Dec 21, 2022
What is the BeReal App? With Mike Hanley Ep. 9
Social media is an unwavering conversation in our lives today. But was it this way 10 years ago? You and I as well as Mike Hanley, our guest for today’s episode of The Recombobulator Lab, would agree it wasn’t. But unlike most of us, Mike was part of a digital content agency before social media even became a thing. So, he’s witnessed its explosive growth more closely than a majority of us, and even contributed to some of the biggest marketing trends, like including a quote with a person’s picture on social media, for example!
Mike has also served the World Economic Forum for over eight years before founding The Content Engine, a team that combines new technologies, including machine-learning, with best-in-class editorial and workflow processes to generate tailored, high-quality content at very high volumes for its clients. He comes with a trove of insights about social media, content marketing, and the degree of “realness” of social media platforms, and what can be done towards improving them. In today’s episode, sit with Mike, Chris and Jason, as they dig into it headfirst.
Among the things they get into: Social Media: A Beautiful Constraint?
A beautiful constraint, Mike explains, is a time or space constraint put to something essential, like explaining a thesis in 5 minutes for example. Social media relies on this beautiful constraint to capture people’s attention quickly. What one needs to remember, however, is that we don't have to capture everybody with every post/piece. As long as we capture somebody with every piece. Social Media: Faking Reality?
Social media has democratized our society more powerfully than anything else in recent times, giving people authority over their lives, thoughts, and opinion, and strengthening free speech. But it has also become more toxic than flavorful, given how some people are using it to show lies and tinted realities. It’s also being used to create fake lives. Be Real: A Better Future for Social Media
Be Real, a new social media app, is calling out on fake social media behavior by building what they call is the social graph – a network of connections that form by identifying the chain of people you know. There’s no advertising involved in their platform. It works by having everyone capture a photo within 2 minutes every day at a different time. While this sounds like a good place to begin the end of the fake social media game, we’ll have to wait for time to tell if it turns out well.
Listen to this conversation to dive deeper into Mike’s knowledge database, including his experience meeting some of the world’s most renowned personalities like Bill and Melinda Gates, and discussing Microsoft’s neo-Nazi sexbot!