Dennis Kennedy is an award-winning leader in applying the Internet and technology to law practice. A published...
Tom Mighell has been at the front lines of technology development since joining Cowles & Thompson, P.C....
Published: | June 30, 2017 |
Podcast: | Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Category: | Legal Technology |
Since technology and the internet are changing at such a fast pace, it’s important to keep track of what’s shifting and how it impacts your practice. In this episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, hosts Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell talk about 2017 internet trends by reviewing the highlights of Mary Meeker’s Code Conference Report. They discuss topics like smartphone use, online advertising, the future of internet searching, and much more.
Special thanks to our sponsor, ServeNow.
The Kennedy-Mighell Report
Internet Trends
06/30/2017
[Music]
Intro: Web 2.0, Innovation, Trend, Collaboration, Software, Metadata… Got the world turning as fast as it can, hear how technology can help, legally speaking with two of the top legal technology experts, authors and lawyers, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to The Kennedy-Mighell Report here on the Legal Talk Network.
Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode #193 of The Kennedy Mighell Report. I am Dennis Kennedy in St. Louis.
Tom Mighell: And I am Tom Mighell in Dallas.
Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode we discussed 3D printing and how it might impact the practice for law. In this episode we focus on our favorite topic, the internet and a new report on Big Internet Trends. We take it should be on your radar as well. Tom, what’s all on our agenda for this episode?
Tom Mighell: Well, Dennis, in this edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, we will indeed be talking about Internet Trends. The annual Internet Trends for 2017 as recently presented by Mary Meeker. In our second segment we’ve got another question from one of our listeners, very excited about that, and as usual, we’ll finish up with our parting shots that one tip, website or observation that you can start to use the second that this podcast is over.
But first, Internet Trends, the big picture about the Internet. This is a legal technology podcast within Internet focus. Each year, Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins provides what is generally considered to be sort of the Seminole State of the Internet presentation which is usually at the Code Conference and that took place a couple of weeks ago each year. Her report is huge and I’ve been huge, it came in this year at 355 PowerPoint slides. I wonder how long it really takes here to deliver this report, but it’s got some great information in it and we thought we try and break some of that down, the things that we thought were most interesting for the listeners of this podcast and things you need to pay attention to. Dennis, how important do you think this report is and what was your initial reaction to it?
Dennis Kennedy: Well, I think this for a long time has been a very important report and it’s something that people really look to, because as you say, 355 slides, you can tell the amount of work and research that goes into it and it really identifies some trends that I don’t think you expect and not a lot of people focus on.
I will say, as a word of warning, that we’re really helping people out by emphasizing how long the set of slides is because I’ve made the mistake of sending into the printer before I checked and I’ve got a three-inch deck of paper here. At least I printed it on both sides of the page.
So, it’s a significant, hefty report. Annually I think it’s a great report. I think that my initial reaction is, this reminds me of how important it is in legal tech for all of us to get the perspective that comes from outside, the legal tech silo. And so, this is really big picture stuff on the Internet and you might initially take that some of it won’t apply to what you do day to day and it’s probably true. So, the trends in China and India, which I think are absolutely fasting, probably want to apply to most of our listeners on a day to day basis. But there’s some really interesting trends in developments within that information that I think it makes sense just to be aware of.
So, I think it’s a great report and I’m glad, Tom, that you suggested this as a topic because I think it’s so great to get that outside perspective from a place other than inside the legal tech world.
Tom Mighell: Well, next time you want to review, I have an iPad app where you can actually view it digitally rather than print things out, and just let me know when you’re ready to start looking at things not on paper, and I am happy to help you out there.
Dennis Kennedy: I acknowledge my mistake on printing there.
Tom Mighell: It’s okay. I’m always intrigued by this report because it talks about things that we’d really don’t get chance to talk about that often on this podcast. But, they are things that — some of them, like you say, probably don’t affect lawyers as much as they affect the business world and the healthcare world and some of these other industries that are out there, but I think that they are part of the reality, that is the Internet, and the fact that things either are changing in a way that lawyers need to be able adapt to, whether it’s a matter of using the Internet in a different way or having the Internet as a resource to get to clients in a different way or how the practice of law might change because of some of these trends, maybe not today, maybe some time in the future.
(00:04:56)
But, it’s part of that, let’s keep up with kind of what are the things that are down the road so that when it finally becomes common place, we’re not so surprised that we knew this was something that was around the bend and it was really only a matter of time before it started.
Do you want to, maybe let’s dive in and talk about some of the favorite. There were so many data points that were part of this report; maybe we talk about some of our favorites?
Dennis Kennedy: Well, I think, I am going to take a deep breath here and make to try to hit the — just describe briefly the trends and overview them. So, she talks about there’s a solid but slowing growth in smartphone use, and it’s actually the smartphone use in some ways are staggering the growth that’s happened here, but it’s solid.
To me, on the bad news side is that, one-line advertising is becoming more effective, actionable and measurable which means we’re going to see even more of it. One of the big points for me is this interactive gaming, especially mobile gaming is the area where we are seeing a lot of innovation and where innovation comes from.
On the media side, seeing that the disruption of existing media is happening really quickly that cloud computing is changing in some fundamental ways but becoming more widely adopted. Entertainment and transportation are huge in China, and in India, there’s a big focus on what, she calls “Consumers Winning”. So, a big focus on what’s going on with the individual consumers in India, and I think that there maybe some lessons in there for some of our listeners.
The other big one I think for lawyers is healthcare, which she describes as being at a digital inflection point, and I think that there are some analogies of what’s happening in a healthcare world that could have impact in a world.
And then, she ends up by focusing on the big global public and private Internet companies, and it’s really — there’s a couple slides in there talking about how — the value in the market, and how that’s changed over the years, and how that shifted over to technology and Internet companies. And again, I think that it’s just something that gives you a great perspective on what’s going on out there and can kind of shape and change your thinking about the Internet. So, there are a number of things as Tom mentions as I went through those that I was really fascinated by especially the healthcare and the gaming one, because I’m not a gamer, but I understand the point that’s being made about gaming. So, what was your general reaction?
Tom Mighell: Actually what I want to do is, I kind of wanted to do some cherrypicking and dive a little bit into some of those things that you talk about, because I think you’ve hit the general trends, the major things that they talked about. One of the most interesting things to me was, you mentioned at the very end there that they show a statistic about 10 years ago or 15 years ago, the top 10 companies in the world in market cap. Most of them were not technology based companies and now either eight or nine out of ten are technology companies, and the ones that were big before ExxonMobil being one of them has fallen tremendously. I think it’s just amazing how Apple, Google, Amazon have really, really risen and have taken over the world, Facebook have taken over the world in terms of their commercial success and their commercial power. I kind of want to talk about, I mean, there are really some little nuggets in there that I think are very interesting and I just want to kind of follow down on a couple of them.
I thought just starting out the fact that she’s able to measure that there are 3.4 billion Internet users right now in the world, and that’s up 10% year over year, so that’s 10% growth just in the past year of people joining the internet, and so, no wonder why technology companies are the most powerful in the world. It is a large market they are serving.
I’m not sure I totally agree with what you said about smartphones. Yes, there is growth, whether it’s solid or not, I want to see what happens next year, and the reason why I say that is that the growth has been slowing year over year. Four years ago the smartphone shipments were up 28%. Two years ago it was only 10% and this year it’s 3%, and I’m curious about why that’s happening, have we gotten to a saturation point with smartphones around the world? That is interesting to me about why that should be happening. I mean, I would imagine that most of those 3.4 billion Internet users is some way have a phone or mobile device, I’m just wondering how many of them are getting a new phone every year.
(00:09:53)
Internet use is up, and not just general Internet use but mobile Internet use and then you might want to talk about that a little, but per day, per adult it’s 5.6 hours, which means that the time on the Internet has doubled in the past eight years and whether that’s a good or a bad thing, we won’t necessarily talk about here, but the fact that people are spending a quarter of their day online in some fact is really interesting to me. I don’t know about you, Dennis, but those kind of are some of the first little nuggets that I wanted to share that caught my attention.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, to me this sort of interesting thing about the smartphone is that how quickly that in the parts of world were the old feature phone or flip phone or non-smartphone is still the standard, how soon that they phase out of that into the smartphone era, which is absolutely both the question of price and what you are able to do applications and the things you are able to do with those phones. So that could have an impact, that’s why I think some of the stuff that she talks about in China and in India is especially interesting along those lines.
Yeah, Tom, I think it’s worth just kind of hitting some of the nuggets that stood out to us. So, here’s one thing that really interested me, where she said, the future search will be about pictures not keywords, and that’s about video search, searching photos, we’re moving away from the Boolean, from the keyword searches into other types of things. So that I think really made me start to think to say, okay. So, if search is going to be focused more on pictures, what might that mean as I go forward whether it’s a lawyer or not?
As I said I was disturbed by everything that was happening in the world of advertising because I feel like I hate everything about ads on the Internet these days, but to the extent you use ads, you can measure them more, you can learn more about it, you can target them better whether that’s a good thing for society or not, I don’t know.
The other thing that I thought was interesting is, talking about how the digitally native brands are going offline. So, just in the past week or so Amazon bought Whole Foods and we have the Apple stores and all these other things, so there is that thing that retail in online has both a physical presence and the online presence, sometimes related to delivery but other things.
And so, my question there is like, well, does that apply to legal as well? And you say, well, what if somebody like LegalZoom starts to have in offline presence, what might that be, is that a firm, is that a center that people go to, and so, that’s a sort of thing I liked about this report is that it does kind of let your imagination run with how some of these trends might have an impact in the legal profession.
Tom Mighell: I think that it’s interesting about the digital natives going offline in terms of the legal field. I think this is one of those times where I might say that the old nugget that law firms and the legal community is about two years behind everybody else in terms of things and we’re just now starting to see these Internet-only legal services putting them — getting them into the brick and mortar world, I still think as a ways off but it is an interesting concept to see what happens if a LegalZoom store opens down the street from sole and small firm world that I think represents a significant threat to traditional practices.
I want to come back real quick on the fact that the future of search will be about pictures and not keywords, because I think that in her report she talks not just about pictures but also about voice. The big example of pictures that I am really interested in seeing more about is Google Lens, which I think we’ve talked about on the podcast in the past where you’re going to be able to point your camera at a flower; it’s going to tell you what flower it is. You are going to point your camera at a performance hall and you can buy tickets to the next concert, which to me is incredibly intriguing that it can identify all of that.
(00:14:32)
The photo recognition on — the facial recognition on Google Photos is both scary in a privacy way, but also just amazing in the accuracy and what it can tell. But really, I think searches about voice as well, the statistic show that in May of last year, 20% of mobile search was by voice, and as of this time it’s now 70% of mobile search is by voice. And I had to read that and I maybe wrong about that stat but that’s what I’ve read, it seems like an incredible increase over just a one year period of time and the fact that voice recognition is getting so good, it’s now for Google anyway at the accepted threshold for human accuracy, which is 95%. It really is just clean in the clocks of Siri or even the Amazon Echo, its recognition is good.
As far as advertising is concerned, the only thing I thought was interesting in addition to what you said is that in addition to the fact that the advertisers are getting much better at what they do. The consumers are making much more use of ad-blocking technology and they are adopting that in a lot more volume than they have in the past, which I think shows that users are increasingly opting out of the things they don’t want.
Now, I will say that ever since I’ve been using ad-blocking technology, the number of websites that say, “We see you’re using an ad-blocker. Please disable it if you want to continue to use this website.” That’s increasing. So, I’m going to be interested to see the fight between ad-blockers and advertisers over the next couple of years, but I did think that that was an interesting statistic that more people are using these tools to kind of fight back against the ads that you hate so much.
Dennis Kennedy: Well, Tom, you got me thinking about what you said if LegalZoom open a store. So if you picture the notion that near the courthouse, there’s this LegalZoom store that people can stop by, and LegalZoom has the branding in the online stuff, that’s a really interesting idea, and I guess, Tom, if they haven’t thought of that and others haven’t thought of that, they can make the royalties checks out of this, I guess, on that idea.
But, that’s really interesting, but that’s also happening at the time when she said, “There’s record of retail store closing.” So, it’s interesting that the brick and mortar copies are looking at the online services, so Wal-Mart buying Jet.com, and then the online services are looking at opening retail stores. So that’s a really interesting dynamic and that could play out I think for lawyers in terms of the clients they represent and some of the impact of that.
Mobile gaming like you said, I’m not a gamer, but a lot of the stuff is interesting to think about. So they said that the mobile gaming is the most engaging form of use of the Internet and the session duration for gaming has gone up 33% in the last 2 years. She asked the question, “Is online gaming preparing us for human-machine partnering. So there’s this notion that in Chess is the example that the best Chess players in the world are humans using AI, not just AI or humans that combination or hybrid approach.
And so, with the online gaming, you’re seeing some of the AI things and some of the other innovations, and I think that that was really fascinating to me is that, they are experienced with using the phone for gaming. Is that going to help us move further into other things where we are using AI? And then I would say, Siri and the other experiences we have with mobile. Also saying, oh, I partner in a kind of fundamental way with this device to help me learn and do things.
Tom Mighell: Yeah, the gaming part was the part that both most interested me and I skipped over the most, other than the international stuff, because I think that you’re probably right. It has a lot. I think that that’s really where the heat is lately because they are being incredibly innovative. The fact that they’re taking advantage of the fact that mobile games are so popular that even apps and either services that aren’t games are gamifying their services so that, I mean, Dennis Kennedy, for a long periods of times is number one at the top of the TECHSHOW Leader Board in the app because you did a lot of things.
It’s an addictive process of doing things that gain you points and gain you other types of things, and I really think that that’s not going to change. I’ve just listened to a really engaging podcast on Note to Self where they talk about how the gaming and basically social media world are always trying to find ways to keep you engaged and keep you addicted to what you’re doing, and I think that gaming is very similar to that. I’m interested to see that cord-cutting is starting to become more of a thing that Netflix is actually catching up with cable subscriptions that people are leaving.
(00:19:54)
I don’t want to say that they are leaving Pay-TV and Droves, but they are — 80% are saying that Pay-TV is too expensive and 48% of those people are using a streaming service. So there is some cord-cutting going on and they are moving away from standard cable or network television, which I think is interesting, and it’s the same with streaming music as well.
There is more of a move towards the Internet because you do have a little bit more freedom of choice, people do have — when it comes to television, they find they don’t need 700 channels, they just need a handful of channels that they watch all the time and that they are willing to pay a monthly price for that, it’s most of the time less than cable, and I think that’s an interesting other notion that traditional services with the judicial pricing is fading out in favor of, and I think that that was another piece that Mary Meeker brought up, is the idea of the subscription that subscription services on the Internet are also kind of all the rage being able to subscribe to things that you receive on a regular basis, Office 365, Acrobat, they are all on subscription services, a very model of how we purchase these things is changing as well, and that’s all due to the Internet.
Dennis Kennedy: I put in my plug as I do from time-to-time that I think they are also subscription models that can work in a legal profession as well. We are going to talk a little bit about Cloud. I mean, basically this was sort of like a business and enterprise look at Cloud that she did, but there were a couple of things I thought were interesting there and one is, there is a kind of shift as there is the acceptance of use of the Cloud too, away from their focus on data security and cost that we used to do, and I think a lot of the law firms do to more of a concerned about am I locked into a vendor, if I go to Cloud, how do I get my data out? What happens with that vendor? So more due diligence on the vendor side, and then also – and Tom, you might have a few thoughts on this as well, but how is that use of the Cloud is going to help me on compliance and information governance?
And then, she made this point that I also thought was really good with the Cloud companies, especially new ones are really focused on improving the user experience for end users. So, I think Cloud seems less of a technical solution and for the companies that use it, and there’s more of a focus on the end user and usability.
Tom Mighell: Yeah, I think that it was — even though security still is the biggest concern, but it really is down significantly over the past 4 years, which I think represents a more growing acceptance of the notion of it. But, you’re right, compliance and governance is one of the ones that is kind of shot up. Now that people are accepting it they’re like, “Okay, we’re putting our stuff into Cloud services, how do we manage it? How do we make sure that we’re keeping it in accordance with our company regulations with the law, with federal regulations, anything that any laws that might apply to them?
Couple of other things, maybe we want to — we could easily spend another 30 or 45 minutes or more talking about some of these things, but maybe let’s talk briefly about security and maybe healthcare and then head out of our first segment. For me, what was interesting in the security was the fact that there are breaches of more than 10 million identities, so security breaches and data breaches involving more than 10 million different identities has increased year over year in the past 3 years. It is a fact of life, it is happening more and more often, it’s not a matter of “if” but “when” that companies are going to get hit with this and I think that they are going to have to evolve. And I think they are evolving on how to protect our information or more importantly, how to recover once that information has had something happening to it.
And I know, Dennis, you want to talk a little bit more about health and all kind of chime in there with some thoughts on how the health world may in some ways mere what the legal world should or can be doing?
Dennis Kennedy: Well, I do want to mention my favorite stat on security which is that, the network breaches are increasingly caused by email and phishing spam and the amount of that is up 350% since 2015. So once again, humans, we are our own worst enemy, like, I don’t know how people can’t have learned by now to be careful with the email on that spot, the phishing emails and the things that they are likely to have Malware, but it’s an ongoing issue and a growing issue, so it’s certainly an education issue. I know that today, there were some cyber attacks that sounded like they might have been prompted by, at least one very prominent firm that may have been prompted by an email Malware issue, so keep in mind that.
(00:25:03)
There’s one part of this report of the 355 pages I would recommend to our listeners but the legal profession is the healthcare section because I suspect that it might be the best analogy for the legal profession or is at least worth asking the question whether it is the best analogy for the legal profession.
So, in health, the big trend is empowering data in consumer hands. So I’ve really noticed this in the last couple of years but the actual status, there’s a 700% increase in hospitals providing digital access to healthcare information. So, it’s just a lot easier to get test results and what’s going on after you had a doctor’s visit, and to get that information, and I think that’s a really interesting thing that I really like.
Myself, and I’m saying, I don’t know that there is, I don’t think with law firms you get the same sense, so if I have a lawyer, I don’t think it’s so easy for me to check information it made to look at the notes or results from meetings I have had or checked documents, that sort of thing. And then, she says, there’s a slide that says, data insight plus translation equal healthcare delivery could change faster with consumer engagement and faster innovation cycles.
Okay, so that’s a mouthful, but I think that my question was, is that the same for law? If we provide data insight to clients and get them involved in the same way that healthcare is starting to, are we going to get higher client engagement and maybe innovate faster because we’re working together with clients?
I think that’s really the interesting question. I don’t have any answer to it and I know that in some ways medical data is different than in legal data, but I think there could be something there. That’s a really client-focused use of technology that could really innovate certain practices.
Tom Mighell: So here’s my rather simplistic view of why I think that healthcare is going to continue to be slightly ahead of the legal industry at least for a while in this particular area, and that’s that — I think that for most people, they consider information about their health, gathering it or capturing it or viewing it or reading it is I think at least in some respects more accessible than getting information about the legal manner that their lawyer might be handling for them, and I want to trace it if I could speculate here. I want to trace it to the idea of wearables.
The stat in the report is that the wearables market has quadrupled over the past 3 years that more and more people are quantifying their health, they have an interest in understanding what their health is like, which in turn, I think makes it easier for that empowerment of the consumer. I think that they can say there is clearly an interest there. Let us help you not only quantify it but let us tell you to how to make sense of it, and the legal industry I think can learn how to help with that to make it more understandable and make it more accessible. I think they are going to be behind the healthcare industry. Dennis, do you want to take us out of this segment with a last final thought.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I think it’s a lot to read so, but I think it’s an important thing especially for lawyers who think about the Internet or use the Internet and I emphasize the point, it’s something I tried to do more and more of. I just think we have to get perspectives outside of the legal tech world and outside the legal industry, legal profession, and it can be very helpful and it will stimulate lots of good ideas. The legal profession is so conservative and we look to see what’s happened before, what the precedent is in the legal world. I think it’s good to look at what’s going on out there and like we didn’t talk about India and China, but in that section of the report, I definitely saw some really interesting things.
[Music]
Tom Mighell: And before we move on to our next segment, let’s take a quick break for a message from our sponsor.
[Music]
Advertiser: Looking for a process server you can trust, HYPERLINK “http://www.ServeNow.com/”ServeNow.com is a nationwide network of local prescreened process servers. ServeNow works with the most professional process servers in the industry, connecting your firm with process servers who embrace technology, have experience with high volume serves, and understand the litigation process and rules of properly effectuating service. Find a prescreened process server today. Visit HYPERLINK “http://www.serve-now.com/”www.serve-now.com.
[Music]
(00:29:59)
Tom Mighell: And now let’s get back to The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I’m Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy. Hey, we got another question from the audience, but no audio this time. We really like getting audio questions and we’re going to, actually come up with a way to make it easier for people to do that with the voicemail line. So be sure to send your questions in. So let’s go right to the question, and it’s a simple one, but it made us think a little bit which says, “I don’t have a blog, does it makes sense to start a blog in 2017?”
Tom Mighell: So, my answer really hasn’t changed since the last time we had got asked this question, because this question comes up from time-to-time and my answer, I think in 2017, is basically the same. It makes sense to have a hub, it makes sense to have a home base, it makes sense to have a place where you keep content that you use to communicate with the world, whether that’s about your practice, about other things you are passionate about, but it makes sense to have some type of central location for that, and if that home base is a blog, then yes, it makes sense to have a blog.
If it makes sense to just have a website, a lot of people choose to say, you know what, I’m just going to spend my time out on Twitter, tweeting at people and talking to them about stuff, or I’m going to post lots of pictures on Instagram, I’m going to get on Facebook, and I’m going to advertise my services there. And I think that all of that is fine, but it is not pointing back to a place where you can share a lot more information with people, articles that you care about, things that you write, things that you participate in. It’s so much easier to do that on a blog or website type format than it is in social media. How do you do that?
I think, I used to say go get a Tumblr blog, but now that Tumblr is owned by Verizon, I’m not sure I recommend that anymore. I’m now recommending either go and get a WordPress.com blog just to see how WordPress works or go to Squarespace, $20 a month, may be it’s a little more than that at this point, but you can get a really nicely designed customizable blog for not a whole lot of money to do that, and I think it’s fairly simple to do, to just test one out and see if you like it. Obviously, there are better or more sophisticated products that you can use to do blogging, but I really think that, yes, it’s still an option.
I think people are still successful in blogging, but I don’t really think of it as, having a blog, it’s what’s my space on the Internet and how do I get people to come there? And if a blog gives that space, then 32:48.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I mean I think what’s changed a little bit is there are so many outlets that you can put content, and I agree with you and although I would say if your law student, our friend, Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog is making blogs available for free to law students, which to me is something you totally have to do if you are a law student especially in this job market. So I think for me the issue is, what’s changed is so many outlets and how much control you want to have, and so what I like about a blog is that it gives me — as you say, Tom, there’s sort of this hub that you can draw people to, I am sort of less concerned about how — whether people go there or not, did I have control of my content? And then, to go back to the world of RSS feeds, what RSS was about? It was real simple syndication.
So for me, there is a syndication notice, so what I like is the idea of having a blog that I can put my content, and it’s freely available on the Internet and then I can take it and I can repost it on LinkedIn, I can do something in Facebook, but even if they make changes to what they do or one of those social media services goes out of business that my content is still residing on the blog, and I can package it in different ways for different audiences.
So I like the fact that it is sort of the home base where I have control and I don’t have to worry about being the product of some other service. So I may put stuff out everywhere else like I think I’m going to try to do a lot more in Facebook, for example, but I think it’s all going to grow, it could start at the blog and then go out from there in a syndication sense.
(00:34:49)
So now it’s time for parting shots, that one tip, website or observation that you can use the second this podcast ends. Tom, take it away.
Tom Mighell: So Dennis and I have talked a lot on this podcast about Slack as a communication tool, we use it ourselves just as an internal tool for talking about the podcast and communicating about that. Lot of law firms have started to use it as an internal tool and like it quite a bit, but I also know some folks who complain about the fact that there is so many notifications, when people know you are online, you are always getting constantly, they ping that and communicated with. I noticed that one of my very favorite companies, the company that makes Todoist, my task manager of choice, they’ve come out with, I think it’s premature to call a Slack Competitor, but it is a similar type messaging tool it’s called Twist, and it works on the same premise. You can set up channels for different types of topics, you can integrate apps including the great Todoist task manager, but other apps as well, and you can communicate. But it’s more a synchronous, it doesn’t say that you’re online and you can talk to people, it doesn’t provide or at least it allows you the ability to opt out of notifications a little bit more than Slack does.
There is a free version for people to use, but the free version only allows you to keep content for I think 60 days, it’s not a very long period of time that you can keep that content. So if you like it and you want to use it as a regular tool, you probably are going to have to upgrade to one of the paid plans which are $5 or $6 a month per user, which isn’t in terribly bad, but an interesting option to Slack that people are interested in a tool, it’s something that I’ve been testing out lately in the past couple of weeks; Twist.
Dennis Kennedy: So, Tom, I do have to say that my heart sank a little bit when I get an invitation to yet another social tool like this from you and so —
Tom Mighell: I had to invite somebody and I can’t just be on a social tool by myself.
Dennis Kennedy: And so, I’m curious to see the ways that you think we can use this tool. So, anyway, I have signed up, so it’s something new for me to try.
I have two things, so I want to do really quick. I saw today that Facebook officially went over 2 billion users, and so, I think that’s important to think about for everyone as to, for people who say, I don’t think Facebook is important, I think Facebook is going to go away, I don’t think I need to be involved in it, 2 billion users, that’s something to think about.
The other thing that I want to mention is, sometimes I’ve really enjoyed, I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this before. I know I’ve mentioned it on podcast or maybe that is a parting shot is that if you are a member of your public library, they are doing a lot of ebook rentals, and there is this app called OverDrive that connects with the system that your public library has and it allows you to rent in the same way you ordered the library books and audio books for a period of time, like a couple of weeks, three weeks, and you can identify books, read them in the app, do wish-lists, request that your library get books that you want to read, see the new things as they come in, put holds on book, it’s great.
And so I find it a really attractive way to give yourself an opportunity to use your library well without having to drive over to a library, and to get some more books read, and it’s summertime, it’s a time for reading, so OverDrive and your public library is a great combination.
Tom Mighell: So that wraps it up for this edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. Thanks for joining us on the podcast.
You can find show notes for this episode at HYPERLINK “http://www.tkmreport.com” tkmreport.com. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes or on the Legal Talk Network site, where you can find archives of all of our previous podcasts.
If you would like to get in touch with us, please email us at HYPERLINK “mailto:[email protected]” [email protected] or send us a tweet. I am @TomMighell and Dennis is @denniskennedy.
And, like Dennis said before, we love, love, love getting audio questions from our audience, so please contact the Legal Talk Network. There is a link there, there is actually going to be a voicemail, a voice dialling, so you can leave a message there. So please check that out and leave us a question if you get a chance. So until the next podcast, I am Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I am Dennis Kennedy, and you have been listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology with an Internet focus. Help us out by telling a couple of your friends and colleagues about the podcast.
[Music]
Outro: Thanks for listening to The Kennedy-Mighell Report. Check out Dennis and Tom’s book, ‘The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together’ from ABA Books or Amazon, and join us every other week for another edition of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, only on the Legal Talk Network.
[Music]
Notify me when there’s a new episode!
Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell talk the latest technology to improve services, client interactions, and workflow.