Social Business Bites: Fonts Have Feelings Too | Get Pocket | Facebook's AlgoNews

Published: Thu, 09/01/16

​Social Business Bites - Curated by Des Walsh

​Hi 

3 crunchy bites this week
  • Fonts Have Feelings Too
  • Bye Bye Delicious, Hello Pocket
  • Facebook's AlgoNews - Your Guarantee of Objectivity (?)
Plus: link to latest episode of my Let's Talk Leadership podcast show.
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Browse previous issues of Social Business Bites at this link
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Yes, it's a quirky subject line but the content definitely passes the Social Business Bites crunchiness and juiciness tests.

I claim no expertise about fonts but I know they are important. The post definitely spoke to me and my feelings. It has implications beyond social media but is particularly relevant for website design and layout, and blogs. 

I’ve noticed how seemingly small things like font and the spacing between letters can impact how I feel when reading online.

The right font choice along with the absence of sidebars and popups makes everything feel easier and better to read.

For this newsletter I wanted to do what I could to make it as quick a read as I could while having enough content to make the bites reasonably chewy and nourishing. So I use Verdana, a font designed specifically for online ease of reading, set it at 14 pixels to add further to readibility, and I eschew sidebars and popups so as to minimize distractions. I hope that all works for you and if you have suggestions for me to make changes to optimize readability and comprehension, please let me know.



Most or maybe all of us who are engaged in social business face a weekly or even daily challenge of coming up with good content. I'm definitely no exception and when early in the week or midweek I find something good for Social Business Bites I don't want to have to go searching for it at the end of the week. One of the tools I've relied on for ages to bookmark interesting blog posts and articles, add some excerpts etc., is the Delicious website: it's saved me a lot of time. Delicious has gone through some ups and downs, and sadly it now seems to be in one of its down times, maybe terminally.

So I've looked around for a substitute.

I found Pocket. it's free and it comes with a little icon for the navigation bar on my desktop, so when I find a post or article I like I just copy the web address (url), click on the Pocked icon and add the link: I get the heading with url embedded, and an image if there is one, and the item then comes up on the My Sites section. I can do a sort by starring some and they then come up when I click on Favorites (see image below). The site has some limitations compared to Delicious, such as my not being able to copy and paste a snippet (or more) of text, but it's more reliable: Delicious was actually losing items I had carefully stored!
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Mark Shiffer

Have you ever wondered what it would be like when the machines took over and really started doing our thinking for us?

Wonder no longer. Mr Zuckerberg and his trusty team at Facebook have taken the worry out of whether we could trust human editors to be objective or even objective enough (surely all we can hope for in an imperfect world) and handed the job over to the machines. 

Ushering in, no doubt unintentionally, a golden opportunity for those cunning enough to make fake news real enough to fool the algorithm - and then us.​​​​​​​

Facebook has removed human editors from decision making and the result has been fake news trending. As of Friday, humans no longer had input into deciding on trending topics on the popular social media site. But three days later, automated computer algorithms had chosen a fake story, reports the Washington Post.

Welcome the R2D2 Times, the C-3PO Tribune and - more ominously - the Daily Dalek Destroyer. 

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Latest Episode from the Let's Talk Leadership Podcast Show


Becky McCray is a small town business owner; she and her husband Joe own a retail liquor store and a cattle ranch in the United States. Yes, the same Becky you saw here recently as a Featured Reader. Becky shares insights from her real-world experience at her highly-ranked website, Small Biz Survival, and in her award-winning book, Small Town Rules.

You might be surprised at some formulas for leadership in small communities that Becky shares in this podcast, but you'll see the wisdom of them.

As always when Becky and I have a good old chat, we both find ourselves surprised and delighted at how much the concerns of small communities are not dissimilar, even thousands of miles apart across the wide Pacific. Everybody now, "It's a small world after all.............." :)

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Looking for previous issues of Social Business Bites? Here's the link.
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Till next time, be well, be social :)


Des


PS: If you are not on the list yet to receive Social Business Bites in your email inbox, and would like to try it, you can register for that at this link. And remember there is an easy unsubscribe link in every update).

My contact details

Phone: International +61 413089355   Australia 0413 089 355
Skype: userid is deswalsh (if you want to connect with me there, just type in "Social Business Bites" - or email me and we can set it up).
Email: deswalsh@webartsco.com​​​​​​​