Ryan Alford [00:00:00] Hey, guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast news update. Riley and I are here with you, to give you the scoop. 

So we've got four stories this week and one in pop culture, a sad one, but we'll get to that local, the one from South Carolina. Also, unfortunately, a celebrity passed away. So we'll get to that. But I hope everyone's been enjoying the episodes. We're going to keep these news segments going. So a little more topical each week. And we're getting ready to start our ecommerce slash digital commerce special. We'll talk about all things happening in the future of e-commerce and everything to do with digital commerce. 

Riley Clarke [00:01:19] And I think it's obviously really important just because of the pandemic situation. I do think that this is going to be a really nice series to bring some good insight on. So I'm excited for all the guests we have lined up.

Ryan Alford [00:01:35] Everything is looking like it's going to be a pretty diverse group of guests. We're still bringing it all together, but it looks like we're going to cover lots of different parts of the ecosystem that is e-commerce. 

Riley Clarke [00:01:51] I agree.  

Ryan Alford [00:01:52] So let's get into some news. 

Riley Clarke [00:01:54] First up, Facebook launches free paid online events for spammers and others. So what exactly does this look like? What will this mean? 

Ryan Alford [00:02:03] Well, essentially, there are a couple of things here. I'll talk holistically and then specifically, I know you've got a lot of things going on where they were going to be live events. So shows, festivals, groups B2B seminars and sales and anything in business, traditionally, especially B2B marketing and sales is event-driven. It's very event-driven. You go and learn about a lot of different vendors, products or services. And, you meet some of your best prospects. They're your best customers and it's a way to meet and greet. So all of that's kind of gone by the wayside temporarily during the pandemic. And so Facebook is rolling out the ability. All these events have started to go online. Do you see these? I see them. I get them in my email box a lot invited to an event. It's essentially a glorified webinar in some ways where if I don't want to dumb it down or make it diminish it, but it's an online version of the event where you might have digital experiences with the product. So because traditionally, if you go from a B2B event, you might have their boosts and different things and different vendors that you walk around to see. And these events bring to life these experiences in a more digital way. You might see the products and services through videos or there's just the interactive events that happen. And Facebook is turning this on and making it free assemblies on the platform so you can sell tickets to events, you can set up the events, you can market 

Riley Clarke [00:03:49] But facebook is doing all that stuff. Right? 

Ryan Alford [00:03:50] Yeah, they're setting up the technology, the mechanism for the events. They already had done this with some of their groups and technologies that are already there. I think they just bundled it together and it's going to be free, at least for the first year which is huge. I mean, because having actually looked at a few clients and exploring the possibilities of online group meeting software or event software, it's pricey. And so I can't speak to, obviously, the features or how robust. It's Facebook. They've got money. So I'm sure it's going to be a nice experience. But you can sell tickets to the event. You can manage the entire process for, I think from marketing, running ads to the event and the actual…

Riley Clarke [00:04:38] I think the actual payment of the event like if you're buying tickets or something, it's all done through this. 

Ryan Alford [00:04:44] So Facebook's been drawing a lot of ad credits for small businesses. They've been doing their part and they've been getting a bad reputation lately. There's been boycotting and different things. And we're going to refrain from passing any judgment on the Radcast. We keep it straight down the line of the news, but the functionality, the service, the intent of this seems great and it seems a great way for businesses to leverage a way to have these events and not have a cost or an infrastructure issue. 

Riley Clarke [00:05:22] Well, because I think even in the beginning, I know a lot of workout gyms were having online videos and then LIVE streaming them to Facebook for their classes, but I think this would give them a way to still do that. It provides everything else they need – promotion, payment, processing.

So the next news is about the Google inventory search. Google is expanding organic services across Google to search. So a lot of the products that were originally coming up. When you type in something on Google, from my understanding, isn’t coming up the same way because they're giving you more content, more of the same product versus ones that paid higher to be at the top. Right?

Ryan Alford [00:07:02] Well, you have Google shopping and the search bar is getting really complex. It used to be one search. Now, you've got shopping, you've got images. You've got videos. And so you had the shopping tag. So like I say, I'm looking for a certain cologne and not tap it in. And then I hit shopping. Those are usually paid ads that are there. And you manage that through your ad platform or Google my business or depending on how you set it up. But those are were paid. And now what they're doing is introducing non-paid organic shopping results that will show up in the base, i.e. like everything, overview, all whatever that cat. I think it's all the category for Google. So you'll see those shopping options there. Yeah, it's very organic and it will be listed out by different retailers. And so it's again interesting to see because everything I feel like it was starting to pay to play on Google, which is their networks, their prerogative. But it's interesting to see non-paid organic listings for shopping that's going to be in the all the everything feed. 

Riley Clarke [00:08:18] So do you think that's going to be in the long term actually more beneficial or do you think it's actually going to hurt more business? 

Ryan Alford [00:08:27] I think it's helping because e-commerce is booming. And so many more people are shopping for goods online. That everyone was doing Amazon. So it wasn't here. But at the same time, everybody's getting into the online game. When you can't open your retail store, you get desperate, you're selling online. And so with that influx, you're going to see these types of products and services just grow across Google. And this is a play for Google because they've been losing search share to Amazon because most people now think about your behavior. I'm looking for a product, not only a person or a random functional search. Google store owns that. But Product Search has specific things that you're looking to buy. Amazon, the search bar has become the mainstay for where most and a lot of people are going. Google is still right. They're neck and neck with them. But this is a play for Google to get back into that prime number one position for product searches. 

Riley Clarke [00:09:50] That's a good point. So because I'm definitely the person that's going on Amazon and I'm like, “I know I want a whiteboard with a draw”. And that's what I'm typing in until I find what I'm looking for. I wouldn't do that. 

Ryan Alford [00:10:01] I still do most of mine actually through Google because I've convenience and everything with Amazon, it usually wins out. 

I have gotten burned a few times where it was just something obscure. I remember what I was buying where I just went to Amazon or whatever, and I did a search for it, like a couple of days later, maybe before it shipped to me. And there was a retailer that had free shipping online and it was like 30 dollars cheaper. I mean, it was like a hundred dollars purchase. So usually you get the best deal on Amazon and you got the convenience, yet your pay structure gets so easy to check out. I used every one. That's why they're doing so well. Jeff Bezos is worth 100 billion dollars now. I stick to my Google still for even products because I like to double-check. And this was actually going to lead to even another reason to do it. So you can cross-check availability stock. And with the pandemic, stock and certain things that I never had to worry about, aren’t as valuable as supply chains have been obviously disrupted. That seems to be getting better. Nevertheless, Google has more shopping options, more organic and another place to get your price. And you can do this through Google. Upload your product catalog, Google my business or Google search console. Those details are still coming out. But you upload your product feed there, link it with your site, you can do all that stuff and automate some of these steps to get approved and so that you're in that organic listing for products that you're selling that people are searching for.

Riley Clarke [00:12:04] And then our last, I guess tech news today is a topic which I'm actually very excited about. Twitter is having this more explained reason why something is trending on Twitter. And so to my understanding, they're redoing the app a little bit with a lot more updates where you're going on the search feed. And you see, seriously, I was a victim of this all the time. I would see something up there and say, “OK, why the hell is this trending?” “Who is this person and why is this happening?” Did you know it was tweeted over half a million times last year? Who would like why this is tweeting? Like, why is this trending? Doesn't surprise me, which doesn't surprise me at all. And I think Twitter I mean, they made a good point. If that's being tweeted that many times, we're not doing our job right for people to have access to appropriate information because I think a lot of time there was a point made that a lot of time people see a celebrity's name coming up in the trending feed. They're like, oh, my gosh, they died. And they're like, oh, my gosh, we have to tweet about it. Oh, everyone died. And then they're like, wait a minute, who died? And then everyone's freaking out. Someone thinks Miley Cyrus is dying. And then it's like, wait a minute, no one died. She didn't die. She was trending because her new album came out or whatever it was. But you wouldn't know that unless you did all the other background research, which I guess in theory wouldn't actually take you that long. But thankfully, Twitter is going to, I guess, make it a lot easier for everyone to understand why things are trending. 

Ryan Alford [00:13:37] I've been a victim of that. I've definitely gone. I mean, like, what was that? I got this news about Dave Matthews. I screamed, “Do not tell me that.”He is not dead”. It has not been easy because all you see is the one keyword, the name of the person, the name of some random thing that you have no idea. 

Riley Clarke [00:14:06] Then you just start assuming, yeah, you put your own thoughts together to talk about the spread of the news.

Ryan Alford [00:14:11] You leave in the platform because what you end up doing is you end up Googling. And, I'm not saying Twitter is competing with Google, but they want your eyeballs in Twitter because they want you reading that feed and looking at those ads. 

Riley Clarke [00:14:23] And if you're not getting your answer from Twitter, you're going to go somewhere else to get your answer. So I think it's good that Twitter is doing this. 

Ryan Alford [00:14:29] I think it's great. And it'll be interesting to see because I noticed that it will pin the most relevant or I guess they're determined this organically. To what that trending topic is. So if it's a person's name, they're going to organically choose a pen, a tweet that you see with that site. So it's going to be interesting to see how the algorithm parse out if it's always there's probably going to do anything else. Celebrities or whoever verified users or the most active people on there. But, it’s a cool feature. 

Riley Clarke [00:16:19] But I'm looking forward to that one coming out and then completely changing gears to just remembering Chadwick Boseman, legendary actor, legendary artist and South Carolina native,

Ryan Alford [00:16:40] Anderson, South Carolina, which is about thirty minutes down the road from where we sit doing this podcast in Greenville, South Carolina. 

A great actor; Black Panther. But it's not of that light Black Panther like some of these other movies he was in, not all of which I've seen. I've admittedly will be seeing the previews of them now with, unfortunately, his passing. But the range that he had in acting as though he could sing like he can dance that I'm like, dude, this guy was going to be I mean, he's already a legend, but was going to be a legend in 43 years. He's my age. I mean, I'm 43. He died of colon cancer. He had the world at his hands in a lot of ways, but you could have everything. But if you don't have your health, there is nothing left. And, there are screenings and everything else, so I encourage people to follow those. But just really sad news. 

Riley Clarke [00:18:02] That is really sad. And I think a lot of things come into play here. He was diagnosed in 2016 and the number of movies he did in that time frame and he was already diagnosed with stage 3 of cancer and it was on its way to stage 4. I mean by the time he passed it was stage four. So just realizing the scope of film that he did and that time frame, 

Ryan Alford [00:18:28] And everybody has come out and said they had no idea that he's been battling this, doing these high-intensity and going through chemo and not talking about coming out. And during this time, I wanted to talk to him.

So many people that go through it, it may be they feel like they should share their story in the midst of it because they're trying to make people aware. But the courage and the I don't know, the selfless aspect of not wearing it on his sleeve and just battling through it, like coming to work every day, in secret, battling it, doing everything that he could, but not making it a story about him and about, OK, great. budding, legend, actor, and I'm dealing with cancer right now. I know like that could have been the story and it would have been fine, but I really admire that he just kept that to himself. And, I mean, just speaks to his character and not making it about him. It stayed about the movie. It stayed about the work that he did and not about cancer. So I really admire him for that. 

Riley Clarke [00:20:06] I think he had a dedication for his art and that was what his life was. It wasn't about other parts of his life. His life was the art of acting and I think he gave his all in that and all the respect and honor for him. Incredibly sad.

Ryan Alford [00:20:23] I think that's all the news for today. 

Riley Clarke [00:20:25] It ends on a sad note, but we have a lot of new information coming up to you guys on the right course. We'll be staying up to date on that. 

Ryan Alford [00:20:34] Alright, guys, we will see you next time. Follow along at the.rad.cast on Instagram and theRadcast.com online. 

Riley Clarke [00:20:44] See you next time.