Tom Mighell has been at the front lines of technology development since joining Cowles & Thompson, P.C....
Dennis Kennedy is an award-winning leader in applying the Internet and technology to law practice. A published...
Published: | July 25, 2018 |
Podcast: | Kennedy-Mighell Report |
Category: | Legal Technology |
It’s estimated that by the year 2020, 20 billion devices will be connected to the internet. In this episode of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, hosts Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell update their conversation about the internet of things (IOT). They discuss not only how the IOT has grown and developed, but the problems with it and how it has affected our expectations about smart technology. Dennis also shares about his entrepreneurial lawyering class that will be part of Michigan State University College of Law’s LegalRnD program this fall. And as always, stay tuned for the parting shots, that one tip, website, or observation that you can use the second the podcast ends.
Have a technology question for Dennis and Tom? Call their Tech Question Hotline at 720-441-6820 for the answers to your most burning tech questions.
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The Kennedy-Mighell Report
Revisiting the Internet of Things
07/25/2018
[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.
[Music]
Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode #218 of The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I am Dennis Kennedy in Ann Arbor.
Tom Mighell: And I am Tom Mighell in Dallas. Before we get started, we would like to thank our sponsors.
Thanks to TextExpander for sponsoring our show. Communicate Smarter with TextExpander. Gather, Perfect, and Share Your Knowledge. Recall your best words instantly and repeatedly. Learn more at textexpander.com/podcast.
Dennis Kennedy: And we would also like to thank ServeNow, a nationwide network of trusted prescreened process servers. Work with the most professional process servers who have experience with high-volume serves, embrace technology, and understand the litigation process. Visit serve-now.com to learn more.
Well, in our last episode we had a fantastic conversation with Whitney Johnson, the author of the books ‘Disrupt Yourself‘, and the new ‘Build an A-Team‘ about disruption, S-curves, team building and innovation in a conservative profession, highly recommended both of her books.
We plan to do regular interview episodes with guests not associated with the legal industry necessarily, so let us know your suggestions and we will see what we can do and who we can bring onto the podcast.
In this episode we decided to take one of our occasional revisits to a topic we covered in the past, and this time it’s the Internet of Things, something we first discussed, believe it or not, more than five years ago on the show.
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 revisiting the topic of the Internet of Things. We will take a look at what has changed, whether people need to be paying a lot more attention to this topic than they currently are.
In our second segment we are going to talk about the class in Entrepreneurial Lawyering that Dennis will be teaching this fall at Michigan State Law School’s Legal R&D Program, and as usual, we will finish up with our parting shots, that one tip, website, or observation that you can start to use the second this podcast is over.
But first up, the Internet of Things, a topic we did a podcast on in March of 2013. I want to say that we were one of the first legal podcasts to talk about the Internet of Things or where I think I am going to say IoT probably more than Internet of Things throughout this podcast.
It feels like over the past five years IoT has settled down to become kind of a natural part of everyone’s life. I think that most people in some form are using some device that’s connected to the Internet.
I have to say though, as I was preparing for this, that there have been a lot of changes. I went back and I listened to the podcast in March and frankly, for me, I am going to go out on a limb here and say the more things change, the more they stay the same. The things I want to talk about today don’t tremendously differ from what we talked about before.
Dennis, what did you think or I guess why did you think it was important to come back to this topic now?
Dennis Kennedy: Well, I mean it is possible that we were so brilliant five years ago that we predicted all, but I think there are some new things and some new ways of looking at things, but I think one of the things that you said really is the important thing is that we have started to really take the Internet of Things for granted, at least you and I have.
I think one of those examples of a technology where you say we tend to overestimate the impact in the short run back five years ago and we underestimate the impact in the long run, so we are out in more of the long run. So I think it’s been, with all the noise lately in legal tech about AI and some of the other really hot technologies that people like to talk about, it has been just really quiet around Internet of Things.
But the Internet of Things to me seems like a game changer that is happening every single day, as we see more and more devices that we rely on, that are connected to the Internet, and sometimes surprising devices that way and we start to rely on that.
So I think the number to consider Tom is that the prediction, and this may be going up a little bit even more is 20 billion devices will be attached to the Internet by the year 2020. So that’s what, roughly around three times as many devices connected to the Internet as there are people on the planet. So I think that’s an important number.
(00:05:08)
But Tom, I think you and I know what Internet of Things or IoT means, but maybe it is worth stepping back and giving people, our listeners a good solid definition of that.
Tom Mighell: Sure, but before we do that I want to say a couple of other things. I mean, your number is spot on about how many devices will be attached to the Internet by 2020. I think that we have already passed a milestone. I think they have estimated that the number of IoT devices surpassed the number of smartphones in the world last year. So there are already more of those devices out there.
I will say and I suspect kind of based on what I am hearing you say and what I think I am going to say, I may turn out to be the curmudgeon in this episode here is that, yup, 20 billion devices may be connected to the Internet by 2020, but I am going to make the argument that the vast majority of that aren’t actually the things that are useful to those of us who might use them. I am going to argue that, and I don’t know if I am going to get into this more, but they are more part of the IIoT, which is a different concept entirely, the Industrial Internet of Things. All of the sensors that are connected to assembly lines and other types of manufacturing and in other places in industries, I am going to argue that that’s taking up the majority of the 20 billion.
But like you said, let’s take a step back, let’s look at IoT, Internet of Things essentially, and I am just going to say in a very broad way means it is any type of device that can connect somehow to the Internet.
And so when I looked at the list that you had put kind of in our pre-work, in our pre-show notes to look at, I looked at the list of things you talked about, watches and Fitbits and scales and medical devices and cars and toys and thermostats and those types of things. Most of those things were actually out in 2013. They were devices that can connect to the Internet.
My Fitbit back in 2013 could connect to the Internet. It would download to my app. I could see what I was doing. I could get regular updates on that. I was also connected to my scale. My scale would take my weight and connect it to my Fitbit app and to a weight loss app that I was using at the same time, and I could see it.
Where we have gotten to now is we have gotten to your doorbell will connect to the Internet, so that you can view kind of who is at your door, but you are seeing something that’s being stored online, it’s connected through a wireless connection. To me, that’s just the basic idea of the Internet of Things. It’s a device, not necessarily a phone or a tablet, it could be anything that connects to the Internet and ultimately provides a service to someone, whether it’s an individual service to you, or like I mentioned, a service like in the Industrial Internet of Things, sensors on an assembly line that tell the manufacturers here is what’s happening and all of those devices are connected via the Internet to provide that service.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, I think that — what I would say is a good example is the adoption curve. So I think five years ago we were probably in the realm of the early adopters. So it took some work to do, some things, you might have a few things. I think it’s just the quantity and the expectation and in ways that you didn’t expect.
So the one that’s kind of surprising to me that it seems like there is a lot of uptake on is door locks; that surprised me a little bit.
I think it’s also surprising when you can’t control things by your phone. So in our new apartment we have a garage door opener and I was thinking it’s kind of surprising that I don’t have a way to check to see if the garage door is open when I am sitting in the living room and use my phone to open and close it. So I think there is that expectation.
We may touch on this. I think a lot of people will be surprised, like you check your network connections on your phone or your computer and you see it’s all connected. You are going to find probably a few more devices in your house connected to your network than you expect these days, but I think there is that, as we carry around the smartphones, we are used to that 24/7, anywhere, anytime connection to the Internet, we are starting to say well, shouldn’t these other things be collecting information and attaching to the Internet.
In the medical area, there might have been a few things five years ago, now I know more people with diabetes who have sensors that like just run constantly and then transmit information, and you start to say well, there are a number of things, especially where I am being monitored for medical reasons that the Internet of Things is starting to make more sense.
(00:09:50)
So I just think it’s more of it. I think we are much farther down on the adoption curve, so there are more people and it’s not just early adopters in a lot of places. And I think you tend to see more places where people would want to use it and where you would like to use it, and it’s in some cases going to be surprising to people, say with the elderly and other things where you wouldn’t expect that, those types of devices make a lot of sense.
Tom Mighell: I did a check too to see how many devices I have connected to the Internet and one of the nice things, I think I have mentioned on the podcast before, that I use eero as a mesh to create a mesh network from my wireless. It really helps speed up and provide kind of overall wireless to my house.
But what’s nice is the app that controls the eero network will also tell me how many devices I have got connected to the Internet at any given time. I checked it just before we started recording and that number is right at 20 devices. That includes computers. It includes phones, tablets, a whole lot of Google Home devices. My Peloton bike is connected to the Internet, my digital frame; I have got two digital frames. The ring doorbell, there’s a Kindle, the Roku we use in our television, the digital scale that I mentioned before. I would say that that number has doubled in the last five years.
So I think you are right, the adoption curve has changed. I think one way that it has helped change is that voice assistants and virtual assistants are really leading the way. I would argue that virtual assistants help us to communicate better with the Internet of Things. They can interact with the devices. They can help them be more useful for us. And frankly, this is where artificial intelligence may be the hot topic, maybe hotter than IoT as a rule, but I think this is where they are meeting up, that voice platforms are becoming the new thing.
Some experts are going to say that voice is really going — frankly, we have said this I think on the podcast, that voice is going to become the user interface of the future. That we will use our voice more often and it’s going to be talking to IoT devices that will likely be the way to deal with it.
But I will also come back and say that just because you can connect something to the Internet doesn’t mean that one, you should; or two, that people are going to use it. And I use as my favorite example, last year at the Consumer Electronics Show, one of the kind of novelty or gadget items was a smart toothbrush that recorded how you brushed your teeth. And I said really, does anybody — why would people care about knowing how your teeth got brushed or what happened? I don’t even really understand that use of an IoT device.
And so I would argue that part of the reason why is that people have taken the good ideas that the IoT is being used for and expanded it to ideas that probably shouldn’t be done. And so I think part of what’s happened over the last five years is, we have seen a lot of IoT startups that have gone bust, because the ideas just weren’t that great to begin with.
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah. I mean it’s, that should it be done, does it make sense is a big thing out there. I agree with you that virtual assistants are probably driving a lot of the acceptance.
I also find that a lot of people use webcams more than I ever expected.
And then I think for a lot of people, the medical is one area. I saw somebody at a startup company here in Ann Arbor that was doing some things that would measure the amount of work that you were doing while you were working out and so tracking that. You could see how that would be useful and to store it somewhere.
I think my bike rides are also — it’s not an Internet of Things, but the information about it is stored in the cloud and so you see the usefulness of that.
And then you have the sensors. You go if I have this stuff and I can use electricity more efficiently and all of that, it starts to make sense.
But there is that tradeoff. So information goes up to someone else in the cloud, you can get information back, that’s a good thing, but you kind of want to — you have got to consider your privacy, what the value is, what you get out of it, cost benefits.
And then the big one is that Tom, there is no question, Internet of Things is an attack vector for cybersecurity and the webcams I just mentioned have surprisingly been in a number of cases the way that people get into networks.
Tom Mighell: Well, and we discussed that on the podcast, the Botnet of Things that was attacking routers and Internet of Things devices was a great example of how IoT devices can be hacked and infected.
I think there are two major issues with IoT right now that I wish could be solved in some way. One is a practical one and one is a need to have. For me, security is probably the biggest risk of IoT devices and I think it’s because it continues to be an afterthought for the product developers.
(00:15:00)
It seems like they add security on at the end of it and they don’t really think about it, because they are thinking primarily of the usefulness of the device and the utility and the practicality of it and then, oh yeah, we totally forgot that people might want to hack into this and change the temperature in our smart refrigerator so that all the stuff in the freezer thaws out.
The other thing that I think is unfortunate that it has stayed the same. Back on the podcast I listened to — I listened to it again from five years ago and I was talking about that one main issue was the lack of standardization, that there was not any standardization of tools on a common platform, and I think mostly this is around the smart home.
And I have got to tell you, that we still haven’t gotten there yet. I mentioned as one of my resolutions at the end of last year that I was going to experiment more with smart home elements and I have been doing that, primarily in a very low key way around light bulbs. But the thing is, is that if you are going to have a smart home, you are still better off if you buy all your light bulbs, and your alarm, and your doorbell and all the other devices that you want to have to make up your smart home from the same company.
It’s possible to use devices from different companies, but there won’t be a hub or a dashboard or anything that can manage all of them in the same place, and so you are still going to be using multiple apps to manage all the devices.
So, security and standardization are number one and two on my wish list of improvements for IoT over the next couple of years.
Dennis Kennedy: And it’s worth mentioning some of the things that people are seeing, especially in domestic abuse, the divorce area, other things where people are really doing bad things with those smart home devices, with the thermostats, the locks, those sorts of things, and you don’t have to — it doesn’t take much imagination to have an idea what’s going on out there, so that security aspect is big.
And then as it’s become easier to attach these things to your network and you don’t do the updates, as we have talked about and things like that, that you are running — Tom, what you described is a fairly significant network in your house and you are not a network administrator, but you know more than the average person, and for people who jump into this it’s something they really need to think about, but I do see it growing.
So when I was at Mastercard, we had this notion, you were talking about the Internet of Industrial Things I think you called it or Industrial Internet of Things, so there’s a number of things like that. In Mastercard we had this notion of Internet of Payment Things, where these devices that were connected to the Internet could be enabled to do payments, again, to and from. So there is a lot of potential out there.
And it also shows how Internet of Things can go from these small sensors and thermostats to refrigerators that allow you to order and pay for food, to your car being just like a whole — maybe thousands of sensors going on in there.
So I think that’s what I — what struck me about going back to this topic was that how much the adoption has gone up and I think our comfort level with it and the utility of it we are seeing more.
But let’s turn it Tom to the world of lawyers. So for me, from what I did in my days at Mastercard, the Internet of Things became really fascinating to me, because I think it changes the nature of transactional practice, from looking at one-to-one things of transactions or products, doing the legal work around products, to actually figuring out how platforms and ecosystems work together.
So that smart refrigerator that orders food for you is going to have the refrigerator, it’s going to have different operating systems in connection with that refrigerator. It may have a different company doing the display. It may have a Mastercard or Visa doing payments. It may have somebody doing order fulfillment, somebody doing deliveries. And so making all those things work together I think has changed the nature of the legal issues that come up with that. So that’s one side of it.
But I think the other thing Tom, I think is the e-discovery, because for me, e-discovery, every time I hear people talk about it, it’s all about email and documents, and I look out there and I go geez, like in a car accident case and some other things, I just — I don’t think the documents and the email is probably going to be the most important thing when you have these devices and sensors and the IoT stuff to get into. And I sort of think that that may be the area of technology competence that lawyers really have to step up to.
(00:19:58)
Dennis Kennedy: So, if you’re in any of those areas, I think you got to have a basic understanding of Internet of Things. I mean, I might kind of jump in a little bit too far in the future, Tom, or what’s your feeling on that?
Tom Mighell: Well, I don’t think so; but I think that the two things are a little bit separate. So, I think that email and other documents are still going to continue to be important in the corporate world, and when we talk about business litigation and things like that, I view IoT evidence as being relevant in criminal cases, in family law cases, in personal injury type cases, in cases where the devices themselves whatever information they are capturing, product liability cases for being able to measure the sensors on an assembly line, to see how something was manufactured may become relevant somehow.
It’s already being used, I mean, we’re already seeing IoT evidence, but it’s primarily being used from both the areas of Fitbits and also with the Amazon Echo. We’ve actually had some cases. There was a murder case in Arkansas where they tried to get information off the Echo. Amazon declined to do that on the basis of privacy and they wound up actually getting some information from a smart utility meter that was used on a hot tub. So they actually did use some IoT evidence, but not from an Echo or a Fitbit.
There have been a bunch of cases out there where Fitbit evidence has been used to show where a person happened to be to establish an alibi, the fact that someone who claimed they were injured was actually working out and seemed to be fine, the fact that a person’s heart rate was elevated, indicated that something bad was happening to them like an assault or a sexual assault or something like that.
But it’s also being used to rebut claims. Someone’s claiming they’re sleeping at a certain time when the Fitbit proves they’re up and walking around. So, I think it’s already being used for those purposes now and I think it’s not too soon to know about it.
But there’s really — from an e-discovery standpoint, there’s really two main issues about using it I think as evidence. The first is, how to get the data off the device to begin with or off the servers where it’s recorded. All the manufacturers — the lack of standardization applies here too. They collect and store data in different ways, which means it’s really hard to develop a standard consistent process.
And I think that this is one of the main opportunity areas for e-discovery vendors is to find a flexible solution that’s going to help them collect and aggregate IoT data. I think that’s one of the Holy Grails of e-discovery.
I think the other main issue is, how does this information get treated as evidence? Is because it’s coming from a device, is it automatically more reliable than something that comes out of an individual? Will the judge or jury think that machines can’t lie the same way a person can?
And so, we always have to believe the machine over the device, or are we going to recognize that IoT data actually still has to be interpreted, that there is a subjective element to the information you get. And I think we’ve still got ways to go in figuring out whether the information that comes off of devices can be seen as objective and unbiased.
Obviously, there are some constitutional issues; do you have the right to confront your accuser if your accuser is a Fitbit or you’re Amazon Echo. I’m really intrigued by this and want to see where this heads, but it is not too soon to be knowing about this, especially if you’re going to wind up with clients who own these kinds of devices and they may become relevant.
Dennis Kennedy: Tom, as you know, I’m like a big fan of detective shows, British detective shows lately and it’s almost like, in all those shows it’s like there’s always let’s go to the CCTV footage. It’s like there’s always a footage or something, so that’s like another piece of that where you say, well —
Tom Mighell: I love CCTV, yes.
Dennis Kennedy: — all this is going on. I love the idea of when I am watching the shows, I don’t know how much I like it — of it tracking me through different things, although sometimes I’m aware of that, especially in parking garages and places.
Tom, I guess we probably should — we’ve kind of gone on a while and I think for me IoT is like I said, it’s kind of really come in under the radar, and I think it’s here now and there’s something to focus on, and I think it’s worthwhile for lawyers and others to think about how much things have changed in how part of the fabric of our networks and our lives that IoT has become and in the implications of that.
So, I guess Tom, we may — we’ll just wrap it up, is it as simple to say are we pro IT or anti IoT or is it maybe like I feel that there’s good and bad, we got to get on top of it but it’s something that’s really come in to stay.
Tom Mighell: Oh, I’m definitely pro IoT. I mean, I think that that there are many more benefits to the Internet of Things than disadvantages or risks or other issues. I think like any other technology, you’ve got to learn how it works, make sure you use it the right way, and take care of yourself.
(00:25:00)
So, I am a little bit less certain that I think we’re still coasting along, I think that the Internet of Things is something that in some industries is really plowing ahead but in the personal use area, I think we’re still kind of — people may be using them more but I don’t see these leaps and bounds that we may have seen four or five or six years ago. So, I’m interested to see where it goes, but right now, I’m thinking it’s going to be a little sleepier than maybe it expects to be.
All right, before our next segment, let’s take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.
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[Music]
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Tom Mighell: And now let’s get back to The Kennedy-Mighell Report. I’m Tom Mighell.
Dennis Kennedy: And I’m Dennis Kennedy. We thought we’d do something a little different in this segment, as we always seem to be doing. I’ll be teaching in classes following entrepreneurial lawyering at Michigan State’s Law School’s LegalRnD program, which is a really cool program.
They have to develop lawyers with some focus on technology and business savvy and some other new approaches to education. The class is already full, so I’m excited about that. So we thought maybe we’d let me talk about the class by having Tom ask me the questions, he thinks that you, our audience, would like to ask me.
Tom, the audience is depending on you; so let’s get started,
Tom Mighell: Well, audience, I’m sorry I’m going to ask some really simple basic questions, so, I hope that’s what you’re aiming for.
So, Dennis, tell us real quick about how this got started? Is this a brand-new class, the LegalRnD program, is the entrepreneurial lawyering class brand-new? Kind of tell us what the genesis was of that?
Dennis Kennedy: Well, I think that the LegalRnD program goes back four or five years or so ago and so you have Dan Katz at Chicago-Kent, who’s well-known for bringing data analytics into the legal profession. Ken Grady who’s done a number of things was also involved in that.
Dan Linna was recently the Head of LegalRnD is now moving to Northwestern and Carla Reyes is going to take over the LegalRnD program; so, it’s been around for a while. So, there’s a notion of some specialized classes so some are data analytics. I know, Carla is going to do a class in Artificial Intelligence and then they put together the two classes I’m doing, are the class that Ken Grady taught.
And so his background in lean thinking, the things he’s done, he’s done at Seyfarth and other things that he’s done he’s pulled into there. So, there’s this real notion of lawyers need to understand business. They need to understand technology, and so the two classes I will be doing, I see are sort of foundational.
So, we’ll look at — in this class, we’ll look at some of the standard approaches to starting businesses, it could be a law practice, it could be other things associated with legal. We’ll look at things like their business model canvas, other things like that, and then I’m also going to also talk about the whole range of technologies that are now coming into the law practice.
So, I mean, if you know me, all these things are right up my alley and I love what Ken has created, and so we’ll be doing some projects and deliverables, and presentations, and pitches, and stuff like that. So, it would be a fun class to learn things.
Tom Mighell: Okay, so you blew right past my second question. You went right into it, so I’m not going to get to ask you, well, tell me what you’re going to be teaching about?
So, I’ll ask my third and final question, which is, can you let us in on what the topic is going to be for your first session? Have you planned it yet? Do you know what the required reading is going to be for the first session or what the topic is going to be?
(00:29:56)
Dennis Kennedy: Yeah, so what I’m going to — I’m going to use two books. So, one is the — I think it’s called ‘E-Myth Manager For Lawyers’, it’s a Michael Gerber’s book on the e-myth, which is a really great approach to starting businesses, and this book is focused on lawyer issues, especially.
So, I think it’s one of those things that you would have liked to — I would have liked to in law school, had a notion of saying, okay, so if I’m actually going to be at a law firm or have my own little practice, what are the issues that you would do as if you’re starting any business? And the other thing that builds on what Ken did is ‘The Business Model of Canvas’, which is Alex Osterwalder’s book.
And so, that’s a way, an approach to really organize and think through what a business is, what the parts are going to be, who the customers are going to be, who your partners are going to be, and put that together. So that will be the core of the entrepreneurial thing and then, Tom, I think that I’ll just start to talk about how technology is going to be used in the practice and what’s out there, because I think that’s really useful for students.
So, it’s a two-hour class, I just made split it in half and do one part, the business model approaches and the second — the second half of the class, technology. So, that’s what I have in mind and we’ll learn as we go and there’ll be some cool projects, and like I said, it’s fun to hear already that the class is sold out.
Tom Mighell: Let’s be sure to check back at the end of the semester and see how things went.
Dennis Kennedy: Now, it’s time for the parting shots, that one-tip website or observation. You can use the second this podcast ends. Tom, take it away.
Tom Mighell: All right. I am going to make and I hate that I’m doing this, but I’m going to make another plea for my password manager challenge after the last one and how cool everybody thought it was. I’ve gotten exactly one request and I said I would help out three people, and surely there are more listeners who listen to this podcast, who either want to get better control over their passwords or don’t have the level of control that they need to get and are willing to make a change in how they think about passwords.
So drop me a line. Shoot me a message on LinkedIn. Send me an email. Find me on Twitter. Any way about it let me know.
My real parting shot actually is that Microsoft Teams, I will call, analog to Slack, but in the Office 365 worlds is now free. Used to be that you have to have an Office 365 subscription to use Teams, now you don’t; you get a certain level of service for free. Obviously, you get more if you have the Office 365 subscription, but it’s free to anyone. Given that, as we are recording this they are announcing that Skype for Business is probably going to go away soon and is going to be fully replaced by Microsoft Teams.
If you’re using Skype for Business or if any of that is interesting to you, it is well worth your while to do Teams and to try out Teams, take a look at it. We use it all the time in our work. I really love it. I think it’s a great communication tool. It’s a worthy competitor to Slack, especially if you’re involved in the Microsoft Office environment; so Microsoft Teams.
Dennis Kennedy: So, I have a tip that will make your Facebook life much, much better and it’s not to quit Facebook, it’s actually to use a feature called Hide in Facebook, and so if you’re like me, your Facebook feed is just — or was until recently, it was just filled with reposts of all kinds of political stuff, all sorts of weird oddball, sometimes politically incorrect humor and other weird interests that people have and it’s just like people reposting stuff. So, I reached this point yesterday where I said I feel that half of my Facebook feed is talking about the imminent end of civilization as we know it and the other half is in an uproar over the delay in the re-launch of a planter’s cheese balls.
So, with Facebook there are a lot of things I want to know about people, so I don’t want to un-follow, but there’s this great feature called Hide and what I find it useful for is although you can hide individuals or you can like you put them on like a 30-day timeout. What I find it really useful for is, the people who just repost a bunch of stuff, you can hide all the stuff that comes from that place that they reposted. So, you can just eliminate. I ruthlessly eliminated all political stuff, which will probably confuse Facebook because they won’t be able to predict what my politics are anymore, and I eliminated tons of humor, pet stuff. So, you can do that Hide thing and then you don’t lose the people. What you get from them is more the stuff you got on Facebook for in the first place, this is what they are actually doing and you don’t get this sort of reflexive reposting of a third-party content.
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So, when you see something that there’s like, just a little place at the right-hand corner, you drop-down the Menu and one of the options is going to be Hide Everything from politicallyincorrecthumor.com or whatever, and then you just hide it and then you don’t see it anymore and your Facebook feed just becomes a much more pleasant place to hang-out at.
Tom Mighell: And 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 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 like to get in touch with us, make sure you reach out to us on LinkedIn, or leave us a voicemail. Remember, we like to get questions for our B-segment, that number is 720-441-6820.
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.
If you liked what you heard today, please rate us in Apple Podcasts and we will see you next time for another episode of The Kennedy-Mighell Report on the Legal Talk Network.
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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.
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Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell talk the latest technology to improve services, client interactions, and workflow.