Hello and welcome everyone back to another episode of The Publishing Lab
I am Tyler Bishop and if I sound different to you it's because yeah, I'm barely hanging
on to my voice at the moment. So we've had a busy customer week at Ezoic and yeah, it's not something we talk about
a ton on the show but if you've been following any of that or tuned in any of that you'll
know that I've been talking a lot this week. So Producer Manny is with me as always and he will, you know, be I'm sure giving my voice
a much needed break as we kind of go through the news and the world of digital publishing
this week. Like there's a lot going on I feel like. I really enjoyed actually listening last week to Producer Manny, you and Terrence and getting
Zach back on as well. You guys were great. Like so I actually found myself being like, yeah, yeah, I really enjoyed him on that
So it was a lot of fun. Yeah, having Terrence and Zach on here was great
I think I had a harder time to get them to stop talking. There was a lot of moments where I just let them roll
They just had so much great information to provide. So it was great having them
We'll definitely have to have them back here soon. You make the same argument that sometimes it's me that is on the roll and no one can
get me to stop talking. But today we may find that I've met my match or my voice will just literally, it'll read
me. It doesn't even want to listen to me talk anymore. So the thing that I think is really interesting right now as we kind of dive into Google News
is that the Chrome address bar feature is now enabling quicker searches
And I think what's interesting to me about this is that you're seeing sort of Google
trying to build, for the very first time, try to actually promote search in a lot of
different ways throughout their other products. Where I kind of feel like for the last decade, Google has tried to use their non-search
products, sort of their search products, to kind of promote and get people to utilize
their non-search products. But I think this is a little bit of maybe Google recognizing that they are, yeah, at
a moment where they need to be a little bit more protective. So please, Manny, tell us a little bit more about what's going on with Google Chrome and
what SEO professionals are saying. Sure thing. So Google Chrome is set to enhance your browser experience with new updates to
its address bar. This feature rolling out in the coming months will offer suggestions for unvisited sites
smarter auto-complete and even correct typos based on your browsing history. Plus, you can now search your bookmarks directly from the address bar
And SEO professionals, please take note that optimizing their sites for keywords can now
make them pop up in the Chrome address bar suggestions. And these changes aim to make your Chrome experience a little bit faster, more smoother
and more friendly. This is kind of seemingly the opposite of what was going on before
where they would kind of like give you the auto answers at the top of Google search
And now it's like they're actually trying to direct people to new websites
Yeah, I would say, you know, I'm sure that there'll be a lot of handling over what types
of algorithms and what types of things you can do to optimize pages so that, you know
I think at the end of the day, Google tends to reutilize a lot of their existing
infrastructure for stuff like that. But at the same time, I would say that, you know, Apple has done a really good job of
that with Safari and mobile. And so, you know, Google may try to borrow a little bit from the user experience
there because so many people have been trained sort of to use, you know, mobile phones and
Apple is the dominant mobile provider. So, yeah, I would say, I would think about the content in regards to how, you know, that
experience is and if there's opportunities there for you. Probably more so some than others, but probably for everybody
And we need some more search hands, right? Thumbs up that if you're a publisher. In the world of social media, we've got some, well, I mean, who else but X making
headlines and it's a certain executive of X that seems to always get most of the news
But I will say this, at least X is, there's always something going on there
And I wish I could log into my account. I haven't been able to in like eight months
So not all innovation is good, but at least we managed to tell us a little bit more about
what's going on today in X. Still no access, huh? It's been a while
I haven't stopped trying. I used to love Twitter. I had a Twitter account for 16 years
It was one of the first ones and it's very slow and I cannot get it back
So if you work at Twitter, give me a call. I mean, I don't know if there's anyone to call over there
I think you may have to put a bandage over there, maybe. But yeah, in the world of Twitter, Elon Musk is shaking things up again with plans to
introduce two new tiers for X premium subscriptions. One tier will be more wallet friendly than their current $8 per month plan
It won't cut down on ads. On the other hand, if you're willing to pay a premium, the other tier will block all ads
for you. The exact pricing is still under wraps and this move could reshape the
advertising landscape on X. And with a significant drop in ad revenue since Musk's takeover, these changes aim
to not only boost revenue, but also to combat bots on the platform, which has been a
pretty big problem for them recently. Stay tuned for more details regarding subscriptions, though we still aren't really
sure what's going on. But then kind of tied to that and just jumping on to our next story from
entrepreneur.com is how subscription models like Meta, Verified and X premium have
transformed the PR landscape. Do you remember when the verification checkmark on social media was a badge of
influence and credibility? Ah, yes, I remember. I remember. TechSpawn remembers. TechSpawn remembers
Well, in 2023, there's been a huge shift with platforms like Meta, Verified and X
premium now offering badges for products. This change is reshaping the PR landscape and is no longer the immediate goal to get
us to get that coveted checkmark. Instead, PR professionals are pivoting, focusing on genuine brand storytelling and
audience engagement in a world where lines between organic and peer recognition blur
Authenticity is now king. The message is clear. Genuine influence can't be bought
And in this digital age, PR remains vital, helping brands stand out with meaningful
narrative. So that's something that I remember like the 20 teens. It was such a big deal if someone had a verified checkmark because you knew it was
then. There was no doubt in your mind that it's like, oh, that's a celebrity or
something. A politician. That's them. But now it's very... Yeah, they may send themselves a big, big difference
You're thinking they were clever. And my wife is a professional athlete
And I know that recently they had PR people and publicist who worked with her on
different things. And in this environment, you know, one of the things they said was
like, she can get you verified. But like that's just spending like eight dollars or whatever
And they're like, you know, it's not something that's really going to do anything
So the primary strategy now is like they want to try to like capitalize on whatever
she's in spaces with. They have other clients or there's other athletes and celebrities that like they
coordinate like per to post content with them. And it's like you're basically, if you're a platform, you've got, hey, I'm going to make
this verification thing accessible. We're going to make money out of it. But what you did was you basically taken the money that was flowing through your
platform via influencers and, you know, basically like sponsored content or endorsements and affiliates
And now it's trafficking like seemingly like off the market, like it's a black
market, you know, because people have to find a way to genuinely impact, you know
what they imagine is like clout or attention. And, you know, you've taken away one of the mechanisms for that
It was actually easy that you had control of it. So let that be a lesson, too
I mean, I think of somebody like X or even Instagram is like a publishing platform in a
lot of ways. And yeah, your website is a publishing platform. So, you know, changes like that are bold
I've definitely seen them with a few websites make really bold decisions around
revenue models that have not worked out at every major brand publisher
And you'll have a story about sales subscriptions for the most part. You know, it's kind of doing good
But if you look, you know, it's kind of a good unit. I think it's like the majority of the revenue comes from subscriptions now, but the
revenue is flat. So they just move the money around. And I'd argue that subscriptions are, you know, like a more consistent, better model
You own the audience. But the overhead, though, the overhead is significantly higher
There's a lot of things that people don't think about. But kind of moving down the line in terms of, did we have anything else on the drop
for social media or are we back into AI now? We got one more for social media
And before we move forward, I just wanted to kind of ask you this
In a hypothetical world, if you still had your Twitter account and the landscape was
still as it is today, what would it take for you to move toward it
I guess it's just not being relevant, probably. It's just not being relevant, misinformation
I use it because I like the format, but it also, the environment, especially like
how strong this podcast, you know, I've done speaking and things like that before
And it's a way for me to sort of plug into this space and for me to access a lot of the
people that maybe are interested in, you know, my opinions and takes on different things
and then also vice versa. So it's just sort of plugged me into this space in a way that no other place does
So if something else did that well, I would be there. And if Twitter didn't, I wouldn't
So it's really a matter of like when Twitter pushes you out, you would need to have
something that would answer all those questions and then something that Zack last
week said. That brings me to the next story, which are brands and retailers giving up on
Twitter? Sorry, X. They have a terrible problem because they put out several times where they say X
formerly Twitter. It's like you're the one that calls yourself whatever it is
Stop calling people formerly. Right. Other people do that. But like, yeah, let's move on
It's like the artist formerly known as Prince. Yeah. But yeah. So this article comes from Digiday.com and in recent findings from a Digiday Plus
research survey, raised eyebrows in the marketing world. Brands and retailers seem to be distancing themselves from X, formerly known as
Twitter. In 2023, only 35% of brands and retailer professionals reported posting
content on X in the past month. It short dropped from 73% in 2022
This decline contrasts with the continued popularity of meta platforms like Facebook
and Instagram. Furthermore, there's been a significant decrease in investment in the original
content for X and perceptions of the platform's brand appropriateness have shifted
with only 56% of professionals in 2023 believing X is somewhat appropriate for the
brand, down to 90% in 2022. One has to wonder about the platform's future in, I'm sorry, one has to wonder about
the platform's future in the brand and retail space. So I have two arguments here
One is I don't believe the advertiser surveys because advertisers are the masses of
saying one thing, but actually, you know, looking out for the best interest
And I think the biggest thing here is that, number one, the bot thing that they talk
about on Twitter, X, a lot, is the missing component of all this is that Twitter was
largely inflated by bots before and a lot of your advertiser impressions were just being
wasted. And that was kind of a money grab. And I think much, one of the reasons why he lost a lot of money on this thing is because
he has tried to actually like make some aspects of this, like, legitimate
So he's not trying to subvert or, you know, basically like, you know, he's a public
company. He's trying to make sure that the revenue doesn't, you know, highlight some
things as massive fraud. You know, he's an owner. So he's like, I want to know if we're actually making money or not
And I think that basically hurts the reach of it because it's not an effective ad
platform. Not nearly as effective as what they proclaim. But I think a lot of advertisers probably knew that
And, yeah, you can look at digital spending across all types of things, Meta
Facebook. Google is doing great, but it's just a shift in ad dollars around
I think there's a lot of other really interesting things you can do with your money in terms of advertising digitally
And, yeah, Twitter, yeah, definitely not in the Vogue. And yeah, I've seen it being a extremely relevant platform for almost any brand
other than Macy's X itself. Yeah, there's definitely been so many interesting, I'm using the word interesting
very loosely, decisions this year that just continue to push the decline
And with apps like Mastodon and now Blue Sky, Gray Sky out there and Threads, I
feel like it's only a matter of time before people are just ultimately going to say
you know what, like there's a good amount of users over here in this space
Let's just jump ship. I don't think this will ever be something that takes the place
of Twitter. I don't think it out-competes to what they are. Now the question becomes is, is there a different experience somewhere else that
essentially provides that? So otherwise, I think there's always going to be a place for it
I think that they've gotten undue criticism for a lot of things that I think they did
that were really smart. But at the same time, I think that the volatility in a lot of the decision making that
they've gone through and the lack of follow through, you know, like you can think about
the launch of Twitter Blue and it's changing like week over week or whatever, makes it
kind of hard. I mean, I'm locked out. I can't even get help on the Twitter Blue user, you know
And it's one of those things where it's like enough of those types of things over time
and maybe we just don't ever have something like that again, you know, or maybe, you
know, it's a patchwork of other things. But right now it is fairly unique
And I think in the current environment, it's really hard for something else to build that
sort of critical mass, either to replace it. I don't see something like Massadong, which is like 12 posted, being able to do that
I don't think any social platform will be able to do a 12 posted model, but that would
be interesting to see. You have something like AI out here now that who knows what kind of social media
platforms and social media experiences will emerge from, you know, like the layer of AI
being embedded. I know that, you know, we've got the launch of Dolly 3 now in tech
VTC. This is actually something that you and I were talking about earlier this week, right
Yeah, so Dolly 3 is out. I was playing with it a little bit earlier in the week, and one of the things I
recognized that it does a much better job with words. It knows how to spell words and knows how to spell them correctly
Sometimes it's still not perfect. I did notice from my trials with it is that it'll get the foreground word correct
more, let's say the word is house. But then it'll try to recreate the word house in the background somewhere
If needed. And that would be highly prolific. Yeah. So it's still we're still not 100 percent perfect, but it's really good
compared to some of the other models that I've tried. Yeah. You know, all the different models that are out there
Go to Stream Studio. You can go to the different stable diffusion models
Hugging Faces has a whole bunch of things in this area called Faces. We can try all the different ones that are out there
But, you know, Valerie Tree, you kind of hoped that they were going to make this
exponential leap. I find myself with all the greatest and the best teams, kind of
finding myself feeling like they're all good. I mean, like they're all good
I mean, you think about what you imagined they could do a year ago and you go, man
it's incredible. But I do find myself feeling a little bit like I got my beasts
with all of them, if you know what I mean. Yeah, I know what you mean. They all have just something that still requires a bit
more fine tuning. But as time goes on, we do see that a lot of these models improve
Some get worse. But the ones that improve are definitely like those tools that we
will continue to use. But we do we are getting a lot of pushback on AI with our next story
An anti-tag DPT app, Superfy, uses AI to match people's live chat
My first thought there is just like, you type something into Tag TPC and then
immediately the app's like, no, that's not true. Yeah, we're getting a lot of processes now
I'm excited to start seeing anti-DPT shares. I always want to watch. But Superfy is revolutionizing the way users get answers
and advice. This innovative mobile app connects users to real individuals for real-time responses
Tara, this is the coolest thing I've ever heard. Using its Matchpoint AI technology, instead of relying heavily on AI-generated
answers, Superfy ensures that a staggering 90 percent of responses come from real
people. With an impressive median response time of just 20 seconds, catering
primarily to young Gen Z audience in regions like the US, Canada and the UK
users are spending an average of 31 minutes daily on the app, engaging in genuine
conversation with a backing of $5 million in funding and plans to further expand
Superfy is available for free on iOS, ensuring a more personal touch in digital
age. You can go ahead and put this in the future manual if it turns out that I'm
like, this is really long and I'm happy to be my influence for it
I'm going to go ahead and say that the fastest way for this thing to succeed is to
shut down the business today and then it will at least have succeeded by not
going further. That's about how strongly I feel about how bad of an idea I think
that is. And the reason being is that it assumes that the human answers are somehow
like better than the AI ones, which I would say fundamentally, you could make the
argument completely to the contrary of that. Now, you may not have like copyright issues or licensing issues, or you don't have
that today with search where you can find answers to just about every question you
would imagine. So I would just say that, yeah, everything about this seems like
worse. It seems like if you were to go, what could have checked DTC have been 10
years ago that no one wanted then, that search was better then, that we could
provide people today. That's kind of quirky. Yeah, I don't get it. I'm surprised that they even have the money for PR
It reminds me, it's like trapped DTC with that system, you know, instead of having
the AI. For worse. Yeah, yeah. It also reminds me of, I don't know if you remember this back in, like
high school, you remember Cha-Cha Answers? No, I don't. No? So Cha-Cha Answers was like this system online where essentially it was someone
would ask a question and then it would get sent to a random agent and the agent would
provide an answer to that. I think I remember something like that. Yeah
I tried signing up to be one of the agents when I was young. You know what? Maybe you just kind of filled me in on this because I think I was
like, I think I'm maybe need somebody to sort of be one of these, like, question answers
It didn't pay well. It didn't pay well. I didn't stay long. I think it was like two cents an answer and you maybe get like one question every
10 minutes. Yeah. It didn't pay well. It's one of those things that seems like it's a great idea where you know, I remember
for a long time, it's probably still out there. There's online surveys where they plan to give money and they say, well, we're going
to go get these surveys from people that pay for it. Like, we're going to pay people to look at ads and pay people to hit surveys
And it sounds great until, like, you're one of their users and you take them, like, on
these surveys and you pay them like $10, but less than probably. It's all of a sudden the business model goes like, wow
But yeah, very interesting. Do we have anything else in the world of AI before we get finished today
Yeah, we've got one more story just in the same realm similar to Superfly where people
are just not fully stoked on AI. It's a story from TechnologyReview.com
This new data pointing tool lets artists fight back against generative AI
Researchers from the University of Chicago, led by Ben Zhao, have developed a graph
breaking tool named Nightshade. This tool empowers artists to allow them to add invisible alterations to their artwork
When AI models scrape this modified art, they produce unpredictable and chaotic
results. The aim is to challenge AI companies that use artist creations without
consent. Nightshade's unique approach can cause AI to misinterpret images, turning dogs into cats or cars into cows
This innovation not only highlights the vulnerabilities of generative AI models, but
also emphasizes the importance of respecting artists right in the digital age
So I feel the exact opposite about this. I think this is a brilliant thing that's badly needed
And depending on how good it is, it offers basically what we knew was like the next
sort of like phase of innovation in this space because it is a problem
It is a problem, you know, like it's like any other kind of like innovative technology
when it comes along. You have things like Napster. Well, Napster doesn't exist
Well, I think it technically does exist, but it's not the same thing. Streaming is the music business now
However, like, you know, the Napster came along and they really sort of violated a lot
of the existing laws that didn't really have a place for them
But it also didn't have the mechanism to sort of like, you know, pursue anything legally
and there was no safeguards or anything else. This is at least the first of the safeguards, as you can see, and sort of like being able
to protect, you know, your intellectual property. If it were just imagery and stuff like that, a fatbot could use this source material
Now, the one thing that I would say, I'm curious about the mechanisms here because, you
know, there's a lot of things you could do to potentially prevent, you know, something
that it says invisible changes. I'm really curious about that because if it's the image source itself, there's a good
chance that like YouTube person that that you just have to call it and take a screenshot
of the image and then index it that way. But there may be something that I have to read a little bit more about it
I find it quite interesting. But I think that there's ways to circumvent this
It's only a matter of time. And so there's better and better ones
And it makes it where it's not really all that helpful to even do it
Yeah, I agree. I think it's it's there's always going to be a way to circumvent things
Right. Even even earlier this year when I was mentioning that CBS News, if you input
their URL, even information relatively similar to what was in their articles, like you'd
get flagged by DC saying I can't crawl this or I can't summarize this information or
some sort of error. There's only so much you can do to put a wall up before someone's able to figure out a
way to get around it. But to try to lighten the the air regarding AI, we do have a new tool to feature
that's AI this week. Yeah, we've been doing this a little bit. I sent you this one yesterday
That's a cool. Yeah, this one's great. Could you tell us a little bit about it
It's called Brandbird. And this one is probably a better fit for some science writers than others
But it allows you to basically it's an image editor that uses AI among other things
You'll see it has an interface. It's very easy to use, but it's it's basically a way for you to create like really good
looking screenshots or product images. So if you have a review site or you talk about technology or you do anything where you're
taking a lot of screenshots, it gives you a lot of sort of like vehicles for displaying
that as an image. And all you do is you upload the image. It'll put it inside a browser window or it'll put it on a table or it'll kind of put it
up as the way you might see, you know, like a glass of milk in an ad
I don't know if glass of milk is the best example, but it allows you to display things
like products and screenshots in a way that is very visually appealing
And yeah, you can change all kinds of little details about it. It kind of does all the harvesting for you
It's free. You can get your tweets into images in kind of cool ways
There's quite a few like different use cases that it has. But it's called Brandberg.app is what it is
So was there anything you thought that was kind of like, yeah, gave you any inspiration
or ideas, Manny? I was taking a look at a lot of these
I thought they were great for like blog posts or just like header images for blog posts
I saw a lot of the reviews that said that they were able to replace Canva altogether
And what was really cool is if you upgrade and get the premium version, they even have
AI generative tools within the app so that you can then input stuff like that
So it's just another Canva competitor with AI integrated. And we're starting to see AI be integrated everywhere
So this is a great tool if you're a publisher and you need to get help with your images
Yeah, these are really great. And we've got a rolling next of tools that will be, you know, just kind of sharing with
everybody. For the most part, trying to find ones that are just free just so we can
expose everybody to kind of cool new stuff. I love that stuff. So hopefully you do too
If you don't, you can leave us a message at publisherlab.org. We have our form working again now
So we heard some feedback that it was actually down, I think, for a week or so
So if you have questions, comments or you like or don't like the tool segment, let us
know. We love to respond to you guys. And that's why we do the show
So help us make it, you know, whatever you imagine or whatever you get out of it
You want to do more of that. And producer Manny, anything else? No, that's it. Thanks to everyone who was with us for anything regarding Customize
2023. And we are so happy that you guys are here watching the Publisher Lab
Again, any feedback, leave it in the comments and we'll see you guys next week
Bye, everybody