Don’t Be Alarmed

You’ve likely heard by now that Hawaii had a little scare last weekend. Okay, more than a little scare, to be honest.

“For 38 minutes on January 13, residents and tourists in Hawaii scrambled to react to a terrifying emergency alert on their phones that read: ‘BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.’”

It was a false alarm.

A Click (or two) Away from Disaster

At ground zero for the incident sat an unnamed employee who, during a shift change, allegedly clicked the wrong option while queueing up a routine drill and deployed the emergency notifications in question, according to USA Today’s report.

Reactions to the mistake ranged from terror to mindful nonchalance and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, whose department is responsible for regulating the emergency alert system and its participants, condemned it as absolutely unacceptable.

Silver Linings, New Playbook

Had this happened on purpose or by other means, the circumstances would be unforgivable. But it is providing troves of information about emergency responses and how states, like Hawaii, prepare their populations for them.

“This is probably going to be the single greatest learning experience that any state has ever had in trying to figure out how to respond to an immediate threat,” Hawaii state representative, Chris Lee, said.

While drills are commonly used to train responders and civilians alike about ideal responses in an emergency, the pressure and immediacy of a true crisis can change how people react and process the situation.

As far as many locals and visitors to Hawaii were concerned, it was a true, end-of-the-world type crisis for the 38 minutes before the mistake was announced across the alert system, yet no related injuries or deaths have been reported and society didn’t descend into utter chaos. Bravo!

The whole situation has also shed light on the alert system as a whole, and how it’s managed, which will help make improvements to the emergency playbook that can hopefully be adopted across the states.

Healthier Feed for the Feed

The algorithm behind Facebook’s News Feed, that eternally-scrollable “Home” page, is receiving its annual overhaul, meaning that what it chooses to show you is changing.

Based on your interactions with friends and brands across the platform, the algorithm in question learns what type of posts and ads to display in order to maximize your overall time on Facebook. After all, Facebook makes money based on the number of eyeballs it can put on advertisements, so displaying the most sponsored content as possible helps pad their wallets.

That being said, the new algorithm sounds like a step in the right direction for users like you and I.

There’re just so many ads on Facebook these days

You may have noticed that, over the past few years, the News Feed has slowly been hijacked by sponsored posts and branded content. This takes virtual real estate away from the stuff you joined Facebook for in the first place: posts penned by actual friends and family.

Facebook’s head honcho, recognizing that this defeats the primary purpose of the platform for end users, is taking it in a new direction. “‘We want to make sure that our products are not just fun, but are good for people,’ Mr. Zuckerberg said. ‘We need to refocus the system.’”

That refocus just cost the company a whopping $25 billion in market capitalization, but that’s the price of making things better for users.

This new focus will favor posts from the people you follow, over viral videos and sponsored articles, in an attempt to turn passive users into active engagers. Ultimately, we’ll wind up with a purer, people-driven social media experience.

"In our view, making the feed more relevant should boost user and engagement growth over time," Mark Mahaney, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients. "Facebook is making the service more social and less media, and that’s likely a positive for the vast majority of users."

To the chagrin of brands

This change comes at a cost to brands, who have gotten used to a pay-to-play model in order to reach audiences on Facebook. They used to be able to pay the bouncer (aka the algorithm) for a seat at the table (aka your News Feed). Now it’s looking like they’ll have to work harder to secure those seats.

“Publishers, nonprofits, small business and many other groups rely on the social network to reach people, so de-emphasizing their posts will most likely hurt them,” reports the NY Times.

This could ultimately create incentive for brands to create truly engaging content, worthy of conversation and sharing, so that it qualifies for the new News Feed. We could see this creating a more healthy ecosystem for local, independent publishers and organizations to flourish.

We’ve got our fingers crossed!

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