Last week I was OOO chaperoning my son’s 6th-grade class trip to Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center, including running a 30-foot tall ropes course station for three hours. I don’t love heights and had to do the entire course to help facilitate the experience for the kids. It’s safe to say I learned a lot about myself in the experience, and I’m pretty damn proud of it.
Then I headed out a little unplugged, kid-free retreat. I turned my phone off, read some books, took my wife out to dinner a bunch, and did a lot of just sitting, looking out the window, and jotting things down in my notebook. Of course, I also got food poisoning and my wife got in a car accident (she’s okay!) so things got cut a little short. But it was more than worth taking the time and stepping away from the phone for a few days – with only 55 missed text messages to show for it.
We’ve now spent some time with each side of the family, enjoyed a nontraditional Japanese hibachi feast, and I snagged a rare Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade NFT. It’s been a pretty great little autumn break, and I hope you’re finding some time to recharge and reconnect yourself.
Here are the social signals I’m tracking this week…
🎄 It’s Whamageddon Season!
Whamageddon is a game played every year where players try to go from December 1 to Christmas Day without hearing “Last Christmas” by Wham! If you hear the song between those days, you are out of the game and have to post “#Whamageddon” on social media to indicate that you lost. The game starts next Wednesday, and by knowing about this game, you are now playing whether you planned to or not. Good luck!
🐤 The Good Tweets
🎙 My Interview on The Business Conversation Podcast
This week I was interviewed by Garrio Harrison for The Business Conversation podcast, where we chatted about using social signals to use learnings from the past to shed light on the patterns of today, ultimately shaping what tomorrow becomes. And lots more! Listen here.
📚 Weekend Reads
- Why TIME Is Launching a New Newsletter on the Metaverse
- NYT: A Robot Wrote This Book Review
- Why Facebook won’t let you control your own news feed
- 2030 B2B Trends: Contrarian Ideas for the Next Decade
- Meta Reality Labs Research: Meet the team that’s working to bring touch to the digital world
🔥 Quick Hits:
- Adele convinced Spotify to remove shuffle from all albums.
- Facebook is introducing its NextDoor clone called Neighborhoods to 132 cities after a trial run in Canada and four metros in the U.S.
- The word “metaverse” has been mentioned 128 times so far this year during investor presentations, compared to just 7 times last year.
- Snapchat turned Snap Map into a custom visual adventure with Layers and is introducing AR shopping.
- The number of hashtags you should use on Instagram is 20-30, according to a study of 18 million posts.
- 25% of Twitter users produce 97% of tweets.
- Nike launched a Roblox world called Nikeland.
- Meta shared a first look at its advanced haptic gloves that will bring touch to metaverse experiences.
- Snapchat Lens of the Week: I Am Feeling It.
- Supply Chain TikTok of the Week: @PlanetMoney explains what logisticians do.
- Space TikTok of the Week: How our solar system actually moves through space.
- Holiday Card TikTok of the Week: Leave your apostrophes at home.
- YouTube of the Week: This is Mars (spend 30 minutes on Mars in 4k UHD).
- YouTube Shorts of the Week: Where does RickRolling come from?
- Twitter of the Week: @johncar_4 is drawing a picture of Vin Diesel everyday until he releases new music.
- Podcast of the Week: Dope Labs interviews Christopher Mims about “the good, bad, and ugly of the extremely complex system that gets our items to us so quickly.”
- TikTokker of the Week: @hioutthereitsmesteve is Steve from Blue’s Clues. He’s learning TikTok and NEEDS OUR HELP.
See you on the internet!
Greg
GREG SWAN 