Have you lately been confused with all the numerous names of Covid drugs and vaccines? Dexamethasone. Remdesivir. Hdroxyquinosomethingnone. AZD1222. Tocilizumab.
Then you will like the below set of slides. Creating this info-graphic is probably the best thing that I did this week.
By the way, you an just drop me an email (vatsa@protonmail.com) to subscribe to my newsletter. I create short documentary videos, web-comics etc. and read a lot – so there is always something nice and interesting to share.
One quick question before you read any further. Do you even like reading (as in have the patience for it)? Or watching videos is all that you can do? I will really appreciate a short reply! Thanks.
Alright, now a super amazing video that I saw this week that everyone must see. It’s just so good!
The above uses the same characters Apple used a year ago in another super cool video from the pre-Covid era.
In my email last Sunday, I had said I would explain why I once again care about sending emails to you guys, instead of say just asking you to follow me on Youtube or Instagram (which I presume some of you do)?
Vatsap? with me?
The short answer is, sooner or later, all these platforms – YT / insta / FB – all of them – will make it impossible for small scale content creators like me to use them for our content to be seen – even when you follow / subscribe. I mean they are already there; it will only get worse. Just look at Youtube.
Earlier, if you were subscribed to me on YT, you would get to see whatever I uploaded (by a notification). And then one fine day, YT decided to throw in a bell-icon (with everyone de-notified by default). And then, after I somehow convinced many of my subscribers to get this ‘bell’ notification on for my channel, YT split up the bloody bell icon in two – 1. all notifications and 2. random notifications (again – ‘all notifications’ was deactivated by default). Who decides when you will get notified? Algorithm! Fuck the algorithm.
I can’t keep playing this game. As a platform, YT doesn’t necessarily want you to watch the content of the creators you follow. YT wants you to watch whatever is addictive and keeps you longer on the platform. Tiktok didn’t even pretend (I have a gut feeling it will come back – let’s wait & watch). All social media platforms more or less have either already become, or becoming like this.
I have 20k+ subscribers on YT – all evolved organically from around 300 in 205-16 to 10,000 in 2018. And yet, just go look at the views I get on my videos – they are abysmally low ! What’s the point of having all these genuine subscribers then? I receive comments like below, ALL THE TIME!
What I have concluded is – if I can just ping some of you over email, once a week, or once every two weeks, that’s probably better. That makes me platform agnostic. I like the idea. I love the idea!
A little over 200 of you are subscribed to receive my emails right now. And last Sunday only around 20% of you who received the mail, opened it! But you know what, that’s fine! At least it’s between you and me – not some algorithm deciding what you even get to see!
My friend Chuck has written a fab piece on this issue of the dying concept of ‘organic reach’ – read it if this topic fascinates you any more (especially from a marketing perspective).
Social media is not an engagement medium anymore.
– Deepak “Chuck” Gopalakrishnan
Ok, this email has become one long rant now. I am still figuring out how to get this newsletter thing right. Do shoot back suggestions & feedback if you can think of any. I started the email with some Covid related gyaan. Let me end it with one too.
In May, my wife asked a great question. We are in 2020. How come science has not yet developed enough that we are being told it would take all of this year before a vaccine comes out?
I dug deep. And I put together my research in a way that made sense. And was a bit funny too. The result is the video below. Even when I wrote this in May and published the video on 1st June – most of the stuff is valid as you read this. Give it a watch (unless you’ve seen it already).
That’s all for this Sunday. Let’s hope the flood situation in Assam gets under control soon. And do remember the question I asked earlier.
Do you even like reading (as in have the patience for it)? Or watching videos is all that you can do? I will really appreciate a short reply!
Vatsap?
One reply on “Vatsap? 2020 Jul 19 Newsletter”
Why don’t you write such good posts in your blog still? Folks like me still rely on the old age feeds which I have subscribed using Feedly (because Google killed reader) to read from people whom we really care about and not just go and read some news website and general recommendations.
Btw – your rant here was also very insightful – I liked the part on how YT pretty much lift and shifted the audience to their recommendations over night by introducing feature changes. The feature PM would have shown a good metric like overal time spent on the App went up by x% and would have happily shipped it 🙂
Thanks subscribe me to your newsletter.