6,095 karma · joined November 11, 2008
I really wish more articles and social media posts point this out, but a lot of writers either don't know this distinction or are going with a more "clickbaity" angle on purpose.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/duckduckgo-anonymous-privacy
Technology and social media haven't changed human behavior, but it allows both positive and negative behavior to be amplified multiple times over. And sometimes all it takes is one negative incident to crush an adolescent's self-esteem.
We shouldn't discount the positive that social media and technology bestow, just as we shouldn't discount the negative as well. I don't think the problem is just a little worse - I think, for some cases, it's A LOT worse. And that's the frightening thing. Both the positive and the negative are amplified.
I dealt with a lot of bullying in school. High school was a nightmare. But at least it's over now and I'm hopefully a stronger person for it. But if the kinds of things that the bullies said or did were recorded on social media and amplified...
As a former engineer turned product manager, I would not advocate such a reporting structure. A PM wouldn't be the best person to help manage an engineer's career growth and everything else. I think it's perfectly fine to be on the same cross-functional team though.
The articles don't say if phone number logging was only going to be done for users searching for censored keywords, or all users making any kind of search. I suspect the latter. And that is a very, very problematic.
Ah, found the episode: Season 2 Episode 2, "Runaway Devaluation".
* Potential marketing for your startup, especially if you gain followers that are also in your target audience.
* Have a way for someone (e.g. investor, potential employee, potential business partner, etc) to look you up and see what kind of person you might be.
CONS
* Distraction away from your customers and team, which should be among your top priorities. It can take time to cultivate a social media presence.
* Misinterpretation risk. For better or worse, if you happen to say something that can be misinterpreted, and someone has an agenda against you, social media can be risky. Assume that everything you say can be posted on a billboard in every major city.
MY $0.02
Each of these carry different weights. I would argue that the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages.
If you want marketing benefits, you'll get more bang for your buck by having someone with lots of marketing experience. Being discoverable by investors via social media is really a minor thing; you'd have to substantially invest in your "social media reputation" in order for this to give you anything, and even then, it's more useful as a tool to maybe get meeting with an investor, than it is to secure funding from that investor.
Being a distraction from your core priorities is really the most important thing I'd offer. Social media can easily be a black hole for attention and time. That's attention and time you can't afford to lose right now.
It's definitely a tough market. I suspect that it will be the larger corporations with enough revenue that can release such products into the market - and probably even release them as free features of an existing suite of products (e.g. iOS with Downtime, Disney's Circle[1], etc), as opposed to a standalone product.
The vast majority of them eventually burn out and leave the field or take on a day job to supplant their income. A small number sell their apps to a larger publisher or get hired by a larger company. And very very very few break through that barrier to generate self-sufficient income, much less growing profits.
They have many of the same business challenges of indie game developers too, it seems. Too many alternatives/competitors, distribution challenges, marketing challenges, lack of differentiation, etc.
I suppose the same could be said for indie developers in many other verticals too.
I just noticed that their vision is to "build the economic infrastructure for the internet." That's ambitious. I wouldn't have guessed, from that vision, that they'd build Atlas. But in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense.
I made the first 20-ish hires, then helped out with 20 more. When we eventually got a director and other managers who were peers to me, I held the informal distinction of being able to make good hiring calls. Many of my hires rose quickly in the company, earned strong performance reviews, and even won awards at the company.
Eventually, I become a middle manager and had to teach managers I supervised how to hire in a similar fashion. Relying on me to make a final call wasn't scalable.
And that's when trouble began.
A few bad hires leaked in. For the first time, our group experienced attrition. So I set about to try to systemize my recruiting process such that it was repeatable by others.
That's when I had to codify our team "culture", which was something I used to help with my hiring decisions. There were times when I made a call to hire a candidate who seemed too junior for a role, because I felt there was a strong "culture fit."
Of course, what I realized was, I was simply assessing for typical soft skills, as well as personality traits such as tenacity, initiative, quick study, etc.
In other words, there was no magic. I didn't have some special gift for hiring. It was just a simple unspoken template in my head. And it wasn't exactly "culture" either, as much as it was a set of personality traits that every company looks for.
I suppose what I came up with was basically a "structured culture fit screening assessment", to borrow the article's parlance. If you don't have something like this, I'd highly encourage that you look into it. Not only can it help minimize bias, but it can also give you a repeatable process for all of your company's hiring managers.
I know Facebook allows this to a certain extent, and I've set up a bunch of Facebook lists in the past. But it's much harder to use.
And as I learned about Facebook's (and social media's) privacy leakiness, I scrubbed my posts of all personal info (kids' birthdays, names, schools, etc) and many photos. My privacy settings are pretty tight too. In another comment, I mentioned several alternatives that I've been exploring for photo sharing - since the primary audience for these photos are grandparents, relatives, and close friends.
Unfortunately, I have a relative who's posted photos of my kids and definitely uses them as social media fashion accessories. It's lead to some awkward conversations and demands to scrub their posts of my kids.
As a side note, I've been having conversations with my oldest kid about social media. I even went through all of the photos I posted, asking if any should be removed. I already post very few photos - and when I do, I carefully curate them. My child was comfortable about all of my posts, but did feel embarrassed about a few from the relative I mentioned earlier. My child now also asks on occasion if I can take a photo and post it. Most of the time, my answer is No, and that I'd share it privately with family instead. But once in a while, I'll share it.
[1] As an example, /r/AskHistorians/ is heavily moderated and high quality.
I would post interesting articles I read and make really lame quips about life or what I was doing.
Later, after I got married and had kids, I consciously experimented with posting photos of my kids. Engagement on my posts shot up. This led me to gradually phase out article sharing and life quipping in favor of kids' photos.
I still consumed interesting articles shared by contacts though. And the curated news that Facebook offered, even though I realized it had a risk of being an echo chamber.
Eventually, I started weeding out people who fell below the level of a real-life friend, because I didn't want to share family photos with them. Facebook became a place to share kids' photos and see kids' photos from friends and family.
Now, I mostly read reddit for interesting articles and discussions. Some Facebook groups are decent for that, but they never quite match the reach and range of discussion that reddit does.
Facebook is now my family-photo-sharing service. And even then, I've begun to slow down my usage in favor of other mechanisms for sharing kids' photos.
Some of my actions were motivated by privacy concerns. Some by conscious experiments in engagement. And some by the utility, or lack thereof, of Facebook in general.
I wouldn't consider myself a typical Facebook user, but anecdotally, a decent number of friends have told me their interactions with Facebook have matched mine.
And those that I didn't hire, I encountered them at other companies. It was flattering to hear them say they remembered me and had a positive impression of our recruiting process, even though they were rejected.
I've always believed that the recruiting process is a great way to sell one's company. Even if the candidate isn't a good match, that candidate may recommend peers to the role if they have a positive experience with you.