HACKS CENSURE CENSORSHIP IS RIFE – DECENTRALIZED SOCIAL MEDIA ARISING TO COUNTER CHAOTIC MAINSTREAM MEDIA

HACKS, CENSURE, CENSORSHIP IS RIFE – DECENTRALIZED SOCIAL MEDIA ARISING TO COUNTER CHAOTIC MAINSTREAM MEDIA

July 15th, 2020 will most likely go down in history as one of the worst days for Twitter in its 14-year reign as the platform that everybody who’s anybody has an active profile and trusts that their account is secure. It is known as the political discussion platform that world leaders use among other high-profile celebrities and apart from Twitter using its power to effectively flag and censor content they deem disinformation or not acceptable by their standards, it seems hackers can also mess with the accounts.   

An overwhelming hack that was reportedly taking advantage of internal tools by convincing a Twitter employee to assist in the hijacking of many high-profile accounts which enabled the hackers to take control and solicit Bitcoin donations. Among compromised accounts were those of U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden, former U.S. President Barack Obama, Google, Apple, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Kanye, and Kim West along with many well-known people in the crypto space. 

The scale of the attack was enormous but apparently the financial reward was minimal. These hackers brought a $28 billion company to its knees but it seems they only collected a trifling $120,000 in Bitcoin. 

Twitter’s reputation is the real casualty as the impacts are multifold. It’s now evident the hackers had access to private communications for the accounts they penetrated and could’ve been used for much more destructive nature than just scamming crypto. Nevertheless, high-profile accounts were embarrassed, associated with scammers, and locked out of their account, regardless of any security measures they may have taken.  

Given the nature and standing of the users, it’s a mystery how and why it’s even possible for Twitter employees to usurp any account on the platform. While hacks of centralized services are quite common these days, they are rarely broadcasted in such a direct, explosive manner in real-time. 

This period of chaos and confusion went on for several hours and the hits on more accounts continued. Twitter’s response was slow and disorderly and although they must’ve been aware of what was happening, they were either unable or unwilling to shut down the platform during the pandemonium. If the report from vice.com Motherboard is accurate regarding the hackers having assistance from a Twitter employee on the inside, it makes Twitter’s controls look exceptionally weak. 

Accidental Reveal

Furthermore leaked screenshots revealed more information about Twitter’s secretive abilities to control accounts and narratives on the site. This is most damning as it is evidence that Twitter is aggressively deleting from the site and contains such keywords as ‘trends blacklist’ and ‘search blacklist’ which seems to show that Twitter does exercise some editorial bias at what content receives algorithmic boosting and what doesn’t.

This accidental reveal of Twitter’s deboosting tools will strengthen the critics’ view that Twitter is a partisan, editorializing service rather than the neutral one it claims to be. It has also been aggressively pursuing more controls alongside algorithmic, rather than chronological timelines. 

Fact-checking handled by the Moments team at Twitter is a bone of contention. It’s a challenge in areas like science and medicine, where respected authorities enforce established standards of knowledge, but it’s almost impossible in politics.

For instance, flagging President Trump’s Tweets was gutsy but seen as clumsy and although they may be experts on compiling social media posts arranging them into a narrative, it hardly qualifies them as master arbiters of truth.

Plus there’s more direct intervention in trending topics and when you consider that all of these measures make up an arsenal to control speech, it seems the perfect juncture for an autocratic oligarch to censure any discourse involving influential people. 

 

Time To Move On

We’ve come a long way since the first video of a day at the zoo on YouTube, another tech giant receiving bad press for its censorship, which has escalated into class-action lawsuits. What started out as a novel way to communicate, find friends, and deemed as “fun”, is now hazardous to our health, wellbeing, and privacy, even livelihood. 

We have been subject to numerous breaches of trust, and control by the centralized big tech platforms that have become commercialized and overtly politicized, and therefore intervene in political disputes by de-boosting particular topics and also selectively banning individuals, in some cases companies with a concept, idea or technology that threatens the status quo. 

There is growing unrest among users on these platforms that have an established model of total control, including ownership of all users’ content which retains the discretion to both monetize or “cash in” on user-contributed content and kick users off the platform for any reason.

Property rights of users’ content creation should extend to these social media platforms, however, given the current balance of power between the users and platforms, it’s not likely to happen within the current crop internet oligarchs still in the centralized Web 2.0 era. 

Instead, we are seeing a number of social media and video platforms that are censorship-resistant with a focus on privacy emerging.

 


Snapshot of LBRY.TV homepage

LBRY.TV, a video-sharing platform is decentralized with its neutral protocol that allows anyone to post content without reprisal, and stores this information on an immutable blockchain. According to CEO, Jeremy Kauffman, every time a crypto personality gets banned from a big tech platform LBRY has an influx of new users. He says, 

 “If platforms want to make the error of enforcing their political biases on their users, let the free market provide competitors like LBRY that make this problem obsolete. Innovations like LBRY make it so that the interference of Twitter and YouTube is technologically impossible.” 

Notably, LBRY specifies the wanton power to censor and deplatform that centralized platforms apply is one of its motivations for being here and is experiencing positive growth.

 


Snapshot of Minds.com newsfeed

MINDS.COM is a blogging platform that emphasizes its minimization of privacy concerns and self-described as a free “crypto social network” that upholds internet freedom. Founder and CEO, Bill Ottman aims to provide a spying free alternative to mainstream social media and pointed out that surveillance by default with little transparency into how a user’s data is used and sold. He says,

“The growth is typically a direct result of scandals with mainstream media platforms. Every day there’s a new scandal. People are looking for alternatives and want to diversify … The trend is towards open source. We’ve seen this happen in other areas already.”

The Minds platform has plans to add several new features this year and is researching the possibility of a decentralized reputation system. Meanwhile, its growth continues as it is currently trying to attract users from India where the government has banned 59 Chinese apps at the end of June this year. 

Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention

Since working and earning a living from home particularly online-based has become more popular and seen as a necessity in a growing number of cases, there is a platform focused on developing a complete self-sovereign ecosystem for the entrepreneur of all niches and individuals from all walks of life at any level of expertise. It does not discriminate. 

 


Snapshot of Markethive.com newsfeed

MARKETHIVE.COM is the not-so-vertical social market network media broadcasting platform that encompasses all facets of inbound marketing and digital media, built on the blockchain and takes privacy, transparency, censorship, and the ability for users to attain financial freedom very seriously. 

With a built-in newsfeed and messaging system enabling users to collaborate, along with a philosophy, in which users can freely associate and disassociate with – but not ban – other accounts, allows for the coexistence of mutually acrimonious individuals without relying on censorship from management. 

Founder and CEO, Thomas Prendergast says Markethive is a sanctuary to the millions who struggle. Markethive is just getting started. People have been making money with Markethive for years as an inbound marketing platform and saving money from tools that elsewhere would cost a lot of money. Today it has evolved into so much more including storefronts enabling the users to establish or participate in cottage businesses under the Markethive umbrella. He says,

“Markethive is a philanthropic endeavor. To give, not take, to help not exploit. Markethive is a vision with a mission – To empower and bring prosperity to every living soul with a purpose…even if that purpose is only to be free from the shackles of the Social Media tyranny we all face.” 

Still, in BETA, the continuous growth of Markethive is noteworthy as all aspects of the free inbound marketing systems are currently operational along with the micropayment faucet system and airdrops, with the release of the wallets and messenger app just around the corner. Markethive is also preparing for its video platform, conference hub, and ecommerce APIs, along with numerous loyalty programs.

The image below is a comparison chart of leading platforms in the industry and what they offer.

Problem Solved 

Each of these platforms has a monetary incentive in the form of their own cryptocurrency with its primary purpose to free and empower the people and with the politicization of Facebook, Google, and other social media giants, Web 3.0 with crypto is a sign of the times upon us. 

Although there is pressure on the tech giants from critics to stop their behavior and implement some form of decentralization, many say this would not be an easy task and not likely to happen. Even if they did, the way they behave in so many other ways is questionable. 

It has become evident that the solution to an overbearing problem is a social internet built on a decentralized blockchain where users can own and operate without the risk of losing their fundamental right to free speech, sovereignty with a capacity to prosper on all levels. 

This is a new era with the evolution of technology and the next generation. What would be even better is if these stand-alone vertical platforms work towards becoming interoperable thereby creating a collaborative network across the internet.

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN MCAFEE – A LIVING LEGEND NOW GHOST

JOHN MCAFEE – A LIVING LEGEND NOW “GHOST”

John McAfee, founder of McAfee Associates and developer of the first antivirus software would have to be one of the most fascinating characters, principled but arguably has a unique set of values and jawdropping life experiences. In the eyes of some, he is a legend, for others, the most controversial figure that speaks his mind fervently. 

McAfee has had an eventful working life starting out as a door to door salesman, progressing to silicon valley working for numerous tech companies, and a software developer and cryptanalyst, with his biggest claim to fame being McAfee Software, among other things. With a fascinating life comes fascinating anecdotes, very outspoken, nothing is off-limits, and now an avid cryptocurrency supporter with a focus on privacy, not only talking about it but doing something about it

His life has also been filled with substance abuse, numerous lawsuits, and arrests including being involved and wanted for questioning in the murder of his neighbor in Belize in 2012. McAfee has incarcerated 21 times in 11 countries, albeit for non-violent crimes, always finding a loophole with the aid of his lawyers resulting in his release. On two occasions he faked a heart attack and a stroke to buy time for his defense. This guy is a regular Houdini.

McAfee tweets,

“My life has consisted of a series of close calls. Authorities call me "Slippery". I don't know. I only know that I will answer only to God. Not to man.”

Running For POTUS Twice – Why Not? 

In September 2015 he decided to start a new political party called The Cyber Party. He also ran for President in 2016, attempting to join the Libertarian Party, but he failed to win the nomination, with New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson winning it instead. 

With over a million followers on Twitter and just because he can, McAfee announced on June 3, 2018, via Twitter that he would run for president again in 2020, either with the Libertarian Party or under the banner of a party of his own creation. 

On January 22, 2019, McAfee announced that he would be continuing his campaign "in exile", following reports that he, his wife, and four of his campaign staff were being indicted for tax-related felonies by the IRS. McAfee indicated that he was in "international waters in his untraceable cage”

On March 4, 2020, McAfee ended his presidential campaign and endorsed Vermin Supreme, as he decided to run for the 2020 Libertarian Party vice-presidential race. The next day, McAfee tweeted that he was re-entering the 2020 Libertarian presidential primary after none of the other Libertarian candidates would “accept  him as their VP running mate.” At the 2020 Libertarian National Convention, McAfee was not nominated for president or vice-president.

In April, McAfee announced that he would be the running mate of Adam Kokesh, a competitor for the nomination, and also endorsed him for president, even though McAfee decided to continue his campaign for the presidency.

In May, Jo Jorgensen was nominated at the 2020 Libertarian National Convention, thus suspending McAfee's campaign.

The Reality

Too crazy to be elected, too rare to not be considered. The reality is McAfee doesn’t want the top job although he says would enjoy causing a stink and embarrassing the candidates on stage in the debates. He will also continue to challenge and debate on his Twitter feed. At his first AMA with the Libertarian Party, he says he does not consider himself a top presidential candidate, saying,

“I don’t want to be president. Who wants that job? We have bigger problems, people. The presidents’ lost their power back in 1960 and today they are called transients by the real manipulators and influencers who are the departments and agencies like the CIA filled with career people at the highest level who never retire…]” 

In addition to that, he says

“manipulation and influence have become institutionalized in our government”. Please people, if anybody out there thinks that I especially can ever be president of the United States, move, please, out of your mother’s basement and see the real world”. 

He goes on to explain what we as a nation can do. We can change the hearts, the minds, and the perceptions of the American public if we are realistic. Anyone can run for president and deservedly be in the spotlight but for a Libertarian to actually win the election, in a predominantly two-party preferred race it’s not realistic.   

“Victory is not winning the presidency, victory is being true to your beliefs and acting as you believe and letting the world see that. Please God, let us be real in this election”. 

  

Staying One Step Ahead Of The Feds

McAfee has been on the run from the US government for alleged charges of tax evasion narrowingly escaping arrest on several occasions. He admits he hasn’t paid income tax for 11 years, and the government actually ignored him for 8 of those years, until he was discovered giving talks about how to avoid paying income tax. In an interview with news.bitcoin.com, John McAfee believes and states,

“I’ve already paid over $50 million in taxes in my lifetime. I have not received $50 million in services. If anything I should be the one asking for a f*****g refund.”

He goes on to say that not filing a tax return is not an offense, but not being truthful about the ones you do submit is. McAfee has not filed a tax return and believes his arrest would be unlawful. 

He also says,

“Income taxes in my mind and heart, as I see the reality around us, are unconstitutional, illegal, and it pushed us back into a feudal society of over 1,000 years ago. Because what is a feudal society? One in which you belong to the king.”

McAfee and his wife Janice are staying one step ahead of the IRS and now also the SEC in light of McAfee DEX, his decentralized exchange which he launched last year, and according to McAfee are two of the most corrupt agencies of the US government. 

In a recent interview he explains that when he worked for MGT Capital Investments, a technology holding company, these agencies went after the $800 million company just to get him, which destroyed the company. They got wind of the fact McAfee was speaking out on international stages on how to avoid paying taxes by using cryptocurrency. Consequently, McAfee resigned amicably and was extremely apologetic to MGT. 

“They’re supposed to protect shareholders and just because they want me, thousands of stockholders lost everything. That’s corruption if you ask me.” 

 

We’re Not Where We Say We Are

Still underground where no one, not even family knows where they are, John and Janice McAfee post disinformation on his twitter feed so no one can track them. They may travel for a day, take photos, then come back to their hideout, post the photos saying "here we are.” He also claims to have 7 body doubles and Janice has 6. However, MacAfee makes no secret that they are in a Russian speaking country, but where that is exactly, is anyone’s guess.

 

About Face On Bitcoin Prediction

McAfee has changed his mind about his infamous bitcoin prediction and declaration that had the world talking, calling his previous prediction of Bitcoin hitting $1 million by the end of 2020 as total nonsense adding that people who believed in the absurd forecast should wake up. 

In a tweet, he stated correlating the entire North American continent GDP as an example to explain why his prediction was just a joke saying,

“If Bitcoin ever hit $1 mil, it's market cap would be greater than the GDP of the entire North American Continent.”

In another tweet, McAfee described Bitcoin as “ancient” tech and his prediction on the price going to $1 million was simply his trick to lure new users into the crypto space.

“Bitcoin was first. It's an ancient technology.  All know it. Newer blockchains have privacy, smart contracts, distributed apps and more.”

 

McAfee’s Latest Innovation

John McAfee, the cybersecurity mogul turned fugitive is still making waves and creating innovations that even have NASDAQ intrigued with his latest controversial project – the world’s first fully untraceable 4G data service titled “The Ghost Cell Phone Data Service.”  

This operates through electronic SIM technology, which allows phones to connect to a special data service network without the use of a physical SIM card. The special data service network is constructed from a number of technologies that make it impossible for connections to be tracked or traced.

Whilst only supported phones will be able to access the network, the offering is already poised to support some of the world’s most popular models, including a number of Google, Samsung, and iPhone handsets. 

                                                                                         

Phone owners will be able to access the service without having to supply any personal information. The service is prepaid, without any contract, and only requires users to scan a QR code supplied upon purchase to connect.

The service forms part of McAfee’s new Ghost ecosystem, which currently includes Ghost cryptocurrency and the GhostX Exchange. GHOST is a Proof of Stake privacy coin to help make you nothing but a "ghost" when transacting online!

McAfee is now reportedly looking for members of the mainstream media who are interested in the service to take part in the beta-testing stage, with global launch expected in September. 

Life In Exile

It seems that John McAfee always has something in the works including an autobiography that will be published next year and forthcoming movie. But according to him he and his wife now lead a boring life in exile watching the television for about 6 hours a day including the show, "The Family Guy". Now at 74 years old, still drinking like a fish and smoking like a trouper, so what’s his secret? 

McAfee describes himself as an explorer, an entrepreneur, lover of life, a lover of freedom, and very no-nonsense in spite of the absurdity of his colorful life. He just wants people to “wake up” and will continue to be outspoken on various issues, doing whatever he can to level the playing field, helping people to take back their freedom and fight tyranny and oppression. 

 

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

 

 

 

WHAT IS A UNICORN COMPANY?

WHAT IS A UNICORN COMPANY?

  • Who Are They?
  • How Are They Valuated?
  • What’s Expected Of Them?
  • How Are They Perceived? 

Unicorn is a term used in the venture funds industry to indicate a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion and usually no more than 10 years old. The term was coined in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures. 

At that stage, there were only 39 companies that were considered to be unicorns. She looked at software startups founded in the 2000s and estimated that only 0.07% of them ever reach $1 billion valuations. She noted startups that managed to reach the $1 billion mark, are so rare that finding one is as difficult as finding a mythical unicorn.

According to Lee, the first unicorn companies were founded in the 1990s with Alphabet (GOOG) or Google as it is now called, being the super-unicorn of the group with a valuation of over $100 billion. Many more unicorns came along in the 2000s with Facebook being at the top of the list and classed as the only super-unicorn for that decade.

Categorizing these companies have evolved and the terms used now are, Decacorn which is for those companies over $10 billion, while Hectocorn is used for such a company that valued over $100 billion.

Since Lee’s publication, the term unicorn, is widely used and refers to startups in the technology, mobile, and information technology sectors and usually integrates all three, questionably supported by their fundamental finances.  

 

Average Life Of A Unicorn 

According to Google, there were 465 unicorns as of April 2020. The largest unicorns included Ant Financial, Didi, Airbnb, Stripe, and Palantir Technologies. The most recent Decacorn is Lyft which became a public company on March 29, 2019. Generally, these billion-dollar valued unicorns become a public company or are bought out or merged with another successful public company. 

In 1999 the average life of a company was 4 years before it went public. Now that has been stretched out to 11 years before a venture-supported technology company is listed. This is brought about by an increased amount of private capital available to unicorns, along with the increase of the number of shareholders a company can have before it is required to disclose its financials publicly. Notably, private investors can only take a position on unicorns when they choose to list.

 

No Need For An IPO

Through many funding rounds, companies do not need to go through an initial public offering (IPO) to obtain capital or a higher valuation as they can just go back to their investors for more capital. IPOs also run the risk of devaluation of a company if the public market thinks a company is worth less than its investors. 

Just two examples of this situation were Square, best known for its mobile payments and financial services business, and Trivago, a popular German hotel search engine, both of which were priced below their initial offer prices by the market. 

This was because of the severe over-valuation of both companies in the private market by investors and venture capital firms. The market did not agree with both companies' valuations, which in turn, dropped the price of each stock from their initial IPO range.

 

Where And Who Are The Unicorns?

Unicorns are concentrated in a few countries/regions: China (125), United States (124), India (27), South Korea (11), UK (10), Israel (7), Sweden (6), Indonesia (6), Singapore (4), France (3), Hong Kong (3), Portugal (3), Switzerland (3), Australia (2), Estonia (2), Belgium (2), Canada (2), Germany (2), Ukraine (2), and fourteen other countries (1 each). 

The Top 10 Unicorn companies are listed in this image below

Former Unicorns 

Below are the top 10 unicorns that exited due to an IPO or Acquisitions

Click the link to view the full list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_companies
NOTE: The companies in red on this list do not have a website. 

 

The Valuation Of A Unicorn

The valuation of a startup company to be classed as a unicorn is unique in comparison to more established companies. For an established company, the valuation stems from past years’ performance, while a startup valuation is derived from its growth opportunities and expected development, so there is no actual math to estimate startups’ valuations. 

Valuations for unicorns usually come from funding rounds of large venture capital firms. To give such high valuations in funding rounds, venture capital firms have to believe in the vision of both the entrepreneur and the company as a whole. They have to believe the company can evolve from its unstable, uncertain present standing into a company that can generate and sustain moderate growth in the future. This approach can backfire as it did when it hurt Softbank, a leading investor in WeWork who took a $4.6 billion hit when the company failed to float in 2019. 

A very significant final valuation of startups is when a much larger company buys out a company and gives them that unicorn valuation. For example when Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion.

Bill Gurley, a partner at venture capital firm Benchmark predicted in March 2015 and earlier that the rapid increase in the number of unicorns may "have moved into a world that is both speculative and unsustainable", that will leave in its wake what he terms "dead unicorns". Also, he said that the main reason for Unicorns' valuation is the "excessive amount of money" available for them. 

Similarly, in 2015 William Danoff who manages the Fidelity Contrafund said unicorns might be "going to lose a bit of luster" due to their more frequent occurrence and several cases of their stock price being devalued. Research by Stanford professors published in 2018 suggests that unicorns are overvalued by an average of 48%. 

 

It’s In The Numbers

Businesses on the internet have made great headway. Some of the biggest businesses in the world, including Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple, are solidly established in the online tech world. A lot of other companies also have large, tangible revenue growth and earnings. They don’t buy users or customers with the hope of making money considering the inevitable attrition rate when those users eventually change their behavior. 

So valuations shouldn’t depend on imaginary future earnings but on actual returns and EBITDA. (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) Amortization being affiliate fees or payments of an obligation of a series of installments or transfers. 

Some argue that venture investors are getting over-enthusiastic when pricing businesses, inflating the price of startups that should be valued in the millions, not billions. Instead of carrying out proper risk analysis, they are diving in out of a fear of missing out on the supposedly next big thing.

 

Path To Profitability – The New Watchword

Silicon Valley’s crop of highly valued tech start-ups, which include Uber and Airbnb, now household names, all benefited from the mass adoption of smartphones and cheap cloud computing. Many of these companies built global empires by simply taking existing businesses, like taxis, food delivery, hotels, etc, and making them mobile, based online. 

Now we are seeing the likes of robotics and Artificial intelligence (AI) startups wanting to be a contender for the next big thing in unicorns. However, growth at all costs has gone out the window after years of IPOs being done without much focus on profits. “Path to profitability” is the new watchword according to Ryan Dzierniejko of Sequoia along with Michael Moritz, another Sequoia partner who says  “The law of economic gravity has returned as it does every decade or so”.

 

There are a considerable number of unicorn companies and the valuations seem to grow beyond the imagination of anyone. Is this the tech bubble 2.0?

 

The Unicorn Reality Check

Even before it was declared a global state of emergency due to COVID-19 on March 13, 2020, the unicorn reality check was underway with venture capitalists reckoning that a third of American unicorns would thrive, a third would disappoint and a third would be subject to an acquisition or die. Some are calling it the next dotcom bubble which burst 20 years ago with the advent of the internet and others are more optimistic. Either way, startup pastures that emerge in the aftermath of this economic upheaval will look very different. 

The past decade saw huge sums of money from sovereign-wealth funds, also mutual and hedge funds pour in, either directly or via VC firms into startups that were unicorns or at the very least their backers believed they might be soon. 

The jubilation began to diminish last year in May 2019, with Uber’s downturn of $43 billion, down more than a third of what it was on its first day of trading. Then, in October, WeWork, a “techie” office-rental group, scrapped its IPO after it became clear that investors had no appetite for shares in a firm that lost as much money as it generated in revenues. Its valuation was cut from $47bn to less than $8bn.

However, for Airbnb, a home-sharing website will bounce back from seeing bookings fall by 40% as the pandemic restricted travel and a possible delay of its IPO, (which was expected to be this year’s biggest) because, despite its losses of late, it is well managed and cash-rich. It also has an unmatched global reach and is likely to be back on track, making money once people are free to travel.

UNICORN – The New Buzzword In Marketing

Unicorns have come a long way since Aileen Lee coined the term in 2013, to convey wonder and rarity. Nowadays every startup wants to be one, for bragging rights and to hire the cleverest coders. Some are portraying themselves to be the next super unicorn to impress and lead potential users, consumers, and possibly victims into believing that the company is positioned to reach great heights and needless to say, using the term completely out of context. 

 “For millennials and Gen Zs being a unicorn became a filter,” says Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of Coursera, a unicorn company that offers online learning courses and university degree programs.

 A small Austin-based scooter startup called itself, simply, Unicorn. It was said to be an attempt to leverage the popularized name and what it stood for, as on a psychological level, people will tend to gravitate towards what they believe identifies as successful. The outcome? It subsequently failed when the firm went bust in December of 2019, after spending all its cash on Google and Facebook ads.

Artificial intelligence is a very generic term and used by many different industries for various use-cases, however, AI is being used in a way that is basically unchained and they’re not making smart decisions about it. It’s heading into areas that people don’t know about, giving it too much power and control and will ultimately get burned. It’s all about competition and the race to see who will create the best AI for any given industry.   

Too many unicorns rest on shaky and opaque financial structures that may exaggerate their lofty valuations. These include “not-so-techy” capital-intensive firms such as WeWork, where accommodating more customers means leasing more physical office space. 

Also, direct-to-consumer retailers such as Casper, which sell flashy bedding. The co-founder, Neil Parikh declared in 2016 that, “We consider ourselves a tech company first,” Stock Market investors considered it a mattress retailer. In February it listed at $575m, less than half its $1.1bn private valuation.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) used in marketing is more about automating simple tasks that allow us to free up more of our time to be strategic, effective, and less repetitive. It’s about improving processes while still keeping that human touch with customers and prospects. So you could say it’s automated intelligence. Some companies are taking it to the extreme with hype boasting they are first and foremost a tech company, and completely AI-based, but it is simply to generate a buzz.

 

 

The Next Unicorn

In terms of the next unicorn Randy Komisar of Kleiner Perkins, a big VC firm, offers an alternative rule of thumb. For a unicorn to count as genuinely “tech”, and therefore profitably scalable, its actual product must be technology, he says, “it can’t just be using technology.” 
Businesses selling physical goods or services and startups offering online solutions with an already established market without proprietary technology often don’t make the cut. 

As it stands now, even viable listings are on ice until the markets’ pandemic fever breaks. In the interim, the unicorn sphere is talking about consolidating. Softbank reportedly wants Uber Eats and Door Dash to merge. In the USA, Uber may try to charm Lyft into merging, whose share price has fallen faster than its own.

There is no magic formula for identifying the next unicorn company and only time will tell us whether the unicorn boom is a bubble or not. If today’s big startups go on to secure significant profits for their investors, they’ll be looked back on as a smart opportunity well taken. If they go the way of WeWork, then the unicorn boom will be remembered alongside the dotcom bubble as an example of investor folly.

 

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

 

 

Kanye’s Shock Announcement To Run For President In 2020

Kanye’s Shock Announcement To Run For President In 2020

The presidential election is not going to be boring this year as Kanye West has announced that he plans to run for president. West made this announcement on July 4, 2020, and at the height of the Independence Day celebrations, the real fireworks began when he broke the news on Twitter with a picture of the American flag and the hashtag 2020vision. declaring,

“We must now realize the promise of America by trusting God, unifying our vision, and building our future. I am running for president of the United States.” 

This comes five years after West promised to run for president while at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2015. However, after a meeting with President Trump in 2018 where his show of support for the president stirred controversy, the 21-time Grammy Award winner said he would no longer pursue a career in politics, tweeting at the time, 

"My eyes are now wide open and now realize I've been used to spread messages I don't believe in. I am distancing myself from politics and completely focusing on being creative !!!" 

But by late 2019, Kanye had changed his mind and said he would launch a presidential campaign in 2024 after all. During an appearance at Fast Company's Innovation Festival, the star rapper shared, 

"When I run for president in 2024, we would've created so many jobs that I'm not going to run, I'm going to walk."

It’s a possibility that due to controversial events in the last 12 months could have sparked West’s decision to run for POTUS this year instead, with only four months to go before the election. It has also been opined that West’s race for the upcoming election could siphon votes from Biden to Trump’s advantage. So in actuality, West is more of a spoiler than a contender. 

If West does actually want to run for president, he would have to do so as an independent. And even that would need to acquire the necessary signatures to get on November's ballot. Bad news for voters in Indiana, Maine, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, and Texas as the deadline has already passed to file and you won't get a chance to vote for West. (Unless you want to write him in.)

Kim Kardashian West (Kanye West’s wife) has spent a fair amount of time at the White House over the past few years and met with Trump to push the criminal reform policy. She first met with the president in 2018 when she secured the commutation of a Tennessee woman's life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense. She is also doing a law degree which would certainly be in her favor as a first lady. 

Although many believe this flash announcement to be ludicrous and a stunt for publicity, West has the full support of Tesla’s, Elon Musk endorsing his twitter post almost immediately along with many others. 

 

Only a week prior to the announcement, Kanye West, the Christian rapper, Jesus Is King star, released the first single off his upcoming album “God’s Country” titled “Wash Us In The Blood” which would make a “hella interesting” campaign song for the hard-hitting, multi-tasking artist. 

There’s a powerful message behind this song that sounds nothing like a prayer but it’s Kanye’s way to drive home and show you the urgency of his call to action for the oppression and injustice in the world where Kanye says things must change. He calls out to God and the Holy Spirit for help and says “We need you now” as people are dying and the world is in chaos and a change has to happen sooner. 

The White House has been the home of an actor (Reagan), now an entrepreneur/TV personality, (Trump), and now possibly a born again power rapper. All I know is something’s got to give and make way for real transformational change. As the saying goes “ stranger things have happened” and I guess only time will tell if West and his supporters are serious about this humongous endeavor. 

 

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals. 

 

 

 

THE INBOUNDOUTBOUND MARKETING EVOLUTION -THE BUYER’SJOURNEY

THE INBOUND/OUTBOUND MARKETING EVOLUTION – THE BUYER'S JOURNEY

 

My introduction to online marketing consisted of a training course that heavily focused on a form of email marketing, mainly safelists, which I found to be a very confusing and overwhelming strategy that involved numerous email accounts and hundreds of advertising sites that took up all my time with very little results. After a while, I felt totally disillusioned and burned out with that and turned to social media marketing of sorts which was okay for a while but then became frustrating and nonsensical. 

Then by chance, I came across Inbound Marketing and it all made sense to me. “Inbound marketing” was a term coined by Hubspot which was founded in 2005, but invented and established nearly a decade earlier by Markethive (operating as Veretekk) way back in 1996 and known as Automated Marketing. For many companies needing to cater to the customer and prospects’ needs and as competition became more fierce they turned to inbound marketing to help give them the edge. 

 

Outbound Marketing

Prior to inbound marketing, we relied upon more traditional methods known as Outbound Marketing which included TV, radio and print ads, billboards, etc. Then with the internet, came paid and rented email lists, banner and display ads, most social media advertising, pop-ups, and pop-unders, etc. In direct contrast to Inbound marketing, these tactics have traditionally been thought of as interruptions and frowned upon, labeled as invasive, and often seen as driving an ideal buyer away. 

Outbound marketing aims at trying to reach as many people as possible, whether or not they are active buyers and in some cases has its merits. 

 

 

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy by which you drive prospects to your website rather than outwardly advertising your products or services. The idea is that bringing potential customers to your website will familiarize them with your brand and offerings through targeted content, tailored to the needs and basic questions of people and offering solutions. Ideally, you’ll build a virtual relationship with the prospect, making it more likely that they will choose your product or service when they’re ready to buy. 

Typically inbound marketing involves blogging or content creation and integrates email marketing, marketing automation, social media monitoring & publishing, SEO, and analytics all in one. It incorporates landing pages and a content management system that assists you in optimizing your content. 

Outbound marketing brings your offering to your prospects. Inbound marketing brings your prospects to you. 

 

Inbound Marketing is a marketing methodology focused on attracting, educating, and empowering consumers via relevant content that actually helps and guides them until they are ready to purchase your product or service. That road to purchase is the buyer’s journey, an active exploration or research process that a buyer goes through, prior to and leading up to the actual purchase.

Out With The Old – In With The New

Back in the day, when I needed to buy something I would pace the shopping mall, searching and comparing until I found what suited me. When I bought my car I went directly to the car yard, talked to the salesperson to learn my options, get answers to my questions, took it for a test drive, and bought it. 

Now I search online before I take a step out of my home and go directly to that store I found most helpful online or maybe buy it online. The way we buy is evolving and according to Google, buyers on average now conduct 70% or more of their research online to help them with a purchasing decision, even before they think about contacting someone in sales or reaching out to a company for more information on their products and services. 

With any sales and marketing method, it must continue to evolve just as consumers’ buying behaviors are evolving. So what does that mean for marketers in the digital world?

Inbound marketing is a strategic process that has several elements to it and some of those elements are not just technical but to gain an insight into the psychological aspect. We need to understand what stages a prospective buyer goes through before making a purchasing decision.

Another way of looking at it is that inbound marketing is designed to better align you and your business with the Buyer’s Journey, which is becoming the natural process that today’s buyer goes through when searching for a solution online.

The internet, along with inbound marketing platforms, has made it easier for marketers to engage customers at the various stages of their journey using content marketing. That’s one of the main reasons that 88% of B2B marketers are using custom content marketing, which is up a whopping 86% from 2015.

 

What Is The Buyer's Journey? 

The Buyer's Journey was first described in 1968, long before the internet, and was perceived as a linear process.   However, today’s customers are sophisticated, savvy consumers who do their research and the internet has made it very easy to access a wide range of information, so these stages are not so cut and dried and it is why we need to be customer-centric in our inbound marketing efforts, with consistent and current relevant content. 

Each stage of the inbound buyer’s journey requires unique content types that range from website pages and blog articles to downloadable offers and video demonstrations. So the new Buyer's journey takes place online and inbound marketers have a golden opportunity to go the extra mile by helping them reach a decision with custom content that will attract and delight the potential buyer. 

 

The three basic stages of the Inbound Buyer's Journey are Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. 

  1. Awareness Stage: Through online research, the buyer is trying to identify their own problems and looking for answers, resources, education, research data, opinions, and insight.  
  2. Consideration Stage: Once the buyer has identified their problem, they begin more heavy research of specific solutions for that problem, whether it’s a good fit for them which leads them to potential solution providers, partners, or vendors.
  3. Decision Stage: After engaging with enough expert, trust-building content, the buyer can filter their solution provider list down and make a confident decision in who they want to work with or buy from.

Inbound marketing is designed to help prospects discover your business in the early stages of the Buyer’s Journey and to educate them on the benefits of your solution for them, all while building trust throughout the process.

 

The Strengths Of Inbound

Although inbound marketing is the preferred method and considered to be more successful due to its not only holistic but an empathic approach, outbound marketing, albeit marketer centric, still has a place, and to determine which one suits your purpose, you need to consider your specific business, audience, and marketing objectives. 

One of the biggest advantages of inbound marketing and what gives it substance is that it focuses on providing value for prospects. It’s educational and in some cases non-promotional and as inbound marketing aligns with the Buyer's Journey, it builds a relationship between your prospects and brand and is not seen as an annoying interruption. Rather it helps the buyer as they are already researching and obviously ready to buy.

Another major strength of inbound marketing is the long term return on investment (ROI) Whether it be sweat equity or money that you’ve invested, this strategy tends to have slower results for the first few months, however, those initial stages are necessary to build your digital marketing assets. It allows you to build your presence online and rank higher in the search engines. 

Eventually, the value of those assets will increase and your outlay to maintain or improve will be less. Digital assets like blog articles and perpetual choice offers can continue to generate leads years after they were originally created without costing an extra cent. 

 

What About Outbound?

The biggest strength of outbound marketing is its ability to get in front of a large number of people quickly and build awareness. When it’s done correctly, you can launch an outbound marketing campaign, get seen by millions, and have new customers within a few weeks, but the results usually depend on the amount of money you invest. 

The more you spend, the more results you get and when you stop investing, the results diminish. With outbound marketing, you don’t accumulate many tangible, long-term assets that continue to generate leads as you do with Inbound marketing. Plus, these days, outbound is generally more disliked by the consumer.

Having said that, there are businesses that have found great success by using inbound or outbound exclusively. There are many that have utilized both consecutively and have had tremendous results. Your marketing strategy really depends on your market, your type of buyer, and your goals. 

 

What Are Your Goals? 

What are you trying to achieve? Do you want to build brand awareness? Drive traffic? How many customers are you aiming to get and what’s your timeline for that goal?

Inbound marketing is the best long-term strategy, however, it will take time and probably won’t dramatically increase business in the first few months. 

Outbound marketing, on the other hand, can help you get customers in the door quickly, but it comes with diminishing returns.

Ideally, the best strategy is to combine a little of both, by taking an inbound approach to both, using outbound for brand awareness, following up with inbound for relationship, and brand-building.

This means you are measuring results accurately and you’re aiming for long-term brand-building alongside short-term growth.

 

Looking After Your Brand And Reputation

It’s important to consider how the tactics you deploy will affect your brand’s image. Launching an aggressive cold-calling campaign or obnoxiously posting fruitless or misleading advertisements too much on peoples’ newsfeeds may get a few sales, but how will that affect your reputation long-term? 

You only want to use marketing tactics that your brand can be proud of and that your customers would approve of if they knew how you executed them. More often than not, the truth comes out and it’s incredibly difficult to overcome a bad reputation.

 

Balance Your Outbound With Inbound

Here at Markethive, we believe in an inbound-focused approach that also uses outbound marketing when appropriate. This means using outbound channels like the Banner program where you can purchase banner impressions from our Banner Impressions Exchange. Your banners are displayed internally at Markethive and externally on numerous domains. 

This will successfully get your business in front of potential buyers, then by using Markethive’s inbound tools you will be focusing more on assisting with the buyer’s journey rather than selling upfront. This works because people are more likely to engage in a brand that helps them understand the buying process, instead of simply asking for their money.

The Next Generation

Markethive has been in the Inbound Marketing business for 25 years and is an ever-evolving platform. Now integrated with Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency as of 2018, it’s certainly keeping up with the changes and advances the marketing realm is experiencing with many still stuck in the old school ways. 

Markethive is always evolving and right now in the process of building a new engineering team to take its funnels (Pagemaker System) integrated into its landing pages which are groups or otherwise known as Storefronts. A self-replicating system will be added to these pages and aligning autoresponders, along with assignment rotators. This makes it Turnkey for members to just walk in and gain great results of a powerful inbound marketing campaign, utilizing another unique feature within this system – the CO-OP engine. 

Markethive delivers a proven Inbound Marketing platform outfitted with email autoresponders, blogging platforms, landing pages, social media broadcasting, Tracking analytics, SEO, backlinking automation, messaging, ecommerce, and SEO which is designed to build a large loyal long-term customer base. The benefits of these systems are to “attract”, “convert”. “close” and “delight” an individual on the buyers’ journey. 

This next-generation platform also has multiple commerce platforms, digital media sites, along a social network bringing together a community of aspiring entrepreneurs and marketers evoking a collaborative mindset. Above all its other benefits, Markethive is a concept and a vision with a focus on providing a universal income for all and being built on the blockchain allows Markethive to pay its members for all activity, regardless if you’re a free member or upgrade to one of our loyalty programs or memberships. 

We believe sharing our resources with you as you build your business and seek to reach your goals, benefits all of us. We welcome all to our collaborative world and ecosystem for the Entrepreneur, Markethive, the Market Network, built for you, by you, and with you.

 

ecosystem for entrepreneurs

 

Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals.