a_shane

As a childless woman in her mid-30's, I take issue with this comment. I run a successful business that supports the livelihoods of a dozen people, I volunteer and am a an active community advocate, and I teach, among other things.

My decision to not have children is so I can focus my attention on other economic contributors and keeping my team employed. I'd hardly call that "dicking around without responsibility."

I totally agree with your take.

I didn't like LinkedIn for a long time (I much preferred Twitter) but since becoming a business owner I've appreciated having a place where I can go and "talk shop" and connect with other business owners going through the same things I am.

Maybe it's just that I've cultivated the right community, but at least 90% of the content I see on LinkedIn is interesting, personal, and thoughtful. I much prefer it to every other social network I use.

I feel the same way; weddings have always felt like an unnecessary extravagance.

Some friends are getting married on the weekend and I was shocked to learn that they're spending close to $50,000 on the wedding, and that's after a raising over $5,000 at their social and getting financial support from both their families to pay for the event. That's like a downpayment on a house! Insanity.

Bump for Trello. I use it to manage my team (who work remotely) and personal life, too. We use it for vacations, long-tern house projects (gardening, building things, etc.)

I've tried Slack in a few different contexts and have always found that the chat-based interface encouraged users to do just that: chat.

A combo of Trello + email work better for keeping communication focused on the product/project, in my experience.

I started freelancing 5-6 years ago, doing copywriting projects mostly. Website copy, monthly blog posts, that kind of stuff.

After a few months I realized that none of the clients I was working with had an actual digital marketing plan in place; they were just farming out copy projects because they "knew the needed to have a blog."

I pitched all of my existing clients and spent the next year building up a side roster of additional clients who relied on me for their digital marketing strategy, copy, and social media management. This pivot away from being just copy-based to strategy and execution/management earned me enough recurring monthly revenue that I was making more from my side project than my 9-5, so I quit.

I've been running my company, Starling Social (https://www.starling.social) for just shy of three years now. I have a Copywriter, an Account Manager, and it's looking like I'll need to hire an Ads Specialist in the not-too-distant future. Life is pretty great.

This is basically me. I wear contacts for "special occasions" but have really been considering lasik recently.

What has your post-lasik experience been like?

Ooh, I'm glad I scrolled down to see your comment identifying this (I generally avoid the comments section online unless it's on HN, heh).

I was taken aback by a lot of statements made in the article, which seemed to essentially state "I worked hard and it's not fair if other people don't have to, too" but in light of this his stance on the matter makes a lot of sense.

I want to add a bit to your comment - it's important to try and identify the kind of meetups you'd like to attend that will help you meet your desired customer base, and the kinds that will help you get known in your local community (ie: meetups for web devs to connect).

I find that meetups can sometimes become circle-jerks for people in a similar field to just get together and talk/humblebrag. Which is fine, but if that's not your goal you need to look at different meetups which serve that goal.

I assume that this is what's going to happen. While I'm a bit nervous about this whole "10,000 char" thing, it would totally destroy their current user experience and make Twitter unreadable if they actually implemented it in your feed.

Still, I don't quite know if I like that idea. I guess we'll see.

I'm actually in the process of updating my quote template for my content marketing services at the moment, and looking over it again it's basically a bunch of gibberish and nonsense that wouldn't have made sense when I was growing up. Weird.

Ooh, I like this!

However, I feel like it would be weird for people to adopt, and probably put people off of Twitter, since paying attention to a 1-1 limit is annoying enough.

Which is all well and good, but when you take away too many of the features which make that ecosystem unique, there's less incentive to use it over anything else.

All of the above, plus attracting new users.

Comparatively, Twitter doesn't have the same user base as Instagram, Facebook, or WhatsApp, and I think that extending the character limit is a way of making Twitter more accessible for first-time users.

It's also designed to bring more brands to Twitter. Right now it's extremely difficult to promote your brand/business, include a photo, @ mention someone, and include a hashtag. An extended character limit solves all of these problems, making it a more attractive platform for advertising than ever before.

I'm 100% with you. Honestly, my "prefect Twitter" would be to keep the 140char limit, but to exclude @ mentions, photos, and links from the limit.

That way users can be a bit more expressive without the word-barf walls of text which make Facebook, Tumblr, and other social platforms a nightmare to read through.

While I'm always interested to read about effects of MDMA on the brain, I can't help but take issue with the negative, tsk-tsk tone of this article. They make MDMA out to sound like this drug which makes you lose all inhibitions and any real sense of control, yet I've known far more people who have made bad choices (driven recklessly, had unprotected sex, gotten into fistfights, etc) while under the influence of practically every other kind of intoxicant - usually alcohol.

On that note, I think that it's interesting how our societies demonize MDMA (largely, I think because it's not sold legally, like alcohol is.) I see tons of articles published discussing the good and bad sides of MDMA use, but rarely see articles circulating around which discuss why we should or shouldn't drink on the weekends, or the long-term effects of binge drinking. It seems like alcohol is the accepted form of abusing our bodies because we've been doing it for so long, and because it's a larger, more public part of our culture.

It seems like a recurring theme in these types of posts is that people leave high-paying jobs and that we should applaud them for "giving up" their salaries to do what makes them happy.

Not that this is a bad thing (I applaud anyone who does something difficult in the pursuit of long-term happiness), but the fact that many people enter into unfulfilling job situations because they're drawn to the high profile and/or salary probably plays a large part in why they feel unfulfilled after working there for a while.

I read this in university and loved it. McLuhan can be a bit heavy-handed (and gets a bit self-important in his later works, imo) but this is a great starting point for anyone interested in media theory. V solid read.

Exactly. Knowing the type of audience you want to reach before making a PR move of any sort is crucial, and can vary widely depending on the type of product you're developing/the kind of company you are/the kind of coverage you want.

I should probably clarify my earlier comment, maybe an example will help: sending out a PR release for a game that's in development to larger tech news sites, like TechCrunch, is a good strategy because companies can build on the momentum of that initial announcement. It's definitely something that shouldn't be taken lightly, though, I totally agree with you there.

As a content marketer, I'm excited about this update. I spend a lot of time crafting images and titles for the content I produce for my clients, and it will be interesting to see if the increased visibility of a post and it's image will drive more traffic.

There are some really great points in here, though I don't know if I'd agree that having a fully finished product is always necessary before putting out a press release - in many cases you can generate a ton of content by sharing articles and updates pertaining to the development of the product as it happens after you've done a press release about it.

People find out about the project through the press release, and ideally will join your mailing list, follow you on social media, etc in order to keep up with the project/product as it develops.

I was actually going to reply to that point, as well. This guy, despite his somewhat unique circumstances (and superb writing) isn't really alone in that he has to do what he needs, however unfulfilling, to get by.

Not available in Canada :(

I actually had to sit down and think about the implications of these things when I saw the photos - how far we've come, what we've accomplished, the sophistication of our tech... it really is staggering.