Would You Like a Human With Your Popcorn?

I did something I haven’t done in a long time recently. 

I went to an actual movie theatre where they show movies. 

Not Netflix, not Amazon Prime…a real, live movie theatre.

Two things stood out from my experience.

The first was the ticket price. I won’t say what it was, because those prices vary across the country. 

Let’s just say it was higher than that to which I had become accustomed.

The second was, when I got to the area where one purchases tickets…well, I’m not quite sure how to put this, but there weren’t any humans selling tickets.

Not…a….single…one.

Now, this wasn’t some off time mid week. This was a prime weekend matinee showing, and the only way to buy tickets was a kiosk.

So for those of you out there urging us to stand in the grocery line where humans still check other people out (as opposed to self-service checkout), that all sounds great until there are no more humans in that job.

If the movie theatre’s strategy is the direction of our future, just remember this: Robots don’t ever have to worry about standing in an unemployment line. 

That is, unless they’re holding open a place for we humans.

Follow Wisely

Happy Tuesday.

I haven’t watched a college basketball game all year, but that NCAA men’s championship game last night between the Texas Tech Red Raiders and the University of Virginia Cavaliers was certainly a good one to watch. 

Being a Texas boy, I was rooting for the Red Raiders, but being a bigger Thomas Jefferson fan, I couldn’t help but be happy for the winners.  And in OT, no less.

So what’s up off the court?

TechCrunch is reporting that Twitter continues to fight the bots, this time by minimizing the number of followers a user can follow per day, from 1,000 to 400. “The idea with the new limit is that it helps prevent spammers from rapidly growing their networks by following then unfollowing Twitter accounts in a ‘bulk, aggressive or indiscriminate manner.’”

 

In response to Twitter’s tweet about the new limits, several have responded to ask why the number “400” was chosen, as that is still far more than a regular Twitter user would need to follow in a single day. Some users said it took years to get to the point of following hundreds of people. Meanwhile, the business use case for following 400 people is somewhat debatable, as DMs can be left open and companies can tweet a special URL to send customers to their inbox to continue a conversation — no following or unfollowing needed on either side.

Follow wisely — and slowly — Grasshopper.