Some Twitter Twaddle
May 2, 2022
Twitter matters to a modest number of self promoters. Nah, I won’t name those who are laboring away in the self branding rock climbing event. I think software posts when one of my research team cranks out a story for the Beyond Search blog. I suppose I should know, but I am not a digital rock climber.
I read “New Study: TikTok Industry Engagement Benchmarks for 2022.” Since I don’t know much about Twitter “twaddle,” the factoid in the write up which caught my attention explores the much-desired notion of “engagement.”
The TikTok outfit with some connection to China has an engagement score of six percent. I am not sure what the other 94 percent means. Maybe those folks are in non engagement mode? If the data in the write up are on the money, other big name social services are breathing the fumes from the Chinese coal burning video platform; to wit:
Facebook: 0.83 percent
Instagram: 0.13 percent
Twitter: 0.05 percent
The write up includes a nifty chart:
What’s interesting is that an outfit which I thought was a Big Dog (YouTube) was not included.
Will the rocket guy with trendy golf carts jazz up the Tweeter’s engagement score? I find it amusing that the wall climbers avoid TikTok, yet express considerable delight when Top Tweeters meet at the gym to talk about their achievements.
If the other social media companies are not delivering “engagement,” will CNN Plus or whatever it was, make a comeback?
Perhaps some Chinese thinking would help? Here’s an example for the Tweeters to ponder?
Navigate to “Tiktok Dominates in Tech Earnings, Digital Ad Giants Struggle to Compete.” Consider this passage:
Based on Insider Intelligence’s forecast, TikTok will garner 755 million monthly users globally in 2022, and its market share in social networking could top 20% this year or nearly 25% by 2024. The short-video-based platform’s immense popularity is exactly the reason why it is making the competition field harder for other platforms.
Maybe the Tweeters should TikTok?Maybe traditional media companies should emulate TikTok?
Stephen E Arnold, May2, 2022
Blue Chip Opioid Advisers Turn Their Attention to Designers
May 2, 2022
The world of blue chip consulting is intensely competitive. High fliers can go to work and be terminated before lunch. Reason? Often pretty vague if the wife of one nuked blue chipper is to be granted credibility.
McKinsey & Co., a firm which has been associated with some non life threatening interactions with people allegedly involved in opioid distribution, has turned its attention from Big Pharma to the art and craft world of “designers.”
“McKinsey Report: Designers Are Critical to Business Performance, But There’s a Big Catch” reveals:
McKinsey also found that companies that have successfully integrated their design teams don’t simply see financial rewards, including revenue growth, increased share price, and overall profitability; they also score better in trickier metrics, such as employee satisfaction, environmental and social impact, innovation, adaptability to COVID-19, user-centricity, and innovation. Designers who are closely integrated with corporate functions also are far more likely to stay at a company for more than five years.
Imagine, please, individuals with pottery residue on their hands and books about Victorian wallpaper in their backpacks contributing to product engineering at a nuclear weapons manufacturing company. I can see these hard working, serious professionals contributing to miniaturized proximity detonators for use with microdrones in war zones.
My take on this type of study and the references to millions of designers and “100,000 design departments” is to laugh. Having worked for a big blue chipper, the notion of millions and hundreds of thousands requires lots of cash or hundreds of interns.
It will be easier to hit one’s sales and revenue objectives if the blue chippers focus on the Fortune 1000, preferably those with deep pockets. Convincing some firms to include a person who worked a year in the Vatican museum to leave the realm of Photoshop and think munitions is downright onionesque.
Stephen E Arnold, May 3, 2022
SeMI: Yet Another Smart Search System
May 2, 2022
Once upon a time, search engines were incapable of understanding queries phrased like a question. With the advent of smarter technology, particularly machine learning and AI, search engines are almost as smart as a human. TechCrunch discusses how one company has created its take on smart search: “SeMI Technologies’ Search Engine Opens Up New Ways To Query Your Data.”
SeMi Technologies invented Weaviate, a vector search engine that uses a unique AI-first database with machine outputting vectors aka embedding. The company wishes to commoditize the technology and has an open source business model. Bob can Luijt is the CEO and co-founder of SeMI. He wants his vector search engine to remain open source so it can help people and businesses that truly need it. SeMi did not create the models used in Weaviate, instead, they deliver the power and systems recommendations.
SeMI Technologies has had over one hundred use cases, including startups powered by vector search engines and use Weaviate to deliver results. SeMi was not actively seeking investors when it received funding in 2020:
“SeMI raised a $1.2 million seed in August 2020 from Zetta Venture Partners and ING Ventures and since then has been on the radar of venture capital companies. Since then, its software has been downloaded almost 750,000 times, growth of about 30% per month. Van Luijt didn’t give specifics on the company’s growth metrics, but did say the number of downloads can correlate to sales of enterprise licenses and managed services. In addition, the spike in usage and understanding of the added value of Weaviate has caused all growth metrics to go up, and the company to exhaust its seed funding.
The company has received more funding in a Series A round that ended with $16 million. The CEO will use the money to hire more employees in the US and Europe, expand its open source community, focus on go-to-market and products centered on the open source core, and invest in research where machine learning overlaps with computer science.
Whitney Grace, May 2, 2022
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