#Who’s a good little consumer? Who’s a good little meat eating tumblr user?

[gunkbaby]

tumblr users ranting about the death of media literacy and critical thinking vs an anti-vegan post with zero sources

[fluxxdog]

1: I get it, fresh meat. More users means more ad revenue or revenue streams. This is standard practice.

2: No. Just, no. There's a reason people leave Farcebook and all the other fail media and that's just burnout. It blurs. It's painful. They are not social, just media. Algorithms shovel you into groups of bodies like we're getting milked or slaughtered.

Tumblr let's you follow people you connect with and share their experiences with your own. It's social. Don't take the social aspect away. We like our following as it is. This alone is enough of a threat to cause me not purchase from site.

3: This is a bit reasonable. But do the smart thing and work with your community, not consultants. Because what hooks people into tumblr is the people already here.

4: Trying to force "creator success" leads to creative burnout. Some creators want to share. Others just want want a side gallery for pieces. Other don't want to create here, it's just a place to chill. And then people like me who look at the buffet spread before them and pick and choose what they want to consume. Line us all up to eat the same slop? Not good.

5: <insert vulgarity here> NOTIFICATIONS! The little numbers that show up in the upper right corner of my browser is more than enough! Don't bug me when I'm off the clock unless you're going to pay me for being on call.

6: Improving your infrastructure is a good move, but don't slop a new coat of paint on until AFTER you fixed everything under the hood. A shiny paint job will never cover the fact that it's bleeding oil and blowing black smoke out the back.

Re: "You deserve a digital home that works for you."

Deserve? That's underhanded language. Companies tell employees they "deserve" a foosball table in the breakroom when really they deserve better pay. So many people on here don't want a digital home. They want a drum circle around a bonfire while we makes s'mores and listen to Bob tell his story about how he wrestled a bear and it's obviously not true but it somehow ended up getting him married and it's funny anyway.

We want to look up and see the stars, not light pollution.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[morganbelarus]

A couple who died of bubonic plague were mocked online. Then, a biologist showed up to shut it down with cold, hard science.

Earlier this year, a couple from Mongolia died of bubonic plague after consuming the organs of raw marmot. They believed the action would bring them good health. While that may sound strange, according to the World Health Organization, the eating of rodent meat is considered a folk remedy in the region.

The loss of two lives is tragic. But it got worse. Soon after news of the couple’s demise broke out, people began mocking them on social media. After one Tumblr user decided to turn the conversation into a discussion of how the deceased should have just adopted a vegan diet, another used showed up to explain exactly why the post was wrong, rude, and ethnocentric.

All images in this post via Imgur.

“If you eat a raw dead rat in 2019 you deserve the bubonic plague,” the original Tumblr user wrote. “We’ve all thought about eating a pigeon but it doesn’t mean you just pick one off the street and bite into it.”

Lots to unpack there, but I’m just going to make two points: 1. No one deserves the bubonic plague — especially for making a mistake; 2. How wonderful to illustrate people one knows nothing about as idiots who pick pigeons up off the street and bite into them.

Fortunately, someone other than an angry blogger stepped in. It was another tumblr user. And they were there to correct misconceptions, explain what happened, and take names. (Without going all off the handle like I might.) (Favorite thing to do!)

“The people who died were an ethnic Kazakh couple in a small Mongolian town,” the user wrote.  “They didn’t eat a dead rat, they ate raw organs from a marmot they had hunted.the plague is an endemic disease in Mongolia, spread largely through contact with marmots (largely as a result of their fleas). unfortunately, due to a lack of information, some people in Mongolia subscribe to the folk belief that eating raw marmot will lead to good health.”

“This couple contracted the disease-which is very treatable with antibiotics-but did not receive adequate care in time and, as a result, suffered horrifically before dying. they left behind children, ranging in age from 14-years-old to 9 months. they did not deserve to die.”

Wow, okay. That’s probably where it should have ended. With the original poster more humble and wise and promising they’d read more than just headlines in the future, but one of their supporters showed up to turn this into an argument about veganism.

And that’s when things got heated. Because you know what? Civility is not always enough when people are being awful. Sometimes one has to fight fire with (very contained but still deadly) fire.  And that’s exactly what this anonymous person (with a clear background in biology) did; showing their detractors that it doesn’t matter whether you eat meat or not — what matters is that we treat others with respect.

A little harsh? Absolutely. But an important reminder that we all need to work to understand others and show compassion in the face of tragedy. Even when we can’t agree.

Original Article : HERE ; This post was curated & posted using : RealSpecific

A couple who died of bubonic plague were mocked online. Then, a biologist showed up to shut it down with cold, hard science. was originally posted by MetNews

[mikemortgage]

Canadian meat giant Maple Leaf debuts its new plant-based burger

Watch out, Impossible. Beware, Beyond. A new competitor is entering the plant-based burger market.

Lightlife Foods, the brand behind Gimme Lean meatless “beef,” Tofu Pups hot dogs, Organic Fakin’ Bacon Tempeh Strips and other vegetarian staples, is joining the looks-like, cooks-like, smells-like, tastes-like-the-real-thing veggie burger fray. The new patties are expected to reach food service clients in February and will begin shipping to U.S. and Canadian retailers by the end of March, the company said.

Like its well-publicized competitors, the new burger is meant to be more like beef than its hockey puck-esque forebears. Unlike Impossible Foods Inc. and Beyond Meat Inc., which mostly rely on venture capital, Lightlife has the resources of a giant meat producer to help sell it. In 2017 the brand became a fully owned subsidiary of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., the US$2.6-billion Canadian meat conglomerate, which later placed Lightlife under the control of a newly created plant-based division, Greenleaf Foods SPC.

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That in-house expertise allowed the burger to go from concept to production in just six months, said Dan Curtin, president of Greenleaf. The company will also take advantage of the relationships it already has to help land the product in stores and restaurants, he said.

Lightlife is hoping to expand the audience beyond its core consumer base of traditional vegans and vegetarians for its new product, targeting so-called flexitarians and anyone looking to reduce their meat intake. The marketing budget is the largest in the company’s history, Curtin said.

Impossible Foods Inc.’s plant-based Impossible Burger.

Nearly one-third of consumers see plant-based burgers as healthier than their meat counterparts, according to research from Mintel, and 29 per cent say they’re acceptable fare for meat eaters. Only 15 per cent say they taste as good as real burgers, however, and just 5 per cent say they’d go to a casual dining restaurant to order one.

“Consumers may realize the product is healthier for them and their family, but when it boils down to it they’re probably going to go with the thing that tastes better or they’re more familiar with,” said Billy Roberts, senior food and drink analyst at Mintel. But manufacturers such as Lightlife are targeting younger consumers, he said, who are more likely to try new products they see as healthier.

Supermarkets may prove a more successful selling environment. “It’s easier to eat healthy at home,” said Meagan Nelson, associate director of fresh growth and strategy at Nielsen. As plant-based burgers shift into the meat section, she said, more consumers will likely reach for them.

In supermarkets, sales of meat alternatives are up 19.2 per cent, reaching US$878 million for the year ended Jan. 5, 2019, according to data from Nielsen. Meat alternative patties — known colloquially as veggie burgers — represent about 24 per cent of that market.

In most conventional grocery stores, consumers will find Lightlife Burgers within arm’s reach of standard beef patties. Impossible Foods is still awaiting final Food and Drug Administration approval before it hits the grocery aisle.

At Maple Leaf the expectations are high, even as meat-mimicking burgers become more widely available. “It has the potential to become a crowded field for a period of time,” said Chief Executive Officer Michael McCain. “But we have a superior product offering on taste, mouthfeel and nutritional profile.”

The burger itself is pink in raw form, is juicy when cooked and chars to a darker pink rather than the brown of real meat. “The ambition is to achieve a taste and a mouthfeel experience for consumers that replicates largely, if not fully, what they would experience on a burger,” McCain said.

The Lightlife Burger will have 270 calories — the same as the Beyond Burger and slightly more than the new Impossible Burger, which has 240 — but a shorter ingredient list than both. Like Beyond it’s made with a pea protein, an increasingly popular ingredient in the world of meat and dairy substitutes. The simpler ingredients and its non-GMO, soy-free, gluten-free pedigree may give it a leg up on its competitors.

“Plant-based proteins are kind of complicated to produce,” said Mintel’s Roberts. “Consumers can be a little concerned when they see a complicated ingredient legend.”

There’s another way it’s different, too, one that underscores Lightlife’s key consumer base of vegans and vegetarians.

“We stay away from the word ‘bleeding,'” Curtin said.

Bloomberg.com

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[mikemortgage]

Vegan products – hold the stigma – become hot new entrants in food sector

When Kailey Gilchrist started NONA Vegan in Toronto in 2013, she says the vegan message didn’t really fly during sampling sessions for her pasta sauces. “It was quite challenging at the start. Even at Whole Foods, people didn’t know what vegan was. So I just stopped leading with the vegan part and said, ‘Here’s a great sauce’ … and then tell them after that.”

Now with all eyes on veganism and plant-based alternatives, the vegan message comes first. “If I just say, do you want to try my sauce, customers will say ‘I’m vegan’ and walk by. It’s crazy how much has changed.”

Crazy is a good word for what is happening in the vegan/plant-based food world. A&W’s adoption onto its menu of Beyond Burger, a meat alternative with the taste and mouth-feel of ground beef (and which has been selling out in many parts of Canada), is a telling indicator of just how much consumer interest in plant-based options is growing, whether they’re card-carrying vegans/vegetarians or not.

International food and restaurant consultants Baum & Whiteman, in fact, named plant-based foods as the No. 1 dining trend for 2018. Other reports indicate plant-based foods are resonating more strongly than ever with consumers, particularly the under-35 demographic.

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What the means for entrepreneurs like Gilchrist, is a hefty boost in sales and a much bigger market base.

“I feel like interest in vegan products has grown five-fold,” she says. “I’m not pushing to get my product in stores anymore. Even major grocery stores say they need a vegan section and are actively seeking us out.”

While she started out as a home-based operation, Gilchrist quickly graduated to a commercial kitchen, and eventually had to outsource manufacturing and distribution to keep up with demand. Today NONA sauces are sold in 100 stores across Ontario and is making moves into B.C., the East Coast and Quebec.

Along her journey, Gilchrist received joint funding from Futurpreneur and BDC, joined ventureLAB in Markham and worked with the George Brown Food Innovation Research Studio (FIRSt). She also did a small investment round with private investors and received grants from Ontario Centres of Excellence, among others.

Paula Bellavance, founder of Basic Roots in Calgary, has produced vegan cookies for eight years and says her business is experiencing a significant upswing with her new line of vegan cashew cheeses.

As their popularity grew, she had to abandon her original product line. “The demand for our cheeses was just too high,” she says. “We had to switch gears.”

She is now in the process of expanding outside of Alberta through distributors in major markets across Canada.

It’s not just vegans and vegetarians interested in these types of products, Bellavance says. “One of the biggest buyers of vegan products are people who are lactose intolerant.”

Veganism is also becoming a draw for other health conscious individuals interested in environmental sustainability, she adds. “People are realizing they don’t need to eat meat seven days a week. Now there are a lot of amazing alternatives. The Beyond Burger is a case in point.”

She estimates that her business will double over the next year, although she believes that is a very conservative projection. Bellavance is also helping other like-minded producers by offering the use of her equipment for production. “We ordered a lot of custom equipment that is very expensive. One machine we have is worth $70,000 so we know how hard it is for startups in this business.”

Jana Zaibak, founder of nomz Organic in Toronto, says that vegan certification is one of the key attributes drawing consumers to her healthy energy bites. In fact, she makes sure all certifications (e.g. vegan, gluten free, organic) are displayed on the front of her packaging. “That was intentional to put all our marketing claims on the front.”

When the first stores agreed to carry her product, she says, “I was over the moon when we had a dozen stores. We thought we had made it. Now we’re in a little over 500 stores, and available on Amazon in both the U.S. and Canada.”

Zaibak is now part of the 2018 Next Founders program in Toronto, where she is working on a line of vegan ice desserts that will be launching later this year. “The business is growing every month, which makes us really excited,” she adds.

But Zaibak also wants to make sure she paces herself. “We built a solid, steady foundation and have been self-funded. We want to stay sustainable. I see this (movement) going on for the next 50 years, so we’re not in a rush to win the market right away.”

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