The Facebook emojis arrive at long last

They rejected a public request for a ‘dislike’ option some time ago. So now if we hover over the Like button we can also choose Love, Ha Ha, Wow, Sad and Angry. You wouldn’t think so much time and money would need to go into a row of emoji as it’s certainly not a new concept, but this is all about Facebook improving their performance by gathering richer data.

Facebook already monitor what people respond to so they can share more of that. For example, they know that I will watch any video related to animals they put in my news-feed. So like any good marketing company they now want to know what emotional reactions posts are creating. With enough research. they might just work out the optimal mix of happy, sad, amazing, funny and annoying posts to keep us all coming back for more.

This week saw International Women’s Day and the theme was Pledge for Parity. In Lancaster we held an event at The Dukes Theatre with Chris Conder MBE as guest speaker.

Chris is the amazing woman behind B4RN, the community action organisation which brought the world’s fastest broadband to rural Lancashire. I love what Chris and the team have achieved, to me she is an inspirational role model and, believe me, in the digital world we seriously need more female role models.

Again I recently saw adverts for a UK conference on digital marketing with 12 speakers - all of whom were male. When challenged, they said they hadn’t noticed! But young women notice and realise this is going to be a hard field to break into, not because it’s difficult work, there is no reason on earth why a female can’t sit at a computer, but because people still refuse to notice women’s achievements in this area. If anyone can tell me why that is please tweet me or email me as I’m getting a tad weary of trying to explain to event organisers they really should try harder.

Have a good week and stay safe on line.