Talking everything Social Media, Tech & Online Marketing.  Covering pertinent social media news, and Craig’s weekly Random Resources!

Broadcast Summary:

• 
  
• News Desk – Chey talking about Yahoo deleting all inactive email IDs, Facebook’s Q2 earnings up 53%, new file-sharing cloud storage called Shared.com, Google making Android 4.3 official plus offering multi-user restricted profile accounts, new Gmail inbox design receiving approval, Google’s secret project (Help-Outs) and Google unveiling Google Chromecast;
  
• Random Resources – Craig talking about is the age of the password over;
  
• Random Resources – Chey talking about Pinterest.
  
• Random Resources – Craig talking about the possible new iPhone 5S
  

CHEY:       And welcome, listeners, to Social Media Pulse where we talk everything social media, online marketing, gadgets, tech, anything to do with the online world. I am Cheyanne Ainsworth, and I’m here in the studio with Craig McCarthy.

CRAIG:      That’s right. Thanks Chey. Great introduction there, and thanks to Sue and Belinda for the last 2 hours of Creating Space.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Always fun and games.

CHEY:       Oh, they are.

CRAIG:      And we had a good show last week too. I – yes, I was all over.

CHEY:       I can barely remember it.

CRAIG:      I know. It actually seems like just a couple of days ago, doesn’t it? Time flies. Maybe that’s our age.

CHEY:       Could be.

CRAIG:      Maybe that’s our maturity.

CHEY:       Maybe. I don’t know.

CRAIG:      It could be any of those things.

CHEY:       I can remember when my husband turned 40. On Facebook, his status update said ‘I am not 40. I’m 15 with 25 years’ experience’.

CRAIG:      Yes. Me. So I was all over Google again last week. I can’t, can’t help myself.

CHEY:       There’s a couple of things in the News Desk with Google too …

CRAIG:      Oh, really?

CHEY:       That I didn’t realize until I had a read through. Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes, yes. Excellent. Yes. I saw something today too, but I can’t quite remember what it was. So let’s move on from that.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      How’s your week, Chey?

CHEY:       Again. Gone in a flash.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       I don’t know what happened.

CRAIG:      Just a blur? It’s nice to come in here on a Friday afternoon, you know? And just winding up the week, and everyone’s relaxing and starting to wind up.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Get in the festive mood.

CHEY:       It’s always very cruisey here on a Friday. Like you can come in on a Monday and it’s just people all over the place. And Friday – it’s just really nice and cruisey.

CRAIG:      Yes. Yes.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      We love Friday afternoon.

CHEY:       How’s your week been?

CRAIG:      My week’s been great. I went to Flemington Members last Saturday and sat up in their Grandstand to watch horses run past.

CHEY:       Gee-gees!

CRAIG:      Yes, yes. Love that. I would say a cold, wet, rainy day here in Melbourne, but it was nice and warm inside. So, you know.

CHEY:       Special.

CRAIG:      A special. Yes, it was good. So go to Social Media Pulse if you want to check out last weeks’ show.

CHEY:       Yes. It’s up.

CRAIG:      It’s up there. Or iTunes. Check us out in iTunes under Social Media Pulse. Or I think you can just about do a search on you or me …

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      And we come up through …

CHEY:       First page, yes.

CRAIG:      On iTunes, yes. Sounds pretty good. I think we are even listed under business and social media and marketing.

CHEY:       Correct.

CRAIG:      I saw some categories, so …

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. You can find us that way as well. What about today’s show, Chey?

CHEY:       Well, I was in such a rush I didn’t pick up the News Desk off my printer, so it’s been read from the iPad today.

CRAIG:      Great.

CHEY:       And I’m also going to have a chat about why you should be looking at Pinterest a bit closely. Or more closely than what you already are.

CRAIG:      That sounds good.

CHEY:       Mmmm.

CRAIG:      We like Pinterest.

CHEY:       Yes. Very much so.

CRAIG:      Mmm.

CHEY:       And yourself?

CRAIG:      I’m going to talk about ‘Is the age of the password over?’.

CHEY:       Oh! Maybe there should be a thumbprint on our …

CRAIG:      That’s it.

CHEY:       On our gadgets or something, so that we just don’t have to remember passwords.

CRAIG:      Uh-huh. It’s funny you should say that. And we’ll talk a little bit about the iPhone 5S coming out soon too. So that’s later in the show. Stick around. You are listening to Social Media Pulse with Craig and Chey on a Friday afternoon.

[THEME TUNE MUSIC and pause]

CRAIG:      Welcome back to Social Media Pulse.

CHEY:       That was a quick song, wasn’t it?

CRAIG:      It was quite a quick song.

CHEY:       Caught us off-guard.

CRAIG:      Yes. It did catch us off – it’s only 2:43.

CHEY:       Very, very quick.

CRAIG:      It was. Yes, that was Ho-Hey by the Lumineers.

CHEY:       Oh, and just so listeners, listening to the podcast, we are actually a live show on radio (on 94.7 The Pulse), and so we have to edit out all of the songs on the show, purely because they are not licensed when we upload our podcast. So yes, that’s why we have our little breaks in-between and a little bit of music. So – mm.

CRAIG:      It’s why the podcast ends up about 30 minutes when our show goes for about an hour.

CHEY:       Yes. Exactly.

CRAIG:      We’ve got to cut the ads out and cut the music out and that sort of stuff.

CHEY:       Well music, advertising, all of that sort of stuff.

CRAIG:      Uh-huh. Yes. Yes. Ok. Chey. It’s Friday afternoon. It’s just after 3 o’clock. Do you want to give us the News Desk?

CHEY:       Yes. Absolutely. Well let me just bring it up here. First thing off the bat is that Yahoo has deleted all inactive accounts. So if you have a desire to get a Yahoo account or, you know, email ID that you’ve never been able to get. If it’s been inactive, then you can go in and grab it.

CRAIG:      Wow.

CHEY:       Ok. And I don’t think I will be doing that, but just in case you’d like to. Second off the desk is that Facebook’s Q2 earnings have beaten expectations with $1.81Bn in revenue. Up 53%. And Mobile has hit 41% of ad revenue. Pretty staggering stats there, which (you know) if you are a business and you are not using Facebook advertising, you had better look at it. We’ve been doing some LinkedIn advertising and not getting as good results as Facebook. Next on the desk – Tumblr users can now create gifts with webcams. That started only at the start of the week, so you can actually go in when you are posting a photo. Just click ‘take a photo’, then hit – there’s a big gift button. Smile and wave your hands in the air, and there you go. All done. There’s a domain called Shared.Com, and it’s taken on Mega, Dropbox and it is offering 100 gig of free storage, so that is pretty big compared to the usual 2 gig that Dropbox offers. So Shared.com. Don’t know how it’s going to affect Dropbox. Dropbox really does have a big share in the marketplace, and is trusted. So we’ll just keep an eye on that. Have a look at it. Google has made Android 4.3 official. It also is now offering multi-user restricted profile accounts, and Bluetooth Smart. Ok? So there’s a fair bit in there, but Bluetooth Low Energy (which is Bluetooth Smart) – it makes it really easy to connect all of your accessories to Android devices without, you know, having to sap too much battery energy. So it’s a big key to smart watch and other wearables in the future, as well as health and fitness trackers and stuff like that. So interesting for the Android market there. New Gmail inbox has a social tab. We talked about this last week.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       And I’m getting reports back from people saying they actually really like it now that they’ve got over the ‘oh my god, it’s new’. They are actually really enjoying how it’s separated. So …

CRAIG:      Have you heard any marketers talk negatively about it yet?

CHEY:       Oh, yes. Of course. And there’s been a few news letters that have shown up in my social tab that have said, you know, make sure you go and do this and this and this and this. And it’s like, well, if you’ve got half a brain you can figure it out.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Like really, and if your content is quality in your newsletter, then people are going to open it anyway.

CRAIG:      Absolutely. They will go looking for it.

CHEY:       Mmm. Now there’s something else here. Help-outs. It’s a Google secret project that turns Hangouts into a commerce platform. So it’s an expansion. Google are always expanding, and it’s taken on a, you know, a noticeable sort of singular direction of e-commerce. With the outside success of Amazon and Ebay, they’ve been building online market places that seek to remove the barriers around buying and selling on the web. It was only a matter of time before Google decided to pull its chair up to the e-commerce table. So Google has quietly been pursuing its market place ambitions under a new platform that leverages its increasingly powerful cloud service, and power live, real e-commerce. So yes – something to look out for. Something I’m tipping will be reporting on in the next couple of Desks. The last thing I have here is also Google-related. They’ve unveiled Chromecast. The $35 HD MI plugin, that streams online videos to your TV. So they announced this service – or announced the launch of it. It’s newest hardware device. It’s a 2†hardware device. It bills as being the easiest way to enjoy online entertainment on the TV. Google Android and Chrome Chief Sunder spoke onstage the other day at a press event about the online videos, saying that 200bn online videos are being watched globally but one problem people have, apparently, is how to bring the internet to the TV. He says that 15% of households each week are able to transfer that information over to the bigger screen. With the updated version of Chrome, Google hopes to extend the experience to television. So there you go.

CRAIG:      Mmm.

CHEY:       That’s the News Desk today.

CRAIG:      So let me just think about that for a minute. So is that a similar thing to Apple TV?

CHEY:       Could be, yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. I mean most TVs these days, you can connect to the internet anyway, right?

CHEY:       M-hum.

CRAIG:      And Apple TV lets you do that. Let’s you watch – stream movies and that sort of stuff through your Apple TV onto your TV.

CHEY:       Just some other notes here, now that you’re talking about it. Ok. Google says that it is approach to online entertainment is all about simplicity. It highlights 3 key points, that it should be fast, easy to set up, shouldn’t have anything to do, anything new to learn and work across platforms and devices. Chromecast is a 2†device specifically 72 in length, 35 in width and 12 in height. Built on Chrome technology. Running as a simplified version of the OS. So consumers need only plug it into HDMI input. Connect to Wi-Fi and sit back and watch.

CRAIG:      Mmm.

CHEY:       There you go.

CRAIG:      Yes. It does sound very similar to Apple products, because Apple talk about throwing things across different, you know, devices. That sort of stuff.

CHEY:       And you know what? As much as Apple talk about it, they don’t walk it.

CRAIG:      Right!

CHEY:       They can talk all they like. They just don’t walk it. I seriously have so many issues with iTunes. And it’s not simplified. It’s clunky. And, you know, we’ve had this discussion a few months ago about how really, for such a product to be that functionally stupid, something needs to change. So if Google are going to …

CRAIG:      Up the ante …

CHEY:       Up the ante, then good on ‘em.

CRAIG:      Yes. Absolutely. We love a good Google versus Apple battle.

CHEY:       Oh! Well – It’s – we’re the consumers. We get – it gets better for us.

CRAIG:      Absolutely. Yes. We love it. All stick around. There’s more to come.

[THEME TUNE MUSIC and pause]

CRAIG:      And welcome back to Social Media at The Pulse on this Friday afternoon.

CHEY:       This lazy Friday afternoon.

CRAIG:      That’s right. I hope you are relaxed out there, having a good Friday afternoon. I’ll tell you what, Chey, I really like about Pulse Radio Station.

CHEY:       Mmm?

CRAIG:      They are very welcoming and open. You can …

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Pretty much just walk in here off the street and come in, and if you are thinking of becoming a subscriber to the Station just come up to the desk and ask them about it. Ask them questions. If you want to join up. $50 it is for an adult, $25 concession, and support your local radio.

CHEY:       Yes. I think it’s a really good idea in here, because it’s a community-based radio station. That means that there’s a lot of interaction with different cultures. I was in here yesterday and the Croatian guys were in here doing their show, and they’ve always got chocolate. So if there’s any enticement …

CRAIG:      Again?

CHEY:       Again.

CRAIG:      With the chocolate.

CHEY:       Oh, they love their chocolate, and the Croatian chocolate is beautiful. But I’d never met them before, and I think it was probably about (you know) a couple of months ago that they wandered into the recording station that we were at and were doing a pre-record. And they just said ‘here, try some chocolate’, and it was like ‘oh, ok. Thank you’. They are just – that’s how friendly they are.

CRAIG:      Yes. We love it.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Ok. I want to talk about passwords, Chey.

CHEY:       Go for it.

CRAIG:      And is the age of the password over. Well …

CHEY:       Bring it on.

CRAIG:      Bring it on. Ok. So what I’m going to do – you know – we all – I come up with a new password for something new just about every day, or at least a few a week. I’m sure we all do as we are logging onto everything. And I just want to – you know – just take a moment. I guess it is – for anyone who has been hacked or, you know, someone has got into their stuff. It’s – they’ll know how painful it is.

CHEY:       It’s painful. It’s like your house being broken into. You feel like somebody’s gone through your undies drawers. You know? Like it’s just wrong.

CRAIG:      Yes, yes. That’s right.

CHEY:       And you do get that ‘oh my gosh. Somebody has broken into my system’.

CRAIG:      Yes. Absolutely. And it’s something you don’t think about until that happens, and then you …

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      And then suddenly you’re more aware of, you know, your choice of passwords and stuff. So I’m just going to speak – talk through – some of the weaknesses with our current system.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      And then give some do’s and don’ts at the end that maybe to get people thinking. The passwords themselves haven’t changed – you know. We’ve always done 6, 8, 12 character alpha-numeric-type passwords. Some of the problems that, or some of the weaknesses, that we have. I mean no password is ultimately secure because there is software out there, there’s hackers out there, and – you know …

CHEY:       It’s a game for them.

CRAIG:      It’s a game for them. They are even – you know one article I was reading was talking about the bored teenagers. There’s some very clever, innovative bored teenagers out there.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Who are just online hacking into stuff. So yes. It’s a game. So you’ve got to be a bit careful. Some of the weaknesses that we have – one of the problems that we have with passwords is as humans, we forget them. We have trouble remembering them.

CHEY:       Or we do different variations of them.

CRAIG:      That’s right. And often, one of the real problems is the different variations so we choose one password and then sort of keep up suffixing or up-numbering or, you know. So if you do have passwords that are linked in some way because they are very similar, it makes it very easy for a hacker to come in and start cracking them. Another problem is that we often use the same email address to login to lots of things. So once someone finds your email address (which I think finding out your email address is not that hard on the internet these days). You can search and find out a lot about people and then you can simply go in and reset peoples’ passwords. A lot of times they reset peoples’ passwords and somehow get into their account to get the recovered password, and then once they’ve got one password, that kind of tends to get into lots of different things. We use – as humans, generally, use terrible passwords. So I know in some online stuff, they suggest passwords and they come up (you know). There’s a lot of strength indicators on just about everything these days, and they come up with some unique passwords which can help. I know WordPress tends to suggest passwords when you are installing WordPress onto a creating a new Blog. And I think there’s even plugins that can continuously change that password.

CHEY:       That’s what we have.

CRAIG:      Yes, yes. So they’re good. There’s a couple of good ones. I think we’ve mentioned them on an earlier show. A couple of good …

CHEY:       Last Pass.

CRAIG:      Yes, ok.

CHEY:       Yes. Last Pass is across all devices, so that’s what I tend to, you know, love about it. Trustworthy, and you can actually check. And we only did this probably a couple of weeks ago. You can actually see how many duplicate passwords you have within all of your passwords and I can remember – I think I was looking at mine and there was like 384 passwords ….

CRAIG:      Wow.

CHEY:       Not one of them was the same.

CRAIG:      Oh. Great.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes, yes. That’s super.

CHEY:       So I got the big tick of approval from Last Pass.

CRAIG:      Yes. Nice. Another problem with passwords is often people trick them out of you. So while there’s a lot of scammers online who are trying to get your details.

CHEY:       It’s funny you say that. There was an article, I think, on – might have been another radio station’s Facebook page, or it could have been the Geelong Addy, or somewhere like that talking about phone calls happening within the Geelong region from scammy, overseas companies, saying your computer is sending us spam and we need to get into your computer and stop it. Can you log into this remote system. And I’m like that’s been happening for over 10 years. And if people really think that, you know, somebody can call them and say that your computer is hacking our system, or your computer is – well, we need to fix it now. Then somebody is, you know, like sucked into that. Well – too stupid. Bad luck. It has been going on for a very long time. The last time it happened to me when I picked up the phone, he said ‘your computer is sending spam. You just need to log in here’. I said ‘I don’t have a computer’. And he said ‘yes, you do!’. And I’m like ‘no, I don’t. I don’t have a computer. What are you talking about?’. ‘Oh, no. It’s, you know …’. Blah. And I said ‘well, what’s the email address?’. I said ‘I don’t have a computer’. And he end up just hanging up on me.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Nice played. You’ve got to question everything these days, don’t you? You just never know.

CHEY:       Yes. Exactly. And on that security note as well. When there’s been transactions on your credit cards and those sorts of things, when the bank calls you, there has been a few things like that happened where, again, it’s scammers. So I always turn around and say ‘I’ll call you back’.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       I won’t discuss anything with you over the phone, so I’ll call back.

CRAIG:      So that was the – they were pretending to be the credit card company?

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Huh.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Mmm.

CRAIG:      According to – in this article I was reading, Diane Smithers from – she’s a software engineer at Google – she says password reuse is what kills you.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Reusing the same password over and over again, which I know I’ve done in the past. So …

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. Ok. So I want to get into some do’s and don’ts. Pretty simple stuff.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Don’t – don’t re-use passwords. Well we just spoke about that. Don’t use a dictionary word as your password. If you must, then string several words together into a pass phrase. Don’t use standard number substitutions, so as in the password you might substitute ‘P’ for 55w0rd to re-spell it with numbers. Cracking tools now have those built in. And don’t use a short password. No matter how weird today’s processing speeds mean that even passwords are quick – even short passwords with lots of characters are quickly crackable. Your best defence is the longest password possible.

CHEY:       And upper and lower case.

CRAIG:      Yes. Upper and lower case. Yes.

CHEY:       If it’s case sensitive – yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. Ok. Some do’s. Do enable 2-factor authentication when offered. So I guess this is like on your Commonwealth Bank/Net Bank account, where you add a new biller and they send you an SMS …

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Saying ‘yes. Here’s a code’. So that’s what they mean by enable 2-factor authentication.

CHEY:       There’s actually – there was something that happened with Visa recently, and if you have a debit card – not – sorry, a debit Visa card. They installed another 3rd-party App so you couldn’t actually use it with Paypal, and then they had to reverse it. They didn’t tell everybody about it. And yes, it was a little bit of a nightmare. I had a client that had issues with that, and I sort of rang and asked a few questions as well because I was intrigued by it. And again, it’s another security measure that banks are bringing in..

CRAIG:      Yes. Yes. And I guess that comes – that’s also one of the strength when you are looking at shopping carts, so if you are setting up a shopping cart for your business and if you do have a lot of products and you have a lot of volume sales through your shopping cart. That’s where a good quality shopping cart, like your Shopify and your Big Commerce. That’s sort of thing. They’re going to – you are going to be able to use debit cards, credit cards, all faultlessly, if you get – I know this. Just last week I got a brand-new credit card in the mail. And so then I went into an online store and it wouldn’t take that new credit card because it had a different (you know) same numbers but different codes and that sort of stuff. So I had to go backwards and forwards and add, add and delete credit cards. So yes – and that sort of stuff, you are really – you know, people are going abandon your shopping cart if there’s any sort of problems like that that they don’t take debit cards or if there’s any problems with the cards you are putting in.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      So yes. If you are doing high-volume sales and lots of products it’s worth investing in a good-quality shopping cart.

CHEY:       Absolutely.

CRAIG:      Base line. Ok. Do give bogus answers to security questions. So instead of giving ‘what was your primary school?’, instead of just giving a simple answer to your primary school give a bogus answer but make sure you remember it.

CHEY:       Yes. I have a bogus identity basically.

CRAIG:      Ok.

CHEY:       And it all stems back from when I was, you know, 18, 19, 20, 21 with all of my girlfriends and we used to go out and we used to have code names so that we didn’t have to give out our actual names to guys that we weren’t interested in.

CRAIG:      Ok.

CHEY:       So it was funny, because when I went up to Aubrey a few weeks ago, my best friend and I were calling each other by our code names, and a few people looked at us a bit oddly. But that’s where it’s carried on from.

CRAIG:      Yes. Right.

CHEY:       So I literally have a bogus identity.

CRAIG:      We had code names once when we went out, but our code names had to be the brand of a sun cream.

CHEY:       Oh, no!

CRAIG:      So I was Ambre Solaire, and my friend – another guy was Piz Buin.

CHEY:       No way! No, ours were a bit more simpler than that.

CRAIG:      Were they? Ok.

CHEY:       But yes.

CRAIG:      Ok. Here’s another do. Scrub your online presence.

CHEY:       Ok!

CRAIG:      Yes. So there you go.

CHEY:       Not as easy as you think.

CRAIG:      Not that easy. They are talking about things like Whitepages.Com and that sort of stuff. You know, you can have silent numbers and that sort of stuff, but yes. These days everyone’s’ stuff is everywhere online.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Pretty much. And that’s why services like reputation management are now so popular.

CHEY:       We were saying it. You know. I know we’ve had the discussion years ago. It’s only going to get worse.

CRAIG:      Absolutely.

CHEY:       If you are not on top of your reputation, then you could come up against all sorts of issues. There is a company called ‘Brand Yourself’ and they can actually do a check. If you just – I think it’s brandyourself.com, or something along those lines. They track any movement within Google of pages and things where you are. And there’s also negative and positive feedback that you give to them. So my maiden-name was coming up on first and second pages and I thought I just want to push it – you know. I’m known by my married name now. So I put negative on it, so it eventually was pushed. So it is now pushed past page 10 and that makes it easier for me, so people don’t sort of go married, maiden – whatever it be.

CRAIG:      Right.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      So you pushed that through Google?

CHEY:       Correct.

CRAIG:      You told them I want …

CHEY:       No. I did it through branding myself.

CRAIG:      Oh, ok.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Wow. Yes.

CHEY:       Yes. I was testing it out. I wanted to see how good this system was. To see how they could do it.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       And yes. It’s – look, I think it might be a once-off page type system. There is a free part of it. I can’t remember now. It was done ages ago, but I do get a report every month, or whenever jumps change. So there was 1, I think, that might have been a Facebook or LinkedIn moved up or moved down, or whatever it was. Or something appeared, and they thought – you know Brand Myself said ‘do you need to action this?’. So it’s – yes. It’s a good thing.

CRAIG:      Wow. That’s pretty clever. And you are talking about when you say 1 and 10, you are talking about coming up in Google search results on page 1

CHEY:       Correct.

CRAIG:      Or page 2, 3, 10.

CHEY:       Correct. Yes.

CRAIG:      Ok. And my last do for passwords – use a unique secure email address for password recoveries.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      So that’s something I haven’t done. I – yes – can set up just another Gmail address for password recoveries. So …

CHEY:       Yes. It’s advisable.

CRAIG:      Mmm. That’s a good idea. I like that one. Ok. You are listening to Chey and Craig.

CHEY:       On Social Media Pulse.

[THEME TUNE MUSIC and pause]

CRAIG:      How about that? How do you like that?

CHEY:       Welcome back to 94.7 The Pulse, where you’re listening to Craig and Chey on this lovely, beautiful Friday afternoon where the sun has been shining here in Geelong.

CRAIG:      Oh, it has been fantastic, hasn’t it? Love it.

CHEY:       Absolutely gorgeous.

CRAIG:      Mmm. Great place to be.

CHEY:       Hasn’t felt like winter today at all.

CRAIG:      No. Ok. Chey, I’m really keen about hearing about Pinterest.

CHEY:       Ok. Now we’ve – I think we’ve done a couple of different sections on Pinterest and how to use it and those sorts of things, but I came across an article this week that I think everybody should have a look at. It’s called “Mind-blogging facts that will make you care about Pinterestâ€. Pinterest isn’t going away and it’s only getting bigger. Here’s why it’s the social platform to watch. Now there’s a few facts in here that I didn’t actually know about, which was great, and it was conceived by 3 male co-founders, and Pinterest is known for women but it was founded by 3 males. And it has 70M users, climbing. Pinterest isn’t going anywhere – you know, it’s going to stick. It’s certainly an incredible platform that I didn’t know had more e-commerce transactions than Facebook.

CRAIG:      Really?

CHEY:       Yes. Here we go. According to social login providers Gigya, its latest numbers show that Pinterest has grabbed – it does grab – 41% of e-commerce traffic compared to Facebook’s 37%. So since Pinterest is centered around the social discovery of objects, opposed to friends and family, it makes sense that Pinterest would eventually have the upper-hand, but it’s an accomplishment for any platform to sneak up on Facebook’s number 1 in everything – you know – status. Something that I saw, my ears pricked. I went ‘Mmm, very interesting’.

CRAIG:      Mmm.

CHEY:       Pinterest is more lucrative e-commerce than anyone basically. So Pinners don’t just like to shop. They like to spend. So even before Pinterest drove more e-commerce than Facebook did, it was already driving more dollars. Whilst the average social shopper – that is a shopper that discovers an item on the platform and then clicks off-site to buy it, they spend an average of $60-$80 when they come from Facebook. But when they come from Pinterest, they spend $140-$180 so there’s a bigger value as well. The other thing is that it’s the fastest growing social network than any other network. Full stop. So Pinterest’s staggering statistics aren’t just limited to 2013. Last year, the e-commerce platform broke a record for reaching 10M monthly uniques in just 9 months. We reported that, so that was last year. In one of the most – you know – dramatic, hockey-stick charts you’ll ever see, Pinterest out-paced Facebook, Twitter and every other network inclining to that momentous milestone. It just – it was incredible. That’s why I’m – I can’t remember what episode we were talking about it, but it really did hit the news. The other thing is Pinterest has more active registered users than Reddit. There you go – it’s true. You know, again!

CRAIG:      Wow.

CHEY:       These sorts of facts – I was, like, wow! Ok. It’s been said that men are from Reddit and women are from Pinterest. If that’s so, then it’s clear who’s winning the battle of the sexes. Both sites have around 70M registered accounts, but this number doesn’t say anything about who’s using the site and how much. Many people sign up for sites that never log into it again. According to Reddit’s latest numbers, only 2M of its 70M visitors last month were logged in as active users. So that’s pretty, again, incredible. Meanwhile a recent study shows that a staggering 20M of Pinterest’s 70M registered users re-pinned or liked a pin in June. Not bad for a network that’s featured in the news less than half the time. Really incredible. Now the average pin is more relevant than an average Tweet. Ok? Traffic-wise, Pinterest isn’t going to edge up on Twitter’s 500M registered users, but it’s already competing with the micro-blogging giant for relevancy and that does say something. You know? According to a recent study from analytics and marketing company Pictura (which I wouldn’t mind actually having a chat about in another show), the average Tweet remains useful only for a matter of minutes. Now I know it’s 18 minutes. Ok? Meanwhile the average pin remains click-worthy for months.

CRAIG:      Wow.

CHEY:       The reason behind this is long-tail. Pinners are more likely to discover past pins through search, whilst Twitter users tend to watch Tweets that blip in and out of their feeds. So relevancy again. Now Pinterest rules the iPad. Facebook may still dominate the iPhone, but according to a study by Adotus, Pinterest is the top channel on the iPad with an almost 50% share of all social activity on the tablet. When you realize that more people use social networks on mobile devices than on computers, a comm store study says it’s now mobile over 55% of the time, it puts into perspective just how much pinning is going on. So the next time you hear somebody talking about a niche social network that’s just for ladies shopping for shoes, you might want to set them straight.

CRAIG:      Mmm. Wow.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      I guess, you know, if we were to compare Pinterest and Instagram. Right? So if you were a – I mean you wouldn’t compare them because they are sort of – Instagram is more a social/friend type thing. Instagram is great.

CHEY:       Location-based. Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. That’s right. Pinterest is more – is just images and I can imagine Pinterest would be really good for selling products.

CHEY:       Oh, yes. Absolutely.

CRAIG:      Yes. And – but also I could imagine Pinterest would be really good for selling experiences as well.

CHEY:       Oh. Travel.

CRAIG:      Travel.

CHEY:       Images – yes, all of that sort of stuff.

CRAIG:      Caravan parks. I mean people with your products doing different things.

CHEY:       Or experiencing your service.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. Exactly. So you could really, you know, it’s not just about having picture products. It’s about – ok – what’s my business do. What do we sell. What is the experience I want my customers to have. And can I capture that in images.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      All different ways.

CHEY:       Absolutely. Now there’s another – there’s an App that I use, It’s called Houzz which is HOUZZ. Very much like Pinterest, but for pinning ideas. If you’re going to be doing house renovations or extensions, or you are looking for certain things, your idea books in there are very similar to what Pinterest do. So that’s another one to check out.

CRAIG:      Yes. Yes.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      So I guess as a business owner you really want to tell people as much about the experience as possible.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      So it – because it makes peoples’ buying process a lot easier if they understand. Ok. What am I going to get for the money? What’s it going to look like? What’s it going to feel like?

CHEY:       Exactly. And with Pinterest, if you put a red sash across the left-hand corner of your pin with the price of the product, you are guaranteed more click-throughs. I don’t know what the exact rates are, but again that is where people want to see a price on the picture. Not in the description. If they can see it on the pin, then you’re guaranteed more click-throughs.

CRAIG:      Fantastic. Ok. We are going to wrap up here in a minute.

CHEY:       Wow.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       That’s gone fast.

CRAIG:      It has gone fast. Can I just say also I wanted to talk about the iPhone 5S.

CHEY:       Oh, yes. Bring it on. Bring it on.

CRAIG:      So of course nobody knows when the 5S is coming out. Nobody even knows if it’s going to be called a 5S, but we can only say from, you know, the past that it’s likely they will have the same body to the phone and call it a 5S. And it’s likely that it will come out sometime in September. That seems to be their cycle.

CHEY:       And why would they do that?

CRAIG:      Err …

CHEY:       Christmas!

CRAIG:      Christmas. Yes, yes. And there’s also speculation of – I read somewhere that 20^th September, based on the logic of the new IOS 7 operating system is out.

CHEY:       Ok.

CRAIG:      And last year, the IOS 6 system came out and 100 days later they released the iPhone 5. So if you have a look at that, and also because Apple always release on a Friday. That’s where they came up with the 20^th September.

CHEY:       So a week after election. All well, unless the election dates change.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       We don’t know.

CRAIG:      That’s right. We don’t know. But …

CHEY:       It better not be Grand Final Weekend, because people will be in a real – you know – like, dilemma.

CRAIG:      Yes, yes. Absolutely. Back on passwords, there’s also one – they are talking about possibly having finger scanning.

CHEY:       Oh, yes.

CRAIG:      Technology in your – on the iPhone 5S, if it is called the 5S. So yes. For things like – for helping, so you can scan in for shopping carts and for – to make payments and that sort of stuff. So that technology is coming too. So …

CHEY:       I think it would be better than retinal. You know? How in all of the movies they have that retina thing, where you’ve got to put your eyes in them and they scan your eyes.

CRAIG:      Yes. Yes.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      That’s a little bit scary.

CHEY:       Well you can start your car with a finger now, so (you know) why shouldn’t you be able to open up and secure your devices by a, you know, a finger print.

CRAIG:      Yes. Do you know I used to work – maybe 20 years ago – I used to work as a night filler at Safeway.

CHEY:       Ok.

CRAIG:      Yes. And we had finger-scanning on, for scanning on, scanning off. So you’d go in there. You’d put your code in. You’d scan your finger. And that’s the way of clocking on.

CHEY:       Wow. There you go.

CRAIG:      How about that for hi-tech.

CHEY:       20 years ago – absolutely. Back to the Future days. Did you have hover-boards and stuff too?

CRAIG:      No, we didn’t. Cutting age Safeway, which is not even called Safeway anymore.

CHEY:       Oh, God no! It’s Woolies, isn’t it?

CRAIG:      That’s right.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes. So that’s about us for today. Have you got anything coming up in the next week, Chey?

CHEY:       In the next week, I’ll be doing some more interviews for the Geelong Business Lounge, and that’s again for the Geelong Small Business Festival that starts on 1^st August. Goes through to 31^st August.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       So I probably won’t have a voice by the end of next week. But no. That’s basically the next week for me. There’s a few other things going on, but …

CRAIG:      Are you get – can I ask you, are you going to do a 30-day challenge next month?

CHEY:       I think I’m going to go back to it. Yes.

CRAIG:      Yes?

CHEY:       Yes. Absolutely.

CRAIG:      Awesome. I feel like doing one as well. I’m not sure what I’m going to do though.

CHEY:       Ok. Well, have a think about it and we’ll decide next week.

CRAIG:      I’ll have a think about – they’ve got a 30-day challenge on at the Bikram Yoga place here, in Jarrow Street here in Geelong. And that challenge.

CHEY:       That wore you out. I don’t know.

CRAIG:      The challenge. I haven’t – I had – yes. Oh, I’m still doing it a few times a week. And it’s still hard-core. But their challenge is 30 times in 30 days, and you know – I don’t think I’m there yet.

CHEY:       Yes.

CRAIG:      Just to be honest.

CHEY:       Work up to it. Work up to it.

CRAIG:      Yes.

CHEY:       I’ve been getting – I haven’t been doing my 10K steps, and I haven’t been doing my blog so I’m sort of, like, you know what? I think I had better revert back and take myself off a couple of networks and just work on a couple for August.

CRAIG:      Yes. Fantastic. Sounds good. All right. Well …

CHEY:       Enjoy your week, Craig.

CRAIG:      Thanks for listening. Thanks, Chey. We’ll see you next week.

[THEME TUNE MUSIC and pause]

End of Transcription: 00:36:30

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