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meeedeee · 5 years

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Cancel Culture: The Internet Eating Itself RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

As social media platforms enter their collective adolescence – Facebook is fifteen, YouTube fourteen, Twitter thirteen, tumblr twelve – I find myself thinking about how little we really understand their cultural implications, both ongoing and for the future. At this point, the idea that being online is completely optional in modern world ought to be absurd, and yet multiple friends, having spoken to their therapists about the impact of digital abuse on their mental health, were told straight up to just stop using the internet. Even if this was a viable option for some, the idea that we can neatly sidestep the problem of bad behaviour in any non-utilitarian sphere by telling those impacted to simply quit is baffling at best and a tacit form of victim-blaming at worst. The internet might be a liminal space, but object permanence still applies to what happens here: the trolls don’t vanish if we close our eyes, and if we vanquish one digital hydra-domain for Toxicity Crimes without caring to fathom the whys and hows of what went wrong, we merely ensure that three more will spring up in its place.

Is the internet a private space, a government space or a public space? Yes.

Is it corporate, communal or unaffiliated? Yes.

Is it truly global or bound by local legal jurisdictions? Yes.

Does the internet reflect our culture or create it? Yes.

Is what people say on the internet reflective of their true beliefs, or is it a constant shell-game of digital personas, marketing ploys, intrusive thoughts, growth-in-progress, personal speculation and fictional exploration? Yes.

The problem with the internet is that takes up all three areas on a Venn diagram depicting the overlap between speech and action, and while this has always been the case, we’re only now admitting that it’s a bug as well as a feature. Human interaction cannot be usefully monitored using an algorithm, but our current conception of What The Internet Is has been engineered specifically to shortcut existing forms of human oversight, the better to maximise both accessibility (good to neutral) and profits (neutral to bad). Uber and Lyft are cheaper, frequently more convenient alternatives to a traditional taxi service, for instance, but that’s because the apps themselves are functionally predicated on the removal of meaningful customer service and worker protections that were hard-won elsewhere. Sites like tumblr are free to use, but the lack of revenue generated by those users means that, past a certain point, profits can only hope to outstrip expenses by selling access to those users and/or their account data, which means in turn that paying to effectively monitor their content creation becomes vastly less important than monetising it.

Small wonder, then, that individual users of social media platforms have learned to place a high premium on their ability to curate what they see, how they see it, and who sees them in turn. When I first started blogging, the largely unwritten rule of the blogsphere was that, while particular webforums dedicated to specific topics could have rules about content and conduct, blogs and their comment pages should be kept Free. Monitoring comments was viewed as a sign of narrow-minded fearfulness: even if a participant was aggressive or abusive, the enlightened path was to let them speak, because anything else was Censorship. This position held out for a good long while, until the collective frustration of everyone who’d been graphically threatened with rape, torture and death, bombarded with slurs, exhausted by sealioning or simply fed up with nitpicking and bad faith arguments finally boiled over.

Particularly in progressive circles, the relief people felt at being told that actually, we were under no moral obligation to let assholes grandstand in the comments or repeatedly explain basic concepts to only theoretically invested strangers was overwhelming. Instead, you could simply delete them, or block them, or maybe even mock them, if the offence or initial point of ignorance seemed silly enough. But as with the previous system, this one-size-fits-all approach soon developed a downside. Thanks to the burnout so many of us felt after literal years of trying to treat patiently with trolls playing Devil’s Advocate, liberal internet culture shifted sharply towards immediate shows of anger, derision and flippancy to anyone who asked a 101 question, or who didn’t use the right language, or who did anything other than immediately agree with whatever position was explained to them, however simply.

I don’t exempt myself from this criticism, but knowing why I was so goddamn tired doesn’t change my conviction that, cumulatively, the end result did more harm than good. Without wanting to sidetrack into a lengthy dissertation on digital activism in the post-aughties decade, it seems evident in hindsight that the then-fledgling alliance between trolls, MRAs, PUAs, Redditors and 4channers to deliberately exhaust left-wing goodwill via sealioning and bad faith arguments was only the first part of a two-pronged attack. The second part, when the left had lost all patience with explaining its own beliefs and was snappily telling anyone who asked about feminism, racism or anything else to just fucking Google it, was to swoop in and persuade the rebuffed party that we were all irrational, screeching harridans who didn’t want to answer because we knew our answers were bad, and why not consider reading Roosh V instead?

The fallout of this period, I would argue, is still ongoing. In an ideal world, drawing a link between online culture wars about ownership of SFF and geekdom and the rise of far-right fascist, xenophobic extremism should be a bow so long that not even Odysseus himself could draw it. But this world, as we’ve all had frequent cause to notice, is far from ideal at the best of times – which these are not – and yet another featurebug of the internet is the fluid interpermeability of its various spaces. We talk, for instance – as I am talking here – about social media as a discreet concept, as though platforms like Twitter or Facebook are functionally separate from the other sites to which their users link; as though there is no relationship between or bleed-through from the viral Facebook post screencapped and shared on BuzzFeed, which is then linked and commented upon on Reddit, which thread is then linked to on Twitter, where an entirely new conversation emerges and subsequently spawns an article in The Huffington Post, which is shared again on Facebook and the replies to that shared on tumblr, and so on like some grizzly perpetual mention machine.

But I digress. The point here is that internet culture is best understood as a pattern of ripples, each new iteration a reaction to the previous one, spreading out until it dissipates and a new shape takes its place. Having learned that slamming the virtual door in everyone’s face was a bad idea, the online left tried establishing a better, calmer means of communication; the flipside was a sudden increase in tone-policing, conversations in which presentation was vaunted over substance and where, once again, particular groups were singled out as needing to conform to the comfort-levels of others. Overlapping with this was the move towards discussing things as being problematic, rather than using more fixed and strident language to decry particular faults – an attempt to acknowledge the inherent fallibility of human works while still allowing for criticism. A sensible goal, surely, but once again, attempting to apply the dictum universally proved a double-edged sword: if everything is problematic, then how to distinguish grave offences from trifling ones? How can anyone enjoy anything if we’re always expected to thumb the rosary of its failings first?

When everything is problematic and everyone has the right to say so, being online as any sort of creator or celebrity is like being nibbled to death by ducks. The well-meaning promise of various organisations, public figures or storytellers to take criticism on board – to listen to the fanbase and do right by their desires – was always going to stumble over the problem of differing tastes. No group is a hivemind: what one person considers bad representation or in poor taste, another might find enlightening, while yet a third party is more concerned with something else entirely. Even in cases with a clear majority opinion, it’s physically impossible to please everyone and a type of folly to try, but that has yet to stop the collective internet from demanding it be so. Out of this comes a new type of ironic frustration: having once rejoiced in being allowed to simply block trolls or timewasters, we now cast judgement on those who block us in turn, viewing them, as we once were viewed, as being fearful of criticism.

Are we creating echo chambers by curating what we see online, or are we acting in pragmatic acknowledgement of the fact that we neither have time to read everything nor an obligation to see all perspectives as equally valid? Yes.

Even if we did have the time and ability to wade through everything, is the signal-to-noise ratio of truth to lies on the internet beyond our individual ability to successfully measure, such that outsourcing some of our judgement to trusted sources is fundamentally necessary, or should we be expected to think critically about everything we encounter, even if it’s only intended as entertainment? Yes.

If something or someone online acts in a way that’s antithetical to our values, are we allowed to tune them out thereafter, knowing full well that there’s a nearly infinite supply of as-yet undisappointing content and content-creators waiting to take their place, or are we obliged to acknowledge that Doing A Bad doesn’t necessarily ruin a person forever? Yes.

And thus we come to cancel culture, the current – but by no means final – culmination of previous internet discourse waves. In this iteration, burnout at critical engagement dovetails with a new emphasis on collective content curation courtesies (try saying that six times fast), but ends up hamstrung once again by differences in taste. Or, to put it another way: someone fucks up and it’s the last straw for us personally, so we try to remove them from our timelines altogether – but unless our friends and mutuals, who we still want to engage with, are convinced to do likewise, then we haven’t really removed them at all, such that we’re now potentially willing to make failure to cancel on demand itself a cancellable offence.

Which brings us right back around to the problem of how the modern internet is fundamentally structured – which is to say, the way in which it’s overwhelmingly meant to rely on individual curation instead of collective moderation. Because the one thing each successive mode of social media discourse has in common with its predecessors is a central, and currently unanswerable question: what universal code of conduct exists that I, an individual on the internet, can adhere to – and expect others to adhere to – while we communicate across multiple different platforms?

In the real world, we understand about social behavioural norms: even if we don’t talk about them in those terms, we broadly recognise them when we see them. Of course, we also understand that those norms can vary from place to place and context to context, but as we can only ever be in one physical place at a time, it’s comparatively easy to adjust as appropriate.

But the internet, as stated, is a liminal space: it’s real and virtual, myriad and singular, private and public all at once. It confuses our sense of which rules might apply under which circumstances, jumbles the normal behavioural cues by obscuring the identity of our interlocutors, and even though we don’t acknowledge it nearly as often as we should, written communication – like spoken communication – is a skill that not everyone has, just as tone, whether spoken or written, isn’t always received (or executed, for that matter) in the way it was intended. And when it comes to politics, in which the internet and its doings now plays no small role, there’s the continual frustration that comes from observing, with more and more frequency, how many literal, real-world crimes and abuses go without punishment, and how that lack of consequences contributes in turn to the fostering of abuse and hostility towards vulnerable groups online.

This is what comes of occupying a transitional period in history: one in which laws are changed and proposed to reflect our changing awareness of the world, but where habit, custom, ignorance, bias and malice still routinely combine, both institutionally and more generally, to see those laws enacted only in part, or tokenistically, or not at all. To take one of the most egregious and well-publicised instances that ultimately presaged the #MeToo movement, the laughably meagre sentence handed down to Brock Turner, who was caught in the act of raping an unconscious woman, combined with the emphasis placed by both the judge and much of the media coverage on his swimming talents and family standing as a means of exonerating him, made it very clear that sexual violence against women is frequently held to be less important than the perceived ‘bright futures’ of its perpetrators.

Knowing this, then – knowing that the story was spread, discussed and argued about on social media, along with thousands of other, similar accounts; knowing that, even in this context, some people still freely spoke up in defence of rapists and issued misogynistic threats against their female interlocutors – is it any wonder that, in the absence of consistent legal justice in such cases, the internet tried, and is still trying, to fill the gap? Is it any wonder, when instances of racist police brutality are constantly filmed and posted online, only for the perpetrators to receive no discipline, that we lose patience for anyone who wants to debate the semantics of when, exactly, extrajudicial murder is “acceptable”?

We cannot control the brutality of the world from the safety of our keyboards, but when it exhausts or threatens us, we can at least click a button to mute its seeming adherents. We don’t always have the energy to decry the same person we’ve already argued against a thousand times before, but when a friend unthinkingly puts them back on our timeline for some new reason, we can tell them that person is cancelled and hope they take the hint not to do it again. Never mind that there is far too often no subtlety, no sense of scale or proportion to how the collective, viral internet reacts in each instance, until all outrage is rendered flat and the outside observer could be forgiven for worrying what’s gone wrong with us all, that using a homophobic trope in a TV show is thought to merit the same online response as an actual hate crime. So long as the war is waged with words alone, there’s only a finite number of outcomes that boycotting, blocking, blacklisting, cancelling, complaining and critiquing can achieve, and while some of those outcomes in particular are well worth fighting for, so many words are poured towards so many attempts that it’s easy to feel numbed to the process; or, conversely, easy to think that one response fits all contexts.

I’m tired of cancel culture, just as I was dully tired of everything that preceded it and will doubtless grow tired of everything that comes after it in turn, until our fundamental sense of what the internet is and how it should be managed finally changes. Like it or not, the internet both is and is of the world, and that is too much for any one person to sensibly try and curate at an individual level. Where nothing is moderated for us, everything must be moderated by us; and wherever people form communities, those communities will grow cultures, which will develop rules and customs that spill over into neighbouring communities, both digitally and offline, with mixed and ever-changing results. Cancel culture is particularly tricky in this regard, as the ease with which we block someone online can seldom be replicated offline, which makes it all the more intoxicating a power to wield when possible: we can’t do anything about the awful coworker who rants at us in the breakroom, but by God, we can block every person who reminds us of them on Twitter.

The thing about participating in internet discourse is, it’s like playing Civilisation in real-time, only it’s not a game and the world keeps progressing even when you log off. Things change so fast on the internet – memes, etiquette, slang, dominant opinions – and yet the changes spread so organically and so fast that we frequently adapt without keeping conscious track of when and why they shifted. Social media is like the Hotel California: we can check out any time we like, but we can never meaningfully leave – not when world leaders are still threatening nuclear war on Twitter, or when Facebook is using friendly memes to test facial recognition software, or when corporate accounts are creating multi-staffed humansonas to engage with artists on tumblr, or when YouTube algorithms are accidentally-on-purpose steering kids towards white nationalist propaganda because it makes them more money.

Of course we try and curate our time online into something finite, comprehensible, familiar, safe: the alternative is to embrace the near-infinite, incomprehensible, alien, dangerous gallimaufry of our fractured global mindscape. Of course we want to try and be critical, rational, moral in our convictions and choices; it’s just that we’re also tired and scared and everyone who wants to argue with us about anything can, even if they’re wrong and angry and also our relative, or else a complete stranger, and sometimes you just want to turn off your brain and enjoy a thing without thinking about it, or give yourself some respite, or exercise a tiny bit of autonomy in the only way you can.

It’s human nature to want to be the most amount of right for the least amount of effort, but unthinkingly taking our moral cues from internet culture the same way we’re accustomed to doing in offline contexts doesn’t work: digital culture shifts too fast and too asymmetrically to be relied on moment to moment as anything like a universal touchstone. Either you end up preaching to the choir, or you run a high risk of aggravation, not necessarily due to any fundamental ideological divide, but because your interlocutor is leaning on a different, false-universal jargon overlying alternate 101 and 201 concepts to the ones you’re using, and modern social media platforms – in what is perhaps the greatest irony of all – are uniquely poorly suited to coherent debate.

Purity wars in fandom, arguments about diversity in narrative and whether its proponents have crossed the line from criticism into bullying: these types of arguments are cyclical now, dying out and rekindling with each new wave of discourse. We might not yet be in a position to stop it, but I have some hope that being aware of it can mitigate the worst of the damage, if only because I’m loathe to watch yet another fandom steadily talk itself into hating its own core media for the sake of literal argument.

For all its flaws – and with all its potential – the internet is here to stay. Here’s hoping we figure out how to fix it before its ugliest aspects make us give up on ourselves.

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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What Makes a GPU a GPU, and When Did We Start Calling it That?

A version of this post originally appeared on Tedium, a twice-weekly newsletter that hunts for the end of the long tail.

Names change. Perhaps the most jarring element of the recent, widely reported “alien” activity isn’t so much descriptions of sonic boomless sonic flight but that UFOs (unidentified flying objects) are now called UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena).

Companies rebrand; Google became Alphabet and the Washington Football Team decided that was a good idea. With technology, terminology tends to become antiquated as industries progress beyond understanding their own achievements.

With that in mind, let’s consider how changes to the GPU (now the graphics processing unit) acronym and how it harkened a new era of computing applications, while frustrating an obvious customer base.

An ad from Tektronix Interactive Graphics, an alleged forebearer of GPU technology. Or were they?

Most of the history of GPUs doesn’t really count

How mainstream consumers came to expect graphic interfaces to work with computers is a long, fascinating history covered by many books and at least one excellent made-for-TV movie.

While Windows and Apple were gaining acceptance for their point-and-click interface, hardcore computer users, i.e. gamers, needed those points and clicks to register a lot faster. They also wanted the graphics to look more realistic. Then they started asking for features like online multiplayer, instant chat, and a slew of other features we expect nowadays, but seemed like a lot in the early to mid-1990s.

One could contribute the increase in technically demanding games to the 1993 classic Doom, as well as its successor Quake, which drove consumer interest in dedicated graphics cards. However, after talking with an expert that’s watched the field develop from the beginning, the history of GPUs just isn’t that simple.

Dr. Jon Peddie first got involved in the computer graphics industry in the 1960s when he was part of a team that made 3D topographic maps from aerial photography, leading to the creation of his company, Data Graphics. By the early 1980s, he was considering retirement and a career writing sci-fi (sounds nice) when he noticed an explosion in the field that was hard to ignore. Practical applications for high performance graphics were initially driven by CAD (computer-aided design) and GIS (geographic information system) companies, though the video game explosion of the 80s would change that.

“Gaming was (and still is) the driver because of the volume of the customers,” Peddie said in an email. “The other users of 3D and GPUs were engineering (CAD, and molecular modeling), and the movies. But that market had (in the 80s and 90s) maybe 100,000 users total. Consumer 3D had millions. But, the pro market would pay more—thousands to tens of thousands, whereas the consumer would pay a few hundred. So the trick was to build enough power into a chip that could, in a final product, be sold for a few hundred.”

At this point in computing history, the acronym GPU had been introduced into the tech lexicon. This blast-from-the-past article from a 1983 edition of Computerworld details the Tektronix line of graphics terminals. But if you look a little closer, GPU didn’t yet stand for “graphic processing unit”. Instead, this iteration stood for “graphic processor unit”. Is there even a difference?

“None,” Peddie explains. “Tense at best case. English is not the first language for a lot of people who write for (on) the web.”

Okay, fair enough. But this isn’t actually the problem or even the interesting element of GPU history to consider, Peddie points out. It’s the fact that before 1997, the GPU didn’t actually exist, even if the acronym was being used. A proper GPU, it turns out, requires a transform and lighting (T&L) engine.

“Why shouldn’t, couldn’t, a graphics chip or board developed before 1997 be called a GPU?” Peddie asks. “It does graphics (albeit only in 2D space). Does it process the graphics? Sure, in a manner of speaking. It draws lines and circles—that’s processing. It repositions polygons on the screen—that’s processing. So the big distinction, that is a GPU must do full 3D (and that requires a T&L).”

Ultimately, like much of tech history, the story quickly becomes about competing claims between an industry leader and a forgotten innovator.

The Glint 3D graphics chip by 3Dlabs, arguably the first company to produce a true GPU. Largely used for “high-end 3D CAD applications”, it was released in November 1994 (still not the first “real” GPU but still a cool graphics chip). Though first to market, 3Dlabs would not enjoy the economies of scale available to their competitors, like Nvidia. Image: Jon Peddie

Bragging rights are claimed by the winners

Let’s get this out of the way since it’s a common mistake. The first PlayStation was not the first mass market GPU. That belief comes from the powerful marketing efforts of Sony and Toshiba. As Peddie explains, “The original PlayStation [had] a geometry transformation engine (GTE), which was a co-processor to a 2D chip that was incorrectly labeled (by marketing) as a GPU.”

Marketing is a big element in this era of GPUs, which is just before they actually came out. The breakthrough for a true 3D GPU was on the horizon and plenty of companies wanted to get there first. But the honor would go to a little outfit from the UK imaginitely called 3Dlabs. The specific innovation that gave 3Dlabs the title of first accurately named GPU was their development of a two-chip graphics processor that included a geometry processor known as a transform and lighting (T&L) engine. Compared with their competitors, 3Dlabs focused on the CAD market though it was trying to make inroads with the larger consumer market by partnering with Creative Labs.

The smaller size and professional focus of 3Dlabs meant there were still plenty of “firsts” to be had in the consumer GPU market.

The graphics-card sector was incredibly busy during this period, with one-time big names such as Matrox, S3, and 3Dfx competing for mindshare among Quake players.

But the winners write the history books, and a dominant player emerged during this period. By late 1999, Nvidia was ready to release the first mass consumer GPU with integrated T&L, known as the GeForce 256.

“That, by Nvidia’s mythology, was the introduction of the GPU, and they claim the invention [of it],” Peddie explains. “So you can slice and dice history as you like. Nvidia is at $10 billion on its way to $50 billion, and no one remembers 3Dlabs.”

(Side note: Nvidia is and always will be a noun and not an acronym despite the wide belief it is one.)

Pretty soon, the market would be loaded with competing GPUs each aiming at their own particular market niche. Canadian manufacturer ATI Technologies, which was later purchased by Nvidia’s biggest competitor AMD, attempted to differentiate their entry into the market by calling their GPU a VPU, or video processor unit, even though they were the same thing. This effort didn’t last.

“ATI gave up, they couldn’t stand up to Nvidia’s superior (and I mean that) marketing skills, volume, sexiness, and relentless push,” Peddie says.

By the early 2000s, major players like Nvidia had dominated the consumer market, quickly becoming villains to gamers everywhere. Interestingly enough, this exact market consolidation helps explain exactly why high-end graphics cards are so hard to find nowadays.

Behold! One of the most coveted items in the world. And it’s not even the top of the line.

So who do we blame for that GPU shortage, anyway?

If you’ve gotten this far into an article on GPU history and naming convention, I bet you’re wondering when I’m going to get to the Great GPU Shortage of 2020 (and probably beyond).

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, the gist is this: the price of higher-end GPUs has exploded in recent months, if you can even find them.

For example, the folks over at Nvidia have three models of graphics cards that are generally sought after by gamers:

RTX 3090: MSRP $1,499

RTX 3080: MSRP $699

RTX 3070: MSRP $499

The individual merits of these models can be (and very much are) debated relative to their given price points and performance. However, scarcity has made the resale markets for these GPUs shoot through the roof as supply becomes scarce. Current listings price the middle-tier RTX 3080 at $1,499, while the 3090 and 3070 are nearly impossible to find. One listing for a 3090 on eBay is over $3,000 at time of writing.

The AMD line of graphics cards also deserve a mention here. Though not as highly sought after because, traditionally, they haven’t been as powerful, AMD has nonetheless been affected by the supply chain limitations for GPU manufacturing. Like the Nvidia line, the AMD RX 6700, 6800, and 6900 models have seen similar price spikes in the secondary market with most models fetching more than twice their original values in resale markets.

(One extreme example of this: Ernie Smith, the editor of Tedium, bought a refurbished AMD RX 570 for slightly more than $100 in mid-2019, which he used in a piece about reusing old workstations. That same card, which is basically a budget model and was already a little old at the time I purchased it, currently sells for $599 on Newegg’s website.)

Clearly there is heavy demand and capitalism is usually pretty good at filling that gap. Like many things wrong with 2020, a good bit of the blame is being placed on COVID-19. Manufacturing hubs in China and Taiwan, along with most of the world, had to shut down. While much of the work in hardware manufacturing can be automated, the delicate nature of GPUs requires some degree of human interaction.

A flow chart describing the current shape of the GPU industry. Image: Jon Peddie

Still, this explanation oversimplifies processes that have been trending in the graphics industry long before COVID-19 hit. Again, I’ll let Peddie explain:

About 15 [plus] years ago, the manufacturing pipeline was established for GPU manufacturing (which includes sourcing the raw silicon ingots), slicing and dicing the wafers, testing, packaging, testing again and finally shipping to a customer. All the companies in the pipeline and downstream (the OEM customers who have a similar pipeline) were seeking ways to respond faster, and at the same time minimize their inventory. So, the JIT (just in time) manufacturing model was developed. This relied on everyone in the chain providing accurate forecasts and therefore orders. If one link in the chain broke everyone downstream would suffer … When governments shut down their countries all production ground to a halt – no parts shipped—the pipeline was broken. And, when and if production could be restarted, it would take months to get everyone in sync again.

At the same time people were being sent home to work, and they didn’t have the tools needed to do that. That created a demand for PCs, notebooks especially. [Thirty to forty percent] of PCs have two GPUs in them, so the demand for GPUs increased even more.

And then [crypto] coins started to inflate … Now the miners (people who use GPUs to monitor and report …) were after every and any GPU they could get their hands on. That caused speculators to buy all the graphics boards and offer them at much higher prices.

So, the supply line got hit with a 1-2-3 punch and was down for the count.

And that was him keeping a long story short. To put it plainly, companies that make GPUs were operating on a thin margin of error without the ability to predict the future. And this applies more to the general market for GPUs while tangentially addressing the higher-end customers.

Another point of frustration to add here was the unfortunate timing of the latest generation of video game consoles in 2020, which also meant a new generation of video games. The highly anticipated PlayStation 5 along with Cyberpunk 2077 was met with numerous supply and technical issues upon launch. Cyberpunk players reported inconsistent experiences largely dependent on hardware the game was being played on. On the differences between the game on a PS4 and a PS5, one YouTuber commented, “At least it’s playable on PS5.”

While Peddie expects the shortage to self-correct by the first quarter of 2022 (hooray …), he is not optimistic about the industry avoiding such missteps in the future.

“The [next] problem will be double-ordering that is going on now and so we have the prospect of a giant slump in the semi market due to excess inventory,” he concludes. “Yin-yang—repeat.”

There is a lot to learn from history even if it’s fairly recent. While it might be tempting to lean into market failures to meet demand, obviously the story is more complicated. Though GPUs have become required for billions on a daily basis, higher performance is left to a few with niche interests.

Still, the larger market should pay attention to frustrated gamers, at least on this point. Their needs push the industry into innovation that becomes standard in more common devices. With each iteration, devices gain a little more of those advanced graphics as they drip down to people who hadn’t noticed them before but now expect it.

After all, if it doesn’t have painstakingly realistic 3D graphics, can we even call it a phone anymore?

What Makes a GPU a GPU, and When Did We Start Calling it That? syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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naijabuzz300 · 4 years

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Giftalworld Review 2020: Make 50k Daily Online Using Your Phone (Scam or Legit)

This article talks about Giftalworld review including how it works and the ways through which you can earn money online with giftalworld in Nigeria. Also, we will be looking at how to register, login and request the gas withdrawal form on the giftalworld income program. If you are just hearing about the platform for the first time and want to know what it is all about, you are in the right place. This post is also for those who already know about giftalworld but are wondering if it is a legit income program or if it is a scam. Either way, you are all welcome. The purpose of this article is not to condemn or endorse Giftalworld but to critically analyze it based on statistics and reviews obtained from various individuals including testimonies and credit alerts. Now, let's get started with the basics.

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This cross road is what have brought about the questions below. Is giftalworld a scam or is it legit? Is it real or is it fake? Is it really working and are they paying? Well, don't take my word for it, as i will be providing you with the information i gathered so far. Let's get right into it. According to a data analysis and market intelligence website known as "SimilarWeb", GiftalWorld ranks as the 19th most visited website in Nigeria with 5.34 Million website visits as of April, 2020.

81.77% of it's audience for April 2020 were from Nigeria alone.

From November, 2019 to March, 2020, there were raking between 1.34 to 1.35 Million visits but it suddenly skyrocketed in April, 2020. This was due to the Coronavirus pandemic which has people staying indoors doing nothing and wanting to a living by engaging themselves with activities online. 8.12% Of traffic is from Social. The breakdown is give below; 44.34% from Facebook 31.67% from YouTube 10.67% from WhatsApp Web-app 9. 58% from Twitter 3.74% from LinkedIn

So there you have it, there are so many people engaging in Giftalworld. If it was not working, of course, their visits will be decreasing and not increasing as shown in the findings above. Well, not to sound bias, i furthered by research and came upon this post on "Quora" where someone asked if Giftalworld was legit. He got a response from a disappointed user showing a screenshot of Giftalworld been reviewed on an upcoming site called "ScamAdviser".

But let me just say this, success and positive results come from hard work, dedication, consistency, motivation. You can not just do something for a day or two and therefore conclude it is a scam because it did not work out instantly. That is how it is for any business and project you embark on. You keep on trying, learning new things to see what works and what doesn't. If you are doing something and it keeps failing, you research to know why it keeps failing. The people that are getting it right, do they have two heads? (If you see such, japa oo

) Anyways, what i observed when reviewing giftalworld is that, it is not a get rich quick scheme that you will instantly make profits from. Yes, others are making 50,000 Naira, 60, 70, even 100 but it did not happen in a day. They would have been working from day one underground, on the low. So, if you want an income program that pays you instantly, then, this is not for you.

Giftalworld review: How it works

Once you signup to their platform, you are given a welcome bonus of 3000 points. After that, you are then required to start sharing their sponsored posts and advert posts where you will be compensated with 500 points for the activities. By simply logging into your account daily, 200 points is rewarded to you. Also, for each news you read and comment you make, you earn 50 points each. There are no strict rules as to how giftalworld works. There are so many categories for you to choose from. The amount of money you can make on the platform is limitless and is directly proportional to how much spare time you put into it. According to Giftalworld.com, "they stated they always keep your interest on the top of their list and are always on their toes striving to deliver amazing contents and integration to the system". 9 Top Ways of Making Money With Giftalworld Below are the proven ways through which you can earn money on giftalworld today Sign up bonus. When you register with giftalworld, they welcome you with open arms and show their commitment by giving you a sign up reward of 3000 points. Mad oo Reading News. Each giftalworld news you read earns you 50 points which can quickly accumulate to a massive amount if you are consistent. By commenting. This method of earning on giftalworld earns you another whooping 50 points. Daily login. By logging into your account daily, you earn 200 points. This can be regarded as a bonus when you look at it really. Sharing of sponsored post. When you share the sponsored posts allocated for your account, you earn 250 points. Sharing of Campaign Advert. This process of making money with giftalworld earns you yet another 250 points. This people are just dashing us money anyhow. Spin Wheel. Giftalworld has a special portion on their site where you can spin the wheel to earn as N10,000. If you have enough gas points, you can keep on spinning as much as you like. Raffle draw. 3 people usually emerge as the winners and are rewarded with a cash prize of N100,000 in cash. How cool is that? Referral Bonus. When you refer someone to register with giftalworld, you get paid N1,500. Now if you look at the above ways of earning passive income with giftalworld, you will see that the earning capabilities are limitless and countless. if you can just put in a few minutes of your time each day to this, you will be surprised that you don't need to depend on anyone anymore for anything as you will be financially independent and living life with your own rules. I will be totally honest with you. The fastest way to cash out and make it big in giftalworld very fast is through referrals. But if you can't refer, don't be scared. This platform is still for you as you will still be paid. For those that want to include referrals to boost their earnings on giftalworld, i will let you guys in on a secret which i don't share with anyone. Do you want to know?? It's a sure way you can use to speed up your daily income with giftalworld income program by referring people. And you might be saying, i don't know how to refer people. Let me tell you, it is very simple and easy. The only 2 platforms that you need as a newbie/beginner are Facebook and WhatsApp. Let's dive straight into it. Shall we??

How to get referrals for giftalworld using Facebook In this section of the giftalworld review 2020 article, i will be sharing with you guys some ways you can leverage to get referrals with just Facebook. 1. Head up straight to Facebook and join lots of groups. Basically, you will want to target Facebook groups that are mainly populated by youths and people interested in making money online such as students, corpers, stay at home moms, unemployed, graduates etc. 2. Try to be sensible when joining these groups. when you join 5 groups, wait for 30 mins and repeat the process for not more than 4 times a day. This is to avoid Facebook from seeing you as a bot which is just spamming thereby blocking your account. 3. Advertise and try to include your WhatsApp number there so that they can contact you. 4. Once they contact you, it means they are interested or curious about knowing how giftalworld works. you then give them the brief and all other necessary info about giftalworld.

How to get referrals for giftalworld program using WhatsApp 1. To be able to manage the people that will be contacting you, create a WhatsApp group of your own and set it to "Only admin can post". 2. Go to google, input "WhatsApp groups to join in Nigeria". You will see so many. Just click on them and join them. 3. Once you join, don,t immediately start posting your advert to avoid been seen as a spammer and ultimately been removed by the Admin of the WhatsApp group. 4. Post your advert with a link So now you know how to refer people which will increase your earnings x2 aside from the other 7 ways which i mentioned above in making money online with giftalworld income program. Nothing stops you from applying this method and start seeing results almost immediately. Must I Have Referrals Before I Get Paid On Giftalworld? No, you will still be paid with or without referrals. Just like i said earlier, referral is totally optional. The basic thing just needed to do is to log in daily, read news, comment, share campaign and sponsored posts.

Giftalworld Testimonies & Credit Alerts

Below are a few bank alerts from few of the many earners who are making a good life from giftalworld.

I am going to be really open and plain with you. Either way on Giftalworld, you will make money. If you choose not to refer, you will be paid but you can only request for payment once a month while if you try your best to refer, you can withdraw your money at anytime. DISCLAIMER: The results you see displayed above might vary for you. You might make more money than them, you might make less money than them or none at all. It all depends on the effort you put in to achieve your goal and the techniques used and methods. Things needed to start Giftalworld online platform For you to utilize this income program, you do not need a website or email list or anything that stressful on Giftalworld. All you need are: Your phone Internet connection (Data) Access to social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp. Motivation and dedication to succeed One time registration fee of N3,000

How Much Is Giftalworld Registration

For you to register and become a member of Giftalworld income program, you need to pay a one time payment of N3,000. Due to their reputation and always putting their members first, they have made earning on their platform to be easy to accumulate for both the the members that will not be referring and those that will be referring. Benefits of joining Giftalworld Below are some of the highlighted benefits of registering and becoming a family family in Giftalworld: 1. Quick accumulation of earnings unlike other income platforms. 2. Various categories of news to choose from so you will never be bored. 3. One click Customer support integration. 4. You get paid daily upon request when you refer in new members. 5. They always pay their members (both referring & non referring) their earning. 6. You have so many ways through which you can make money on their platform apart from the regular methods. 7. You could win a trip to Mauritius (an ocean island nation which is known for its beaches, lagoons and reefs). 8. You could be the lucky winner of the N100,000 cash prize in their monthly raffle draw games. 9. You could win variety of prizes when you "Spin the wheel". 10. You can use your accumulated GAS points to register for various online courses that you are passionate about. 10. The list is just so much and endless. Do You Want To Register? CLICK HERE For Instant Registration WhatsApp Me Now!! How to register on Giftalworld income platform Below is a step by step process of how to register on giftalworld: 1. Go to Giftalworld registration page HERE. Please take note of your details. 2. Enter your correct details as shown below. Enter Referral Username as "soundsng" for quick account validation.

3. Check the terms and conditions box. 4. Click enter and also click "Apply Activation Code".

5. The next step now is to pay the one time registration fee of N3,000 to any of the approved Giftalworld official merchant code distributors shown below to get your activation code. Among all these merchants above, i personally tested Henry Onyenanu. He replies swiftly. Checkout my WhatsApp conversation with him regarding my request to get the activation code.

6. Once you are given your code, go to your account dashboard.

7. Click on "Apply activation code".

8. Enter the code in the area provided and click on Apply. That's all. You are now good to go. Do you also want to start cashing out online?? Click Here To Join Giftalworld You Can Chat Me Up Personally HERE On WhatsApp Incase You Need Assistance on registering. Giftalworld Income program 1 Year Anniversary Celebration Photos

How To Share Sponsored Post On Giftalworld So here, i will be explaining how to share your sponsored post to Facebook. If you are yet to join giftalworld hurry up and Join Giftalworld because Giftalworld pays without referrals. 1. log in to your giftal account. 2. click on "my account". This will open your account's dashboard. 3. Click on campaign. A drop down menu will show. select "Sponsored Post".

4. Share the post allocated for that day.

Important: Ensure you make the post visible (public) on your timeline as this will make it easy for them to verify they you have shared the post and you will be given your earnings. Now, after you have shared the sponsored post on Facebook, go back to the campaign on your dashboard to share campaign post to Instagram. For Instant Registration WhatsApp Me Now!! How To Share Sponsored Post On Giftalworld 1. log in to your giftal account 2. click on "my account". This will open your account's dashboard. 3. Click on campaign. A drop down menu will show. select "campaign post". 4. Share the post allocated for that day.

Note: Sponsored post is to be posted on Facebook while Campaign post is to be posted on either Instagram or Twitter. If you don't have an Instagram account, you can use Twitter. Any one will work perfectly. You have to share both of the posts to ensure that you will be able to withdraw your earnings as they will request for your Facebook and Instagram profile link. Also, make sure you follow the founder on Instagram @ebrightking and you also join their Facebook group >> Giftalworld Group. By doing these, you will get updated and latest news about the program. You will know if there will be any changes and you will be the first to get notified.

How to enroll for Giftalworld Online Courses Giftalworld income program recently just added a new feature to their program. This enables you to register for online courses that you are passionate about. The process of registering is illustrated below; Perform the basic activitities on the site. This are the normal activities such as daily logging in, reading news, sharing of sponsored and campaign posts. Save up your GAS earnings to purchase any of the available courses. Send a mail to [email protected]. Include your full name Phone number Giftal username Email address Giftalworld organizers discovered many people complained of less values on gas points. Instead of Paying money to Outsiders to teach you some knowledge you need online, Giftalworld have now partnered with experts in various fields to bring you these courses. With your Giftal Gas point you can achieve all with no money from your pocket. Normally it will cost you N100,000+ to learn but they will help you guys make it accessible and cheap with the help of your GiftalGas. Also, Giftalworld officially announced that Giftal Gas will be their own official Electronic Currency

, "stay tuned just give us more time trust me you’ll forever be grateful". Online courses available on giftalworld income program Below are the courses currently available on giftalworld: Soap and cream making Graphic Designing Web Development Digital Marketing Mini Importation Click Here To Join Giftalworld Giftalworld Review: How To Get Your Facebook Profile Link When it is time to withdraw your earnings, Giftalworld usually requests for your Facebook profile link. This is just to verify that you posted and performed the activities required of you. It's not a big deal. Log in to your Facebook. Use the normal Facebook and not Facebook lite. Go to your profile. Click on the more icon more with 3 dots.

Scroll down to where you see "copy link to profile". Click on it and it will be copied automatically. Head over back to giftalworld and paste it there. How To Get Instagram Link For GAS Withdrawal Copy this URL "https://www.instagram.com/your_username/", replace the "Your_username" with your own Instagram username. So if your username is Maxwell, it becomes, "https://www.instagram.com/maxwell/". I hope this answers your question.

Giftalworld payment Plan

They pay their members based on two factors. 1. If you referred people to their site. 2. If you engaged solely in the site's activities. Giftalworld income program will pay members who referred new people to their site instantly while those who strictly engaged in daily activities such as reading news, commenting, sharing of posts etc will be paid once a month using the withdrawal form. If you want to know when is there next GAS payment, you will have to follow them on their Facebook and Instagram page as they announce it once every month. So, to be clear, members who refer downlines (new members) are credited instantly while members who don't refer will still receive their money but it will be once every month in bulk. If you have any complaints, inquiries or you wish to post an advert, you can contact giftalworld through their contact below; Email: [email protected] or 08159020340

Frequently Asked Questions

Can foreigners also join? Yes, anybody from all part of the world can join the program. You can pay for registration fee using bitcoin and PayPal. How Much can I Earn on Giftalworld? The amount you can earn is limitless and it depends solely on you if you want to make more money or not. What is Giftalworld G.A.S Point? These are the revenues and commissions we make from our various advertising partners such as Google Adsense. What Is Giftalworld G.A.F? This is the affiliate commission given to a giftalworld income program member for referring a new user to our program. When you refer a new member to Giftalworld, you are paid N1,500 to your GAF earnings which you can withdraw anytime. Must I refer people Before I get paid? No, you will be paid even when you don't refer anyone. Is Giftalworld legit? Many people are joining daily and are getting paid so it's safe to say that for now, they are legit. Is giftalworld still paying? Yes, they are very much still paying their members. How much is registration fee? The registration fee is a one time payment of #3,000 which once paid, it can fetch you unlimited amount of money in return. For Non Referrals, What is The minimum Earnings? Currently, the minimum pay for activities earners is ₦15,000. How do I Register new people on Giftalworld? Go to your account dashboard, click on referral to copy out your link. Once copied, you can share it to your prospective downlines to fill in their details and apply the activation code. Is sharing of Sponsored Post Compulsory? Yes, it is a must if you want to withdraw your earnings at the end of the month. Is Campaign Advert Compulsory? Yes, you share it to your Instagram account to get your accumulated earnings. How do I share the campaign advert? Click on campaign Advert on your dashboard. Download the Giftal Banner there. Copy the Text written there. Post on your Instagram account. Keep and save for newbies coming You can also share to your existing downlines When do Giftalworld pays? They pay GAF (Referral earners) daily with a minimum threshold of ₦4,500. They also pay GAS (activity earners) every 2 weeks. They announce their GAS withdrawal date on their Facebook group. How do I Withdraw my Earnings on giftalworld? Referral earnings (GAF) can be withdrawn any day and at anytime through wallet which is located on your dashboard. While activities earnings (GAS) can be withdrawn every 2 weeks or monthly through the GAS withdrawal form on your Dashboard. What are the ways I can pay for Giftalworld Registration? Activation code PayPal Bitcoin Giftalworld Review: Activation code Definition? Activation code is an E-pin or Voucher used for registration on the platform. It is used to authenticate and verify that you have paid to become a member of Giftalworld income program. When you use a activation code to register your prospect you will automatically get your referral bonus.

Conclusion: Giftalworld Review 2020

Giftalworld is currently the only income platform in Nigeria that pays ₦1,500 as an affiliate commission to its referring members. According to various users, Giftalworld has changed their lives. There are mixed experiences on the platform with some people witnessing success and others, not so much. I hope this article on Giftalworld Review 2020: Make 50k Daily Online Using Your Phone was helpful enough for you to determine if it is legit or if is a scam. wetin be your opinion for this matter? Click Here To Comment Read the full article

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syntaxxxblogs · 4 years

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30 Sites to Get Free Images (updated for 2020)

There are probably hundreds of sites with free images out there, yet when you start searching for that special image you want to use in your design, you might end up spending lots of time in vain. In order not to waste your time, here is a selection of some really good sites with free images. In addition to sites with free images with some restrictions in their use, the list includes many public domain image sites as well, the images of which generally can be used in any way you deem fit. As with all free stuff you find on the Internet, if you plan to use it for commercial projects, always read the license first because some sites, or some pictures on an otherwise free site, are free for personal use only and/or require attribution. I know, it's boring to do it but this is the price of free stuff.

1. Sxc.hu

Of all the sites with free images, this site with a totally unpronounceable name has been my favorite for years. The reason is pretty simple – it has a wonderful selection of images in almost all niches. The interface of Sxc.hu doesn't look very exciting but this comes second to the rich choice of images they offer.

2. Deviant Art

Deviant Art offers much more than free images. For a designer, this is a site to check daily because it's one of the best galleries on the Net where designers all over the world showcase their talents. The site isn't dedicated specifically to free images – whether an image is free to use commercially or not depends solely on its author, so when you pick an image you'd like to use, check what uses the author allows. Some authors release their images in the public domain, while others don't allow any commercial use.

3. Flickr

Flickr is another popular destination when you are looking for free images. It has a vast selection of images, not all of which are licensed for commercial use. As with the other sites, you need to check if a particular image is licensed under a Creative Commons license and if yes, which version of CC because this defines what you can (and can't do) with this image.

4. Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia is another huge source of images licensed under a Creative Commons license but the allowed uses vary from one image to the next, so again, check in advance the restrictions applicable to that particular photo you like. Wikimedia Commons has images in any category imaginable and generally their quality is good or even superb. In addition to still images, it also offers videos.

5. pixabay

Unlike the other sites, pixabay is an image search engine. It lists results to many public domain images as well. Depending on the niche you are searching images in, the number of retrieved results varies drastically but even in narrow niches you can still find lots of stuff.

6. Public Domain Pictures

As the name itself implies, this site is dedicated to free public domain pictures but as the site itself states, some images might require a model or property release, so check this before you use an image commercially. Most of the images are large in size and with good quality. The site is free to use but downloads require registration.

7. Public Domain Image

Public Domain Image is another site with images in the public domain. This isn't a site with millions of images but the ones it has across numerous niches are of good quality, so they deserve your attention. The size of the images varies but many large images can be found on this site.

8. Pexels

No list for websites with free images would be complete without Pexels. They have one of the biggest collection of curated stock images on the web and is of the most sought after providers for free stock images. They have even started providing stock videos, exciting isn't it?

9. pdpics

The list of sites with public domain images goes on with pdpics. Unlike the other sites with public domain images that have gathered such images from all over the Net, or have scanned them from old sources, the images on this site are taken by their in-house photographers. This gives more assurance that the images are really in the public domain and that they are unique. Additionally, here you can find really huge images, which go well for print, not only for the Web. The site asks for a link back, so if this is not a problem for you, you can link back to them.

10. The Photo Section of All Free Download

There are many nice photos here, though the site is not dedicated to them only. All Free Download is another site I frequently visit because they have many free goodies a designer loves. The quality of the images varies but generally it's good enough for use in commercial projects. On this site I've managed to find many images in narrow niches that were hard to find even on stock photo sites.

11. morgueFile

morgueFile is one of the oldest sources of free images and its collection is pretty impressive. There are lots of large images here and as a whole, the quality of images is more than decent. In fact, there were times when I stocked myself with free images mostly from here, though in some niches the choice is somehow limited.

12. Free Stock Image Site

This is one more site with free stock images that can be used in both personal and commercial projects. There are many images across various niches and their overall quality is quite good. The description of images includes some technical data, such as the camera model, aperture, etc., as well, which is good, if technical data is of importance to you.

13. Unsplash

Unsplash can boast of 325000+ great quality images and they have over 60000 contributors across the world. They obviously donot compare to some of the other sites that have millions of images but they do real justice to the the quality of images that are offered. 8 out of 10 times you would find a good fit for your need here.

14. Free Stock Photos

Free Stock Photos doesn't have the largest collection of images but it does have some really cute ones in many categories. One of the things I don't like about this site is that very often the largest image size is quite small for many purposes (like 800x600 pixels) but if you need it for an online blog or for a site, this size is quite OK.

15. Picdrome

Picdrome is one more site with public domain images. The number of images is kind of modest but if you find what you are looking for, numbers don't matter. In terms of image size the choice varies – from what I browsed I think most images are quite small in size (1000x1000 pixels or less) but for many uses even this size is OK.

16. Stock Free Images

This is one more site with free images but it is powered by Dreamstime. The negative is that you will see links to stock images on Dreamstime all the time, but the on the positive side, the partnership with one of the leading stock image sites is great because the quality (and topical diversity) of the images on Stock Free Images is really good.

17. Free Digital Photos

Free Digital Photos has a huge collection of images but I doubt this will be your first choice, if you are searching for free images because there is a catch. Only the smallest sizes, like 400x300, are free and they do require attribution. If you want larger photos, you need to pay. Still, if you are OK with small sizes and you find an image you like, this site is not totally useless.

18. Open Clipart

There are two kinds of designers – one who like clipart, and one who hate it. If you are in the first group, then you will certainly appreciate this site. Open Clipart is one of the largest clipart collections on the Web. Additionally, all its images are public domain.

19. Pikwizard

Pikwizard has an enormous number of images across a variety of different categories. And apart from the usual stuff you find on most of the free image providers, Pikwizard also has a good arsenal of image editing tools. Obviously they have a free tier that provides you the basic set of features to fulfill the humble needs. But they have a paid version with a whole suite of tools for the users who are hungry for more power when it comes to editing images online.

20. Clker

Clker is another site with tons of clipart and photos. The arrangement of stuff is somehow peculiar – they do have topical categories but many images are classified under a color category (i.e. pink, red, green, etc.), which is cute, if you are more interested in the color of the image than in its contents and not so cute otherwise. Aside from this, Clker is a great site with lots of unique images.

21. Reusable Art

Reusable Art is full of vintage stuff - free drawings, paintings, and illustrations from old print materials. Many of the images there are more than a century old but they are still usable. Again, if you hold vintage art to modern graphic standards, the quality might seem too low but since this is vintage, you'd better enjoy its value than be picky about the sharpness of the outlines, for example.

22. 1 Million Free Pictures

Despite its name, the site hardly has 1 million free pictures but this is not what matters. What matters more, is the quality of the images and here you will find many high quality photos. Some of the images are in the public domain, while others are just free, so always check what rules apply to the particular image(s) you have chosen.

23. Unrestricted Stock

Unrestricted Stock offers lots of free photos and vectors. Here you can find textures and patterns as well. There are also many hand drawn images, as well as a couple of free PSD files. All in all, this site offers really good free images.

24. Free Range Stock

Compared to the other sites with thousands or even millions of images, this one looks like a poor relative but if you can't find photos you like on the other sites, it won't hurt to check this one, too. If you want to download images, you need to register.

25. Foter

If the number displayed on site is correct, this site has about 230 million free images. This is pretty impressive! However, when you pick images, pay attention to the license because not all images on this site are free for commercial use.

26. Reshot

Reshot is really a great community of people looking to help out each other; essentially you have photographers who would like to share their creative work on one side and on the other side people who are looking for such creatives. The whole community is free but that doesn't at all undermine the quality of the creatives and the list is curated too.

27. Rawpixel

It is pretty evident that Rawpixel has one of the most diverse set of images or stock photo collections on the web that spans across vectors, PSD mockups, and some of the public domain content too. Apart from the free stock images/photos they also have a paid images, and it is great to know that a part of the proceeds received goes as a contribution towards 'Hope for Children'

28. Canva

Canva is more popular as an image editing tool (and is pretty good at it) but they do have a humble repository of stock images and photos that can be used. You can even just get the stock image edited right there on the platform to create a completely new and unique image for your usage.

29. Crello

Crello is similar to Canva being an image editing tool, but again Crello also provides a repository of free stock images and photos that you can choose to customize using their suite of image editing tools.

30. Google Advanced Image Search

This one might be a surprising one on the list, but is evidently by far one of the most powerful options in the list. Google's image search has it's own algorithm and set of search tools that can help you find free to use images across the web pretty quickly If this list seems a long one to you, trust me when I say there are many more free image sites that are not included in this list. We have updated the list taking off the ones that are no longer active and adding some of the new ones that have gained a lot of popularity over last few years. But I guess I probably have missed some major ones, too – I apologize for this but these 30 sites that made the list are the ones I think are really good and worth browsing. Follow my blog with Bloglovin Read the full article

#freeimages #freebies #publicdomainimages #resources

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

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Tinder will now help you find matches with those people you may cross paths with in your day-to-day life. As promised earlier, the company today is announcing the launch of a new location-based feature that will narrow your list of potential dating prospects to those who hit up your same bar for after-work drinks, or who stop by your favorite coffee shop for their daily caffeine fix, or who work out at your same gym.

Yes, that’s right — you no longer have to say “hello” in real life — you can match first, then speak.

This is what it’s come to, friends. Even the “meet cute” story is now a dating app product.

The feature, known as Tinder Places, was previously spotted during beta tests.

Starting today, Tinder Places is formally being announced as a public beta test that’s underway in three cities: Sydney and Brisbane, Australia and Santiago, Chile. (It was being tested privately in these markets prior to now.) The plan is to collect user feedback from the public trials, and tweak the product before it launches to all users worldwide, the company says.

The idea of sharing your location with strangers, however, is a bit creepy — especially considering that Tinder users are not always respectful. But Tinder believes that the fact it’s showing you people you might actually run into in real life will actually prompt more civility in those initial chats.

“I do think that — and this is a personal hypothesis of mine — if you match with someone who you know goes to the same place as you, I think that will set a very different tone to the conversation than someone who is more or less anonymous as an online match on a dating platform,” says Samantha Stevens, director of Location Products at Tinder, who led the product’s development.

She says the larger idea here is to present users with potential matches who you already have things in common with, as reflected by the places you go.

“The places that you go say a lot about who you are as an individual, what you value, your hobbies, your interests,” she continues. “So being able to match with someone on Tinder who shares those same things with you, we believe creates a more genuine match and a better conversation.”

That said, not everyone would want strangers on a dating service to know where to find them.

But Stevens explains Places has a number of safeguards built-in to make users feel more comfortable, and to limit the feature’s ability to be used for stalking.

“As a female who designed this feature, I personally made sure that I would feel safe using it,” she says.

For starters, the feature is opt in, not opt out.

It leverages Mapbox and Foursquare’s Pilgrim SDK to identify and categorize places you go, and it only shares those places Foursquare deems “social.” (Foursquare is able to “wake up” Tinder’s app for background location, in case you’re wondering how this works). Tinder says it will not record places like your house, the office building where you work, banks, doctors’ offices and other venues that are either too personal or not relevant to matching. All this appears in a separate section of the Tinder app’s interface.

Plus, your place visits aren’t recorded to the app in real-time. Instead, Tinder waits until at least 30 minutes before a place shows up, or even longer. It randomizes the time before someone appears associated with a particular venue in order to limit others’ abilities to deduce people’s routines.

In addition, users who are participating in Places will get an alert when a new place is added, and can then choose to toggle that place off so it’s not shown right away.

You also can tell Tinder to never show a particular place again after its first appearance. So, for example, if you never want to meet people at your gym when you’re all hot and sweaty, you can disable that place from ever appearing.

Your association with a place also deletes from the app after 28 days, not only as a privacy protection, but also because it helps keep data fresh, Stevens says. (After all, just because you went to that hip bar a year ago does not make you a person who goes to hip bars.)

Of course, a dedicated stalker could make a note of your favorite haunts and attempt to locate you in the real world, but this would require extra effort in terms of writing things down, and trying to determine your patterns. It wouldn’t be impossible to start making some connections, but it would require dedication to the task at hand.

Despite the safeguards, it’s unclear that the real-world benefit to users is significant enough to opt in to this additional data collection. While there are arguably use cases for matching with those you cross paths with, simply visiting the same coffee shop isn’t necessarily an indicator of a potential for a relationship. That comes down to a lot of other factors — including, most importantly, that unpredictable chemistry — something neither Tinder, nor any other dating app, can determine — and a set of shared values. At best, this “place data” is a icebreaker.

But for Tinder, location data on its users holds far more value.

The company has no plans to delete its own records of your jaunts around town. You can’t push a button to clear your data, for instance. If you want it gone, you’ll need to delete your Tinder user account entirely, we understand.

The company says users haven’t asked for this sort of functionality during tests. Rather, they’ve opted in to the feature in full force, with very few qualms about their personal data or its usage, it seems.

“In terms of opt-in rates — and we’ll see how this behaves as we go to a bigger population — but we’re at like 99 percent,” says Tinder CEO Elie Seidman, who moved over from Match Groups’s OKCupid’s top position to lead Tinder in January. “I don’t know that we’ll see that hold up on a broad population, but I think we could expect this is a 90-plus percent opt-in rate.”

That seems to contradict the shift in user sentiment around personal data collection in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, which has led the world’s largest social network to rethink its practices, and potentially face regulation. The fallout has led to users becoming more cynical and wary of social apps asking them to share their data — and in the case of Tinder, where it’s about — well, frankly, romance and sex — one would think users would give “opting in” a bit more thought.

Seidman doesn’t believe there’s much for users to be concerned about, though. That’s because Tinder’s main business isn’t ads — it’s subscriptions to its premium service, he explains.

“We’re not using [personal data] to sell advertising,” the exec says. “If you think about the trade between our members and us — like, what do you get in exchange for the data? In one place, you get photos of kids, right? And obviously, a lot of ads. And in the other place, you get connected to the most important part of your life. So I think it’s a very different thing,” Seidman says.

That’s certainly a starry-eyed way of viewing Tinder’s potential, of course.

One could argue that “photos of kids” — meaning your family, your friends and their family, and generally, those broader connections you have through social networks — are at least equally important to your romantic relationships, if not more valuable. (Especially if you’re just using Tinder for hook-ups).

Tinder claims that it’s not using the location data to target users with its in-app ads, but that doesn’t mean the option is off the table forever. Having a massive trove of location data on users could be an advantage there, as well as a way to improve its algorithm, and even potentially to help it expand into real-world events — something Stevens didn’t rule out, saying if that was something a large number of users demanded, Tinder may consider it.

Meanwhile, a better matching algorithm would be a significant competitive advantage for Tinder, which is today fending off other newcomers, too, not just the desktop web-era dating sites. It’s embroiled in back-and-forth lawsuits with top rival Bumble, for example, and even itself is adopting Bumble’s “women speak first” feature. Given that the industry at large has stolen the swipe to match mechanism Tinder popularized, that seems fair enough.

The new location feature won’t be as easily copied, Seidman believes.

“This is the first time, on an experience before people match, where we’ve changed — in a really fundamental way — the user interface. Of course, it feels very much like Tinder,” he says. “There’s a large body of work here and the team has worked for quarters to do this. It’s a product that inherently works better with scale. We’re drawing a smaller circle around the universe,” Seidman adds. “You need Tinder’s level of scale to make this work.”

Tinder officially claims “tens of millions” of users worldwide, with estimates putting that figure at more than 50 million.

The company hasn’t provided a time-table as to when location-based dating will roll out worldwide.

Photo credits: illustration: Bryce Durbin; screenshots: Tinder; couple: Philip Lee Harvey/Getty Images

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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webanalytics · 7 years

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How to Do Customer Engagement If You’re In a Unique Niche

I once worked with a business that specialized in making custom squirrel horror dioramas.

If you’re wondering what in the world a custom squirrel horror diorama is, then you’ve proved an underlying point of this article.

Unique niches are really tough for marketing.

If there are 37 people on the planet that are in your target market, then you’ve got your work cut out for you.

But at the same time, a unique niche is a huge advantage!

Marketing in a tight and well-defined niche is deliciously straightforward.

You have less competition.

You can segment your audience with ease.

You can go hyper specific with organic and paid keywords.

You can micro target the heck out of Facebook ads.

You have the potential to get higher conversion rates.

You can get to know each of those 37 people on a first-name basis.

But there are some things that are more difficult in unique niches.

What’s Difficult About Unique Niches?

Customer engagement falls into that category.

Okay, so customer engagement itself isn’t that complicated.

However, when you’re in a specific niche, your customers are going to have specific wants and needs.

So you have to take a much more strategic approach to customer engagement if you want to get the results you’re looking for.

Lots of niche businesses overlook this, and it costs them.

“Customer engagement” falls into the abyss of other jargony business best practices that just don’t get done.

You can avoid falling into the same trap, but you have to plan ahead and work a little harder to understand your customers better.

And that’s the thing — engagement starts with understanding.

Unsurprisingly, customer engagement with niche customers looks a lot like a relationship, but what many brands forget is that relationships take work.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to push the relationship or dating analogy too far.

But I do want to speak directly to businesses that are in a well-defined niche.

I’ve worked with companies who designed hair dryers for women with light and curly hair. Another one of my clients made big rock-shaking machines for mines. (It’s called vibratory equipment.)

Niches are really cool.

And I also want to speak to businesses that need to boost their customer engagement efforts.

Customer engagement is more than just clever tweets and using emojis in your Facebook posts.

Customer engagement is a fascinating world that can dish up more conversions than you ever thought possible.

We’re going to solve the customer engagement problem in unique niches.

(And if you’re the custom squirrel horror diorama guy I used to work with, this article is for you, man.)

Get Up Close and Personal

It makes sense that if you want to sell to customers who have specific wants and needs, you need to figure out what those wants and needs are.

That’s why it’s important to dig deep into demographics and psychographics. Your demographics will tell you who, while psychographics will tell you why.

Demographics and psychographics are important for every customer engagement strategy, but they’re especially crucial when you’re operating in a small niche.

To get this information, you can use a number of different platforms, but Google Analytics is probably the easiest (and it’s free).

Although it will only show you some basic information, it’s often enough to get started.

To find demographics in Google Analytics, go to the sidebar and navigate to Audience > Demographics > Overview.

You’ll find two sections: age and gender.

Again, It’s really basic, and gives you only a slice of relevant demographic data.

Because Google Analytics is so lacking here, consider doing some more research. Other demographics you might want to research include:

Location

Current occupation

Income

Education level

Family status (marital status, number of children, etc.)

You can find most of these using sites like City-Data.com that give you information on demographics in a certain area that you specify.

When it comes to psychographics, Google Analytics provides more information than you might expect.

You can see this info by going to Audience > Interests > Overview.

Here you’ll see three categories: Affinity Category, In-Market Segment, and Other Category. When you put these three together, you get a better idea of what your customers like.

Pay extra attention to the In-Market Segment. These are things that your customers are in the market for. They’re already into the sales funnel and might even be ready to buy.

Together, demographics and psychographics help paint a vivid picture of your audience.

You not only know what kind of people you’re engaging but also how to engage them (because you know what they want).

So now you know who your customers are and what they want.

What do you do next? You create a strategy that’s custom made for them.

There are lots of ways you can go about this, and it can get confusing.

Here are a few tips to help you out.

Be Approachable

Approachability is one factor that is exponentially more important for niche businesses than it is for more general businesses.

That’s because a unique niche is personal to your customers. Any given customer might even go so far as to define him or herself using a niche.

Consider the cassette market. (Yes, cassettes are making a comeback.) People who listen to cassettes might call themselves cassette enthusiasts.

These people form a community, albeit small, that want that kind of personal engagement that their interests require.

Often, you’re engaging your customers in a way that’s intensely personal to them.

The more approachable you are, the better your customers will feel.

Understand that your customers don’t just want to like you––they want to trust you.

Building trust takes time and effort, but it has a big impact.

So how do you become more approachable?

Especially, since we’re dealing with the issue in a business context, and not in a warm-handshake-and-friendly-smile context.

First, listen to your customers.

And get serious about listening.

It’s easy to tell yourself that you’re listening to your customers, but are you really? If you aren’t, it’s never too late to start.

When you get customer feedback, don’t just make a mental note of it.

Keep a record of it and actually look at it.

Look for common threads in the feedback you get.

You might need to ask for feedback in the form of a survey. Most of your users will be happy to give you their thought, and a nice incentive (like a prize drawing) doesn’t hurt either.

Second, create a personality around your brand.

Of course, you could do this literally like Geico did with their gecko mascot (who has his own Twitter account).

But you could also transform your entire brand into something your customers trust.

Coca-Cola does this with its unforgettable marketing campaigns that are focused on happiness and positivity.

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Bonus: Be funny.

If humor comes naturally to you, use it.

One example of a hilarious brand is Blockbuster. Specifically, The Last Blockbuster.

Okay, maybe it’s not actually a real business, but it sure is funny.

Humor doesn’t work for everyone. Sometimes, it’s feels forced and painful, like chewing on screws.

But for businesses that can do it, it enhances approachability.

If your brand is approachable, you’ll stand out from all your competitors.

Your customers will feel like you know them, and that’s because you do. All the work you put into finding demographics and psychographics will pay off at this step.

Enhance Your Online Presence

Like any relationship, the connection between you and your customers has to be nurtured. It takes frequent and open communication for any relationship to succeed.

That’s why having a robust online presence can drastically improve your customer engagement.

Being more active online mean that there are more points of contact.

Your customers can reach you more often, and that very act builds a ton of trust.

You probably saw this coming from a mile away, but being available on social media often is a huge plus.

People spend a lot of time on social media, and you can take advantage of that by also spending a lot of time on various networks.

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Social media is most likely where your target audience hangs out. Your specific audience might tend to congregate on one or two social media sites, and you need to find out exactly where.

This doesn’t mean you should go out and run a bunch of ads on every social media site.

It does mean that you should have a human presence on your accounts.

Look, I love bots just as much as the next guy, but you’re going to tick people off if your Twitter “customer service” is a poorly programmed bot.

(Bots aren’t pure evil, as I’ll mention in just a minute.)

Many brands understand how important this is, and they make sure to respond to as much customer feedback as they can. Target’s Facebook excels at this:

Other brands go above and beyond the call of duty. Some companies like Warby Parker have created social media accounts solely for customer support.

But old-fashioned customer support isn’t the only option. Some businesses, especially smaller ones, simply don’t have the resources to staff a dedicated support team.

That’s one of the reasons live chat has become so popular over the past few years.

With live chat, you can have business hours, so to speak. Your customers know when you’re available, and you can respond in real time.

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It’s a super efficient and cost-effective method of doing customer support in a way that your customers will love.

The ability to talk with your customers in real time is a big benefit. It’ll increase the level of hospitality and make customers feel closer to your brand.

Correctly programmed and carefully used, Chatbots can be used appropriately.

You’ve probably seen these around. They look like live chat boxes but are handled by software.

You can program these bots to do a ton of helpful things, like ask questions and make product suggestions.

Setting up a chatbot will take a little more time, but on the upside, you won’t have to do much after it’s done.

One of the big benefits of chatbots is consistent customer engagement. Your customers can interact with your brand even when you’re not there.

Still, it’s no replacement for human contact, which is why most businesses supplement chatbots with live chat support, and they work nicely in tandem.

Figure Out How to Treat Your Customers

Customer engagement looks a lot different today than it did just ten years ago.

(Sheesh, I’m starting to sound like one of those “when I was a kid” people!)

Today, you can improve your customers’ experiences with interactive quizzes, well-timed popup offers, and even games.

The abundance of customer engagement resources also means that it’s actually more difficult to engage customers than ever before. How can you cut through all the noise?

What many businesses are discovering is that it takes a lot of value for customers to pay attention to a brand.

If you’re not an industry titan like Google or Coca-Cola, this is the road you have to take. And thankfully, it’s not too hard to navigate.

You probably already know that customers prioritize value above all else, but you might be underestimating how much value you need to provide.

There has to be a huge amount of value every step of the way.

Value isn’t just something that you do. It’s something you are.

That sounds fluffy, but it really isn’t. It means that if you’re not giving your customers value as they go through the sales funnel, you’re not doing your job.

Value is what will separate you from everyone else in your niche. You need to figure out what kind of value your customers want and determine the best way to deliver that value.

If you’ve already researched your audience’s demographics and psychographics, you’re already halfway there. All that’s left is to provide the value your customers are looking for.

How do you do that? Actionable content is one of the best ways. Content marketing is still alive and well, and people still respond well to it.

The more helpful your content is, the more your customers will engage with it.

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For your content to stand out, it should be better than your competitors’ content. (That will also help people find your site before they find your competitors.)

The Skyscraper Technique is a popular method for creating amazing content, but in the end, all that matters is providing an overwhelming amount of value with every piece of content you publish.

Use Email For Good, Not Evil

Email is a powerful tool in every marketer’s arsenal––in fact, it’s the most powerful. Email is one of the top-converting channels. It’s simply unparalleled for engagement.

Sadly, it’s often overused. How many times have you gotten annoying email campaigns you didn’t want? Probably more times than you can count.

When it comes to your email strategy, keep Seth Godin’s idea of permission marketing in mind.

When someone gives you their email address, they’re trusting you with it. They expect you to not spam them or send them content they don’t want.

That’s the idea of permission marketing. You are literally getting your subscribers’ permission to market to them, and you have a responsibility to make good on your promise to only give them what they want. That means no spam or unscrupulous tactics.

This goes back to what we covered earlier about building trust with your customers. Email plays a huge role in that. If you respect people’s emails, they will respect you.

Did you know? Kissmetrics combines behavioral analytics with Kissmetrics Campaigns, which lets users send targeted emails to their audience to nudge them toward engagement and activation.

It’s tempting to use a lot of fine print to trick people into opting in to more than one list, and you might even want to rent out your list.

But if you really want to engage your customers and turn them into lifelong brand fans, you have to stick to email best practices.

Conclusion

Being in a super specific niche doesn’t have to make your customer engagement difficult.

In fact, niche engagement has the potential to allow you to connect with your customers on a personal level.

At its core, customer engagement has the same principles and priorities no matter what kind of business you own.

But within each niche, it looks a little different.

It’s well worth your time to find out what works and what doesn’t for your customer base.

If you’ve had any problems with customer engagement in your niche, share your experiences in the comments!

And if you have any major wins tell about those, too!

About the Author: Daniel Threlfall is an Internet entrepreneur and content marketing strategist. As a writer and marketing strategist, Daniel has helped brands including Merck, Fiji Water, Little Tikes, and MGA Entertainment. Daniel is co-founding Your Success Rocket, a resource for Internet entrepreneurs. He and his wife Keren have four children, and occasionally enjoy adventures in remote corners of the globe (kids included). You can follow Daniel on Twitter or see pictures of his adventures on Instagram.

from Search Results for “analytics” – The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/2vp03ZK #Digital #Analytics #Website

#Analytics #Search Results for “analytics” – The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog

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samiam03x · 7 years