We've been tracking vaccine hesitancy since Dec 2020 via our Symptom Survey and providing daily data updates to help inform vaccine efforts by govts around the world. Given this week's news and some changes we’re seeing in the data, I want to share some additional insights 1/7
Super excited to be doing this. This is an awesome company and I love their expeditions (dad and I have been to the Bering Sea and Antartica with them). I also think it's a really interesting business with lots of opportunities and hope I can help!
We are happy to announce that Lindblad’s Board of Directors has appointed
@alexschultz
as a new independent director. Alex currently serves as Chief Marketing Officer & VP of Analytics for Meta, formerly Facebook, where he leads consumer marketing and product analytics globally.
I was lucky to do the
@twentyminutevc
podcast with the excellent
@HarryStebbings
and he would like me to share it with my legions ;) of fans on social media: thank you Harry for the opportunity and
@shak
&
@codorniou
for pushing me to do it!
So many issuing swirling around relating to the net and free speech. Parler struggling after Amazon and Apple acted, President Trump off facebook and twitter. Got stuck into all of this with
@jeffjarvis
. Thought-provoking stuff.
@https
://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55615214
@sama
I just think the internet has matured. Had this conversation around engineers out of college being less desirable now relative to the last slow down. Both are the same in my mind, you have more great, experienced 40year olds than you did a decade ago in our industry as it ages.
I wrote down my thoughts on the state of AI as we head into Cannes for the ad industry where I'm lucky to be speaking at the Palais with the incredible Es Devlin:
My core thinking is that with technology waves too often we act like this is the first time
I lived in San Francisco for a decade , I have explicitly not joined the noise about the problems here (a lot is actually better than when I moved to the states but there are also a lot of problems), but I wanted to say this statement by the mayor makes me proud of her.
EXCLUSIVE | Adweek’s
@StephenLepitak
talks to the head of Visit Iceland about its ad parodying Mark Zuckerberg and Meta, which has been viewed more than 6 million times.
I think it's fair to say humanity took a bit of a beating in 2020, but one month into 2021 there are signs of a fightback.
It took a year to reach 100 million confirmed cases worldwide. It's taken six weeks to give out 100 million doses of the vaccine.
The Great Stagnation is coming to an end:
“A nuclear fusion start-up backed by Silicon Valley investor Sam Altman and Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital has secured $500m to demonstrate commercially viable power by 2024”
The current situation is terrible. Black lives matter and I hope the outcome all of this will be progress. The first pride was a riot. Black people were leaders in that. I hope these protests can be a turning point like that was. Although I hope it's quicker progress.
Did she get a new job? Did she win the lottery? Maybe she finally got the loan she needed to start her own big dream idea. Whatever is next, with end-to-end encryption, only she knows. Message Privately.
I'm so so excited about this marketing campaign. I think it's really using the best of social media. Having your friends genuinely share with you when they've been vaccinated so you can have real conversations about your decision making and be inspired is the best of what we do.
Very proud of this program. It’s one of the programs I help fund at the college and I believe Magdalene does a really good job of promoting access and inclusion which is amazing when you look how far the college has come from being the last college to admit women.
Today we welcomed 17 students to our Under-Represented Ethnic Groups in Engineering Residential! This afternoon they worked through some example problems on structural trusses with Dr Jess Forsdyke.
One of the best ways to reduce hesitancy is to show ppl others in their community who are getting vaccinated - that’s why we’re increasing our promotions of profile frames that allow people to voice support for vaccines 7/7
Remember acid rain? It was real, and we beat it.
@_HannahRitchie
details the causes and costs of acid rain, and how Western governments eventually were persuaded and able to act to tackle it.
We can do the same for other environmental challenges today.
Today reminds us that progress might be slow. It might take decades. But no matter what things might look like today, it’s always possible. Happy Pride month, everybody.
Meta has built over 30 tools that help parents and teens work together to help create positive online experiences. This video shows how supervision tools can help support families on Instagram:
I believe VR/AR and the metaverse is going to do amazing things for society and the world over the coming decade and I'm proud for my team to help explain how:
I'm so glad he's ok. I nearly fell apart when I saw the crash this morning. I always worried the halo would be a problem in a fire. So glad to see that it wasn't and indeed saved his life. Really wonderful.
We welcome their conclusion that we’ve presented these metrics accurately and we have the right internal controls in place to ensure accuracy. As we keep growing this report, we'll also keep working to make sure that it is independently verified. (7/7)
Building a data pipeline in 2020 is like building a bridge in the 14th century
• You do a lot of work that gets thrown away
• Half the job is getting rid of the stuff you dont want
• The folks who started it are dead by the time it's done
So good again and I really subscribe to the "This has all happened before". That thinking has always shaped my world view. What can we learn from the echoes of history?
New Years Resolutions:
2022:
- Read more books
- Ride the bicycle more
- Read in bed, instead of going on phone
1902:
- Read less books
- Stop riding the bicycle so much
- Don't read in bed
Via our newsletter:
@HarryStebbings
@Meta
Oh wow I'm honoured. I assumed with the cool new studio you showed in social you'd had someone in. It was a great conversation and I'm really honoured you asked me and
@shak
and
@codorniou
pushed me out of my comfort zone to do it.
FWIW I think this is worth doing. The ad archive is very good and the ads tool is very transparent in what you can do. Also Benedict is very thoughtful more broadly so I suggest following him and subscribing to his newsletter.
Lee introduced me to this company and I was super impressed (in a personal role not as part of my job at Meta). If you are interested in implementing privacy best practices as an engineer or data engineer I encourage you to check them out!
I believe most developers care about data privacy and are motivated to do the right thing. But privacy best practices are not easy.
We led the Seed round in
@privacydynamics
to make best-in-class data privacy the default. Coming out of hiding, you can sign up today.
(Links👇)
Join my campaign to stop scientists using the term “statistically significant” and replace it with “statistically detectable”, so people don’t assume it always means *actually* significant
The metaverse is the next evolution of social connection. It's a collective project that will be created by people all over the world, and open to everyone. You’ll be able to socialize, learn, collaborate and play in ways that go beyond what’s possible today.
BREAKING NEWS: This is an announcement that has been decades in the making.
On December 5, 2022 a team from DOE's
@Livermore_Lab
made history by achieving fusion ignition.
This breakthrough will change the future of clean power and America’s national defense forever.
i cherish the time i spend online. I don’t consider it a second class citizen or a guilty pleasure vs the real world. its often more interesting and rich. I suspect many on here, by selection, feel the same but it’s low status to say so
We're all teaming up to help (and actually have been doing stuff together informally, even person to person, for weeks) as you'd expect. Personally I think just the availability of these services let's you stay in touch, not be lonely, learn and collaborate. I'm using them all.
this is awesome - we need audits, we need cuts at the category level (since, for example sites like twitter and facebook where links are a big thing will have different abuse than things like youtube and instagram with mostly visual posts) but I'm just so happy to see this. 1/2
An article was published in the
@nytimes
today entitled "Children’s Screen Time Has Soared in the Pandemic, Alarming Parents and Researchers" and I have thoughts.
A thread.
The wonderful
@HarryStebbings
of
@twentyminutevc
interviewed me for his awesome podcast 20Growth. We talked about the journey of Yoast over the last 15 years that
@MariekeRakt
and I have been on, the angel investing we do now and much more!
How times have changed…
On 3 September 1189, Richard I was crowned King in Westminster Abbey. Jews were barred from attending, but in a spirit of heartfelt goodwill, some Jewish leaders arrived bearing gifts for the new king. They were informed that Jews were not welcome,
Negative stories about people abound. I’d like to tell a different kind of story that’s always stuck w me.
A few years ago, my cousin’s friend was dying from an aggressive cancer. He had a few days to live. So my cousin picked up the phone & called Christina Applegate’s agent.
99% of technical SEO is just trying to get basic web standards implemented.
Fix your HTML. Fix your errors. Fix your speed. Fix your images. Fix your URLs. Fix your servers. Fix your loading strategies. Fix your rendering. Fix your DNS. Etc.
No magic here, just quality control.
I don't think people in Silicon Valley fully appreciate how awesome it is that such a huge number of random people are (regularly and somewhat easily) given a few hundred thousand dollars to try something out.
@CT_Bergstrom
@aginnt
Fwiw arguably I have some of the best experience making products grow virally and I have a decent science background at college. I am a silicon valley person trying to learn from experts and do my bit to help keep people connected so they don't feel as alone in lockdown.
We have seen an increase in vaccine acceptance over the past several months. However, data over the past week suggest that hesitancy may be increasing over concerns about the J&J shot. New
@yougov
shows public confidence in J&J vaccine dropped 15pts 2/7
I remember when eBay was the terrifying thing: "Someone is selling their baby on eBay!". I remember when Wikipedia was the terrifying thing: "OMG there's an error in Wikipedia."
Now, ChatGPT is the terrifying thing. And...
It is worth noting life expectancy at age 81 of a man (I'm a man hence choosing that) in the UK is 89. So if the average person is dying of covid at age 81 that is robbing that "average" person of 8 years. I hate the takes using life expectancy at birth.
This Cambridge housing plan sounds so good. A new quarter for the city, with a gentle density, agreeablist design code, hundreds of thousands of new homes and lots of new lab space. Incredibly good news for UK science & tech.
Remarkably anti-cheems!
I get a lot of reference checks like “X was at notable company Y during hyper growth, they’re a definite hire, right?” Those people deserve more scrutiny, not less. When a company’s really successful, everyone looks like a high performer from the outside, even those that aren’t.
I think this is very worth everyone thinking about screens watching: and I'd encourage everyone to follow folks like
@ShuhBillSkee
and
@OrbenAmy
(and folks they recommend).
I spent months reporting on the
@OversightBoard
Meta set up to second-guess it. The board actually wants to fundamentally change not just Meta but the boundaries of social media discourse overall. Anyway, read it here.
Didn't realize this moment was being filmed yesterday but I'm so happy that it was. My childhood self would never have dreamed of seeing a gay kiss on TV at the Olympics but for the first time ever a kid watching at home CAN! Love is love is love.
I'm tired of the lazy reporting on loneliness:
"We have a loneliness epidemic, it's making ppl miserable & killing them. Probably due to social media, phones, suburban life, or smthg. Let's go back to meeting in real life!"
No!
Yes, we do spend more time alone:
There’s been a lot of discussion lately, driven by the points raised in Jonathan Haidt’s Atlantic article about social media’s impact on democracy and daily life in America. But the research tells a far more nuanced story. Here is Meta’s response:
Pete Buttigieg kissed his husband on some of the biggest political stages in the country. That would've meant the world to me as a closeted gay kid growing up in the South, and I know it still does for many, many scared kids staring at the ceiling in their bedrooms. It matters.
I know people are freaking out about valuations + insane pace of current startup environment.
But...
Been in SV for 20 years. Never seen this much cool sh!t or this many amazing companies. The hype is real. Next 5+ years are going to be amazing.
/end