Welcome to the weekend! Today we dive deep into the social of social media; after a deeper dive, we go lighter into humor and creativity and finish with new music from Phoenix. Enjoy your day!

The new owner of Twitter has been sitting in his sink for one week, and we haven’t been able to look away. Friends and readers of With A Shout know we are all about action over words. Based on his actions alone, Elon Musk is a genius and has already done more for humankind than many of us can imagine. Musk is the King of Doing and what baffles us is why he is now mimicking those most famous for Undoing. We will continue to watch the story; we wanted to find another angle from which to come at the Twitter story; we love data, so let’s look at some data.

We read an interesting thread about Twitter from Jack Shepherd; here are a few interesting facts to consider while taking in the current trainwreck of unfolding events.

Six minutes per day seems low to us; we think of Twitter as the digital equivalent of eating chips. You can go into it with a 6-minute threshold, and an hour later, you wonder where all the chips went.

In 2007 Twitter and the event producers at South by Southwest (who also own the Austin Chronicle) figured out a way to use Twitter at a large conference that soon became the norm for all conferences. One sentence highlights from hundreds of in-person attendees, essential notices from organizers, and where the best after parties were being held! A few of us were at SXSW in 2007, and Twitter and the hashtag were just getting started. At this event, we saw an exciting potential for what looked like a waste of app storage space on the surface.

We remember the beginning of instant messaging when more people used AOL Instant Messenger than AOL Online. Most of us were starting in tech and working in large bullpen cubicle rooms, and people would “IM” each other one cubicle away. We initially thought this was the dumbest thing we’d ever seen. From fad to phone, instant message and chat apps are everywhere and a staple in business. If the bones are good, people will find a way to use the tech in productive ways.

Twitter has also been life-saving in several natural disasters. In the same way, Twitter can be a communications hub at a conference; it can be a digital bulletin board for emergencies to help people; find each other, find help, or find information when all other forms of communication are inaccessible.

The accuracy of how much Twitter or other social media apps helped in the Arab Spring uprising or similar protests worldwide is debatable. The concept of social media applications providing a voice to a demonstration in a country where free speech is not a right is less contentious. The new era of “smile you are on camera” is social media.

All of the upside potentials can be used for all the wrong reasons. If one group tries to shine a light on injustice, another can use a platform to spread lies and hate. It remains to be seen which direction humankind-changing Musk will take all this potential. Musk’s accomplishments are remarkable; if Musk does nothing else for the rest of his life, the achievements will stand the test of time. Musk has been disciplined in the past with long-term goals. Cars and rockets have been around for a while; he didn’t build Tesla or Space X overnight but has improved cars and rockets exponentially. Twitter has the same potential.

At With A Shout, we like three things:

We stumbled a crossed a substack from Allison Epstein called Dirtbags Through the Ages. We haven’t gotten far into the substack yet, but the initial read checks all 3 of our boxes. Here’s a quote from a recent post:

In the post and the quote, Epstein is talking about the murder of Lord Darnley in 1566 in a fact-based and filled-in delicious fiction piece talking about Mary Stuart, AKA Mary Queen of Scots. It’s a fun read, enjoy and share!

[Music Notes]

There isn’t a lot of French Rock Music in our playlists; French-based Phoenix is one band that has been in our rotations since the release of Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix in 2009. The Guardian talked with Phoenix about their music and the new release of Alpha Zulu earlier this month.

Singer Laurent Brancowitz talks about France as a third-world country in pop music, which might be why our playlists are French Rock light.

Always interesting, melodic, and almost quiet, Phoenix talks about starting, their influences, and why they don’t like recording studios.

They recently recorded in The Louvre, which we bet wasn’t boring. Alpha Zulu is out now and available on all your favorite streaming platforms.

[More New Stuff]

Words | Music | Art | Unknown

A powerful surprise.

Click on the Apple Music image to listen to the song on Apple Music or on the Spotify Image to listen to Spotify.

Thank you for spending a few minutes with us!

With A Shout Team