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Chris brings us back to earlier phone tech and more in This Week In Tech History
Listener Nicole in Naples, Florida asked us about Facebook and YouTube views
She asked: I’ve heard a lot about videos being uploaded to Facebook and the views have been great, they’re saying that it’s actually going way above YouTube views. What’s your thoughts?
Views are all about how they’re defined. For example, if you were to reload the same video 10,000 times, YouTube would not count those as 10,000 views, it knows when someone is artificially padding the numbers and if they’re paying the user for ad impressions on that video, it even hurts their bottom line to count fake views as views.
Views are all about how they’re defined.
Facebook will charge an advertiser for a view after the video has played for 3 seconds, so they’re probably a lot less strict as to what constitutes a view in their world. If you’re looking to promote a business, it’s far easier to target a specific audience on Facebook so, even if you did get less views, it may still be worth it, but then again people go on YouTube exclusively to watch videos, which makes it far more likely that they’ll have their volume up while playing whatever you’re uploading.
YouTube has far more views per day than Facebook as a site, it’s what it’s for and even back in 2011 it had more views a day than Facebook is reporting now, but what your personal videos get is ultimately what matters to you in particular, so unless you’re trying to go viral with something, experiment and stick to the site that works best for you, having said that… uploads are free, why not use both?
You might also consider the fact that, unless you tell it otherwise, Facebook will automatically begin playing videos when they are displayed in someone’s newsfeed. While a lot of the Facebook users we know have turned that off, no doubt a lot have not. If Facebook counts even a few seconds of watching a video to be one “view,” then the view count could be greatly inflated by the automatic play option.
Listener Joshua in Sparta, Tennessee listens on SuperTalk WTN 99.7 and asked us to help him determine when repairs are worth the trouble
He said: I lost a battle with my Samsung Galaxy S4 phone, I crushed it up against the wall so the screen is black but I can still receive phone calls– the screen is shot otherwise. I was wondering if you thought it was worth fixing? As well as my Sanyo television, the HDMI plug in the back is starting to cause trouble. It’s probably a 9-year old television, I was wondering if that would be worth repairing?
We’re very sorry to hear about your recent troubles with electronics! Be gentle with them. Tech is your friend! That must really cause plenty of inconveniences, especially the way you’re limited to not being able to make phone calls on your own. Just being forced to take calls from telemarketers and bill collectors must be a nightmare!
Now, your best bet is definitely not to get another phone as it will likely be way more costly than just repairing this one, and to do so, you will probably need to visit a local repair shop and have them take a look at your phone. Prices will vary depending on the issue and what the particular repair shop charges– but it seems like that would help, because you’re still able to receive calls, meaning your phone is not entirely dead and could likely — hopefully — be fixed.
The more tedious but pocket-friendly solution is to order a repair kit for your phone, finding good instructions and doing it yourself. It may sound difficult, but plenty of people — including me — have been able to save money by doing this. Our intern had an issue previously with a broken phone screen and before paying $100 to a repair shop to fix it, his father was able to order a repair kit on Amazon that came with instructions and after it arrived– it was fixed within an hour. He thinks that if his father, was able to fix a phone, just about anyone could do it too!
About your TV, you’re probably better off not fixing the port, a 9 year old TV is probably not worth an awful lot today. If you have another working HDMI port, you could buy an HDMI switcher and just use that to plug in whatever was connected to the dead port. We’ve seen estimates of about $150 to replace a broken HDMI port, a switch can cost you as little as $5.