get what I wanted out of the platform. I tried and failed so many times.

In September of 2022 I tried to raise venture capital to build the platform I wanted for us. I pitched it to accelerators and true blue venture capital.

Juicy is what is called 'pre-seed'. Which means were still so new and evolving, under-resourced and while there was interest, there was no joy. No funding was raised.

In December 2023, I realised it was time to rethink Juicy. i have been on the deepest dive for months rebuilding Juicy from the ground up and preparing the framework for the mobile app.

I’ve built something I want to use… and wild, I’m building it and using it as a fan at the same time. I'm at the point where it's impossible not to want to share.

And what kind of platform do I mean? At its most basic level:

You can track your reads, watches and plays

You can review and recommend the titles to the community, your friends, strangers on Twitter, your friend you're trying to corrupt outside the fandom. Your poison.

Timelines for you, for titles, for episodes, chapters… just about everything. I mean everything: The creators, the publishers, the studios, the actors... you can leave reviews and status posts on EVERYTHING. No algorithms, no force feeding... just discovery, recommendations and honest reviews by this community about our community and the industry we feed.

Collections! Lists of stuff you're reading, dropped, want to read, want to buy, love or hate, all pretty and organised and shareable..

A growing database resource of titles, tagged up to its eyeballs with a minutiae of data.. with reading an streaming links and anything else we find that we think is relevant.

But it is also a lot more than this.

I wanted it to be more than what it was. I want to turn Juicy into a mobile app, add some more functionality and more specifically, platform all of BL for its non-Asian fandom.

We get left out of so much, I feel like we need our own thing. 

I don’t know about ya’ll, but I was tired of being banned on social media for sharing content. How you gonna ban me for saying a 2D fictional character needs to be shot with shite and strung with cobweb? But they did… and I know it’s not just me.

What about the creators? How do they interface with the non-Japanese or non-Korean fandoms? On which misogynistic hell site?

What about the publishers and merchandisers? What about the little Etsy sellers? Why does BL have to hidden away in the databases of mangaupdates, anisearch and anilist? Why does every single manga tracker out there seem to have pitiful listings for BL? 

Is it because we’re a female or queer audience? 

Look at this lil video I made:

Either way, I’ve long felt it’s time for us to do our own thing. So I’ve been building it. Pixel by pixel. Feature by feature on my own.

Juicy has been a small chat group, but I’m the only developer. We’ve always been clear about what we wanted to build: A platform for the fandom, the creators, the publishers, the merchandisers… my goal is a one-stop platform for BL and I am damn close to presenting this new iteration.

This was and remains the core of what I’m building: The largest English platform for BL on the planet. The functionality is one thing, but building a database like that is not a one-person job.

So now I need your help.

First to keep the servers online, so I can continue to build and develop and finally, finally release the mobile app. I can't tell you how much I want that.

I’m close to pushing the new Juicy 3.0 out, and I’m very in love with the work I’ve done since December. It’s a new look, and it works 1000 times better than the previous iterations of Juicy.

I just have hit a wall financially, and need your help and support to get it over the line.

Juicy's ass is fat and I been carrying her mostly alone for two solid years. 

I’m going to launch a Kickstarter for this project in a bit so I can hire another developer  to help with the trickier bits and fine tune the mobile app, but for now, I felt a Patreon would at least help us keep the servers up and maybe, just maybe allow us to afford a few crucial bits that will elevate your experience as a user.

And because I’m a developer, and I can do some pretty kinky shit with APIs and such, if you support this Patreon campaign, you will get some nice feature perks on the platform automagically. You won’t have to pay again to access these perks in-app later.

As many perks as I can cook up anyway, not the least of which will be access to some of the nicer functions and features I’ve already built into the platform.

When the mobile app launches, you will get it first and for free! Plus we’ve been talking about a lot of other ways we can make the platform fun beyond what I've done already.

I plan to monetise the platform in various ways, but in a profit sharing model. You contribute to the database, you contribute content, you get a share of whatever the platform makes. This is already built into the system. This will be open to anyone willing, but to Patrons first.

Finally, I'm limiting the number of people who can subscribe via Patreon to 1000 people. Once we hit that number, the rolls will be closed to new membership, and everyone directed to the platform to pay for any services or merchandise.

My goal for this group of Patrons is that you become an exclusive and tightly knit inner circle.

My hope is that you will help me actively shape what Juicy will become. Your votes and say will carry weight. Your feature requests considered and if possible implemented first.

You will get access to exclusive merchandise, exclusive giveaways and promos (like free stuff), and exclusive programming from the team.

With your help we will produce an exclusive podcast for Patrons only discussing all things BL and Juicy (honestly our conversations are generally wild and hilarious... it will be a rollick for sure), along with other content for Patrons only. We've even planned watch parties and other fun shit... I swear, we want you all to be our greatest ambassadors so we are planning as many treats as we can.

Your access on the platform will be specific to your Patreon subscription and your treatment will be VIP for the life of your subscription.

Finally, the way my auADHD are set up, I have no interest in the dramas of the BL fandom, so this is never going to be about gatekeeping access to anything. It’s about making more access possible. You can help bring us all together and make us stronger as a group.

So do you think Digital Juicy sounds like something you’d like in on?

Okute Sea

Saezuru Murmurs

[mariacallous]

In 2023, the world has felt like it was balanced on a precipice. A United States presidential election looms, with a resurgent candidate that threatens to bring with him all the chaos of 2016 and 2020. Artificial intelligence developed so quickly that it seemed to have suddenly sprung into being, heralding vast societal promise and disruption just around the bend of its exponential curve. And the world's richest man continued to use his power to push for a more reckless tech world, from free-for-all social media and oversold assisted-driving features to AI with a “rebellious streak.”

In the midst of that uncertainty, a new war between Israel and Hamas added more atrocities alongside the slow-burning horrors of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. These wars have echoed across the internet in propaganda, hate speech, and cyberattacks that triggered widespread real-world effects. Chinese state-sponsored hackers, meanwhile, sowed the seeds for a future cyberwar, and ransomware gangs resurged. It was a banner year for chaos, present and impending, and all reflected in the digital mirror.

Each year, WIRED assembles a list of the most dangerous people, groups, and organizations on the internet—both those who intentionally endanger innocent people and those whose actions, regardless of their intent, destabilize the world as we know it in myriad ways. Here, in no particular order, are our picks for 2023.

Elon Musk

A year ago, it might have still been fair to regard Elon Musk as a brilliant technologist with occasional destructive, trollish tendencies. In 2023, those tendencies seemed to take over his public identity. Twitter, now renamed X thanks to Musk's branding whims, this year invited back conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and even amplified one account's antisemitic statements. When advertisers complained, Musk managed in a single conversation to both apologize for that blunder and tell them, “Go fuck yourself.”

Before that, in July, Musk had said that his social media platform's ad revenue had fallen by half—all of which calls into question whether this once-central platform for online conversation will survive Musk's reign, and in what form.

In the midst of that meltdown, Musk's new startup xAI released Grok, an AI chatbot Musk celebrated for having fewer guardrails than OpenAI's ChatGPT. Musk faces calls for an SEC investigation for his comments about how monkeys died in experiments carried out by his brain implant startup Neuralink. And in mid-December, Tesla recalled nearly every model of its vehicles sold in the US to fix an Autopilot feature. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that Tesla's safety measures for assuring that drivers paying attention—which many no doubt were not, perhaps thanks in part to Musk's own descriptions of the assisted-driving feature—were inadequate.

Five years ago, WIRED put Musk's face on the cover with a story that described his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality. These days, it's becoming clearer which side of that split personality dominates.

Cl0p

In 2023, ransomware resurged. According to cryptocurrency firm Chainalysis, it appears to be on track to be the second-worst year on record in terms of total extortion payments collected by the ransomware industry's coercive gangs of hackers. But perhaps no group did more damage this year than the people behind the Cl0p malware.

In May, the Cl0p gang began exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in the MOVEit file transfer software and used it to carry out a shocking spree of intrusions across more than 2,000 organizations, according to ransomware-focused security firm Emsisoft. A single victim, medical firm Maximus, lost control of the data of at least 8 million people in the breach. The hackers stole data from the state government of Maine on another 1.3 million. In total, at least 62 million people were affected, and Cl0p's hackers remain at large.

Alphv

If Cl0p were the most ruthless ransomware hackers of the year, Alphv, also known as Black Cat, were certainly in close contention. The group, which has ties to the hackers who carried out the 2021 cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline, gained a new level of notoriety in September when it targeted MGM Resorts International, shutting down computer systems across the hotel and casino chain and ultimately doing $100 million in damage, by MGM's estimate. More broadly, the FBI says that Alphv has compromised over a thousand organizations and extracted more than $300 million in ransoms.

In mid-December, the FBI announced that it had seized the dark-web site where Alphv publishes its victims’ stolen data. Hours later, the site reappeared, and Alphv defiantly announced it had “unseized” it and would no longer abide by a rule not to target critical infrastructure systems. The site was soon taken down again. But given that no members of the group have been arrested or even indicted in absentia, its chaos will likely continue.

Hamas

No event of 2023 has shaken geopolitics as suddenly and shockingly as Hamas' atrocities against civilians in Southern Israel on October 7. The attacks, in which Hamas militants killed 1,200 people and took hundreds of hostages, immediately triggered a war that threatens to destabilize the region. It has also shaken the tech world, where it has raised questions about the digital technologies that have enabled Hamas, from the millions of dollars the group raised via cryptocurrency to its channels on Telegram, where it distributes propaganda and videos of its violence. When ISIS came to prominence in 2014, it forced every technology platform in the world to question whether and how it enabled extremist violence. Now, a decade later, a new round of horrific bloodletting shows how that reckoning continues.

Sandworm

Despite sanctions, indictments, and even a $10 million bounty, Russia's team of hyper-aggressive military intelligence hackers known as Sandworm are still out there—and still active. As Russia's invasion of Ukraine grinds toward its third brutal year, in fact, they appear to have turned their focus to that conflict.

This year, Sandworm was revealed to have carried out a third blackout cyberattack against a Ukrainian electric utility, this time in the midst of a Russian air strike hitting the same city. It later penetrated Ukrainian military communications in a more traditional espionage-focused effort to gain an advantage during Ukraine's counteroffensive. And evidence points to Sandworm's responsibility for a cyberattack just this month that hit the telecom Kyivstar, taking out internet and mobile communications for millions amid another series of strikes. The group, in other words, continues to earn its reputation as the Kremlin's most dangerous hackers.

Volt Typhoon

For years, the cybersecurity community has asked itself who might be the “Sandworm of China.” This year provided perhaps the closest thing yet to an answer. The hacker group dubbed Volt Typhoon by Microsoft was revealed in May to have planted malware in power grid networks across the continental US and Guam, in some cases with an apparent eye toward controlling the flow of electricity to US military bases. More recently, The Washington Post revealed that Volt Typhoon's targets have extended to other kinds of critical infrastructure too, from an oil and gas pipeline to a major West Coast port and a Hawaiian water utility.

While the intentions of the group and its overseers are still far from clear, cybersecurity and geopolitical analysts increasingly see it as laying the groundwork to disrupt key US systems in the event of a crisis—such as China invading Taiwan.

Donald Trump

Last year, for the first time since 2015, Donald Trump was not included on this list. Hope you enjoyed the break!

Less than 11 months out from the 2024 US presidential election, Trump leads Republican primary polls by a wide margin. He has used his rekindled relevance to launch disturbing attacks on his perceived enemies, largely from his own right-wing-dominated Truth Social platform.

In posts there, he has vowed, if elected, to launch federal investigations into media companies and journalists that criticize him and to prosecute President Biden. He has ranted about the wife of one of the judges overseeing a civil trial against him for fraud charges and blamed his political opponents for the criminal charges he faces for allegations of election interference and improper handling of classified information. And he has continued to tout his discredited claims of winning the 2020 election, which the US Department of Justice says fueled the January 6, 2021, storming of the US Capitol.

More to the point, all of this may be finding a receptive audience among Trump's base. That means it could help usher in another presidency of the kind that pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, instituted a “Muslim ban” and family separation border policy, dismantled pandemic protections, and denied the seriousness of Covid-19 as hundreds of thousands of American died. Here we go again.

Israel Defense Forces

Since October 7, Israel's military has responded to Hamas' invasion of Israel with attacks that have killed at least 20,000 Palestinians—largely women and children—displaced nearly 2 million of Gaza's inhabitants, and cut off the flow of food, water, and medicine to the region. It has also at times taken out Gaza's telecommunications and internet to leave it in a near-total information blackout, even as it claims it's using those communication tools to warn civilians about its impending attacks on their homes.

In the midst of all of this, Israel's propaganda machine has been working to shape the public narrative about its military operations, from promoted tweets by the IDF in support of its campaign in Gaza appearing on X to Israeli accounts going so far as to claim that Palestinian deaths have been staged with dolls made to look like dead infants. All of that has played a role in silencing global criticism of the IDF's actions even as the death toll from its war against Hamas stretches an order of magnitude beyond that of Hamas' October 7 atrocities.

Sam Altman

Running the company that's arguably leading the race to develop the most disruptive technology ever imagined is enough to qualify anyone as one of the most dangerous people to exist—not just this year but in human history. Setting that small point aside, Altman might seem at a glance like the most benign personality imaginable to serve as OpenAI's CEO. He has chosen, surprisingly, to take no equity stake in the company. He argues for more government regulation of AI in interviews and congressional hearings. He genuinely seems to believe in a flourishing future for humanity in a post-singularity world.

But November's brief and dramatic power struggle within OpenAI exposed a less reassuring side to the company's leader and the newly consolidated circle of power that surrounds him. Altman had argued in the past that the strange structure of OpenAI, with a nonprofit overseeing a for-profit company, offered a form of self-restraint that would keep the company's technological ambitions on a safety-conscious leash. But when Altman was fired by OpenAI's board and almost immediately wrested back control of the company while ousting several board members—including two ethics-focused effective altruists—the leash snapped. OpenAI, in this new era, is now firmly under the control of one man and his executive team, as well as Microsoft, his $2.8 trillion corporate ally and investor.

So let's hope his plan for the future of this world-flipping technology is a good one. Either way, it will be very hard to stop him.

Predatory Sparrow

The group that calls itself Predatory Sparrow, a translation from the Persian Gonjeshke Darande, is hardly a household name in the cybersecurity world. But it raised alarms in 2022 when it carried out a cyberattack on several Iranian companies, including a steel mill where it claimed—and posted video to show—that it had somehow started a fire in the facility. The group, which styles itself as hacktivists but which the Iranian government has claimed is linked to the Israeli state, also leaked a collection of documents stolen in those breaches that the hackers said revealed the companies’ connections to the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Now, in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, and as Houthi rebels fire Iranian missiles at Israel, Predatory Sparrow has carried out a second major cyberattack against Iran, this time reportedly disabling as many as 70 percent of gas stations across the country. This will be one to watch.

[patent-registration-services]

Unlocking the Power of Data: Ecorfy’s Innovative Data Engineering Solutions

Introduction:

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, data is more than just a byproduct of business operations; it is the foundation of decision-making, strategy, and growth. Organizations generate vast amounts of data daily, but the real challenge lies in managing, processing, and transforming this data into actionable insights. This is where Ecorfy’s Data Engineering services come into play, offering businesses a comprehensive solution to streamline their data management and harness its true potential. Whether you're looking for data engineering services in Texas or data engineering solutions in California, Ecorfy delivers top-tier results to clients across the USA.

What is Data Engineering?

Data engineering is the process of designing, building, and maintaining the infrastructure that allows for the collection, storage, and analysis of large datasets. It serves as the backbone of data-driven organizations, ensuring that data is accessible, reliable, and usable across various platforms. From designing efficient pipelines to ensuring data integrity, data engineering is critical for enabling advanced analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence applications. Ecorfy’s data engineering consultants in the USA are experts in optimizing this process, ensuring that businesses get the most from their data.

Ecorfy’s Approach to Data Engineering

Ecorfy understands the complexities associated with managing large datasets, and their team of experts is equipped to handle every aspect of the data engineering lifecycle. Their solutions are designed to help businesses scale efficiently by building robust data architectures that support long-term growth and agility.

1. Data Integration

Ecorfy’s data engineering team excels at integrating data from disparate sources into a unified platform. Whether it's cloud data, structured databases, or unstructured data from various sources like social media and IoT devices, Ecorfy’s integration techniques ensure that businesses have a single source of truth for all their data-related needs. This integrated approach enhances data quality, making analytics more precise and decision-making more informed. Their big data engineering services in New York stand out as a benchmark for real-time and high-volume data management.

2. Data Pipeline Creation

Ecorfy specializes in creating seamless data pipelines that automate the flow of data from multiple sources into a central data repository. This enables businesses to handle real-time data processing and ensure that data is available for immediate use by analytics and business intelligence tools. The automation reduces human errors, enhances efficiency, and ensures that data remains consistent and up-to-date. With big data consultants in New York, Ecorfy provides robust solutions that make real-time data processing effortless.

3. Data Storage and Architecture

Proper storage and efficient data architecture are crucial for handling large datasets. Ecorfy ensures that businesses have the right storage solutions in place, whether on-premise or in the cloud. Their team also ensures that data is stored in ways that optimize retrieval speed and accuracy, implementing the best database management systems that are scalable and secure. Their data engineering solutions in California offer a diverse range of options suited to different business needs.

5. Big Data Handling and Real-Time Processing

With the rise of big data, businesses often struggle to process and analyze large volumes of data quickly. Ecorfy offers cutting-edge solutions for handling big data and real-time analytics, allowing companies to gain insights and respond to business needs without delays. From implementing technologies like Apache Hadoop to optimizing data workflows, Ecorfy makes big data accessible and manageable. Their big data consultants in New York offer specialized expertise to ensure that your big data projects are handled with precision and foresight.

Conclusion

In the data-driven era, effective data management is critical for business success. Ecorfy’s Data Engineering services offer businesses the tools they need to unlock the full potential of their data. By providing seamless integration, optimized data pipelines, scalable architecture, and real-time processing, Ecorfy helps organizations stay ahead of the competition in an increasingly data-centric world. Whether you're seeking data engineering consultants in the USA or industry-leading data engineering services in Texas and California, Ecorfy is your go-to partner for comprehensive, scalable data solutions.

[modulationdigitals-blog]

“Exploring the Benefits of Working with a Digital Marketing Agency in Delhi”

Every business needs a strong online presence to grow in today's digital world. Partnering with a digital marketing agency in Delhi can give you the information and support you need to achieve your marketing goals easily. Modulation Digital is one of the best digital marketing agencies in Delhi. This company can offer you several benefits that can make your business stronger in the online world. Let's read further to know what are the benefits of working with a digital marketing agency in Delhi and how Modulation Digital is at the forefront in providing these benefits. Why Choose a Digital Marketing Agency in Delhi?

Expertise and Experience

Specialized Knowledge -  Digital marketing agency in Delhi  like Modulation Digital has expertise in different digital marketing techniques such as SEO, PPC, social media and content marketing. This ensures that your campaign is designed and executed in a strategic manner.

Proven Track Record - With experience in handling a wide range of clients and businesses, Modulation Digital has a proven track record of delivering results. Their portfolio will show successful campaigns that have driven traffic, generated leads and converted leads.

Access to Advanced Tools and Technologies

Cutting Edge Tools - Working with a digital marketing agency in Delhi gives you access to cutting edge tools and technologies that can make your marketing even better. These tools include SEO analytics platforms, PPC management software and social media monitoring tools.

Data-Driven Insights -  Modulation Digital uses these tools to collect and analyze information. The resulting reports (insights) can help you further strengthen your marketing strategy. This data-driven approach ensures that your campaign performs at its best.

Cost-Effective Solutions

Efficient Resource Allocation -  Partnering with a digital marketing agency in Delhi can be more cost-effective than building an in-house digital marketing team. Agencies like Modulation Digital offer scalable solutions that allow you to effectively manage your marketing budget.

Flexible Plans - Modulation Digital creates flexible plans based on your business needs. Whether you need a complete marketing strategy or a specific service, they provide solutions that fit your budget and goals.

Focus on Core Business Activities

Delegate Marketing Tasks - By letting a specialist agency handle your digital marketing, you can focus on your core business. This allows you to focus on product development, customer service, and other important tasks for your business.

Expert Management - Modulation Digital's expert team manages every aspect of your digital marketing strategy, ensuring that every campaign is executed professionally and efficiently.

Enhanced Online Visibility

SEO & SEM Expertise - A digital marketing agency in Delhi specializes in getting your website ranked higher in search engines (Google, Bing, etc.). Modulation Digital uses modern SEO techniques and SEM strategies to improve your website rankings and online presence.

Targeted Campaigns - Through targeted PPC and social media campaigns, Modulation Digital strengthens your online presence. This helps you reach the right people and drive good traffic to your website.

Comprehensive Marketing Strategies

Integrated Approach - Modulation Digital takes a holistic approach to the digital marketing strategy, i.e., website, social media, content, etc., to form a single strategy. This ensures that all aspects of your marketing are interconnected and work together to help you achieve your goals.

Tailored Solutions -  The agency creates a strategy based on your business's specific needs and goals. From content creation to social media management, Modulation Digital creates a strategy that takes into account your specific challenges and opportunities.

Key Services Offered by Modulation Digital

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

On-page SEO -  This involves improving the website's content, meta tags and internal linking so that it ranks higher in search engines.

Off-page SEO -  This involves building high-quality backlinks and increasing the credibility of the website.

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Campaign management -  Creating and managing PPC campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and Bing Ads.

Ad optimization - Constantly monitoring and improving ads to get more profit from less cost (high ROI) and less cost per click (low cost-per-click).

Social media marketing

Platform management - Managing and growing presence on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Content creation - Creating content that appeals to people and grabs attention, which makes your brand recognizable and people feel connected to you.

 Content Marketing

Content Strategy -  Creating a content strategy that aligns with your marketing goals and the audience you want to reach.

Content Creation - Creating high-quality blog posts, articles, and other content (multimedia content) to keep people visiting and engaging with your website.

Web Design and Development

Responsive Design -  Creating an attractive, mobile-friendly website that is easy to use (seamless user experience).

Development - Using the latest technology and best practices to ensure that your website is fast, secure, and functional.

In summary, Partnering with a digital marketing agency in Delhi, for example Modulation Digital, can bring many benefits to your business. Expert support, modern tools, affordable solutions and greater online visibility – all of these benefits can take your business a long way.

Modulation Digital employs a hands-on approach, customer-centric service and innovative thinking, making it an excellent choice for businesses looking to strengthen their digital marketing.

If you want to find out how Modulation Digital can help your business succeed, check out their website or contact them directly. Work with one of the best digital marketing agencies in Delhi to see how things can change and take your business to new heights.

[chinting]

Week 12: Crowdsourcing: Harnessing Collective Power in Times of Crisis

In moments of crisis, whether it's a natural disaster or a global emergency, crowdsourcing becomes a powerful tool for bringing people together to help. Crowdsourcing means asking a large group of people, often through the internet, to share their knowledge and resources to solve problems and support each other. This approach has revolutionized how we respond to emergencies and disasters around the world (Hargrave 2022).

Crowdsourcing emerges as a crucial lifeline during times of crisis, revolutionizing how communities respond and recover from disasters. In the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in 2010, platforms like Ushahidi utilized SMS and online forms to gather vital reports directly from affected locals. This real-time data was then mapped out, pinpointing areas where aid was urgently needed and enabling relief organizations to allocate resources efficiently (Ford 2012). Similarly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, social media became a powerful tool for crowdsourcing, connecting individuals with critical resources like oxygen cylinders, hospital beds, and vaccine information through hashtags such as #COVIDRelief and #COVID19Help. These initiatives not only facilitated rapid information dissemination but also mobilized collective action, demonstrating the transformative impact of crowdsourcing in enhancing disaster response and community resilience.

In addition, social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have revolutionized crisis response efforts by enabling real-time crowdsourcing of vital information. During natural disasters like hurricanes and typhoons, affected communities leverage hashtags to disseminate urgent updates on evacuation routes, shelter availability, and critical needs such as food and water. This rapid sharing of information enables volunteers, relief organizations, and authorities to respond swiftly, ensuring timely assistance reaches those in distress. Similarly, in regions prone to wildfires and floods, residents utilize social media to warn others about impending dangers, share safety tips, and coordinate community-driven initiatives aimed at supporting affected individuals and communities. This grassroots approach facilitated by social media underscores its pivotal role in enhancing disaster preparedness and response strategies worldwide.

Conclusion: Coming Together to Make a Difference

Crowdsourcing demonstrates the power of collective action. By leveraging technology and collective knowledge, communities can respond more effectively to crises, save lives, and build resilience. It's about harnessing the strength of many to overcome challenges that no single entity could tackle alone.

In summary, crowdsourcing isn't just a tool it's a testament to human compassion and solidarity. By connecting people globally and locally, we can create a future where every voice is heard, and every contribution makes a meaningful impact in times of need.

Reference

Ford, H 2012, 'Witnesses to disasters: From documentary realism to collective intelligence', in M Farman (ed.), The Mobile Story: Narrative Practices with Locative Technologies, Routledge, pp. 31-44.

Hargrave, M 2022, Crowdsourcing: Definition, How It Works, Types, and Examples, Investopedia, viewed 16 Jun 2024, <https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crowdsourcing.asp>.

[jason-squires]

Jason Squires Advice on Using the Right Social Media Marketing Tools

The power of social media to connect brands with consumers, raise awareness, and generate sales has grown rapidly in recent years. However, it is important to use a variety of methods to make yourself stand out in the crowded and competitive world of social media to effectively reach your target audience. Expert social selling trainer Jason Squires frequently emphasizes the need to employ the appropriate instruments in carrying out a brilliant social marketing plan. 

Tools for Managing Your Social Media Presence 

Maintaining an updated and well-organized social media presence is essential. Hootsuite and Buffer are two of many social media management applications that let you schedule posts in advance and post to various networks from a single interface. Your content's success may be measured with the help of these tools, allowing you to adjust your approach as necessary. 

Tools for Analyzing Information at Greater Depth 

Jason Squires stresses the importance of data as the backbone of every marketing plan. Google Analytics and Sprout Social are just two examples of analytics solutions that can help you better understand your audience and their behavior. Important questions like "What content resonates most?" can be answered with their support. When do you recommend posting? This data is useful for planning future campaigns. 

Make Your Content Stand Out by Being Different 

Engaging and original material is essential if you want to be heard in the sea of information that is social media. Canva and Adobe Spark are just two content production tools that provide simple design components you can utilize to make your posts stand out. These platforms include a variety of social media channel-specific templates to help you keep your brand's voice consistent across profiles. 

The Role of Conversation in Customer Engagement 

Customer loyalty can be increased through conversations with your target demographic. You can keep tabs on what people are saying about your business on various social media channels with the help of customer interaction tools like Mention and Brand24. Using this in-the-moment information, you may more effectively interact with your target market, respond to questions, and deal with constructive criticism. 

Concluding Remarks 

Because of the dynamic nature of social media marketing, adopting an integrated strategy is essential for success. An oft-repeated quote from Jason Squires goes something like this: "It's not about collecting tools, but about using the right ones effectively." Each tool complements your social media advertising efforts in its unique way. Selecting and using these tools effectively can help you achieve your social media and marketing objectives. 

[jacksondavis01]

Benefits of Using Hubspot

HubSpot is a CRM system that combines all that growing businesses need to produce a world-class consumer experience into a single platform. Our handcrafted, not cobbled-together solutions enable teams to develop by providing tools that are strong on their own but even more so when combined.

HubSpot – The All-In-One Platform

Growth is most effective when every aspect is linked. When the operations of the departments of sales and marketing are coordinated, they perform best. When client service teammates have access to the entire process, they can provide a unique experience. While it is possible to perform purchases, advertising, customer support, and options using only a Mad Scientist collection of various software, this is frequently unproductive and results in low adoption. Vitally, HubSpot offers one framework for all of one go-to-market workgroup, bringing all their activities together. Understanding how to start making the motor change direction by managing information, sending messages, automation, statistics, and regularly reporting through HubSpot is simple.

The History of HubSpot

To comprehend how HubSpot tends to work, it’s beneficial to have a basic understanding of HubSpot and the business. It began as an asset for marketing companies in 2005. They used to provide resources and information to assist businesses get launching with marketing strategies.

What Are All the Upsides Of HubSpot?

HubSpot provides several advantages that, as a comprehensive framework, are difficult to find elsewhere. After all, no online marketing platform is ideal. If you need a content management system, The buffer may have more characteristics. MailChimp can provide more online marketing features, WordPress is a good CMS, and Salesforce is a CRM. However, if you want all four and a variety of out-of-the-box characteristics, HubSpot is the best option.

HubSpot would be ideal for your requirements :

● It is a thorough CRM console with everything you require.

This is every marketer’s requirement. With HubSpot, users no longer need to multitask between multiple platforms to commercialize to existing and potential clients. You can generate and maximize information, nurture leads, track contacts as they turn into customers, and track the progress of your marketing efforts.

● HubSpot could be integrated with other portals.

In some cases, other channels, like WordPress and Magento, may be required by your company. HubSpot is compatible with WordPress and Magento, as well as various systems. So, if you want to develop your contacts in HubSpot while handling the upkeep of your webpage in some other, you can accomplish this.

● A HubSpot CMS Hub offers the following tools:

Framework for comprehensive hosting service: Get all you require inside one place, from home screens and support pages to third-party websites, blogs, feedback forms, and CTAs. Best security — HubSpot has been well-known for its outstanding security. Furthermore, given that they are not an open system like WordPress, cybersecurity threats are significantly lower.

Pace —The CMS is created to be lightning-fast. You don’t need to do a lot of work or install many add-ons to create a website that loads quickly.

● Hubspot Operations Center

An Operations Hub, its newest family member, has been data-centric and enables automation. It enables you to communicate your applications, sync consumer data all over team members, clean up redundant information, and automate tasks to remove the “menial tasks” from your daily routine. This hub is an excellent method for avoiding having a jumbled mess of technology solutions as your company grows.

● It elevates social interaction to a different level.

Social media is an essential component of any strategy for inbound marketing. It may also be challenging to implement amid the frenetic pace of day-to-day commercial activities – however, without coherent communication systems, engagement, and uploading its worth is null and void.

The key to maintaining control of your social networks is to pre-schedule your Twitter messages or blogs to operate in the backstory when you’re too occupied with spending hours on them. HubSpot has an excellent social media schedule and management framework with outstanding awareness that helps make social networking execution easier.

● It is analytical.

Data-driven advertising is the best way to go. HubSpot makes it easy to gather all the information you need or desire to direct your advertising and, more notably, demonstrate its significance and ROI. It’s not been more straightforward to gather the much more key criteria!

● An SEO Function On Hubspot Is Nice.

Search engine optimization is a complicated process. However, there are numerous tools obtainable in the business to assist you in becoming more noticeable to narrow down the search while researching, composing, maximizing, and communicating your web content.

It is nearly impossible to accomplish everything if you have a small staff or aren’t an SEO expert. So, overall, you will indeed benefit from seeking SEO assistance in this regard. However, HubSpot SEO provides the fundamentals, removing all difficulties and challenges and providing basic techniques for non-SEO specialists to track critical phrases, enhance your site’s standings, and write SEO-friendly material.

Pricing for HubSpot CRM

The free plan of HubSpot CRM provides restricted rights to its techniques. You could indeed store contact details, their businesses, and pacts, incorporate them with an Email account or Outlook, and so on. Even so, only just a few team members are privy to it. So it’s only able to assist you in the beginning. HubSpot has three pay-per-click tiers in addition to the free ones:

Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.

Its paid tiers grant access to the company’s sophisticated tools. Prices for Sales Hub levels vary.

● Sales Hub Starter Tier-$45/month

● Professional Tier ($450/month)

● Enterprise Tier ($1200/month)

Conclusion

HubSpot has also cemented its position as the best link-building software. Many companies and organizations effectively conduct it. Even though learning new things is difficult. Once you’ve mastered it, you’ll be able to enter a new universe of potential and accomplishments. With the clear and specific HubSpot CRM advantages and functions, you can simplify your entire business process, accelerate, and expand with a unified platform.

As a result, HubSpot CRM is the better decision if you’re searching for a user-friendly, aligned, and available CRM.

[skytrust11]

What is an Omnichannel Brand? How can it Help You Grow?

An omnichannel strategy is an effective marketing experience that allows users to easily navigate multiple channels before making the final purchase.

What is Omnichannel marketing?

In today’s fast-paced digital environment, customers and businesses are empowered with new technologies and channels at their fingertips. Organizations are paving ways to synchronize the online and offline touchpoints of brands and create a seamless user experience. Omnichannel marketing is all about the integration and cooperation of multiple to interact with customers efficiently.

You might have noticed that many times whenever browsing anything online, you add your choice of product to the cart but don’t end up buying it. Later, you see the ad for that abandoned product on your social media platforms also. This is not any miracle; it’s an example of an omnichannel marketing strategy.

An omnichannel strategy is an effective marketing experience that allows users to navigate through multiple channels with ease before making the final purchase. According to research, an omnichannel customer tends to shop 1.7 times more than customers using a single-channel approach. Also, many B2C customers engage with atleast 3 to 5 channels whenever purchasing a product or resolving a request.

An omnichannel approach creates a customer-centric view by helping customers with certain key elements like –

Identifiable brand tone and vision.

Personalizes messages for specific interests.

Content influenced by past interaction and the current stage of the buyer’s journey.

What are the four pillars of omnichannel marketing strategy?

https://skytrustit.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/25025577_7038058-1-1536x1024.jpg.webp

An efficient omnichannel strategy is dependent on four pillars that work cohesively to achieve the objective of providing a unified and integrated customer experience. People often ask about what is an omnichannel approach and what it is based on. To answer this question, let’s have a look at the four pillars of an omnichannel marketing strategy that form the base of every omnichannel approach.

Customer-centric approach – Customer-centricity is one of the main aspects of creating a top-notch omnichannel experience for its customers. Capturing customer data and insights by following their behaviors, preferences, and pain points across channels leads to enhanced customer satisfaction, loyalty, happiness, and accelerated returns on investments.

Integration of channels – Integrating all channels provides a uniform and seamless customer experience. When a customer is able to access your products and services through your website and ends up purchasing through the mobile app without any hassles or confusion, it means that you have succeeded in providing your customers the ease of navigating through multiple channels. Although this strategy requires on-point planning, execution, and large investment in information and technology, if done right can lead to brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, and increased revenues.

Personalization – This is one of the key components to ensure client loyalty and repetition by providing tailored experiences to clients across all channels. Companies must delve deep into customers’ data and insights into their behavior, likes, dislikes, etc., to provide a personalized approach that complements their needs, requirements, and preferences.

Data-driven decision-making – This fourth pillar of omnichannel marketing strategy involves collecting customer data based on their preferences, behavior, likes, and dislikes across all channels. Data-driven decision-making leads to improved customer experience and greater returns on investment.

What is the difference between multichannel and omnichannel?

Although multichannel and omnichannel are based on customer engagement across multiple channels, they cannot be used interchangeably. Multichannel is much simpler in intentions and reflective in operations. It looks at a specific channel and how the transactions will be completed there. However, omnichannel is reflective of customer experience. It takes into account the customer journey across multiple channels and provides a good customer experience on all channels. The three key differences between multichannel and omnichannel strategy are:

Customer engagement vs customer experience – Multichannel marketing focuses on making people aware of the business and allowing maximum heads to engage with your brand. Omnichannel marketing focuses on creating a consistent customer experience for already engaged customers.

Channel centric vs customer-centric – Multichannel aims to increase the number of channels used for brand promotion, and Omnichannel ensures to provide a seamless experience to customers as they switch between various digital marketing channels and offline channels.

Quantity vs quality – Multichannel approach is all about expanding the number of channels irrespective of them being interconnected. The omnichannel approach focuses on offering good quality by interconnecting all channels, allowing customers to choose or switch whenever they want without any fear of starting again.

What is the advantage of omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel strategy can be a game changer for many. Below are some of the benefits offered by the omnichannel brand strategy.

Great customer experience – Since omnichannel focuses more on customer-centricity than various channels, the customer experience is better and is likely to lead to higher sales and revenue.

Comprehensive brand strategy and identity – Creating a consistent brand strategy across all channels may lead to an identifiable brand image, values, and vision.

High revenue – Customers tend to approach brands through multiple channels and touchpoints in omnichannel marketing, resulting in increased revenue. Research shows that customers that engage with multiple touchpoints are likely to be 30 percent more valuable.

Better attribution data – Creating targeted campaigns and optimizing media spending efficiently leads to a better understanding of the customer’s journey. Omnichannel marketing automation includes not just building a user experience with your brand but with data analytics as well.

What is the disadvantage of omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing can also be challenging for brands to maintain a fine-tuned system. Below are some of the disadvantages of the same.

Increased online competition – As you offer multiple channels for your customers, you also open doors for online competition. The only way to solve this problem is to offer your customers with discounts, rewards, etc.

Weaker margins – Any channel involved in omnichannel involves higher expenses of storage, inventory, packaging, and delivery. Hence, lowering the profit margins for each channel.

Relies on open communication – The key to an effective omnichannel system is to have a consolidated technology that targets the priority and vision of every channel toward the same end product. Any difference in the same will lead to an alignment error.

[skytrustunitedstates]

What is an Omnichannel Brand? How can it Help You Grow?

What is an Omnichannel Brand? How can it Help You Grow?

An omnichannel strategy is an effective marketing experience that allows users to easily navigate multiple channels before making the final purchase.

What is Omnichannel marketing?

In today’s fast-paced digital environment, customers and businesses are empowered with new technologies and channels at their fingertips. Organizations are paving ways to synchronize the online and offline touchpoints of brands and create a seamless user experience. Omnichannel marketing is all about the integration and cooperation of multiple to interact with customers efficiently.

You might have noticed that many times whenever browsing anything online, you add your choice of product to the cart but don’t end up buying it. Later, you see the ad for that abandoned product on your social media platforms also. This is not any miracle; it’s an example of an omnichannel marketing strategy.

An omnichannel strategy is an effective marketing experience that allows users to navigate through multiple channels with ease before making the final purchase. According to research, an omnichannel customer tends to shop 1.7 times more than customers using a single-channel approach. Also, many B2C customers engage with atleast 3 to 5 channels whenever purchasing a product or resolving a request.

An omnichannel approach creates a customer-centric view by helping customers with certain key elements like –

Identifiable brand tone and vision.

Personalizes messages for specific interests.

Content influenced by past interaction and the current stage of the buyer’s journey.

What are the four pillars of omnichannel marketing strategy?

An efficient omnichannel strategy is dependent on four pillars that work cohesively to achieve the objective of providing a unified and integrated customer experience. People often ask about what is an omnichannel approach and what it is based on. To answer this question, let’s have a look at the four pillars of an omnichannel marketing strategy that form the base of every omnichannel approach.

Customer-centric approach – Customer-centricity is one of the main aspects of creating a top-notch omnichannel experience for its customers. Capturing customer data and insights by following their behaviors, preferences, and pain points across channels leads to enhanced customer satisfaction, loyalty, happiness, and accelerated returns on investments.

Integration of channels – Integrating all channels provides a uniform and seamless customer experience. When a customer is able to access your products and services through your website and ends up purchasing through the mobile app without any hassles or confusion, it means that you have succeeded in providing your customers the ease of navigating through multiple channels. Although this strategy requires on-point planning, execution, and large investment in information and technology, if done right can lead to brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, and increased revenues.

Personalization – This is one of the key components to ensure client loyalty and repetition by providing tailored experiences to clients across all channels. Companies must delve deep into customers’ data and insights into their behavior, likes, dislikes, etc., to provide a personalized approach that complements their needs, requirements, and preferences.

Data-driven decision-making – This fourth pillar of omnichannel marketing strategy involves collecting customer data based on their preferences, behavior, likes, and dislikes across all channels. Data-driven decision-making leads to improved customer experience and greater returns on investment.

What is the difference between multichannel and omnichannel?

Although multichannel and omnichannel are based on customer engagement across multiple channels, they cannot be used interchangeably. Multichannel is much simpler in intentions and reflective in operations. It looks at a specific channel and how the transactions will be completed there. However, omnichannel is reflective of customer experience. It takes into account the customer journey across multiple channels and provides a good customer experience on all channels. The three key differences between multichannel and omnichannel strategy are:

Customer engagement vs customer experience – Multichannel marketing focuses on making people aware of the business and allowing maximum heads to engage with your brand. Omnichannel marketing focuses on creating a consistent customer experience for already engaged customers.

Channel centric vs customer-centric – Multichannel aims to increase the number of channels used for brand promotion, and Omnichannel ensures to provide a seamless experience to customers as they switch between various digital marketing channels and offline channels.

Quantity vs quality – Multichannel approach is all about expanding the number of channels irrespective of them being interconnected. The omnichannel approach focuses on offering good quality by interconnecting all channels, allowing customers to choose or switch whenever they want without any fear of starting again.

What is the advantage of omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel strategy can be a game changer for many. Below are some of the benefits offered by the omnichannel brand strategy.

Great customer experience – Since omnichannel focuses more on customer-centricity than various channels, the customer experience is better and is likely to lead to higher sales and revenue.

Comprehensive brand strategy and identity – Creating a consistent brand strategy across all channels may lead to an identifiable brand image, values, and vision.

High revenue – Customers tend to approach brands through multiple channels and touchpoints in omnichannel marketing, resulting in increased revenue. Research shows that customers that engage with multiple touchpoints are likely to be 30 percent more valuable.

Better attribution data – Creating targeted campaigns and optimizing media spending efficiently leads to a better understanding of the customer’s journey. Omnichannel marketing automation includes not just building a user experience with your brand but with data analytics as well.

What is the disadvantage of omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing can also be challenging for brands to maintain a fine-tuned system. Below are some of the disadvantages of the same.

Increased online competition – As you offer multiple channels for your customers, you also open doors for online competition. The only way to solve this problem is to offer your customers with discounts, rewards, etc.

Weaker margins – Any channel involved in omnichannel involves higher expenses of storage, inventory, packaging, and delivery. Hence, lowering the profit margins for each channel.

Relies on open communication – The key to an effective omnichannel system is to have a consolidated technology that targets the priority and vision of every channel toward the same end product. Any difference in the same will lead to an alignment error.

https://skytrustit.com/2023/04/17/what-is-an-omnichannel-brand-how-can-it-help-you-grow/

[projectcubicle1]

A Guide to Proxies: Working and Benefits

A Guide to Proxies: Working and Benefits

When you log into your computer to browse the internet, you expose yourself to countless cybersecurity threats, malware, and cyberattack vulnerabilities. Your personal information is continuously at risk; anyone can easily track your online activity. However, there are several ways to maintain your privacy. For instance, you can use online VPN services and proxy providers to make your IP address untraceable. In this article, we will explore the benefits of using proxies for your online activities.

Proxies vs. VPNs

Both proxy and VPN are online services that can encrypt your web activities, preventing cyber attacks from entering a private network. However, VPNs are superior to a proxy as they can encrypt all web activity, while a proxy can only encrypt the IP address of a single website. The proxy server has its own Internet Protocol address that allows you to appear as if browsing from a different location. With VPNs, traffic travels over an encrypted tunnel between the remote VPN network and the user's computer or device. VPNs are set up similarly to firewalls or web filters and safeguard your devices from cyber danger.

The Benefits of Using Proxies

Proxies allow clients to access information stored in various servers while keeping their anonymity. Let’s discuss the benefits of using proxies further.

1.   Your Private Information Is Safe Most sites that you visit collect data from their users to some extent, although the degree of every website’s tracking is different and may never be discovered. However, some statistics reveal that around 79% of websites online save user information by using cookies and other related tracking methods. Proxies can provide you with a certain level of security by altering your IP address or any other information that could be used to identify you on the web. You may appear from an IP address utterly different from yours when using proxies. This ensures that your privacy and information are safe if you use a proxy. 2.   You Can Log In From Multiple Locations Several common-use websites are banned in some countries for political, geographical, or social reasons. The same is true for certain tv shows on streaming platforms like Netflix. However, proxies can get you access to all these restricted and unavailable websites and media by signing you in from different prominent locations throughout the globe. Most proxy services give their customers the freedom to choose where they want their specific IP address to originate from. Proxies can also help find localized data for research purposes, so finding location-specific demographic data is made easy by using proxies.

3.   You Get Uncompromised Speed VPN can slow down your connectivity over the web. However, private proxies are an easy fix to this issue. A private proxy offers a unique IP address only used by the owner of the IP address, ensuring bandwidth is unlimited with no traffic at all. Additionally, these dedicated proxies are safer and more reliable than shared public proxies. 4.   You Get Control Over Internet Access Where proxies allow you to access all the banned and restricted websites in your area, they also allow you to ban certain websites from your IP address. So, if you are a boss or a parent trying to keep your children’s or workers’ online activity monitoring, you can do so by placing bans and logging web requests through your exclusive proxy.

Endnote

You should use a proxy if you value online anonymity and are willing to take that extra step to secure your data. A better idea is to use private proxies that cost as low as one dollar per proxy. This allows you to have a completely exclusive IP address for your dedicated use, compatible with all devices, tools, and applications. Read the full article

[blockchainxtech]

Web3 Marketplaces: Unlocking the True Potential of Blockchain Technology

Introduction

The way we think about e-commerce and other digital marketplaces has significantly changed thanks to web3 marketplace. These decentralized platforms employ blockchain technology to create a marketplace environment that is more open, safe, and user-controlled.

Web2 marketplaces altered the way we purchase and sell products and services online in the early days of the internet. These centralized systems are nonetheless vulnerable to problems including data privacy concerns, user control limitations, and the possibility of fraud and manipulation.

By decentralizing the platform and giving consumers access to their data and transactions, Web3 markets overcome these problems. This offers up a whole new world of opportunities, from automated decentralized organizations to peer-to-peer marketplaces without middlemen.

We'll go into web3, how it differs from past internet incarnations, and the potential of web3 markets to unleash the full power of blockchain technology in this post. Together with some of the difficulties and restrictions these platforms now face, we'll also look at some of the most well-known web3 markets currently in use.

What is Web3?

The third-generation internet, commonly referred to as web3.0 or the decentralized web, is being constructed on top of blockchain technology. While centralized platforms and services like Facebook, Amazon, and Google dominate the present web, often known as web 2.0, web 3 intends to build a more decentralized and democratized internet where people have greater control over their data and online interactions.

Blockchain, decentralized storage systems, smart contracts, and peer-to-peer networking are just a few of the protocols and technologies that make up Web 3. These tools let programmers create decentralized apps (dApps), which are hosted on distributed networks of nodes rather than centralized servers.

Web3 has the potential to disrupt a wide range of sectors, from social media and entertainment to banking and government, in addition to allowing decentralized markets and other e-commerce platforms. Web3 has the ability to build a more just and equitable internet that is less susceptible to censorship and monitoring by providing more user control and ownership of data.

What are Blockchain-based Marketplaces?

Digital marketplaces that use blockchain technology to build a decentralized and open platform for buying and selling products and services are known as blockchain-based marketplaces. Instead than depending on a single server or platform, these markets run on a distributed network of nodes, allowing for increased transparency, security, and user control.

The ability of blockchain-based markets to do away with intermediaries like banks, payment processors, and other third-party providers is one of its key advantages. Smart contracts, which are self-executing contracts that automatically enforce the terms of the agreement between buyers and sellers, are used to carry out transactions. As a result, there is no longer a need for middlemen, which may lower costs, boost productivity, and foster a less trustworthy environment for both buyers and sellers.

As all transactions are recorded on an immutable ledger that can be audited and confirmed by anybody on the network, blockchain-based markets can also provide better transparency and security. As a result, it is considerably more difficult for fraud or manipulation to take place because every transaction is recorded and available to the public and cannot be changed or removed.

OpenSea for NFTs, Rarible for digital collectibles, Origin Protocol for e-commerce, and Uniswap for trading in decentralized finance (DeFi) are a few examples of blockchain-based markets. These systems show how blockchain-based markets have the potential to develop a more user-controlled, open, and transparent online marketplace environment.

Examples of Web3 Marketplaces

There are a number of major Web3 marketplaces now in use. Here are a few illustrations:

OpenSea is a decentralized exchange where users may buy, sell, and find non-fungible coins (NFTs). NFTs are distinctive digital assets that may represent anything, including virtual real estate, music, and the arts. One of the biggest NFT markets, OpenSea offers a huge selection of NFTs for sale.

Another NFT marketplace that specializes in digital art is called SuperRare. Artists may create original digital pieces of art and mint them as NFTs to sell on the site. SuperRare has grown in prominence as a venue for both well-known and emerging artists to display and market their digital works.

Origin Protocol is a decentralised e-commerce network that facilitates direct transactions between consumers and sellers without the need of middlemen. The platform supports a wide range of items, including services, tangible objects, and digital products. Also, users of Origin Protocol can build their own decentralised markets on the network.

Mirror - Mirror is a marketplace for buying and selling "synthetic" assets, or digital assets that mimic the value of physical assets like equities, commodities, and money. Users may build and trade synthetic assets that mimic the behaviour of actual assets with Mirror, which runs on the Ethereum blockchain.

Advantages of Web3 Marketplaces

Web3 markets are superior than typical web2 marketplaces in a number of ways. The following are some of the main benefits of Web3 marketplaces:

Web3 markets are decentralized, which implies that no single institution or group has authority over them. As a result, the atmosphere in which buyers and sellers conduct business with one another is more open, transparent, and distrustless.

User control: Web3 marketplace development provides users with more power over their information and financial activities. Without the use of middlemen like banks, payment processors, or other third-party providers, users may communicate with the platform directly. Hence, the possibility of fraud, censorship, and manipulation is diminished.

Reduced costs: Because there are no middlemen to take a percentage of the transaction, Web3 marketplaces may operate with lower fees than traditional marketplaces.

This can lower costs for both buyers and sellers, facilitating market participation for small enterprises and individuals.

Security: Blockchain technology is used by Web3 marketplaces to offer a more secure and impenetrable environment for transactions. Every transaction is recorded in an unchangeable ledger that everyone on the network can audit and verify. Fraud or manipulation is significantly more difficult as a result.

Innovation: Web3 markets are still in their infancy, so there is a tonne of space for creativity and experimentation. Developers may now build new kinds of markets that weren't conceivable with conventional marketplaces, including decentralized exchanges or automated organizations.

In general, Web3 markets provide a more accessible, open, and user-controlled setting for online purchasing and selling of products and services. Although these platforms currently face difficulties and constraints, there are many investors and businesspeople banking on the future of Web3 markets because of the substantial potential benefits.

Future of Web3 Marketplaces

Web3 markets have a bright future since they have certain significant benefits over web2 marketplaces, including decentralisation, user control, cheaper costs, and improved security. The following events and trends may have an impact on how Web3 markets grow in the future:

Growth of use cases: At the moment, Web3 markets are concentrating on digital assets like NFTs, cryptocurrencies, and digital art. Web3 markets will likely extend into new use cases, such as e-commerce, real estate, and supply chain management, as the technology advances.

Increasing acceptance: As more individuals become aware with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, we may anticipate a rise in Web3 marketplace use. This may result in more liquidity, a wider selection of products, and reduced prices.

Interoperability: The majority of Web3 markets are currently constructed on several blockchain networks, which hinders compatibility. To make it simpler for consumers to transfer assets between various Web3 markets, new protocols and standards that enable cross-chain interoperability are predicted to develop.

Integration with Web3 infrastructure: Decentralized identification solutions, decentralised storage networks, and decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms are just a few examples of the Web3 infrastructure that will be progressively integrated with Web3 markets. Peer-to-peer lending, decentralised insurance, and social tokens are just a few examples of the new kinds of transactions and use cases that may be made possible.

Web3 markets are still in their infancy, thus we may anticipate the emergence of new marketplaces that were not feasible with conventional web2 marketplaces. For instance, we may see the development of Decentralized autonomous organisations (DAOs) that function as decentralised marketplaces, where users jointly decide which goods and services to provide and how to run the platform.

Overall, Web3 markets have a promising future because they provide an environment for online buying and selling that is more open, transparent, and user-controlled. Although these platforms currently face difficulties and constraints, there are many investors and businesspeople banking on the future of Web3 markets because of the substantial potential benefits.

Conclusion

In summary, Web3 markets provide a number of benefits over typical web2 marketplaces, including decentralization, user control, cheaper costs, more security, and the opportunity for innovation. These marketplaces, which are based on blockchain technology, aim to improve the online marketplace by making it more open, transparent, and user-controlled.

Web3 markets are still in their infancy, but in the upcoming years, we may anticipate further development and expansion. The development of use cases, greater acceptance, interoperability, interaction with existing Web3 infrastructure, and ongoing innovation will all be part of this.

Web3 marketplaces, as a whole, offer a fascinating new frontier in e-commerce and have the potential to completely change how we purchase and sell products and services online. In order to engage in the global economy and get access to new markets throughout the world, businesses and people will have new options as these platforms continue to develop and grow.

[modulationdigitals-blog]

Best Social Media Marketing company in Laxmi Nagar

In the digital age, a strong social media presence is no longer a luxury but a necessity. This is essential to attract your target market, increase brand recognition, and ultimately pursue business expansion. But navigating the ever-changing social media landscape can be difficult. This is where the role of Modulation Digital comes into play.

Modulation Digital's success can be attributed to its continued dedication to data-driven insights, creative talent and strategic thinking.

Here's what sets Modulation Digital apart as the best social media marketing company in Delhi:

strategic intelligence

Modulation Digital approaches social media marketing with a strategy that is individual to every company because it understands that every company is different and has different objectives and difficulties. Modulation Digital's team creates customized social media campaigns through in-depth market research and strategic analysis that connect with target groups and encourage meaningful engagement.

Understanding the Customer Deeply – Modulation Digital carefully researches your target audience before writing a single article.

Analyzing and Differentiating from Your Competitors – Understanding your competitors is important. Modulation Digital conducts in-depth analysis of competitors to determine their strengths and weaknesses.

Goal-Oriented Strategy Development – Using Social Media Doesn't Have to Be a Waste of Time Together you and Modulation Digital set specific, measurable goals for your social media marketing. We create a customized plan that produces measurable results toward reaching those goals, whether they relate to brand exposure, lead generation, website traffic or customer engagement.

Parameter Driven Optimization – Digital Modulation recognizes the power of data, so it is king. We monitor campaign performance using advanced data, monitoring objective progress and highlighting areas for improvement.

Excellence Creativity

There is so much crowd on social media that if you want to stand out then it is very important to be creative. Modulation Digital has a team full of creative ideas that create things that attract people and inspire them to do something. Every piece of content on Modulation Digital, whether it's eye-catching graphics or powerful language, is designed to make an impact on the audience.

Let us now see how Modulation Digital remains at the forefront of creativity:

Understanding the pulse of culture – It's important to stay connected to what's trending on social media. Modulation Digital uses incredible creativity to incorporate memes, cultural trends and the latest news into its content so that your audience feels more connected to you.

Adoption of new formats- New features and formats keep coming on social media platforms every day. Modulation Digital is one of the first adopters of these trends. She incorporates things like live streams, stories that disappear, and interactive video ads into her content to keep her content fresh and engaging.

Testing and Optimization (A/B Testing and Optimization) – A strategy that works for one brand may not necessarily work for another. Modulation Digital believes in continuous progress. She tests different creative ideas and strives to make your social media campaign the best it can be.

Collaboration with micro-influencers – Working with micro-influencers that your target market follows can be very beneficial.

Data- driven insights 

Data is the king of social media marketing. Modulation Digital tracks performance parameters in real-time using mostly analytics tools and technology and collects actionable insights. Thanks to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) analysis and campaign success tracking by Modulation Digital, every marketing dollar is spent carefully and maximizes return on investment (ROI).

Here's how Modulation Digital analyzes the data:

Advanced audience segmentation – It's important to know who your audience is. Modulation Digital uses advanced analytics technologies to analyze your audience based on their demographics, interests and online activity.

Measuring Return on Investment (ROI) – Since social media marketing is an investment, you should look at the return on investment. Modulation Digital provides comprehensive reports that monitor important data from social media efforts like website traffic, lead generation, and sales conversion.

Predictive analytics – Predict future patterns instead of just reacting to data. Modulation Digital uses predictive analytics to predict audience behavior and content performance.

Transparent Communication

Transparency is the foundation of how we work with Modulation Digital. The team is committed to transparent and honest communication, and they ensure clients are fully informed about campaign developments by providing regular updates and full reports.

You won't be kept in the dark – with our regular reporting and updates. Regular reports from Modulation Digital analyze the effectiveness of your campaign. These reports include key metrics, engagement information, and insights from analytics.

Collaborative Goal Setting – Goals for social media are flexible. Modulation Digital works with you to determine your initial social media goals.

Education and Empowerment of Clients – Modulation Digital is committed to empowering its clients. They often provide informative articles and instructional materials to help you better understand the social media environment.

Dedicated Support

The success of your social media is of paramount importance to Modulation Digital. Their team goes the extra mile to provide unmatched support and guidance by providing strategic advice, creative direction and technical expertise every step of the way. Whether answering questions, resolving concerns or brainstorming new ideas, Modulation Digital is committed to helping clients achieve their digital marketing goals.

Here's how Modulation Digital ensures your success-

Regular Performance Reviews and Optimization – Your dedicated account manager is not just there to handle everyday tasks. They conduct regular performance reviews, analyze campaign data and work with you to identify areas for optimization.

Building a Long-Term-Partnership – Modulation Digital is not just a salesperson – they are your partner in social media success. Your dedicated account manager takes time to understand your brand vision and long-term goals.

Strategic Guidance and Recommendations – Need help understanding a new social media feature or platform update? Your account manager is there to guide you. They leverage their expertise to provide strategic recommendations, brainstorm content ideas, and provide ongoing support to ensure that your social media efforts remain effective..

Through strategic savvy, creative excellence, data-driven insights, transparent communication and dedicated support, Modulation Digital has earned its reputation as Delhi's leading social media marketing company. For brands looking to achieve digital success and unlock the full potential of their online presence, partnering with Modulation Digital is the key to achieving their goals in today's competitive digital landscape.

[qocsuing]

The Privacy Risks of Likee: Stay Away From This Invasive App

The Privacy Risks of Likee: Stay Away From This Invasive App

Likee, formerly known as LIKE, is a video-sharing platform created in July 2017. Likee allows users to create short videos, style them with stickers, music, and text, and then share them with others. Because of its similarities to TikTok, many people accuse Likee of being a TikTok clone.To get more news about top up likee, you can visit topuplive.com official website.

The Likee app for Android and iOS is freely available in their app stores. In the Google Play Store, Likee has more than 500 million downloads. The video-sharing platform is clearly very popular, but is the Likee app safe?

Not only is Likee flooded with inappropriate content, but the app also provides many risks when it comes to data collection. In this article, we dive into the privacy risks of Likee and explain why it��s best to stay away from this invasive app.Through Likee, you have access to videos that other users have posted. These self-created videos can be enhanced with filters, text, or music.

Likee employs smart recommendation technologies to deliver information that is tailored to you. Additionally, you can filter information by location or conduct a search for certain hashtags.

Active users can “level up” for things like posting videos, growing their fan base, interacting with other users, and opening the app every single day. Additionally, the company provides in-app purchases, boasts celebrity-generated content, and advertises the potential to profit from your videos if they become popular.

On the outside, Likee seems to be just like any other social media app. However, in comparison to other apps, the amount of inappropriate content on the platform is astonishing. Even so, the app is extremely popular. Who is using Likee? According to the top data and analytics organization App Annie, Likee was the sixth most downloaded app worldwide during the first quarter of 2020. The number of downloads for the app increased by 208.3 percent in comparison to 2019.

However, the app is not without controversy, and not only when it comes to the amount of inappropriate content on Likee. In many nations around the world, privacy concerns about this app are growing.

Censorship icon One of the fastest-growing apps on the Indian market, Likee had 330 million downloads in 2019, with 50 million of those coming from India. Being a great TikTok substitute, the app’s availability in 15 regional languages was one of the factors contributing to its popularity in India.

But in June 2020, Likee was banned by the Indian government. Censorship in India is not a recent development, and the Likee app, like various others, was banned on vague grounds related to national security.Generally, we are skeptical of these oppressive censorship tactics. After looking into Likee, however, we’ve come to a startling conclusion: perhaps banning the app is justified.You can search for content using hashtags or filters. Likee offers in-app purchases. And what’s more is that it makes it incredibly easy to connect with others via its Nearby feature that shows you people in your area.

While this might seem like an optimal user experience, it creates many privacy risks. When you create a Likee account, you can use your phone number, connect via a different social media account (Facebook, Google) or create a new account. If you choose this last option, you have to submit a username, enter your date of birth and select your gender.