Over the past few years social media stars have made a fortune online, using YouTube to create their own brand. Take a look at how they’ve made their careers and the money that they’re making. From top YouTubers to the celebs you’d forgotten started their careers online, here we take a look at the secrets to online fame and fortune.
Take a look at some of the biggest YouTube stars making millions online and find out if you could do the same! Did we miss anyone? Leave us a comment at the bottom of the post and let us know who is your favorite.
Smart Speakers 101 The trendy devices can help you with everything from appointment reminders to grocery shopping lists to playing your favorite music and podcasts. It’s that last item that has the radio world excited. Find out why all the buzz is good news not only for broadcasters but also importantly for you.
A recent trend has shown an increase in radio listenership through popular smart speakers such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa. So what can broadcasters do to take advantage of this trend? Steve Goldstein of Amplifi Media and Sonic Ai aims to help.
A broadcaster by trade, most recently as EVP at Saga Communications, Steve saw a shift to on-demand content, and in 2015 launched Amplifi, a firm focused on developing on-demand audio—the intersection of podcasting and broadcasting. Earlier this year, Steve partnered with Jacobs Media on Sonic Ai, who develops smart speaker skills (more on skills later) for podcasters and broadcasters.
So what is it about smart speakers that make it easier for people to listen to radio? Steve explains, “There are a number of factors. For starters, the number of radios in the home has been on a steady decline. By some estimates, two-thirds of homes do not have radios. Generationally it’s even fewer.” Steve says the notion that it’s a choice between a radio and something else isn’t really true anymore – in some homes, there is no radio.
While it may be hard for those of us in the broadcast industry to imagine, the smartphone has replaced the radio and clock radio in many homes. “The smartphone is an entertainment hub,” Steve says. “It’s where people listen to music, get the news, watch videos, and so on. It’s transitioned from a telephone to a full-fledged hub. Part of that hub can be radio, but very little listening to radio occurs through the device.”
Steve says radio stations need to think beyond the transmitter and audio stream. While there are only so many radio stations in a market, there are 100,000 radio stations available via the TuneIn Radio app, streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, and 400,000 podcasts. “You’re talking about an awful lot of audio,” he asserts. “The focus needs to be on-demand content. That’s the trend. The expectation today is that content is available on-demand.” The ability to listen whenever and wherever a listener desires—in the car, while they’re walking the dog, when they’re exercising—is in step with today’s lifestyles.
It’s the same arc we’ve seen on the video side with on-demand services such as Netflix, Hulu, and others. While adoption has been slower on the audio side, the conversion is happening rapidly among millennials.
An Edison Research study from NPR earlier this year showed that somewhere between 7-11% of homes in the U.S. have these devices and the largest group of users is millennials (18-34). And we should expect this trend to continue, especially with the holidays upon us. “We should expect these devices are going to sell like hotcakes over holiday season,” Steve says. He points out that some analysts predict that market penetration may increase to 15-18% by the end of the year.
Smart Speaker
With the trend toward radio and audio consumption through smart devices, it’s apparent the way forward for broadcasters is to develop new ways to connect audiences to their content.
Got Skills?
You’ve probably heard the term skills thrown about when smart speakers are discussed. So what exactly are skills? And how do they relate to broadcast audio consumption via smart speakers? Steve explains. “Think of smart speakers as computers… They don’t know what to do until you teach it. In this case, Amazon refers to the learning aspect of the device as a skill. We develop skills and invocations for the stations we work with.”
As an example, Sonic Ai built a skill for WMMR in Philadelphia called ‘Open MMR.’ The listener hears a greeting from the morning show, then is offered a menu of choices. Listeners can choose to listen to the live stream, the latest podcast of the morning show, or the show’s top feature, called ‘The Bizarre Files’—an 8-12 minute piece of audio you can listen to without sitting through the entire morning show. Steve says WMMR has seen significant traction from listeners who missed the segment on the morning show tuning in to listen at a time convenient to them.
For a top-performing morning show, this is huge; for the first time, there’s a retention strategy, with the ability to repurpose and reuse audio. Additionally, in PPM markets, listening to content within 24 hours of the original broadcast is accretive to a station’s ratings.
Steve points out that when it comes to a radio station’s invocations and skills, getting it right is essential. Depending on the name or phrase used to identify a station, the invocation might not provide the audio stream you’re looking for. Steve cites the phrase ‘Lite FM’ as an example. “If you say ‘Play Lite FM’ as your invocation, you’re going to get Lite FM in Beirut, Lebanon, or an Inspirational station in Albany, NY. So you need to get your name and invocation correct, and register it.”
Steve suggests however that if stations are only doing this for streaming purposes, that’s not enough. “The real opportunity is with on-demand audio, which is what we’re focused on.”
The capabilities of smart speakers are constantly being enhanced, and they’re used for a variety of tasks, but audio is by far the top option. That’s the good news, Steve says, but the challenge for broadcasters is that that audio is coming from a variety of sources. “The linear AM/FM notion is going away, but the notion that broadcasters create relevant content is not, so they need to be more flexible about where content is being consumed, less focused on the transmitter, and more focused on devices that can play audio.”
It’s a new challenge, but with booming sales of smart speakers and potential for a measurable increase in listeners, it’s a challenge broadcasters need to embrace. Steve sums it up. “Broadcasters need to get out of the radio business and into the audio business. That will change your thinking about everything.” For the Silo, Dave Sarkies/Telos Alliance.
NEW YORK, NY (PRWEB)- According to the White House, by 2018, 51 percent of STEM jobs will be in computer science-related fields. However, the number of tech employees has not increased along with the number of jobs available. Why? The answer is simple: lack of relevant education. The White House maintains that just one quarter of K-12 schools offer high-quality computer science with programming and coding. In addition, in 2016, the PEW Research Center reported that only 17% of adults believed they were “digitally ready.” Technology is changing the way that we live and work, and it’s happening fast. So how do we ensure that individuals (especially girls and women) are digitally literate?
In my new interview below with C.M. Rubin (founder of CMRubinWorld), Derek Lo says he started Py because he wanted to demystify “coding”. His app does this by making coding fun. The program also avoids using any programming jargon until the learner is ready. Lo states that “gamification isn’t a hindrance to learning—-it accelerates it.” He further notes that coding “instills a greater aptitude for systematic thinking and logical decision making.” Lo recently partnered with the not for profit Girls Who Code to further reduce the gender gap and “change people’s image of who a coder is.”
“We specifically write our content using language that even young children can understand.” — Derek Lo
Why were 600,000 high-paying tech jobs unfilled in 2015 in the United States alone, or is the better question: Is technology developing faster than humans can learn to handle it?
When we look at diversity, things only get worse. In 2015, 22 percent of students taking the AP Computer Science exam were girls while 13 percent were African-American or Latino. These statistics are not U.S. specific; in 2015, Australia reported that only 28 percent of ICT jobs were held by women.
Coding has always been regarded as a mysterious field, something Derek Lo, co-founder of the new application “Py”, wants to change. Launched in 2016, the application offers interactive courses on everything from Python to iOS development. The “unique value proposition,” as Lo puts it, has been a revolutionary success. The fun-oriented application has so far resulted in over 100,000 downloads on both iTunes and Google Play.
Most parents frown when kids use their phones at the dinner table, but what if the kids were learning to code over Sunday roast? “Ok, so maybe not the Sunday roast, but seriously, could a more accessible and fun coding application make all the difference?”
The Global Search for Education is excited to welcome one of Py’s founders, Derek Lo, to discuss how Py’s revolutionary approach is literally making coding cool.
“Coding can provide people with the awesome ability of being able to create tangible things like websites and apps. It also instills less tangible things like a greater aptitude for systematic thinking and logical decision making.” — Derek Lo
People say education today is often treated as a business and that individual students’ needs have not been prioritized enough. As the number of qualified applicants increases, can individualized learning tools, such as Py, help today’s generations remain competent in our globalized world, even with “broken” education systems?
Yes. As college acceptance rates decline, more people will need alternatives for learning career-essential skills, and we believe Py will be a big part of that. Using machine learning algorithms, we’re able to adapt the user experience based on prior skill and behavior within the app, creating a tailored curriculum. Having a personal tutor in your pocket that knows how you learn and what you should be learning is powerful and why we are investing in personalization.
Py provides its users with a simple and easy platform while many other coding applications (e.g. Solo Learn) have opted for more traditional and serious lesson plans. Does making learning applications appear more serious fuel the conception that coding is a hard and scary thing to learn? Are we over-complicating the field of coding and making it seem inaccessible for people or should students really be this wary of programming?
One of the reasons that my co-founder and I started Py is to demystify “coding”. We make it easy by making it fun. When you’re dragging pretty blocks around and pressing colorful buttons, it doesn’t feel like work. Yet users are still soaking up all the same knowledge they would be by slogging through a boring textbook. We also intentionally avoid programming jargon until the learner is ready. A good example is when we teach users about loops—-we use words like “repeat” instead of “iterate”. Almost all of Py’s courses are focused on teaching the fundamental concepts using simple language and in an interactive fashion.
Also, many people are scared away from learning how to code because they hear from friends that computer science is such a difficult major in school. An important thing to realize is that there’s a big difference between theoretical computer science and making a simple website. An art major might not need to understand Dijkstra’s algorithm, but would greatly benefit from knowing a bit of HTML and CSS.
“We’re extremely excited about helping to change people’s image (and self-image) of who a coder is and actively encourage more girls to get into coding.” — Derek Lo
What would you say to skeptics who question whether a game-like application like Py can truly help people learn how to code properly?
Gamification isn’t a hindrance to learning—-it accelerates it. By keeping you excited and engaged, Py teaches you better than if you got bored or zoned out. When you’re having fun, you actually learn faster and better.
Another way to phrase this question might be, “Even if Py is fun, do you walk away having learned something from it?” The answer is yes, definitely. We’re very data-driven, constantly improving our courses by analyzing our users’ progress. We can see (and track) real progress in our users’ ability to understand everything from basic semantics to high-level algorithms and design principles.
Do you think Py’s game-like surface allows younger generations to become more involved with coding?
Yes. We specifically write our content using language that even young children can understand. In fact, a parent emailed us just the other day telling us he was using Py to teach his 10-year old son Python! Currently our target demographic is definitely a bit older than that though. We think of Py as the learn-to-code solution for the SnapChat generation.
What general skills does coding teach kids/ young adults?
Coding can provide people with the awesome ability of being able to create tangible things like websites and apps. It also instills less tangible things like a greater aptitude for systematic thinking and logical decision making.
“Once you understand how an algorithm works, typing it out should be an afterthought. The important thing is to understand it—once you do, it’s yours forever.” — Derek Lo
Py has recently partnered with Girls Who Code. Why do you think coding has been branded throughout history as a ‘male’ profession and how do you hope to eliminate this gender gap?
Historically some of the most important computer scientists are women. Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper are considered pioneers of programming. Stereotypes aside, men and women are obviously equally capable of becoming great software engineers. We’re extremely excited about helping to change people’s image (and self-image) of who a coder is and actively encourage more girls to get into coding. We’re huge fans of Girls Who Code and we’re so excited to provide them free premium subscriptions for some of their students.
When we think of coding, we mostly envision computer screens, yet we tend to use our phones more often than we do our computers. How does Py bridge the gap between using a computer screen as opposed to learning how to code on smaller devices? Is the coding world shifting to using smartphones or is coding still a generally ‘computer’ based field?
People actually don’t need to type lots of code to learn the concepts necessary to become great programmers. We’ve built interaction types like “fill-in-the-blank” that let users quickly edit code on the fly without any typing. Recently we’ve also created a custom keyboard that allows users to type real code on their phones in a friction-less way. This is great for short programs and practicing the fundamentals, and it’s how we’re making the transition from computer to phone and vice versa easier. Applying this knowledge to create a website or app does still primarily take place on computers. But the world is seeing a wave of new mobile learning applications, and I think we’re at the forefront of that trend.
How do you envision the world of coding changing in the next 15-20 years? How will Py keep up with these changes in the field?
Coding will become less about rote memorization of basic syntax and more about high-level understanding of what’s really going on. At a minimum, programming languages have morphed from low-level (shifting bits and allocating memory) to high-level (abstract data structures and functional programming), from obtuse (assembly, machine code) to human friendly (Python, Swift).
That’s why Py focuses on high-level concepts. Once you understand how an algorithm works, typing it out should be an afterthought. The important thing is to understand it—once you do, it’s yours forever.
(l) C. M. Rubin & (r) Derek Lo
(All photos are courtesy of CMRubinWorld except featured image by J. Barker)
For the Silo, David Wine /CMRubinWorld with contributions by Zita Petrahai.
