Founders, authors and the week in social, circa 2014
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur trade opinions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, then hand the floor to a founder or author with something to show or argue. Heard now from the TWiT archive, the 2014 episodes work as a snapshot of the social web as it stood that year.
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The Social Hour was TWiT's talk show about the social web, hosted by Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur and now available as an archive. The episodes in this run were recorded live in August and September 2014. Sarah worked from TWiT World Headquarters in Petaluma, California, and Amber joined from her home studio in Toronto. The split setup gives the conversation an easy back-and-forth, down to comparing a hot day in California with early fall weather in Toronto. Episodes combine a guest interview, a run of platform news and small apps worth a look. The guests arrive with something concrete to discuss. Liat Mordechay Hertanu, co-founder of 24me, comes on for an app designed to hold an entire life in one place. Zoltan Csaki, co-founder of The Affair, talks about a menswear line that doubles as a Faraday cage. The founder and CEO of Mindie joins to discuss an app built around a simple question: do videos get better with a music track laid over them? Authors appear too: Scott Stratten with 'UnSelling', Dave Delaney with 'New Business Networking', and the LinkedIn expert Chuck Hester. The Stratten conversation keeps coming back to relationship building and to the idea that social noise is self-made, because users choose whom to follow. It also looks back fondly at Twitter's early days, when a casual greeting drew a crowd of replies. A viewer's tweet, read out during the interview, says social media finally made sense after hearing him speak. The news talk is where the hosts' instincts show. They weigh Facebook's auto-deleting posts by use: sensible for a brand promoting a flash sale or a time-sensitive event, hard to justify for an ordinary user, and possibly a new avenue for bullying. On Apple, the verdict is that a company this focused on hardware and its own software has little reason to build a social network, and Ping gets a puzzled mention. The same conversation admits a familiar ambivalence: Facebook can feel terrible and still be hard to put down. Instagram's Hyperlapse gets a first-hand report, from the struggle to find the standalone app on launch day to the in-house image stabilization that Instagram kept calling 'cinematic'. When a brand-new TwitPic story comes up, the hosts stop to reassure viewers that it does not affect TWiT. Episode titles show how wide the news range runs: Twitter opening Analytics to all, Pinterest's news feed, Facebook's new satire labels, Ask.com buying Ask.fm, Uber and Lyft and the taxi business, and the Airline Knee Defender. Smaller tools show up in the titles too, from UnPocket for privacy to Kuddle for kids and a how-to for turning YouTube videos into GIFs. Guest hosts fill in when Amber is away: Shannon Morse on one episode, and Tanya Hall, known from Marketing Mavericks, on another. Hall describes social as one part of a bigger marketing job that also includes branding and customer service. The mood stays sunny. The hosts call it a fun-filled show, and they seem to mean it. For a first listen, the Scott Stratten episode is a good introduction to the interviews, and the Mindie episode, with its talk about Apple and Facebook, shows the news side.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants to hear how people discussed the 2014 social web while it was happening, and who likes friendly, opinionated talk about platforms and apps next to conversations with founders and authors.
What sets it apart: It puts founders of small social apps and authors on social marketing next to the week's platform news, and it judges new features by asking who they would actually help. As an archive, it also works as a period piece, catching Hyperlapse, memories of Ping and the TwitPic story as they were first discussed.
Social web addicts Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur have teamed up to create The Social Hour, your source for the best social tools, news, and fascinating folks building the next generation of the Internet. The Social Hour is helpful, inspiring, interactive, and fun!Although the show is no longer in production, you can enjoy episodes from the TWiT Archives.
Facebook turns ten; Sarah and Amber ask if an anonymous app will make you a monster.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded, lively conversation about Apple's social restraint, Facebook's tradeoffs, and the social feel of iOS 8 audio notes.
The Social Hour frames Apple's reluctance to build a social network as a revealing choice, not just a product gap. Sarah Lane and guest host Shannon Morse move cleanly from Apple's hardware-and-software instincts to the faded Ping experiment, then treat the idea of Apple buying…
Facebook's disappearing posts turn platform permanence into the episode's central question.
The Social Hour puts an oddball privacy-minded menswear concept beside a more pointed discussion of Facebook testing disappearing posts. The pairing works because both topics circle the same concern: consumer tech is not just about new tools, but about what those tools do to…
A 24Me discussion turns digital clutter into a control question, with Twitter's feed debate widening the frame.
The Social Hour frames a messy digital routine as a practical question about trust and control: can one app keep tasks and daily obligations from spreading across too many services?
Instagram's Hyperlapse gives this social-news hour its sharpest look at technology becoming an everyday media tool.
The Social Hour's Episode 177 follows social media as a constantly shifting product surface, with Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur working through a crowded week before talking with Dave Delaney, author of New Business Networking and introduced as a social media expert.
Scott Stratton makes the case that social media can still be social, even when noise gets in the way.
The Social Hour uses Scott Stratton's visit to make a clear, practical case about social media's self-inflicted noise. Stratton keeps the focus on user choices - who people follow, friend, and fold into their contacts - while measuring today's messier experience against the…
LinkedIn mechanics without the growth-hack fog.
Careful science interviews for an uncertain world.
Creator growth with a sharper sales edge.
TikTok culture, reported from the For You page.
Gregoire Henriot says Mindie turns user-shot video into music videos by layering 30-second samples from 7Digital, and he says the app is working with labels to make the catalog legal.
["The Social Hour episode 178, recorded Thursday, September 4, 2014, opens with Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur in Petaluma and Toronto discussing privacy, social apps, and wearable tech.", "Zoltan Csaki, co-founder of The Affair, joins from Auckland, New Zealand to explain The Unpocket, a Kickstarter item built from police-grade metalized fabric that forms a Faraday cage around phones, passports, and bank cards.", "The conversation links The Affair's 1984-inspired menswear to Edward Snowden's NSA leaks, then moves through Facebook's auto-deleting post test, Google's Polar acquisition, and the rumor that Apple could buy Path.", "Amber ends with a Twitter sleep-settings tip and the Instagram site No Likes Yet, which surfaces photos with zero likes for users who want to find overlooked posts."]
The Social Hour episode 178, recorded September 4, 2014, opens with Liat Mordeshai-Hertanu of 24Me describing an app meant to keep calendars, tasks, reminders, notes, and accounts in one place.
Dave Delaney’s argument that Twitter is noisier, and that Lists and advanced search still matter, anchors The Social Hour episode 177 alongside Facebook bandwidth targeting and Instagram Hyperlapse.
The Social Hour episode 176, recorded Thursday, August 21, 2014, has Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur talking with Scott Stratten about Unselling and social platforms that keep changing under users.
Sarah Lane and Tanya Hall interview Chuck Hester about LinkedIn strategy, including why he treats LinkedIn as an online portfolio instead of an online resume.
Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur examine Twitter's test of suggested tweets from accounts users do not follow and Pinterest's private group messaging around shared pins.
The Social Hour hosts Amber MacArthur and Sarah Lane interview Mashable tech editor Pete Pachal about Twitter's positive earnings report and its future relative to Facebook.
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur interview Front CEO Mathilde Collin about shared inboxes, team assignments, internal comments, and Twitter integration.
Ryan Hoover explains how Product Hunt combines product submissions, community upvotes, founder discussions, and a deliberately restricted posting system that allowed only 1% to 2% of monthly visitors to contribute.
The Social Hour hosts Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur cover June 2014 technology and social-media news, including Social Media Day on June 30 and Airbnb's data-driven recommendations.
The Social Hour’s Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur interview Crowd Companies founder Jeremiah Owyang about the collaborative economy and its effect on established businesses.
Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur examine The New York Times’ plan to close or merge almost half of its standalone blogs, including discussion of traffic, advertising, and the continuing appeal of Medium.
The Social Hour hosts Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur interview Scout founder Christian Wicklund about meeting strangers online, launching Fuse, and building consumer apps.
The Social Hour’s Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur interview Guy Kawasaki, Canva’s chief evangelist, about making graphic design accessible through an online tool from Sydney, Australia.
The Social Hour hosts Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur interview Paul Biederman about using Pinterest as a visual portfolio and source of website traffic.
The Social Hour interviews Joseph Garrett, known as Stampy Cat, about building a Minecraft YouTube channel with nearly three million subscribers and more than a billion views.
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur interview Stuart Reynolds, known online as Brittle Star, about building more than 300,000 Vine followers through short visual comedy.
The Social Hour hosts Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur interview Patreon co-founder and CEO Jack Conte about funding creators who publish digital work regularly.
The Social Hour episode 161 covers Snapchat’s Federal Trade Commission settlement, including privacy disclosures, screenshots, address-book access, and a 20-year independent monitoring program.
Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur cover Facebook's anonymous app login, Messenger's separation from Facebook's mobile app, Snapchat's new video chat, and Parks Canada's plan for Wi-Fi hotspots at up to 150 locations.
The Social Hour with Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur interviews Mighty Bell founder Gina Bianchini about purpose-built social networks for teachers, small-business owners, and other focused communities.
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur interview Stageit founder and CEO Evan Lowenstein about paid artist-fan interaction through laptop-based web concerts.
Sarah Lane and Shannon Morse interview Gigaom senior writer Matthew Ingram about Heartbleed, Facebook's real-name policy, Twitter's redesign, and Dropbox's Carousel.
The Social Hour episode 156, recorded April 3, 2014, features Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur interviewing LiveNinja CEO Will Weinraub about real-time video services.
Mark Cuban explains CyberDust, an ephemeral messaging app that gives users 30 seconds to read a message after opening it and deletes unread messages after 12 hours.
Sarah Hill, Veterans United’s human media strategist, argues that Google Plus Hangouts create “human media” by adding face-to-face interaction to social networking.
Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur examine VKontakte, a Russian social network with about 228 million users whose majority ownership shifted to businessmen aligned with Putin supporters.
The Social Hour episode 152, recorded March 6, 2014, examines acquisitions involving Flipboard, Zite, Yahoo, and Visify.
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur examine why approximately one in two Canadians use Facebook, with some checking it on phones up to 20 times daily.
The Social Hour hosts Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur examine Facebook’s $19 billion WhatsApp purchase, including WhatsApp’s 450 million active users and one million daily signups.
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur's February 13, 2014 episode of The Social Hour examines Comcast's proposed Time Warner Cable acquisition through Gizmodo's collection of 50 reaction tweets and customer-service complaints.
Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur examine Facebook’s tenth-anniversary Look Back videos, including complaints about unwanted memories and a father’s request to access his deceased son’s video after a related appeal reached about 700,000 views.
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur examine Facebook Paper, a standalone newsreader scheduled for February 3, 2014, and question whether human editors can improve Facebook's low-quality, sensational news feed.
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur examine Pinterest's recipe search engine after its Punch Fork acquisition and note that food content reached almost 18% of Pinterest content in fall 2013.
Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur examine YouTube's replacement of Google Plus comments with native moderation and comment-management tools.
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur’s January 9, 2013 episode covers Google’s employee ferry, LinkedIn’s lawsuit over fake-profile scraping, and CBS Films’ use of A.O.
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur examine New York City's real-time snow-plow tracking, a system that can show residents which roads have been cleared.
The Social Hour hosts Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur review 2013 through Google, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, social-media hoaxes, and marketing campaigns.
Nick Bilton discusses Hatching Twitter with Social Hour hosts Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur, describing four former friends, internal conflict, and the digital records behind his reporting.
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur examine Twitter’s briefly revised blocking policy, including why harassment concerns prompted backlash and a rapid reversal.
Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur interview Gary Vaynerchuk about his book “Jab Jab Jab Right Hook,” which frames social content as giving repeatedly before asking.
Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur examine Snapchat’s reported lead over Facebook in daily photo uploads and question whether private-sharing metrics support the comparison.
The Social Hour episode 137 features Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur discussing Miles, a five-year-old with leukemia whose Make-A-Wish Batman day turned San Francisco into a staged rescue scene.
The Social Hour episode 136, hosted by Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur on November 8, 2013, examines Twitter's IPO, which rose about 78% from its initial price range before settling in the mid-40s.
The Social Hour with Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur examines Facebook's admitted decline in teen usage, Snapchat's appeal, and the possibility that young users will keep changing networks.
The Social Hour episode 134, recorded October 25, 2013, examines Twitter's reported rise above Facebook among teens, with Instagram close behind.
The Social Hour episode 133 has Sarah Lane and guest host Ayaz Akhtar examining Twitter's opt-in direct messages, including spam, stripped URLs, and possible brand advertising.
Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur interview Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian about his book Without Their Permission and the idea of permissionless innovation.
The Social Hour episode 131 features Sarah Lane and Amber McArthur discussing Twitter's S-1 filing, a planned one-billion-dollar IPO, 253 million dollars in first-half revenue, and continued losses.