Are We Approaching the Great Social Media Resignation?

Episode Notes

Transcript

[Music]

Intro:  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-Mile Report here on the Legal Talk Network.

Dennis Kennedy:  And welcome to episode 312 of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, I’m Dennis Kennedy in Ann Arbor.

Tom Mighell:  And I’m Tom Mighell in Dallas.

Dennis Kennedy:  In our last episode we went back to a foundational technology topic, decision trees and decision tree tools.  In this episode we want to add our contribution, such that it is to the discussion around Elon Musk buying and changing Twitter if indeed he does and where we are with social media in general today, and whether we should expect to see a great resignation from Twitter or any other social media platform anytime soon.  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 prognosticating about what’s going to be happening with Twitter.  Now that it’s Elon Musk’s for the taking.  And indeed, we may be talking about all of social media today.  In our second segment, we’re going to discuss a comment we recently saw about collaboration being a bug rather than a feature for lawyers.  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 up Elon Musk, Twitter and the current state of social media.  Unless you have been locked away somewhere in a space capsule or a biodome for the past couple of weeks, it would have been hard for you to miss the news that Elon Musk has made an offer to purchase Twitter, and Twitter has accepted.  And as you might, expect social media news, since that announcement has been all Elon, all of the time.  So, we thought we would discuss the impending purchase what it might mean for all of us, whether we care about it, whether we should care about it.  And some random thoughts on the subject.  Dennis, I am guessing, just a speculation on my part, from the number of average daily tweets that you have, that quitting Twitter is not in your game plan.

Dennis Kennedy:  After 15 years on Twitter, I finally feel I’m getting the hang of how I want to use Twitter.  And so, I’d hate to stop now.  This has been a big story and it’s had its ups and downs.  So, like I saw on Twitter today that people speculating that the – with the drop in stock prices and Twitter’s prices particular, that there’s actually a reasonable chance of this deal not going through.  So, we’ll see what tomorrow brings or what people know by the time they listen to this podcast, but let’s assume that it’s going through and that people have projected all their hopes and fears for Twitter on to Elon Musk and we get a sense of what’s actually going to happen.  And I think it is big news for Twitter because we’ve — those of us who use it — and I think sometimes we kind of exaggerate how many people actually use Twitter on a regular basis or rely on that.  But those of us who do think that it’s very important —

So, this is big news and we want to kind of understand how it’s going to change a platform that we use on a regular basis.  So, I’m planning to hang around and we’ll talk about some of the preparatory things that I’ve done, in case there are big changes.  But it is interesting because there was initial feeling that some people are going to leave just because it was Elon Musk going to buy it.  In the last two days, I would say, there’s another set of people who are now planning to leave Twitter if Donald Trump is allowed to Tweet again.  And probably in a couple days there’ll be some other thing that people will say, it’s going to be the reason they leave.  So, it’s an interesting dynamic situation, but I thought it was a good topic to talk about one because it’s timely and two because it’s — I think it forces us to rethink how we use Twitter and social media in general.

Tom Mighell:  I’m going to make the argument that it does not.  It makes us do none of those things.  And I’m going to tell you why I think that in just a little bit.  But maybe let’s spend some time first talking about what the news is.

(00:05:03)

What the basic things are.  For those of you who have only vaguely paid attention to the fact that he’s made an offer to buy Twitter, but maybe not all the details.  Let’s cover the details for a minute.  So, part of the reason why he wants to purchase it is, because he is Twitter’s number one troll and number one person on there.  So, he’s got a lot of thoughts about how he thinks it should be run and how it should be.  Some ideas are not bad, some ideas are not so great.  For example, he wants to make the Twitter algorithm open source, so that there is more transparency about how it makes decisions.  Theoretically, not a bad idea.  I don’t have a problem with that necessarily.  He wants to basically allow all speech unless it constitutes a crime under the laws of the country where it was said, which I don’t even know how you begin to enforce something of that.  But what I think he is not understanding which every social media platform that has tried to break away from Twitter and say, “Hey, we can’t have free speech on Twitter.  We are going to have a free speech platform.”  Is that content moderation is hard.  Everyone who has gone away and said, we’re going to have a free speech, they’ve all been forced to implement some level of content moderation.  So, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens when he gets there and if he gets there and decide he wants free speech.

He has a pledged all along this to make Twitter more like the internet’s Public Square.  I applaud that.  I think that it has part of that capability, although I think it’s more like public squares than with single Public Square.  One of the things that I think is also going to be challenging and or potentially maybe dangerous is he wants to authenticate humans so that they’re — essentially, he wants to avoid that there are any more bots or spam, which I applaud that.  I don’t want boxer spam.  Although it’s very interesting.  He has his own bot army that basically goes after anybody that disagrees with him, which is kind of interesting.  But getting rid of bots and spam is great.  But the authenticating humans part becomes a little more challenging if you want to be anonymous, if you want to be pseudonymous on Twitter and you don’t want necessarily people to know who you are.  That becomes a little tricky.  So, a couple of things around it.  Hear a couple of other quick things and then I’m going to turn it over to you, Dennis.  A couple other things that I find very interesting.  He plans to increase Twitter users from 217 million to 931 million by in the next six years, which just — it blows me away how we’re going to get triple the users, almost a billion users.

Dennis Kennedy:  It’s very precise number too.

Tom Mighell:  He has a very precise number of how many he has.  He has a new undescribed subscription service that he calls X.  For those of you who don’t know, Elon, X is a favorite number — favorite letter of his.  He has owned the x.com domain for years and years.  He has said that it will have 104 million subscribers by 2028, even though we have no idea what you’re going to be subscribing to.  Advertising now makes up 90 percent of Twitter’s Revenue, but he only wants it to be 45 percent.  So, I’m not sure how Twitter is going to wind up making money at this point.  He also, what I think is fascinating wants to do is, he wants to license and sell the daily tweets to marketing and consumer data analytics companies.  I think it ignores the part that frankly, the copyright on tweets belong to the users themselves.  So, I’m not sure how you can do that without radically changing the terms of service for the company.

And then he most recently talked about the fact that while casual users could use Twitter for free, he would have to think about charging governments and corporations a “slight cost” for using Twitter.  So, it changes b day by day.  So, it’s always interesting.  But those are some of the changes and things that we can probably expect to at least be in the news or be hearing about as we get closer to a potential sale.

Dennis Kennedy:  I mean it comes down to the devils in the details.  So, when we kind of look at those of us who’ve been on Twitter for a long time.  Let’s say like there’s a lot — Twitter is where it’s at today as a result of a lot of evolution and argument, and development.  And the way the people of kind of compromise on things.  And so, the idea that you come in and say “Oh, we’ll do this and we’re going to make — we’re going to promise investors.  We are going to make a lot more money and there’s going to be this, and there’s going to be blue check box, and there’s going to be subscriptions, and there’s going to be this in free speech” and all the stuff.  We’ve sort of seen like through all these ups and downs of how that works and how it doesn’t work.  And these issues can be really difficult.

(00:09:57)

And you kind of come in, and you sort of feel like people come in and they’re — we’re software engineers and we’ll just program this stuff to get the results that we want.  And the fact is, it’s humans who — and humans are unpredictable and they do what’s unexpected.  And they do, sometimes just crazy things.  So, I don’t think it’s going to be a smooth process.  I just hope that they don’t do a lot of violence to how we currently use it.  And, I think that’s the concern where people say “Oh, I might go somewhere else maybe”  But I’m kind of, I don’t know exactly where you’re going to be on this point time, but I’ve kind of at the point where he looked basically, most of the times when people make threats to leave big platforms, where they have audiences and communities, they never follow through on it.

Tom Mighell:  I agree with that.  And the thing is, is that, if you are going to leave something, you need to have something to live for.  You got to have an exit plan to where your — especially if you have an audience.  I mean, if it’s just that you use Twitter to keep up with stuff and you decide you’re going to find a different way to keep up with the news, then maybe that’s not such a big deal.  But I think that most people stay for a couple of reasons.  One, like you say, the audience that we typically have is there.  I think that the other piece is that — and here’s why I fundamentally believe that nothing major is going to happen for the majority of people.  And I don’t even want to worried about thinking about how I’m going to rethink my social media because, Twitter is so big that it can be what you make of it.  And the truth of that the matter is, that there are parts of Twitter that are just cesspools of disgusting content.  I have gone through those occasionally.  I have gone down a rabbit hole and seen just terrible, terrible stuff, but I know how to stay away from them.  And so, I never see that.  So, I have the world that I want to be in.  I have created the people I want to pay attention to.  They are generally kind, generally smart, generally informative and I stay in that world.

So, unless any of his plans or anything that winds up happening to Twitter, fundamentally changed my personal Twitter experience.  I am unlikely to switch.  And I think that’s the same with everybody else.  As long as their day-to-day Twitter experience doesn’t change, then this is going to blow over after a certain period of time because nothing really for them is going to make a big difference.  Now, it might be that it makes a difference for the people who are allowed to come on.  But I’ll tell you, if there are people who say things that you don’t like listening to, don’t listen to him just tune it out.  Twitter gives you the ability to do that.  And so, I think ultimately, people probably won’t do as much as they say they are and they’ll stick around.  Because they’ve already made a comfortable home on Twitter in a place that makes them comfortable to be in.

Dennis Kennedy:  Yeah.  I mean, I’m there too.  I look back and I just remember all the other times people are going to quit Facebook and they’re going to quit TikTok, they’re going to quit LinkedIn, they’re going to quit Twitter, they’re never going to blog again.  And then, to couple days later they’re blogging.  We have a friend, who I won’t name, who was notorious for announcing that he’s going to stop blogging and then sheepishly couple weeks later be doing it again.  So, I think that these are big platforms.  We get a lot of value out of them, and that’s why we’re there.  And I think that I just go back and go like “Hey, if my community is there, if my audience is there, it is really difficult for me to leave.”  “I might rethink a little bit about how I use it.  But that’s going to be depending on with the audience is there.

I think the — I did want to say one thing, Tom.  That — and we — I think we use Twitter in somewhat different ways.  And for me, Twitter is really underrated as a, like a high speed, instantaneous news source.  In a time when the news – it is sort of like the news media sites have moved to pay (00:14:29), subscriber only content.  So, it’s hard to get actual news.  I mean, sort of running gag is my one of my favorite quotes, but Twitter, it’s simultaneously the greatest source of, like in a developing new story of accurate news, inaccurate news and outrageously false stories at the same time.  And so, you kind of have to learn to live with that.  But the fact is that there are certain types of new stories that Twitter is the best place to get information.

(00:15:02)

And I don’t think it’s going to go away for that.  It would be difficult for me to leave Twitter because I do use it for that.

Tom Mighell:  Well — and I do the same thing, but I do it for mostly technology news.  And so that’s where — rather than follow a bunch of blogs, I have — although I follow blogs and I still use a news reader, I don’t really use it as often as I use Twitter.  I pretend to find Twitter is easier to consume than consuming an RSS reader like Feedly.  But the same — I’ll come back to the same argument.  I’m going to be a broken record and the segment of the podcast, which is that I know which accounts give good reasonable news and the ones that I can rely on and trust to give me what I need.  And I subscribe to those sites and I stick with them, and I’m happy with that.  And so, I totally agree with you that — and have agreed for some time that Twitter is a great news source.  It’s really just about finding the trustworthy sources and being able to filter those — filter the ones that are less trustworthy out, or the ones that have the potential for misinformation, or for other things that just don’t make for a worthwhile reading experience.

Dennis Kennedy:  Well, it is still place better than Twitter for finding all the people who agree with you that the referees made a really bad call in the game that you’re watching.  So, I guess time — Did you — so in these little past few weeks on Twitter, did you actually take any steps or seriously consider any options about with respect to Twitter?

Tom Mighell:  No, that’s all I got to say about that.  No.

Dennis Kennedy:  I would say the same thing.  But I did say like “Oh, this is a little nudge” because somebody said, here’s how you download like all your archive of tweets.  I just went ahead and did that.  Which is kind of a weird process because you basically request that Twitter send them to you.  It’s not a direct download.  So, I think that I just — and I when I look at it, I just say it is so hard to create new audience on new platforms when you already have existing audiences.  Because you have to get that audience to move or just create an audience from scratch.  I just think that is so difficult as a creator or someone who has communities.  And that to me is, as is a stopper for me.  I know you haven’t really rethought of your use of social media, but I have time.  And I’m curious.  Now, maybe to dive into say, like, if we were going to make changes or rethink our social media, how might we do that?  Or are you just sort of locked into where you are and say, like, “I’m all set here, at least for a while.”

Tom Mighell:  I’m going to let you cover that because the basic answer to that is, is that I’m not unhappy with where I am, but I want to take a step back first.  When you talk about creating new audiences on new platforms is really hard.  I agree with that.  I think that it — what’s hard – So, if you are a just a consumer of social media, if you’re just there to get information and having an audience is less important, then it doesn’t matter where you are.  As long as you find where you want to be, that’s what makes the most sense.  If you want to be where your friends are and your friends will go wherever you go, then that’s one thing.  If you are a creator, if you have an audience, if having people either follow you or respond to you, is part of you making a living or something like that, then that is important.  And the only thing I have to say about that is, there is a potential on the future for a change for that.

And I want to talk about something that a company by the name of Blue Sky, which is an open-source offshoot of Twitter has been working on, which I think is really kind of fascinating.  They are coming out with something they have introduced it.  It is in Beta now, I believe.  It is called authenticated data experiment or ADX.  I’ll put a link to blueskyweb.xyz in the show notes.  It is a protocol that is built around you being able to maintain your own data or personal — or they call a personal data repository that social networks could choose to support.  So, at some point, if you don’t like Twitter, you could pick up your personal data repository and move over to another service that supported the ADX and basically install your complete history on the other platform.  And so, so Blue Sky says on the web your data lives on the social platform where it’s created.  In ADX, your data lives in your own personal data repository that you your cell phone.

(00:20:02)

So, Dennis, when you say that you downloaded your Twitter things, that’s great.  But it just gives you an archive.  It doesn’t really give you a place to put them.  You can’t actually do anything with them where this actually allows you to do something.

Now, this is where it depends on multiple organizations deciding we’re going to adapt this, which that may never happen, but who knows.  It might be something that want them.  And it may be hard.  You may say I’m quitting Twitter because now I can pick my library of stuff up and move over to the next thing.  You still have the dilemma there of convincing your audience to move with you.  But what I find intriguing about this technology is, is that you’re not locked in.  That’s no longer necessarily your only option.  You have to stay where you are.  And that’s what intrigues me about the potential that people could move in the future, given the right circumstances technologically, it’s becoming a lot easier and better to do hopefully in the future.

Dennis Kennedy:  Yeah and I would argue that’s one of the core concepts of Web Tree as well in a decentralized sort of platform where you had a lot more control or you had total control over your own data and where it was placed.  I have just to go back to saying all the stuff the devil is in the details, right?  Because what was like 25 years ago we’re all going to be all legal opinions and legal information is going to be in Legal XML.  It’s going to be like totally usable and transportable and all the stuff and you see where we are on that which is nowhere.  So, I think – when I started to think about this, I sort of – it just goes back to basics to me.  Just kind of take a look at what – and what I’m doing is I’m taking a look at what I’m doing so what are the places I put content and I use social media and then look at each of the platforms that I’m now using and say, what’s the job to be done?  What am I hiring for?  And is that what I’m using it for?  And if there’s anything new that I might consider, what would be hiring it to do?  And then, more importantly I’m looking to say what are my audiences and communities and do I have them as aligned to those platforms as I think they should be and so – and I’d say content as well because I have a pretty good feel right now where things go and then I look and say, what changes might I make?

And so, Tom, here’s my quick list, I said, well, I could look at something like Apple News which I’m using more as an actual mainstream media news advocate or Feedly.  I use for our assess feeds.  I could see using Twitter lists maybe but I have really great control on who I follow on Twitter.  I want to think more carefully about content placement if I’m doing in the right place.  Then also the thing that always surprise me when people are complaining about Twitter is like you can mute all kinds of stuff.  You just like used the feature set a little bit.  You go like, hey, I can mute like names or words or anything that I want and then the big one for me and then we’ve talked about from time to time is do I want to port some of the – I would actually just move some of the stuff that I have on these third-party social networks into the community platform where I just developed a completely new audience in a new way.  So, that’s sort of how I’m thinking about this, the buy of Twitter.  And I probably come out about where you do Tom.  So, I might like use some muting features or other things but probably I’m just going to reevaluate, kind of reposition a little bit but I’m going to think really hard about how I use Mighty Networks. 

Tom Mighell:  So, I agree with everything you said but I will sort of simplify though my way of thinking about it is that I think it’s a good idea whether or not some good kajillionaire offers to buy one of your favorite social media platforms or not, it’s a good idea to audit your social media usage from time to time.  I think we’ve talked about it several times on the podcast and it’s a good idea to take a look at what you’re using and whether it makes sense for you.  To me, I want to simplify it into three different areas.  One, where are you friends?  Because social media is just not about following the news.  It’s not just about doing a business and talking to professional people.  It’s about where you’re friends are.  You want to be able to talk to them too.

(00:24:55)

Number two, where is your audience for business/whatever your lifestyle purpose is?  If you are trying to cultivate an audience as a creator or as part of a revenue generating process, you want to make sure that your audience is there too.

Three, where do you want to keep up with the latest news in your field or in general?  Because it may not be the same place where your audience is.  It may not be the same place where your friends are.  But to me, those are the three simple questions about social media.  Where your friends are so you can keep up with them.  Where are your followers going to be?  And where can you keep you with things?  The only rule that I tried to apply to all of that is, do not spread yourself too thin.  Don’t go wide, because if you have too many places, you’ll be unhappy.  I’ve been unhappy before because I found that I am enjoying information from Twitter, from blog posts.  There are some Reddits, sub-Reddits that I’ve started to follow.  Because frankly some of the information there is even better than any other places that I’ve seen.  And I am totally overwhelmed and so it’s really about finding one or two places that you figure can meet the requirements for you and sticking with those.

Dennis Kennedy:  I think I would start to also think in terms of – think of social media in terms of the buy directional approach.  So, what am I posting and what am I responding too?  And to get a sense that interactivity and say, are my friends there?  Are my customers there?  Are different types of audience is there?  And can I have some interactions through the social media platforms which is really sort of widely were devised despite the fact they’ve all been turned into advertising outlets.  And that’s one thing that I would think about is where is that buy directional thing happening?  And can I find some community there that’s really valuable to me?  Tom, we should wrap it up with a couple of predictions.  What do you expect to happen with Twitter since probably will be wrong by the time that people are listening to this?

Tom Mighell:  Well, that’s true.  It’s hard for me to make a prediction but I predict that Elon will still come through whether he gets more money from the Saudis that are giving him money or some other interesting secret location where he gets money.  I predict that that will still happen.  I predict that he will learn some hard truths about owning a social media company like that but I think that it will come at the cost of a lot of uproar and maybe not letting certain people onto to Twitter and makes comments and have statements on Twitter that we have to learn lessons from.  I kind of think we’re going to go through growing pains.  With Twitter, with a new owner, that’s as far as my prediction are willing to go at this point.  What about you Dennis? 

Dennis Kennedy:  The one prediction I’m pretty confident of is that there’re going to be many people totally outraged by what Elon does and there’re going to be – many people totally ecstatic about what he does and there’s going to be bunch of us in the middle where kind of like, whatever.

Tom Mighell:  That’s not a prediction.  That’s just what’s going to happen.

Dennis Kennedy:  This is a serious prediction.  But the one thing I’m going to predict is that Twitter is placed as the platform for what I think will be the word of this year if it was not already the word of last year, for doom scrolling is stilling going to be unsalable because there’s no better place to find out and follow all the negative stories in the world in your spare time than Twitter is.

Tom Mighell:  And with that, we’re going to close out this segment.  We will see you here in another six to twelve months and we will figure out whether our predictions have come through.  However, in the meantime, it’s time to move on.  Before we move on to our next segment, let’s take a quick break from a message from our sponsors.

[Music]

Female:  As a lawyer, ever wish you could be in two places at once?  You could take a call when you’re in court.  Capture a lead during a meeting.  That’s where Posh comes in, where live virtual receptionists who answer and transfer your calls so you never miss an opportunity.  And the Posh app let’s you control when your receptionist steps in.  So, if you can’t answer, Posh can.  And if you’ve got it, Posh is just a tap away.  With Posh, you can save as much as 40% off your current service provider’s rates.  Start your free trial today at posh.com.

[Music]

Dennis Kennedy:  Being a lawyer can be stressful especially if you juggle multiple systems to get your work done.  That’s why over 150,000 legal professionals switch to Clio.

(00:30:02) 

With Clio’s cloud-based legal software, you can manage everything.  From client intake to billing for one secure platform.  Plus Clio integrates with your favorite tools like Outlook, Gmail and Quickbooks so you can get more done in one place.  Learn more at clio.com.  It’s C-L-I-O dot com.

[Music]

Tom Mighell:  As a lawyer, insurance is one of the last parts of your job you want to spend unbillable hours on.  That’s why thousands of lawyers have switched to Embroker.  Embroker offers eight plus rated insurance for law firms that you can quote and buy instantly online.  If you need help, they’ve got experts on standby.  Go from signup to purchase in jury 15 minutes by visiting embroker.com/law.  That’s E-M-B-R-O-K-E-R dot com forward slash law.

[Music]

Tom Mighell:  And now, let’s get back to the Kennedy-Mighell report.  I’m tom Mighell.

Dennis Kennedy:  And I’m Dennis Kennedy.  So, we recently saw comment from a lawyer about collaboration that we wanted to share.  It will help us kick off this series of podcast topics we’re playing due once our new work from home edition of The Lawyers Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies Book gets published this summer.  We actually received the page produce for the books today.  So, it should be off to the printer.  I think by the time you hear this episode.  So, here’s the quote we wanted to discuss and it goes like this, “(00:31:41) engaged in looking at document management systems and CLM systems.  I find the sales efforts seemed to emphasize collaboration.  As a lawyer, I find collaboration to be a bug not a feature.  I think I need absolute control over versions.”  Tom, is this lawyer’s attitude a bug or is it a feature?

Tom Mighell:  So, the first thing I thought about when I saw your question, is it a bug or a feature is, I think that this would make a great subject for a B-segment.  Instead of hot or not, let’s do bug or features.  I’m just giving you that idea that let’s maybe think about bug or feature for future B-segments in the podcast.

Second, let’s be clear.  This is a quote from an actual lawyer, a real life human being lawyer made this quote.  This is not hypothetical.  This is something that was actually said and so, in this case, I’m hoping that his attitude or his thinking is just plain uninformed and uneducated.  That’s my hope.  If it’s not, if he really believes that absolute control over versions is a best course of action for a lawyer then he’s missing out on a lot of the opportunities to be more productive, be more efficient probably endear himself more to clients and colleagues and he sounds a little bit like a control freak to me.

And obviously, that last sentence where he uses the word control is telling him that.  But I am going to choose to assume that he is mistaken in his assumptions about collaboration.  So, just taking a tool like Microsoft 365 for example.  Collaboration on a document with someone doesn’t mean that the primary author cannot exercise a further level or a higher level of version control over the people that they collaborate with.  Let’s take this word document that we’re using right now.  We write a script through the word document.  I can go back to any version of the script at any time and have absolute control over what that version is.  If I’m working with the other side on a legal matter or those who might want to alter a document then I can put editing controls on the document that would not prevent collaboration but would prevent altering of the document.  If I was even more of a control freak, I’d convert that document to PDF where it couldn’t be altered at all and yet we could still collaborate on it and fully protect version control.

There are so many options to remain in control of versions and still collaborate.  I have to believe that this guy is uneducated and if I’m wrong then I guess I have to say I’m relieved.  I will probably never have to work on a document with this guy.  Dennis, your thoughts?

Dennis Kennedy:  So, although I didn’t tell you Tom, you are accurate in your assumption that this was a man who wrote this, a male lawyer.  So, when I saw this, it’s fascinating to me because and he did say absolute control over versions.  So, there’s this – my micromanager antenna go off, and I’m just like I think you missed totally one half of the point of collaboration.  In our book, we talked about how it’s really important at times when you’re working together with people that you want to kind of open things up so the people can work on and then you’re tracking what’s happened.

(00:35:08)

So, you can identify that and you get all the advantages of people working together.  Then there’s a point where it goes to the other side and as you said Tom, you still want people to be able to work with you but you exercise a different set of controls.  So, you don’t kind of expose the data.  You use track changes in a different way.

And so, collaboration to me is absolutely the feature that you want in ever legal technology system that involves more than one person using it.  And so, the reason I shared this with you is because I just thought this was a bizarre concept and as you said, it would just kind of miss the whole point of collaboration and I would hope if people have this thought about collaboration then they really – I would not even wait till our new book came out.  I would just buy the old book and read up on this because you’re missing like half of the core idea of collaboration.  Now, it’s time for our parting chat.  One tip website or observation, you could use the second this podcast ends.  Tom, take it away.

Tom Mighell:  All right.  My parting shot came about when I was trying to understand how to best protect my home network for and on benefit and on behalf of a new resident that is going to be coming and living with us.  A young adult who will be living with us.  And I think I’ve mentioned in the podcast before, I use the Eero mesh network to manage my internet and it has great security features and you can set up and now that I’ve done some more research on it, you can set up child and or adult filters within Eeros so that prevents them from getting to certain sites and information.  For children, you can set it up by age range.  So, there’s a range for like one to five.  There’s a range from 5 to 13.  There’s a range from 13 to 18.  And then there’s actually one for adult and what they do in adult is that they break it down by types of contents.  So, you can block adult content, illegal or criminal content, violent content, chat and messaging, social media, games, streaming and shopping.

And I thought this is really very useful if there are people that you want to – at the very least, I would like to discourage visiting illegal or criminal websites.  So, I may put that filter on our network and I like how this breaks it down and makes it more granular and I’m probably going to implement some kind of filter like this and I thought it was really useful.  So, if you’re using a mesh network, if you’re using Eero, it’s really easy.  Just go to settings and find the place to add child and adult filters.  If you happen to use another type of mesh network like Google or Net Orbi, I can’t remember the other names that are out there.  They probably also have those filtering products or features as well.  I would definitely go check them out.

Dennis Kennedy:  And what’s potential brilliant about this is that the user will just think that the internet is acting up or that there’s like a bad connection that – and I’ve realized that you’ve actually screened them from something.  So, you kind of get the best of both worlds.  So, my parting shot is something new, brand new but it’s also kind of an old idea and so, I’ve been reading about this site called “Oldest Search” as in the oldest search and what it does is it takes the Google approach which really focuses on the most recent things generally and it goes back to the first times that, the first mentions of something in a search.  So, instead of getting the stuff that just happened in a list there so you get stuff that happened 20 years ago on Google.  And this can be your certain times, this can be actually useful and it’s interesting like now I can use the oldest search thing to say like, oh, my god, it’s actually is true that I did coin the term legal innovation as a service because it shows right up there.  So, that’s interesting but it’s an example I think of this customized Google search engines that you could do and the people have done for a long time where you can kind of take some of the Google filters and you can do some other things and you can create these kind of specialized search engines for yourself.

(00:39:56)

And Tom, I think we’ve talked about these on podcast before and this is just an interesting example of how to do it and I think once you see how this works, it might interest you.  I would get you interested in trying some of the other ways to customize search tool for certain site or set of sites or for other things like that.  So, it might be an interesting thing.  But it’s kind of fun if you just want to see like what search results were like a long-long-long time ago is kind of interesting.  And if you do like a search on your own name, that’s super interesting as well.

Tom Mighell:  I did a search on my own name and interestingly enough, the oldest site which had me wondering is dated April 14, 1975 long before I think most of the internet – I mean, the internet has been around for a long time but I don’t think that websites have been around for that long and it turns out that there was a case in Illinois called Blue Meyer versus Tom Mighell Construction.  And so, my name is memorialized in an appellate decision back then so that looks like it’s the oldest link on the internet with my name although it’s a new link.  It’s relevant to an old-old case.

Dennis Kennedy:  I was thinking at 1975 that might have been like one of our first internet columns that we wrote together.

Tom Mighell:  Yeah.  I’m not quite that old.  You speak for yourself but my first internet columns came out decades later.  All right.  So, and with that, so that wraps it up for this edition of the The Kennedy-Mighell Report.  Thanks for joining us on the podcast.  You can find show notes for this episode on the Legal Talk Network’s page for the show.  If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our podcast in iTunes on the Legal Talk Network site where you can find our causable or previous podcasts along with transcripts or in your favorite podcast app.  If you would like to get in touch with us, reach out to us on LinkedIn.  We’re all Twitter.  We’ve made that very clear or remember we’d love to get a voicemail from you.  That voicemail number is (720) 441-6820.  Leave us a voicemail.  Let us know if you’re going to move away from Twitter or if you’re changing your social media habits.  So, until the next podcast.  I’m Tom Mighell.

Dennis Kennedy:  And I’m Dennis Kennedy and that’s @denniskennedy on Twitter.  And you’ve been listening to the Kennedy-Mighell Report, a podcast on legal technology with an internet focus.  If you like what you heard today, please rate us in Apple Podcast and we’ll see you next time for another episode of the Kennedy-Mighell Report on the Legal Talk Network.

[Music]

Male:  Thanks for listening to the Kennedy-Mighell Report.  Check out Dennis and Tom’s book, A 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]

Continue Reading