Episode 70 – Online vs. Personal Reviews, Dark UX, Alex Inc., and Instagram API Updates

This week, our hosts Rai, Kyle, Min, and Mitch get into some brand new and exciting updates for marketers including the Instagram API updates that are rolling out for business accounts this week. We also get into the nitty-gritty on user behavior by diving into the world of dark UX and discuss where millennials and younger generations are getting their product recommendations from. 

 

Online vs. Personal Reviews [4:30]
Alex Inc. [7:50]
Dark UX [13:00]
Instagram API Updates [21:15]

Online vs. Personal Reviews

Online product reviews are more important than ever, but could they be surpassing word of mouth as a trusted source? Mitch tells us some shocking information on the trustworthiness of online reviews for younger generations. From something as small as an app recommendation to something as major as buying a car, online reviews quickly becoming the #1 source of information.

 

“Millennials and a little younger aren’t going to parents or friends for reviews anymore. They don’t trust them.” -Mitch
“Online reviews are huge right now. Even with something as important as a financial app, people are going to online reviews rather than their real-life friends.” -Mitch
“I do ask my friends and family for opinions, but I prefer online reviews because you can get such a wide variety of opinions from a larger pool of people.” -Rai
“If you’re researching a product or service, your friends and family may have only tried one or two products in that category. Online, you can get reviews for everything.” -Rai
“As a millennial, I wouldn’t trust my dad for an app recommendation!” -Kyle
“I just bought a new car. When I was first looking, I read a lot of online reviews first, and THEN I started asking for opinions from friends.” -Min

Alex Inc.

Zach Braff is starring in a new ABC show about our favorite topic, podcasting! Kyle gives us the rundown of this new show as well as providing some facts about the real-life story that it’s based on.

 

“The show is based on a podcast known as ‘Startup.’” -Kyle
“Basically, Zach Braff’s character is a journalist that isn’t enjoying it anymore, so he starts up his own podcast. The story kind of goes how he gets funded, kind of ‘Silicon Valley’ – esque” -Kyle
“The real story is really cool because it was started in 2014 by a company called Gimlet Media and the idea was that it was going to be sort of a narrative style podcast about real life.” -Kyle
“What was really interesting around this time was that people were saying that podcasts weren’t going to last. It was just something people did in their basement for fun and that there wasn’t any money in it.” -Kyle
“Podcasts were around in 2014, but they definitely weren’t as popular as they are now.” -Kyle

Dark UX Patterns

Min describes a UX pattern that we all have experienced before, but we might not have put a name to. Dark UX. It refers to misleading or hard to understand UX that can be deceiving for anyone, especially for older users or those with vision impairment. Have you ever been bamboozled by a dark UX feature?

 

“Dark UX is loosely defined as a way to trick users into performing certain actions that benefit the company and leave the user out-of-pocket. Whether that be money, or your email address, or your privacy, they’re taking it form you.” -Min
“Companies are disguising advertisements, sneaking additional items into your cart, making it difficult for users to cancel subscriptions, and they’re making you share information you did not intend to.” -Min
“Facebook and Amazon are two of the biggest offenders when it comes to Dark UX.” -Min
“For Prime, the way that you get out of paying for anything is by clicking a teeny blue link at the bottom of a pop-up that says ‘no thanks.’ For 5% of the population, this text is too small and too light colored to read.” -Min
“These companies take advantage of the elderly, people with less language proficiency, and people with disabilities because they just can’t understand the language being used.” -Min

Instagram API Updates

The moment all social media marketers have been waiting for has arrived! Through select third-party Facebook Partners, you are now able to schedule Instagram posts for business pages! Rai walks us through this new update and gives us an overview of other nifty features included in this new update. For more information, check out this great blog post by Mitch!

 

“Instagram came out with a few new updates to their API that are in effect for business accounts. Some of these new accounts should be available for personal accounts beginning in 2019.” -Rai
“The most exciting update that has been getting the most buzz is that you can now do scheduled content publishing instead of having to rely on push notifications or setting personal reminders to send posts out.” -Rai
“Comment moderation is also a new feature. You can filter by keyword or limit the people who can comment to followers only, followers of followers, or only people you follow.” -Rai
“The new features have been getting a bit of hate. The point of Instagram is to instantly share what you’re doing. And with these new features, it’s obviously in favor of businesses and turning it into even more of a marketing tool and less organic.” -Rai

 

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