twitter Archives - Steve Sammartino

Enlightened Loyalty

Posted on April 22, 2022April 22, 2022 by Steve Sammartino

Loyalty in life matters. But one thing we should never be loyal to, is a corporation.

Corporate loyalty is one of the most foolish decisions we can make, simply because companies, aren’t real. They are a legal-financial construct invented by humans to literally remove human oriented risk. And we can be sure that despite what they say, a company will never be loyal to anyone inside it. The ‘thing’ can only be loyal to its corporate objectives. It’s designed that way on purpose.

But here is what we can do – be loyal to the people we meet inside them. That has the potential to be enduring. This has the potential to extend beyond the original corporate meeting place because it is between people.

One of the most important decisions we can make – is what to be loyal to. On this my advice is simple, be loyal to people, not things or market based constructs. The irony of course, is that the more we focus on human loyalty, the more the companies and market places we inhabit benefit.

Speaking of loyalty – This weeks Episode of The Rebound is all about Gamification & Loyalty. It’ll be shown on Channel 9 Nationally at 12.30pm. We are now in our 3rd season which is pretty cool.

I remember the first pitch meeting we had with Channel 9. I said that we think smart Australians want to watch something a little more educational than seeing strangers get married on an island or at first site. A risky move, but it worked. I was loyal to what I actually believe. And when it comes to pitching I always say that the audience believes, what you believe They can smell it – and there is nothing more compelling than self belief. And while, we still haven’t cracked prime time our audience was up 61% across season 2. So thanks for all who are tuning in.

The first 2 episodes have already run. Ep.1 was all about Data and Algorithms – with clear explanations and hacks to get them working for you. Ep.2 was all about the Freelancer, something close to my heart because I am one.

And if you haven’t had enough Sammatron – here’s a radio interview I did for Talking Finance (nerdy I know) about why Elon Musk literally can’t afford to buy twitter. Yes, you read that right. The world’s richest human with his $250 billion+ in net worth, can’t raise the cash. Nearly all of his wealth is in Tesla Stock, and he hasn’t got the $43 billion in cash needed to buy it, and he can’t access it either. You can listen in here to find out why. I speak at 23 min mark- a simple insight into how investment markets really work.

I actually posted this interview about Elon Musk not having the money to takeover Twitter – and the tweeting Taliban descended upon me with hate mail. Lol. It’s an interesting example of misdirected loyalty. Elon’s fans, or should I say acolytes, think that he can do no wrong. No doubt he is a genius who has changed the world, but I think it is about time that we kibosh the idea that the person with the most money is always correct. Wisdom isn’t a financial construct, and neither should loyalty be.

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Keep Thinking,

Steve

Why I'm using Snapchat

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

I got message from Richard on Linkedin regarding my use of Snapchat recently: here it is below:

Steve, I noticed around the time of this post you started posting about the benefits of Snapchat, rather than promoting your book. I get it, especially for connecting to the next generation. I also get that Snapchat is a whole new, exciting landscape & way of connecting that’s diff. to other social. I’d to hear more about why you’ve made the switch and have started on it as a platform. Only so many hours in the day. Pls explain why time on this is good for startups. Listened to https://lnkd.in/bXKk5D4 but would love YOUR take 🙂

Here’s my response:

Hey Richard,

Props for paying attention to my stuff and thanks for reading. I started to mix it up a bit at the bottom of my blog posts. Still some book, but mostly snapchat. My book, I promote less because it is getting old and I’m writing my next one… is all. The reason for Snapchat is that Twitter has very little engagement these days. I have nearly 7000 genuine followers on twitter, I never chased a follow ever, all came to me. I get about 300 people with the opportunity to see my tweets, about 7 looks or so click or engage – Pathetic. With Snapchat in just a few weeks I get around 50 engagements. People literally looking at my story. Snap is simply replacing my twitter. But more than that, we need to be nimble and change forums when the disco gets too crowded and noisy and no one can hear each other speak. For me it’s not about connecting to the next generation, it’s more that my generation are now using Snapchat – it’s my old twitter audience changing which nightclub they dance in….Another reminder that we need to be loyal to our audience, and not worry about the forum or the way they want to connect. I was an early Naysayer of Snapchat and it’s value. But their ‘My Story’ feature (24 hours of snaps) changed it’s value proposition for me – and when the facts change, I change my mind. In fact, I’m gonna blog this…. trust you’re Ok with that… 🙂

Steve.

P.S – If this blog disappears quickly, it’s because Richard wasn’t ok with it!

Why Twitter will die if we keep saying it

Posted on February 2, 2016 by Steve Sammartino

I’ve been thinking a lot about twitter lately based on the many articles written forecasting its demise. I really hope they’re wrong, but I think they might be right. The main reason I think it will die, is because so many people are saying it. The same people who espoused it’s virtues when it arrived in 2007, are now nostalgic about a time when twitter really, really mattered. The problem with this sentiment, is that it will probably come true even if it isn’t. It’s a bit like a run on the banks. Here’s a short Sammartino definition:

A bank run happens hen a large number of a bank’s customers withdraw their deposits simultaneously due to concerns about the bank’s solvency. As more people withdraw their funds, the probability of default increases, thereby prompting more people to withdraw their deposits. The end result is the bank’s reserves may not be sufficient to cover the withdrawals. A bank run is typically the result of panic, rather than a true insolvency on the part of the bank; however, what began as panic or opinion can turn into a true situation.

If enough people think there is no engagement on twitter, then more and more people will stop making ‘engagement deposits’ on twitter. Those who are there will get less engagement as a result. Then they’ll leave, which makes it less useful for others and before we know it we have another MySpace on our hands. It’s classic behavioural economics.

For me twitter has been valuable the past 8 years or so – I joined in Jan 2008. While it sounds kinda weird, I met a lot of my current friends through twitter, I built my personal brand there, and it became a tool for discovery and learning. It really helped me find people who cared about what I care about. It was an incredible tool, and my favourite brand for many years.

But if I were to think of one reason why I believe twitter started to stumble it would be this:

Delayed Tweets. Yes buffer, I blame you and cohort.

It’s a bit like this. All of us were at this really great party. Some of your friends were there. You met some new and interesting people. Everyone was really interested in what you were doing, and you interested in what they were doing. We helped each other, built a great eco system and it was all very give and take. But the party was so valuable and fun that no one really wanted to leave. People didn’t want to miss out on sharing a cool idea. So people started to talk more and listen less. After a while it became hard to hear and be heard. People even started sending messages when they were’t really in the room. It was like everyone put up a cardboard cut out of themselves, with interchangeable speech bubbles attached to them. The conversation turned into a noisy nightclub where no one could hear anyone speak. You’d try and have conversations with people who weren’t really there. It lost its authenticity. Slowly but surely, the value declined, and less people turned up.

Honestly, I don’t know if this is the cause, but it’s how it feels for me. If someone shared a blog post of mine it used to mean they really liked what I wrote. Now it probably means they have an IFTTT recipe set up. I’ll probably still hangout at twitter for a while yet, I might be one of the last to leave. But if there is any lessons for business people it’s this: Twitter is classic reminder that we can never be sure of a channels long term survival. We should all be trying to build things we own and control so we have independence. We need to be our own media channel and have a place to talk to people who want to hear from us. It’s probably a portable email list. If people don’t have a reason to follow us on our own channel, then maybe our we need to create something more compelling.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.

You say 'ello', I say goodbye

Posted on September 29, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

While it is around 6 months old now, and still in beta, there has been a lot of noise about Social Networking Startup Ello. And rightly so. A decade or more deep into this social connection thing people are starting to realise, that corporations like Facebook and Twitter, are well, just corporations. They just have incredibly compelling and usable products, from which they’re motivated to deliver what all public corporations aim to do – increase shareholder wealth. Nothing new there. And while some of the founders may have had, and possibly even still have rather altruistic visions…

A more open and connected world

Change the world 140 characters at a time

… once any company becomes public, its DNA changes somewhat, it mutates and we end up with what we’ve always had. Profit centricity. This isn’t necessarily bad, profits are good, and only companies with great (or addictive) products ever turn one. It’s more about understanding things for what they actually are, or in this case, have become.

Ello, on the other hand believes there is a better way. And I agree. You can read their manifesto here. In short they promise never to sell ‘you’. What they don’t mention is that they’ve already accepted venture capital funding as part of their growth plan. Call me a cynic, but in general people who provide funds usually want some kind of monetary return at a later date.

If any social network wants to arrive and actually be, what Ello is positioning itself as, then it can never be a for profit corporation. It also probably should never be controlled by a limited number of people, or even an organisation. It needs instead to be a gift to humanity, a bit like the World Wide Web. It needs to be open source, and uncontrolled. A bit like a language really. One thing is for sure, it can never be about a financial return on investment.

New book – The Great Fragmentation – out now!

When receiving is better than giving

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

I’ve had a few discussions with friends lately about their social feeds. A few of them have mentioned that they don’t even read their twitter feed. That they don’t read other peoples blog posts, or tweets and they only pay attention to the attention their own content is getting. The views, the shares, the open rates, the followers, that’s what they care about. And I understand why they might do this. It’s only natural to see if we are having an impact. It’s natural to focus on the work we are delivering to the market, even if this work is content creation and curation. We’ve all heard the argument that much of the content is created by the motivated few. But in a world where content is being replaced by digital conversations I wonder if everybody is so busy talking that no one is actually listening.

What if we all did that? What if every one of us was so introspective that the only work that mattered was our own work?

If everyone is posting and creating and not reading where does that leaves us?

It leaves us in a place where the internet becomes a noisy auditorium of nothingness. There’s a reason why we have two ears and one mouth. We should listen twice as often as we speak. If attention is the asset in the modern economy we need to ask ourselves the question of how much we are giving others. Are we being generous enough with our own attention for others content? Are we respecting the gift of knowledge dissemination provided by others? I feel like this is becoming an important question in these times of data deluge.

It comes down to a simple fact which is as old as human language. If we want to be heard, then we first need pay our respects and listen first. People in our specific communities are making an effort with their thoughts and we should support it. Because the things that don’t get attention and support eventually disappear. Content is no different. We need to look at our physical make up and read 2 for every 1 we create. Answer 2 tweets for every 1 we send. Comment twice for every blog post we create.

This is one of the few times in life where it is better to receive than give.

Live chat today

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Steve Sammartino

Blog posts are awesome. When you find an entry that answers just the problem you’ve just been facing in business or life. But every now and again what we actually need is a very short direct answer to a sticky question. Right?

So today I’ll be doing a live Q & A on your questions on twitter with the good people of Business Victoria. The general topic is generating new business. However, feel free to shoot me any Q related to your startup as well.

It is today at 2pm EST time Australia and on twitter under my handle @sammartino and on the hashtag #chatbv

Tune in and look forward to chatting.