Episode 6 Special Guest From Smart Post App - Instagram New App Instants and more...

Episode 6 Special Guest From Smart Post App - Instagram New App Instants and Child advocates call for online harms bill to cover AI chatbots, gaming.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello everyone and welcome to episode number six of the Link Through Social Podcast. As promised, later on the show, we have the pleasure to speak with Mike Kuczynski, who is the owner of Smart Post app, which happens to be our first sponsor. More about that later on in the show. But let's get started with some of the headlines of the week. Instagram tests a new incidence app for sharing disappearing photos. Instagram is testing a new image sharing app called Incidence. The company confirmed last Thursday that the app, which is now available in Spain and Italy and is in testing functions, will let users share disappearing photos with their friends that be can that can be viewed only once and remain available for 24 hours. Sound familiar? Well, you know Snapchat has already had that market for quite some time, uh, but Instagram's trying. With instance, you capture a photo in a single tap with no editing allowed. Uh the app doesn't allow uploads from your camera role and only lets you capture and share content using the in-app camera. Well, you can add text to your instance, as these unedited photos are called, you can't modify them any further. Now, unlike Instagram, which is about curated, polished content, an instance is designed for quick, real-life snapshots. The app borrows ideas from social platforms, like we just said, Snapchat, lock it and be real as it focuses on authentic content. It's worth noting that Instagram has been testing instance as an in-app feature in certain regions before today. The company says users can choose to use instance either within the standard Instagram app or through a standalone instance app. We will see after the testing period if this becomes a regular feature or not. And we'll talk about it more on the show as the months go by. Next, child advocates call for online harms covering AI chatbots and gaming. Ottawa can't afford to wait any longer to introduce new online harms legislation that covers AI chatbots and video games. Children's advocates and about a dozen kids told a pref press conference on Parliament Hill this past Monday. They urge the government to move quickly to introduce its promise online harms bill. This is a David and Goliath battle. Kids and parents up against a multi-billion dollar tech industry that is profiting off harming our children, says Sarah Austen, former or sorry, founder and CEO of Children First Canada. Now, Austin said in an earlier interview that recent months have uh seen an escalation in the level of harm caused by the use of AI chatbots. OpenAI banned the mass shooter in Tumblr Richmond, uh Tumblr Ridge BC from using its ChatGBT chatbot due to what it called worrisome interactions, but did not alert law enforcement. The shooter got around the ban by having a second account. And the investigation continues on that. So it's very, very concerning. She said there are multiple gaming platforms that are risky for kids because they allow chat features with kids to be able to communicate with strangers who can pretend to be children. In addition to AI chatbots and gaming, the group wants the online harms bill to cover social media. It says legislation must include a duty of care for platforms requiring them to prevent foreseeable harm and introduce safety by design, and a strong and independent regulator with enforcement power. That is the important key. As we have spoken about uh this in previous episodes, the ban of social media for children under the age of 16 started in Australia and now is spreading across Europe. I'm very happy that Canada's working on their own bill to implement these bans. We'll be back after this. Tired of stressing over what to post on social media? Meet the smart post app. You're all in one solution to create a schedule and grow your content effortlessly. In just a few tabs, you can generate an engaging post and stay consistent and keep your audience coming back for more. No more guessing, no more burnout, just smarter content faster. Whether you're a business owner, creator, or entrepreneur, smartpost helps you show up like a pro. Start posting smarter today at smartpostapp.com. SmartPostapp because your content should work for you. Welcome back to the Link Through Social Podcast, your go-to source for everything social media, digital trends, and the rapidly evolving world of AI. And we're excited to have our first guest here on the Link Through Social podcast. His name is Mike Kuczynski from the SmartPost app, which can be found on SmartPostapp.com. Mike, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Hi, Paul. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Well, Mike, I'm uh so thrilled uh to have you on. We do have a bit of a history. You've uh you've had this app for quite some time, and we've connected in the past, uh, myself being a social media manager and for many, many years now. And um I'm glad we uh recently reconnected and uh you have some exciting new uh features on your smart post app. Uh but first of all, why don't you uh just tell me a little bit about yourself and and how you uh got into app development?

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Yeah, thanks, Paul. Um so yeah, I've uh I've been in app development for a little over 10 years now out of college. Uh I started uh in college actually. Um you know, I went to went to school for computer science, and while I was studying, uh I started kind of a side project with a few folks and uh my brother specifically uh to kind of have a tool similar to, if you remember back, this would probably have been 10 or 15 years ago, there was an app called uh TweetDeck, which essentially brought in all your Twitter handles, right? Um gave you like a slides, you know, like a slide column where you could kind of navigate them view multiple feeds across different accounts. Uh so the idea kind of spun from that, uh, where you know we wanted to build an app that was similar to that, but worked across different platforms also, right? So at the time I think TweetDeck uh before it got bought by Twitter only worked uh for Twitter, you know, but we wanted something that would work across Facebook. And at the time, I'm not even sure if Instagram and all that was a big thing, but it was mainly Facebook and and Twitter. Uh right. So we we started up and me, you know, started as a web project, and then um, you know, we we we moved into native. So that that was one of the big things in in college, is I was I was pretty interested in doing specifically iOS development natively uh for Apple. Um and uh yeah, since then uh it's it's it's still you know it's still a side project for me, but it's something that I'm very passionate about. Uh and you know, we uh we you know we just I put a lot of time into this and it's uh it's it's kind of a fun project to uh to work on and and keep exploring, keep uh keep trying new things. Uh and the other thing I wanted to mention is you know, we we started as kind of a tweet deck companion, but uh we really in in more recent years have really started to lean in and focus on the scheduling aspect, right? So we feel that uh that is kind of our core business, is we're really trying to make sure, really build a really strong tool around scheduling specifically. So we're not extremely interested in uh like pulling people's feeds or uh even for us, analytics is something that we haven't leaned too much into. I know there's been a lot of competitors that have, but for us, it's really just trying to build the best scheduling app uh and and and something that's simple uh and somewhat affordable, right? For uh more of the smaller businesses, uh uh the the small you know Instagram or YouTube streamers that that want something that works, it's simple, um, and and can can help people out. So that's kind of the the story of how we got here.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

So right, yeah. So you hit it on the nail there. Time is so important to everybody, especially since you're you're focusing on on small business owners and uh or streamers or influencers and that. And to have all the different social platforms under one app where you can schedule them, you can do multiple ones together, or just you know, certain things for Twitter X or for Instagram or or um one of the many other platforms that you have on Smart Post. It's it's it's so important. You've kept it affordable. And uh I really stress that people should check this out. It saves time and it's easy to use. So, Mike, you don't have to be a real tech savvy expert to operate this, correct?

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Yeah, exactly. That's kind of the idea. You know, a lot of these other competitors to us have uh kind of built complicated systems, and that that that's really the core of what we're trying to build is something that on the surface is very simple. And I can get into that a little bit here. We we can talk about some of the enhancements that we've made and that we're we're focusing on uh in the upcoming months here. But um, our goal is to not clutter things, not add too many bells and whistles, right? Like we want to have a strong feature set, but we also want something that you can come in, you know, add your accounts. It's easy to get into scheduling and and you're off in a few minutes scheduling posts, and you don't have to think too much about all these deep settings and all this this weird configuration and all that. So the idea is extremely simple, uh, something that works is consistent and uh just saves you time, like you said.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

So and it's it's available both on Apple and Google, correct?

SPEAKER_01 11:05

That's correct, yeah. So uh it's Apple and Google. Are they like I said, they are native apps, so that you know I know that's kind of a tech detail, but it's something that we do take pride in. Um performance-wise, right? They're uh they're much fat, it's a much faster app uh compared to a lot of other competitors. Um and we are actually we had a web app many years ago. Um it kind of fell off out of scope. Um, and we actually decommissioned it about a year ago.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

I remember, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

And but we are actually working on a new uh web version. So we we feel that uh that web is kind of a uh it's it's an important piece of this tool, right? A lot of content creators and a lot of businesses, small businesses, we feel you know, use use desktop apps and and uh web browsers, right, to do all their scheduling and all their uh you know business related tasks. So um we are gonna put some time into um building something and we're gonna start simple, right? We're not the the first couple of versions of this will not be a fully fleshed out uh you know feature set like we have on the native iOS and Android apps. Uh but we plan to have something simple. We're gonna focus around the calendar visuals, you know, with some maybe some drag and dropping and being able to very easily ingest media, right? That's kind of the goal is focus on calendar because calendar is important to view on desktop where you have you know a big view of kind of all your posts in the past and the future, um, and keep it, like I said, simple and add features as as people request. So that that's something else I wanted to mention is that we're very small. We're not uh you know, we're not a large group uh working on this project. So with that, uh we're very nimble and we're very interested in feedback from from users, right? So uh we actually have a feature request board. Uh it's support.smartposapp.com. Uh sorry, sorry, it's it's suggestions.smartpostapp.com. Uh you can find it on our our problem.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

We'll we'll put uh we'll put a link to your website and directly to that uh as well on all the socials when we send this out. Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Yeah, but we we suggest people go in there, and like I said, you can you can recommend, you know, you can upvote uh features, upcoming features, you can suggest new things. Uh we actively monitor that. And then we are serious about it. You'll see there are things that we're actively working on. So we kind of feel that our our main users are the ones that we we want to be driving are the next features that we work on. So um that's something that we we take a lot of pride in. The other thing is support, right? I know a lot of companies, right, they offer a product, but they kind of go dark, right? They don't really uh they don't know.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

That's a that's a big that is a big problem. I'm glad you brought that up, Mike. So tell me about how you uh handle that.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah, yeah. So we, you know, like I said, since we're small, we um you know, we try absolutely our best to reply, honestly, within an hour of support requests that come in, that's kind of our goal. Um obviously there there is some off times, you know, we don't have full coverage across like night and everything. But if you hit us during the day, uh we definitely reply. Um, and and that's you know, it's it's something that we we take a lot of a lot of pride in and in helping every user. Um, so like I said, since we're small, we we all have access, we can get into the system and kind of debug the user's account, figure out what's going on, potentially why something might have failed um or isn't working, or if someone just has general questions. So it's definitely something that uh we should we strive to make sure our support is uh extremely strong. And uh if you email us at you know our email, we will reply. I can tell you that.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

That's that's that's another reason why uh I'm happy uh that you're on board uh as a sponsor, Mike, because what you just said is so important. Right now, everybody goes to a website, needs customer service, they're gonna get the AI chat box. You have to break through about 50 different questions or walls before eventually you can maybe speak to somebody. And in a lot of cases, you're still not gonna be able to speak to somebody. So uh to have that um that that personal touch uh of customer service, and especially for a small business owner, they're already stressed, they have a lot of things that are going on, and um to have their scheduled posts that were supposed to go out for a big sale or a big promotion and it didn't go out uh can be very stressful. And uh to be uh to to have some sort of uh relatively immediate response uh will go a long way. And and then once again, it's uh smartpostapp.com. You you can uh download it to through Google or or Apple as well. And Mike, uh we appreciate it. We're gonna bring you back on the show uh in the coming weeks uh to talk some more about it. And uh on our socials at link through social, uh, we're gonna be uh putting out a lot of information for the smart post app so people can uh know about it. And I'm going to be doing some live reviewing as well, uh pointing out some of the really good features that you do have on there and uh what would be helpful for small business owners or bloggers or influencers uh that would like to use your app. Uh just in closing, is there anything uh you wanted to say about the emergence of AI? Is there any uh plans to incorporate that within the app itself? Um maybe you can briefly touch on that and then we'll wrap things up for today.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah. Um yeah, AI is uh is a very fast-moving uh you know uh vehicle here. It's it's pretty wild. Um we we've been leaning a lot into it uh from the business perspective, right? From the more technical solutioning side. Uh we're heavily involved with AI from from very you know very varying aspects. Um specific to smart posts from from the front end, from the user's perspective. Uh we do have some very basic kind of, you know, you can you can chat with uh you know Chat GPT essentially within Smart Post to generate uh posts or even to kind of clean up or reword posts. That's something that we do have embedded there, um, which is is helpful. Um we have thought about doing some potential image generation, right? So there's APIs to do um image direct and image generation and suggestions. Uh so yeah, we're we're definitely uh involved with AI and we're trying to figure out um kind of where it can help the most, right? That's something that we're being a little cautious of. We're not like I said, we have some basic basic implementations in there, but we don't want to just litter everything with AI and just have buttons everywhere that's like, oh AI is.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

No, we don't want that. We want to keep it clean and simple.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Yeah, keep it clean and simple. Kind of taking the Apple approach. If anyone uses Apple products, right, they kind of they don't just they don't throw it everywhere, they kind of strategically uh place AI where it makes sense. So uh like I said, we do have definitely what we're thinking about some like time suggestions or maybe having AI uh kind of do some analysis to figure out uh when the best time to post is that's something that we're thinking about, trying to figure out how to make that work the best. Um, so there'll definitely be some features coming down the pipe here soon, uh specifically around AI. But yeah, with what's out there, we would be curious if if it's uh useful, right? I mean, we have like I said a couple tools in there. So any feedback in the future um on what's there and how we can improve it, we would love to have also. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Wonderful, wonderful, Mike. Well, it's a pleasure having you on here, Mike. And like I said, we'll we'll bring you back on the show in the coming weeks. And once again, everyone, it's smartpostapp.com. And uh like Mike said, let them know what you think of the app. Uh, share your comments to them, and uh, they have a very good uh uh customer service um section in their on their app. So if you have any questions or concerns or compliments as well, because uh it's always good for an app developer to get honest feedback uh to see how they can improve or what they're doing really well. So uh smartpostapp.com and uh Mike, once again, thank you for being here today.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Thank you, Paul.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

Thank you. Okay, well, Link Through Social Podcast will be back right after this. Well, that does it for episode number six. Please don't forget to like, download, and subscribe on the platform where you get your podcast, and stay connected on our social media accounts at Link Through Social at T H R U on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. And message any feedback or questions you may have. Access all these links at Link Through Social Podcast dot com. Thanks for listening. Until next time, that's it, another edition of the Link Through Social Podcast.