Happy Friday!
This last weekend I was in Virginia Beach speaking at the Thomson Reuters Synergy Users Conference. I didn’t previously know a lot about government property administration and taxation, so it made for some fascinating conversation with attendees. And they seemed to like my new presentation, Tradigital: Marketing Trends for the Modern Age.
The event’s location right on the Atlantic Ocean made for a great place to test out all the lenses of my new iPhone 11 Pro. And at night, I was able to use the Ocearch website to track how many sharks were in the beach outside my hotel. Technology is awesome! And scary!
Speaking of dark thoughts, there’s a trend in app and software design called “Dark Mode” that’s all the buzz right now. If you haven’t seen it hit your phone or computer screen yet, the gist is that it’s a setting that toggles a black-dominant theme across a browsing experience that was probably designed to be on a white backdrop with white colors. You know, the stuff that makes it hard to put your phone down and is probably making it difficult to fall asleep.
Dark mode has become increasingly popular in social media networks (Facebook Messenger, Slack, Reddit), and now entire mobile operating systems. Last week Apple’s newest iOS13 release followed the dark mode trend on iPhones and iPads. With Android 10, Google will also allow Android users to apply a systemwide dark theme across its new mobile Android OS, too. This week had a mini-news cycle of apps themselves (Twitter, Shazam) announcing their support of dark mode this week, with the culmination being the Gmail app. So dark!
Have you tried dark mode yet? Personally, I’m using the iOS13 feature that turns on dark mode at night, and then back off during the day. It’s so good.
This week I’ve been streaming the new Shredders’ album, Great Hits. The band is a Doomtree collective hip-hop band composed of P.O.S, Sims, Lazerbeak, and Paper Tiger. The single Ayeyayaya is so aggressive and fantastic. Blare it for your coworkers!
Lastly, if you want to hear me saying semi-coherent things about the current state of social media marketing, the unplugged culture and how your work ethic as a leader is translated to your team, I’m on the Schmidt List Podcast this week with Kurt Schmidt.
See you on the internet!
Greg
GREG SWAN 