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charger-batteries · 4 years

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How to Copy Your Windows Installation to an SSD

If you're still using a traditional, spinning hard disk on your PC, you're missing out. Swapping it out for a solid-state drive (SSD) is one of the best upgrades you can make in terms of speeding up your computer. It'll boot faster, programs will launch instantly, and games won't take so long to load anymore.

You could reinstall Windows from scratch, if you wanted to, and start new with a fresh, squeaky-clean system. While that might seem simpler, it's actually much more of a hassle. Copying your drive will get you up and running much quicker, as long as you follow these instructions.

What You'll Need: An SSD

Obviously, in order to upgrade to an SSD, you'll need to, well, buy an SSD. We have some recommendations here, though if you're on a pretty strict budget, we have a separate list of cheap SSDs as well. Make sure to buy the right form factor for your computer (some laptops will use 2.5-inch drives, while others might use M.2 or mSATA drives), and get one big enough to fit all your data. If you have a 500GB hard drive now, you should probably spring for a similarly sized SSD (or larger, to accommodate for future data).

The only exception is if you're on a desktop computer and have room for multiple hard drives. In that case, you could store Windows and your programs on the SSD while putting your music, movies, and other media on a second, larger hard disk.

What You'll Need: A USB-to-SATA Dock

During this process, you'll need both your SSD and your old hard drive connected to your computer at the same time. If you're using a laptop with only one hard drive slot, that means you'll need an external adapter, dock, or enclosure that can connect your bare SSD to your computer over USB. (Again, desktop users may not need this if they have room for two drives inside their PC—you can just install it internally alongside your old hard drive.)

What You'll Need: AOMEI Backupper for Windows

There are many different drive-cloning tools on the market, but when cloning a hard drive to SSD, I recommend AOMEI Backupper, since it's free, easy to use, and takes into account a few quirks that sometimes pop up during clones from hard drives to SSDs.

The free Standard version is fine; there's no need to upgrade to the paid version for what we're doing today. You will need to enter your email and subscribe to the newsletter to get the download link, though. Thankfully, you can just unsubscribe later.

Once you've gathered up those necessities, it's time to get started.

Back Up Your Data (and Free Up Space, if Necessary)

Before you start messing with drives and formatting partitions, it's absolutely necessary to back up your data first. A simple misclick can result in you erasing everything, so do not continue until you've backed up all of your data. If you don't have a backup yet, check out our favorite software for the job—though for today's purposes, copying your important data to an external hard drive will do in a pinch.

If you're upgrading to an SSD that's smaller than your current hard drive, you'll want to take extra care here. This isn't as common as it once was, thanks to bigger, less expensive SSDs, but if that's the case for you, you'll need to delete some files and free up space on your hard drive before cloning it. Otherwise, your data won't fit.

Once your data is safe and secure, continue onto the next step.

Plug In and Initialize Your SSD

Plug your SSD into the SATA-to-USB adapter, then plug that into your computer. If it's a brand-new drive, you probably won't see the drive pop up in File Explorer, but don't worry; it just needs to be initialized first. Open the Start menu and type "partitions" in the search box. Click the "Create and format hard disk partitions" option, and Disk Management will open. It'll prompt you to initialize the drive using either the GPT or MBR partition table.

I'll be using GPT for my SSD, since I have a modern PC with a UEFI firmware. If you have an older PC with a traditional BIOS, you may need to use an MBR partition table. If you aren't sure, look up your specific model of PC or motherboard to see which type of firmware it uses.

If you aren't prompted to initialize the drive, and don't see it in Disk Management, double-check that it's properly connected to your computer, and that the enclosure or dock is powered on (if necessary).

Once the drive has been initialized, you should see the drive show up in the bottom pane of Disk Management as unallocated space. Right-click on it, choose New Simple Volume, and click Next through the wizard to create a new volume taking up the entire drive. It isn't super important what this volume looks like; we just need a volume on the disk for AOMEI to see it. Close Disk Management and continue to the next step.

Clone Your Hard Drive

Open AOMEI Backupper and click the Clone option in the left sidebar. Choose Disk Clone, and select your C: drive as your source disk. Click Next, then click on your SSD to select it as the destination disk—again, be very careful you're selecting the right disk here, since it will be erased and overwritten—and click Next again.

Even if your SSD is smaller than your current hard drive, AOMEI will resize the volume to fit. You shouldn't run into trouble unless your source drive contains more data than can fit on the new SSD.

Finally, you'll be given a summary of the upcoming operation, which you can double-check one last time. Check the SSD Alignment box along the bottom, which ensures you're getting the best performance from your SSD, and click the Start Clone button.

Wait...and Wait, and Wait

This can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on how large the disks are. So go binge-watch some Netflix and come back in a while. When it’s done, click the "Finish" button. You should see your new SSD in File Explorer, complete with all your data.

For Bigger Drives: Extend Your Partition

If your SSD is the same size or smaller than your old hard drive, you should be all done with the cloning process, and you can skip to the next step.

If, however, you upgraded to an SSD with more space than your old drive, you'll need to do one more thing. The Windows volume you copied to your SSD will be the same size as it was on the original hard drive, and you'll need to expand it so it takes up the rest of the disk. The Pro version of Backupper allows you to do this during the clone process, but there's no need to pay—another AOMEI tool called Partition Assistant can do it for free.

Install the free, Standard edition of Partition Assistant and look at the disks along the bottom of the window. You should see that one of your drives—in my case, Disk 2 holding the D: drive—has a bunch of unallocated space at the end. That's our new SSD, and the D: drive (or whatever letter its assigned on your system) is the volume we want to expand. You may see other volumes on the disk—these are boot and recovery partitions, and it's best to leave them intact for now.

Click that volume and select the Merge Partitions button in the sidebar. Check the Unallocated box alongside that D: drive and click OK. You should see the new layout in the AOMEI Partition Assistant window, and you can click the Apply button in the upper-left corner to make the changes.

Install Your SSD

Next, shut down your computer. It's time to install that SSD in your computer permanently. If you have a laptop with only one hard drive slot, you'll need to remove your old hard drive and replace it with your SSD. This is a bit different on every laptop. If you have a desktop PC with more than one hard drive slot, you can leave your old hard drive in as extra storage, and just install your SSD alongside it.

Reboot From Your New Drive

Once you're finished installing the SSD, you'll need to tell your computer to boot from it. (This may not be necessary on laptops with just one drive, but if you experience problems booting, it can help on some PCs.) Turn your computer on and enter its BIOS/UEFI setup—this is a bit different on every PC, but it'll usually say something like "Press DEL to enter setup" on the boot screen, so you'll want to press the corresponding key as it starts up.

From there, look for your BIOS' boot options. These will be in a different spot depending on your computer, but once you find them, you'll want to select the option to change the boot sequence. Choose your SSD from the list as the first boot drive, then head back to the BIOS' main menu to exit, saving your settings.

Your computer will reboot, and if all went well, it should plop you back into Windows faster than ever before. Open File Explorer and check to confirm that your SSD is, in fact, the C: drive. If everything looks good, you're ready to rock, and your computer should feel significantly snappier without having to reinstall a thing.

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jestbee · 7 years

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June 15: Come Back, Be Here (Chapter Four)

Title: Come Back, Be Here – Chapter Four Tags: Long distance relationship, getting together, fluff, angst, Words: 1610 Summary: The five times Dan and Phil said goodbye in a train station, and the one time they didn’t. Prompt: 15 days… I broke my laptop charging cable so there could be some disruption to this project until my internet gets installed on 17th and I can use my desktop PC. (I’ve been using my laptop and stealing my parents WiFi)

FEDIJ Day: June 15

Previous Day/Chapter | Masterlist of fics so far

[AO3 Link]

Phil is beginning to resent this train station. On the one hand, when Dan is arriving the lights on the concourse are bright, and the hustle and bustle of the crowds feed into his nervous energy, jumping on the spot, peering over them to seek out his first look at Dan making his way over to him. On days like today though, the frantic energy of people moving around feels like friction, like he can’t get enough space to breathe.

Dan doesn’t seem to be having the same problem, he’s chatting endlessly at Phil’s side, apparently oblivious to his monosyllabic responses. Phil is learning Dan, has started to become fluent in his mannerisms, but he mustn’t be as knowledgeable as he once thought because he could swear Dan is nervous.

Phil uses his hands to talk frequently, tends to amplify his communication with paralinguistic cues in the form of wide, fast hand movements. Dan is more stoic, with a tendency to fiddle with whatever is closest by when he’s getting on to really difficult subjects. But today Dan’s hands are moving wildly, he’s practically vibrating with it.

“Are you okay?” Phil asks when Dan takes a breath.

“Yes,” Dan says, “Why?”

“You seem… I don’t know. Nervous?”

Phil feels a little sick, the nagging sensation that Dan could be nervous about giving bad news, about telling Phil that he’s finding this too difficult.

“I’m fine.”

Phil nods silently, not wanting to press the issue, though he suspects this is more to do with his own fear of what he might find there rather than trying to protect Dan’s feelings.

The board is lit up in the same way it always is and they crane their necks to look, both deflated at the ‘on time’ announcement even though they expected it.

“I guess delays are only granted as Christmas presents,” Dan says, a shy smile tugging at his mouth.

“Could have given me one for my birthday though,”

“Your birthday was yesterday,” Dan points out.

“Yeah… but you’d think the train gods might let their mercy drift into the day after as well. It’s Sunday, and you’re leaving, and then going on holiday for two whole weeks in a place where you might not have wifi, that’s not a very nice birthday present.”

“Train gods?”

“Shut up.” Phil laughs, his mouth climbing into a pout.

“It’s fine,” Dan says, “It’s cute.”

Along with the nervousness it seems Dan is being more liberal with his affection today. He’s stepped into Phil’s space, not touching, but they are close enough that if you were inclined to do so you could interpret their relative spatial positions as indicating more than platonic intentions. It confuses Phil to no end, as well as making him fight and internal war with himself over whether he actually wants to step away, whether he actually cares if they are spotted or not. But he knows Dan does care, usually, so he won’t press it. Instead, he’ll just enjoy today and assume that he’s getting a little extra devil-may-care from Dan as an extended birthday treat.

Phil feels his cheeks flush slightly at the praise and he drums his fingers on his leg to stop himself reaching out.

“I could give you an extra birthday present if you like?” Dan asks, a slightly crazy smile on his face.

“Oh yeah?” Phil cocks an eyebrow, or hew tries to, he’s not sure what his actual facial expression is but Dan seems to get the intent.

“Ew, no. I’m not blowing you in a bathroom or something. I meant an actual present… well… not a thing. You can’t touch or anything it’s… Um–”

“Dan,” Phil interrupts him, “What the hell are you going on about?”

“Just…come here.” He catches Phil’s cuff in his fingers and tugs until Phil is following him across the station. They come to rest in the underpass, near the ticket machines. There aren’t as many people here, and the ones that are aren’t paying attention to them as much. They crowd into a dimly lit corner and Dan looks up at him with such fondness that Phil feels his chest might burst.

“This is all very secretive,” Phil notes, “And you’ve only got ten minutes until your train leaves.”

“It won’t take long,” Dan insists, “I just… I didn’t want to say anything in front of your parents because… well, I don’t know how they’d take it.”

“Okay…”

“It’s nothing bad!” Dan says in a rush, “But they might not… approve? I guess. Or they might think that it’s stupid or too fast and anyway it might not even happen and–”

Phil reaches out with his hand and places over the top of Dan’s flailing one. He squeezes Dan’s fingers lightly between his own and it seems to slow Dan down, make him take a breath. “Calm down,” Phil says, “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s fine. You said it was a present, it can’t be that bad.”

Dan breathes out sharply, like a staccato sigh. “I applied to Manchester university.”

Phil knows his mouth is gaping open, knows he hasn’t said anything, knows he can’t. He feels rooted to the spot, the overwhelming knowledge of it rolling over him, the possibilities…the beautiful glorious image of Dan, here, at last.

“You…?”

“Yeah,” And Dan’s dimples are out, he’s grinning madly at him, Phil has never wanted to kiss him so badly.

“For… what? When?”

“UCAS deadline was the 19th January. I… I didn’t know whether I should tell you.”

“Of course you should… You did it without telling me? Oh my God Dan, do you know what this means?”

Dan shrugs, “I mean, I got the grades. I got them last year before my gap year so it’s not like I have to wait for them or anything.”

“So, wait. I’m confused. You don’t have to wait for grades so… did you get in?”

“They…” Dan shifts slightly closer and drops his voice like it’s a big secret. “I got an unconditional offer.”

“OH MY GOD!” Phil wants to throw his arms around Dan, to pull him up close and bury his face in his neck, kiss his lips and breathe him in. He does none of those things, instead he wraps a hand around his bicep and jostles him slightly.

“I know, I know. They only hurdle now is my parents. They don’t know I applied, I don’t really know how they’ll feel about it so I haven’t even accepted the offer yet.”

Phil makes himself relax, tries to adopt a neutral expression, one that isn’t the embodiment of begging Dan to throw caution to the wind and come here.

“Well, it’s your life Dan.”

“I know. And I applied to Law like they wanted so hopefully that will go a ways to accepting it. They’re just still a bit… funny. About you.They might thinks that’s the only reason I’m doing it.”

“It’s not though, is it?” Phil checks, “You’re doing what you want to.”

“I mean… I can’t really see myself as a lawyer, but I can’t really see myself as doing anything so it might as well be that. It’ll be a good job, and I’m sure I’ll like it fine once I grow up and get used to the idea. But Manchester is a good university. It’s not… It’s not just for you. But… you know, you’re important to me.”

“You’re important to me too,” Phil whispers, the hand on Dan’s arm tightening for a moment like the hug he’s unable to give.

There is the sharing of a soft smile which says more than any words ever could.

“Best birthday present ever,” Phil grins, “Even if it doesn’t actually happen.”

“I’ll make it happen,” Dan says determinedly, “Happy Birthday, Phil.”

Phil feels it all rush up in him then, that emotion he’s been trying to push down, the words he knows it’s far too early to say. His head is filled with so many ideas, the hopes he feels building in his chest like an ever expanding block of something warm. He’s never felt like he does with Dan, it’s big and slightly scary and he doesn’t want to shy away from it, not really, but it all feels too much until he’s here, until they know that it isn’t just a possibility anymore, but something inevitable, something permanent.

“Thank you,” is all he says instead.

Dan is moving again then, looking at the clock on his phone and grumbling slightly about the train and Phil is in a daze as they say goodbye. He gets another big, exaggerated hug that doesn’t really get into his personal space, but Dan hangs on for a few seconds longer than is appropriate and Phil can feel his cheeks pushed into a smile against his shoulder and it’s not perfect, but it’s as near as they can get.

Phil opens his mouth to speak and Dan interrupts him. “Text you,” he laughs, “I know.”

“Yeah,” he responds, “text me.”

Then Dan is leaving, he’s getting on a train and he’s going away, away, always so far away but this time Phil can see an end to it, he can visualise it so perfectly. He resolves that if Dan decides he is going to come here, that he will do something too. He’ll move out of his parents, come to the city centre, take the next step in his life that he’s been putting off a little himself. It’s all coming together, and Phil can see the next tetris block of his life and clearly as he’s ever seen anything.

#my fics #phanfic #phanfiction #phanfic fluff #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #fic prompt #dnp #dan and phil #phan #phandom

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un-enfant-immature · 6 years

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Envoy raises $43 million to digitize your office

The office might not seem like an area in desperate need of disruption, but Envoy — a Silicon Valley company used to sign in over 100,000 visitors at offices across the world each day; and a TechCrunch SF office neighbor! — has raised $43 million to do just that.

The company started life five years digitizing the sign-in book with a simple iPad-based approach, and it has moved on to office deliveries with an automated system that simply involves scanning a barcode. In both cases, alerts are routed directly to the person collecting the goods or visitor using an app.

The concept is simple: no more pen and paper, no calls or prompts, everything goes digital.

The result is an easier life for office workers and more efficiency for front desk staff, who have more time for important items. A basic version of Envoy is available for free, but the feature-rich options include two-tiered plans ($99/$249 per month) and bespoke packages for more advanced integrations.

This new Series B capital takes Envoy to $59.5 million raised to date. The round was led by Menlo Ventures with participation from existing backers Initialized Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. Envoy’s previous round was a $15 million Series A in 2015, and its seed investors include Marc Benioff as well as Initialized Capital partners Gary Tan and Alexis Ohanian.

Envoy has certainly expanded since that first $1.5 million seed deal. CEO and founder Larry Gadea, who spent four years at Google after joining at 19 and later worked for Twitter, told TechCrunch in an interview that its customer base spans 72 countries. Over 32 million visitors have been signed in to date and Gadea is particularly proud that 80 percent of its 10,000 daily companies — which includes well-known names like Yelp, Mailchimp and Rakuten — are based outside of Silicon Valley. That, he rightly asserts, is evidence that the issue isn’t just a Silicon Valley/first world problem like so many ideas spun out of The Valley can be.

“The growth has been absolutely nuts. It’s a very viral product… people see it, use it and then take it back to their company,” Gadea, who joined Google from high school in Canada, explained. “The majority of our deals happening through inbound.”

Child prodigy Larry Gadea was plucked from high school in Canada by Google after the company discovered a plug-in he had developed for its desktop search service

Organic growth is a good start, but $43 million is a lot of money and it’ll be used to go push things further still and expand the Envoy team which is currently at around 100 people. You can expect more new office digitizations from the company since its ultimate goal is to make the entire office smarter. That could include products like meeting room booking and other small pieces which, when put together, Gadea hopes will allow workers to concentrate on their work not unnecessary admin. Just as Envoy has done with front desk staff.

“We’re known for the front desk and sign-in but where I think it’s really interesting, and where our future is, is that the rest of the office is just so broken,” he explained. “There’s so much low-hanging fruit we can go after.”

Gadea explained a little more in an Envoy blog post announcing the new round:

Though we’ve helped modernize over 10,000 lobbies with automated iPad-based sign-in, and started bringing some order to the chaos of the mailroom, the rest of the workplace remains largely untouched: people are losing their keys/badges (and being locked out of their office!), meeting rooms are reserved but are unoccupied, lights/heating are left on after-hours, there’s all sorts of out-of-place things that nobody’s reporting, etc. Where are the products to fix all those things? And to unify them all together.

The ultimate vision is a kind of ‘office OS’ platform that other companies can build off. Gadea compares the potential impact to what Nest has done to the home with its smart products, which started with the thermostat.

Gadea is still working on a name for the platform, and he isn’t saying exactly what features it might include. Certainly, now that there’s an additional $43 million in the kitty, expectations for what might (first) appear to be a modest proposal for the front desk have been raised.

#TechCrunch

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newidaho · 5 years

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19. Social Media, 2054

Don’t have the time/patience/desire to read with your eyes? Don’t have eyes? Well, have your friend read you this: You can check out the audiobook for free on Apple, Google, Stitcher, or Spotify. Subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday!

A Brief History of Social Media

As Researched by Steven Carki, UNI Class of ’56

Dated 24 November 2054

Sometimes it’s difficult to think back to the days of our grandparents, where social media was no more than a handwritten list of friends you could call on the telephone. Now online social networks have been a part of our every day lives for nearly fifty years. Clubhouse, the latest, greatest player in the game, just celebrated its twentieth birthday this past year.

Of course, social media didn’t always look the way it does today. While myself and many of my peers were raised on Virtual Reality, our parents were raised in the era of screens, with VR no more than a new fad, a technology they knew had potential, but did not yet know to what end.

Thus, for my final presentation in Modern Anthropology, I would like to discuss the history of social media in the world. Ideally, I would like to leave behind a transcript so that others may look back and remember where all this came from.

The first major surge in social media took place in the early ‘00s. The first notable social media giant was a company called MySpace, which debuted in 2003 and remained the largest social networking site in the world until 2009. Its replacement, Facebook, was founded one year later in 2004 and took the market by storm for the next couple decades. Other giants include Twitter, founded 2006, and Instagram in 2010.

For the 2010s, these companies would rule the social media market, especially after the advent of the smart phone in 2007. As the smartphone became more and more commonplace, social media apps became the go-to time-wasters on everybody’s glass devices, each with their own niche. Facebook, much like Clubhouse today, provided a central hub for all friends, where you could like different pages, post status updates, keep photo albums, and make your own clubs and events. Twitter’s interface prompted users to share short blurbs that their followers could scroll through. Instagram was similar to Twitter, but for pictures only (Hartford, 2045).

As the ‘20s approached, however, the fall of the social media giants appeared imminent to those who kept their eyes open. The influx of participants from the older generation on these applications signified the beginning of the decline. What once appealed to the younger generations was adopted by their grandparents, seriously cutting down the cool factor of the software. Though this trend was noticeable far earlier, the median age range of each company had grown to 46-52 by 2025 (Skaroff 2034).

In addition to the influx of older generations, privacy scandals started to plague the giants from the 2010s well into the ‘20s. What started as companies selling user information for ad revenue evolved into much more suspect behavior, with rumors accusing the companies of everything from colluding to form a national registry to selling information to hackers under the table.

Regardless of who the information was sold to, the increasingly sophisticated methods each company used to pry into their users’ lives made their followers increasingly uncomfortable. The result for social media companies was an immediate drop in reputation and a steady decline in market share as long-time users looked for more trustworthy alternative social media outlets.

Unfortunately for users, it was extremely difficult for any competing social media network to attain critical mass in the smartphone application market. Even amidst the controversy, social media companies continued to innovate and improve their services at a rate that no others could keep up with. Even with new features added to keep users on board, however, the companies continued to undermine their trustworthiness as they proceeded to sell their users’ information in creative new ways that inevitably made it above ground in due time.

Toward the end of the ‘20s, things were looking dire for the giants. With the continued growth of virtual reality, everyone could feel a sea change coming. To prepare for the new age, in 2027 each company decided, allegedly independently, to change their name, building what was later known as “The ’27 Club”. One after one, each tried to become known as something new—“F,” “Birdie,” and “QuickPic”.

Suffice to say, the rebranding tactic left much to be desired. Not only were users not fooled by the new branding, the new names were notably lamer than their predecessors. Add to this the aging demographic of the giants’ user bases, and the companies seemed destined for irrelevance.

The companies held on for about four more years until each of them finally went bankrupt in the “Social Crash of ’31”. It took a decade longer than many thought it should have, but people were finally done with the social media giants for good. The disappearance of the giants left a huge hole in the social media market, which many new companies tried to fill. The general populace, however, had apparently decided they were done, and refused to adopt any of the new players in the web-based social media market. Technology users returned to a world of group and personal messages, forgoing the need to broadcast their lives for a time.

This period after the Social Crash of ’31 was known as “The Great Purification”. Though the period of absolute social media abstinence lasted only three years, this time was generally viewed favorably by those who lived through it. A generation was perceiving the world and relationships in a whole new way. Like someone newly sober, there was an element of latent wonder in this new view, and many asked themselves why they didn’t get off the services sooner.

Even though many enjoyed their new perspective on the wagon, all it took was a new innovator for the great majority of consumers to fall off. In 2034, nine years after the Lucid Mask redefined Virtual Reality into a major consumer market, a new social media craze was born out of a dorm room on New Idaho University’s campus.

The new mastermind was Nathan Habernick, a prodigious English Major in his junior year. As he put it in a 2035 interview:

“I was always captivated by the worlds that authors and filmmakers would create. I wanted to do the same. For a while, I was just writing and writing, but that didn’t feel like quite enough. And I didn’t necessarily have a huge interest in gaining mastery over some other medium. I just wanted to make my own world and live in it. So I was getting high with my friends one day—come on, it’s 2035 and you’re gonna look at me like I can’t say that?—I was stoned, alright, and I was wondering why there wasn’t yet any easy way to create your own environment in virtual reality. And the applications that were out there just weren’t pushing it far enough. I wanted to make my own world, and I wanted my friends to be able to hang out in it. The market was ripe for a change. So, anyway, that’s how the idea of Clubhouse was born.” (Habernick 2035)

Clubhouse was the disrupter that should have taken down the social media market, had the world not already been in the middle of The Great Purification. Though it began humbly, Clubhouse scaled quickly, allowing users greater and greater freedom to build their own virtual space that their friends could enjoy with them.

Clubhouse eventually began to integrate all the features that the other social media giants had done before them. Users could personalize their own “Bulletin Board” for view by anyone specified in their privacy settings. “Walkie-Talkie” was added soon after launch as the native chat feature in the application. Users could even host Virtual gatherings in each of their Clubhouses.

It wasn’t until 2037 that Clubhouse hit the mainstream with its AR integration, implemented into the second generation of Lucid Lenses. Though the VR app was still popular, the AR implementation was much more useful day-to-day, leading to a surge in popularity similar to the one Facebook experienced when it expanded from desktop to mobile.

In addition to finding a comfortable home in the VR and AR market, Clubhouse made sure to avoid the downfall of its predecessors by brainstorming alternative streams of income to the sale of user data. From the application’s launch, Habernick made sure to emphasize the importance they placed on the privacy of their users. Instead of selling users’ information, Habernick set Clubhouse up with an eCommerce platform that allowed users to sell their own data, goods, and services. By taking a small cut from each interaction, Clubhouse was able to sustain comfortable profits. Though Clubhouse ads didn't start off quite as sophisticated as the social media companies of yesteryear, the surprisingly large amount of users that voluntarily sold their data allowed ad companies to attain approximately the same level of insight into their possible customer base, eventually netting Clubhouse notable ad revenue in addition to what they were gaining from eCommerce.

In 2054, at the time of this writing, Clubhouse remains the most profitable social media company on the market today. Though it has grown over the years, its primary principles have remained the same, which has led to a user loyalty that was never present in the old, dead giants.

After proving there was a place for social media in the new era, it didn’t take long for other companies to follow in Clubhouse’s footsteps. Many of these companies built their base on the new functionality allowed by AR technology. For instance, Infrariend, est. 2024, when activated, allowed users to spot consenting Clubhouse friends from miles away through what resembled an infrared headset. This technology came in handy for many AR games of the 21st century.

Another successful (though slightly more unnerving) company was Foot-Steps, founded in 2045. Foot-Steps allows VR and AR users to sync up with their friends’ AR glasses, literally giving users the chance to walk in someone else’s shoes. Oddly enough, even after the privacy scares of the ‘20s, consumers seemed to be willing once more to risk their privacy for the chance to try new technology. Though there is no conclusive evidence that Foot-Steps is or isn’t spying on their users, it would appear that the trustworthy precedent set by Clubhouse has lulled users into a false sense of security when trying new applications.

As of 2054, no social media application has approached the current success of Clubhouse. In fact, the social media market has remained relatively stagnant for the last decade or so. The reputation of Clubhouse is certainly in better shape after 20 years than the giants’ had been. For Clubhouse’s reign to be displaced in the future, it may be necessary for a disrupter in the tech market as a whole. Just as AR replaced mobile, whatever the next step for mass human communication is will likely be the spot to see major competitors.

Until then, Clubhouse holds a proud monopoly over social media, and few seem to mind. Habernick, in fact, has been guest teaching around a class a semester at UNI for the past five years or so. If you ever happen to run into him on campus, you can feel proud that a fellow Okapi has changed the world. We can only hope that the next disrupter comes from the same magical place.

Works Cited

Habernick, Nathan. Personal Interview. 20 Feb 2035.

Hartford, Melanie. A Generation of Socialites. San Francisco, New History Press, 2045.

Husk, Rajit. Hanging at the Clubhouse. New Idaho, New Idaho UP, 2053.

Skaroff, Nicholas. “Understanding the Social Crash.” Journal of Social Media, vol. 12, no. 1, 2034, pp. 13-16.

#New Idaho #Ben Vizy #New Novel #Writing #Writing Community #Novelist #Novel Writing #2054 #Augmented Reality #Futurism #social media #New Social Media

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

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The concept is simple: no more pen and paper, no calls or prompts, everything goes digital.

Child prodigy Larry Gadea was plucked from high school in Canada by Google after the company discovered a plug-in he had developed for its desktop search service

Gadea explained a little more in an Envoy blog post announcing the new round:

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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fmservers · 6 years

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Envoy raises $43 million to digitize your office

The concept is simple: no more pen and paper, no calls or prompts, everything goes digital.

Child prodigy Larry Gadea was plucked from high school in Canada by Google after the company discovered a plug-in he had developed for its desktop search service

Gadea explained a little more in an Envoy blog post announcing the new round:

Via Jon Russell https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

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kraussoutene · 6 years

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How to Monitor Your Competitors to Increase Conversions

In 2015 Shareaholic released statistics about the state of social media in that day’s market. According to the site, social media had grown to be the number one referral traffic source on the web, overtaking email campaigns and direct advertising. In all, it was driving 31.24% of overall traffic on its own.

During 2017, a controversial and aggressive year in online news and discussion, search overtook social media. But the social side is creeping back up, and it is clear that the importance of narrowing focus on social related campaigns can’t be overstated.

The Big Problem with Social Media Referral Traffic

With the above stats in mind, let’s not try to hide an elephant in the room: Social media traffic doesn’t convert that well and for two obvious reasons:

Intent!!! This is the biggest one. Social media users are not there to buy: They are browsing pictures or talking to friends. Your offer distracts them rather than giving them what they wanted. Unlike search traffic where users are there to find what you are looking for, social media traffic isn’t matched to the users’ expectations

Attention span. Somewhat related to #1, social media traffic is mostly lurkers. They are in a hurry, vaguely interested in you, always willing to go back to whatever they are doing. It’s very hard to prompt them to make a pause and start paying attention.

Hard doesn’t mean impossible though. With the right tools and tactics, you can put that traffic to good use.

This article outlines one specific tactic to learn to convert your social media traffic: monitoring your competitors.

1. How to Identify and Monitor Your Competitors

When entering the niche, you are likely to know your major competitors well. Searching Google for your target keywords will give you even more ideas. When searching, make notes. Getting organized from the very start will save you lots of time going forward.

SproutSocial has a neat spreadsheet template to help you get you competitors in order.

Keeping a spreadsheet makes it more scalable: when expanding your team, you’ll be able to hand your data to new team members easily. You can extend the spreadsheet beyond social media and also note competitors with creative CTAs or link acquisition methods. The more integrated your spreadsheets are, the better because no marketing channel is an island. These days, everything from link building to conversion optimization can either help or destroy your end result.

When adding more accounts to your spreadsheet, add your competitors’ name into your social media monitoring tool. Awario is a brand monitoring solution you may find helpful here because it makes monitoring very well-organized:

You can organize mentions into alerts while keeping your “big picture” view over at your dashboard

You can choose your data sources and keep all of them (which include Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube, Reddit, news / blogs and web)

You can add mentions to “favorites” (which is my favorite feature because it keeps my team very organized) to keep track of most important ones

Once you have your spreadsheet going and monitoring dashboard set-up, you can proceed to learning the data:

2. Track Your Bigger Competitors and Build Your Social Media Editorial Calendar Around Them

Tactic: Research your competitor’s navigational queries and build your social media promotions based on your findings.

That huge brand that is taking up most of the market share? Those probably aren’t the guys you should be looking to take down. Their customers aren’t as likely to be looking for a smaller alternative and anyway, the company has the money, reputation and force of influence to shut you down.

It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be paying attention. What your huge competitors can do for you is to provide data, LOTS of it.

While it may not be that easy to use your own data yet (if you are starting out, there’s not much to analyze), your bigger, more established competitors are being searched and discussed every minute.

Treat your biggest competitor name as your keyword: Research the context, questions and sentiment around it. Find angles you can use for your own marketing:

Check out my article on keyword research here where I describe how I use Serpstat to research my niche and navigational queries (i.e. those queries that contain your or your competitor’s brand name). First, copy-paste your competitor’s brand name and export the list:

Now take this list and put it though Serpstat’s clustering feature:

Grouping your competitor’s navigational queries gives you an outline of topics to build your social media promotion around. Do you want to know what your competitor’s customers want most? See what they are searching for in Google.

This type of research is the perfect first step to building your social media strategy. All you need to do now is to start addressing struggles and questions of competitor’s customers on your social media channels and you have their attention!

3. Monitor Your Competitor’s Unhappy Customers and Be There to Help

Tactic: Monitor your competitors’ unhappy customers and steal them by helping them (as well as use them to improve your site and your product!)

This is one of the most under-utilized, yet the most effective (from experience) tactic: Don’t just monitor your own brand and your own customers. Include your competitor’s customers too!

Twitter is the perfect medium for this tactic for two reasons:

It’s open, public and searchable

It supports negative sentiment search

If you are unaware of the latter tip, try searching for the following:

[“your competitor name” -from:@yourcompetitor]

Keep the space between the brand name and

Use “” if the brand name consists of more than one words

Add -from:@yourcompetitor to filter out your competitor’s own tweets:

Now import this search to your Twitter engagement platform and encourage your team to interact with each and every of them. No need to actually go ahead and offer your business as an alternative: Don’t oversell! Instead, be helpful and you’ll have much better results.

I use Tweetdeck for this because it lets me set up desktop alerts, so I am there immediately, much faster than the competitor. Timing is everything!

Who knows you may even find some tweets to use for testimonials or your social media campaign. Look how Gillette got attention to their brand (Disclaimer: Use this specific tactic at your own risk!)

4. Identify Your Competitors’ Most Successful Tactics on Facebook

Tactic: Investigate your competitors’ Facebook business page and find what seems to work best for them.

Last but not least: Use your competitor’s social media marketing success for your own inspiration. There’s nothing bad in using others’ successful tactics: On a large scale that’s what powers progress.

An easy tool to spy on your competitor’s facebook tactics and analyze them is Buzzsumo’s Facebook analytics tool. This tool will help you identify most engaging of your competitor’s updates on Facebook for you to build up your own page engagement and then use remarketing to get more out of your Facebook ads.

Put your competitor’s Facebook username there, wait for the tool to generate updates and then play with different sorting and filtering options:

You can sort by overall number of interactions (to see the most successful updates on top)

You can filter by type of content (to see your competitor’s videos, giveaways, images, links, questions, etc.)

Filter by date to see more recent successful updates

Now use these ideas to brainstorm your own updates and put them into your own social media editorial calendar. These are just a few examples. I am sure, using these ideas, you can come up with many more.

https://ift.tt/2urckzA

#How to Monitor Your Competitors to Increase Conversions

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christinesumpmg1 · 6 years