Eyeless on Campus: social media

JOUR 304.3001--MidTerm: The Crash of Social Media---

Disruptive Innovation and Social Media

Paradigms are meant to be replaced. The phenomenon known as "social media" may or may not be considered a paradigm in the strict sense of the word but it has made a major mark not just on the internet but on culture itself.

Within the confines of the social media universe, trends rise and fall depending on the demands made by consumers and demands developed by industry. Pressure from both of those demands creates an atmosphere where progress, often times radical, replaces inertia. That pressure in radical form is defined by Clayton Christensen of Harvard University as "disruptive innovation."

“Disruptive innovation” was outlined in the Jill Lepore 2014 article in The New Yorker titled “The Disruption Machine.” Citing one of her associates at Harvard, Clayton Christensen, she defined disruptive innovation as;

“The selling of a cheaper, poorer quality product that initially reaches less profitable customers but eventually takes over and devours an entire industry.” (Lepore, New Yorker)

Curiously, Lepore goes on to report that a company using the disruptive innovation paradigm will have to fail in order to succeed. She cites Morrison-Knudsen's effort for mass transit which resulted in total failure of the company.

By his own account, the founder of Friendster, Jonathan Abrams, blames venture capital for its failure. Another entrepreneur, Joel Spolsky, has it right when he says;

"The basic venture capital system is structured so that there are built-in conflicts of interest between the VC and the entrepreneur," (Max Chafkin, inc.com)

The market for upstart social media networks in the days of Friendster survived in a narrow range and investors hedged their bets by spreading cash out across the board. Naturally, when a better platform surfaced, the money went there, and Friendster was relegated to the dustbin of history; the first disruptive innovation in social media had failed.

That, in fact, is the paradigm we are looking for in whether a social media endeavor, or social media itself, will survive in cyberspace, where survival of the fittest is the bottom line, and money is what fuels it.

Fast forward to the current status quo of the primary social-media platform, Facebook (NYSE:FB). The company went public in May of 2012. It's current stock value is just under $200 a share. Its primary source of revenue is, not being liked by everyone posting pictures of their pets or trip to Paris, but advertising. By the 4th quarter of 2018, the revenue topped just over $16 billion, most of which were publishers from the United States. Facebook depends on its US advertising to survive, there is no diversification, a basic component to stay in business in America. (Statista)

According to Statista, the United States does not lead the world in Facebook users, but it is India, a predominant market in what Dr. Pain of the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, refers to as "The Global South." (Statista) Facebook is still a one-trick pony depending chiefly on running ads to generate revenue basing its success on the number of users on the platform, but that's changing;

"...despite Facebook’s advertising growth, its user growth rate slowed during the quarter. The social network only added 38 million new monthly active users during the quarter. " (Digital Commerce 360)

Now that we have set the stage for the crash, let's examine the mechanics. The above might be considered the hard scientific data on the current state of social media. We might call it a synthetic, or an inductive, interpretation. What about the analytical, or deductive interpretation? That's where we can see the weakness in the system, and it goes back to what happened to Friendster. The evolution from that site through the rise of Myspace to the eventual social media pinnacle established by Facebook is no matter of personal privacy, everybody knows about it. The difference was that Myspace never went public and was bought out by NewsCorp in 2005 (NAS:NWS);

"News had been looking for $100m but settled for $35m offer from advertising targeting firm Specific Media. The sale is believed to be mainly in stock and News Corp will retain a small holding." (The Guardian)

Of course, what else would the site be good for but to run ads, just like the rest of the social media platforms that have no diversified material products to sell. This brings us back to deducting just what the flow chart looks like to the eventual decline of Facebook itself. Consider two things, where the revenue is coming from to float its income and who are the venture capitalists behind the wall propping it up.

First, the graph shows half its income is in the US-Canada market, which makes sense because that's where the money is. That's who can afford to promote their favorite pet or trip to Paris video on mobile phones. The problem isn't how much Facebook rakes in on the successful market, but its limited returns in The Global South. The largest prospect for growth is there, as seen in the explosion of users from India; even though the prospect to find ad publishers is very limited. No matter many people Facebook has coming into the site, if the money isn't there to support them, the stress will fall on the infrastructure. (Graph, Merch Today)

Footing the bill for the stock is Vanguard Group out of Pennsylvania, one of the largest funds in the world. Its portfolio is spread across a myriad of sectors but its top holdings fall into a limited category, with ten out of top twenty stocks on the Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 stocks. Even though there is a strong tech presence in the top twenty, it all about drugs, and it always is. Three of those are on the Dow30, Proctor & Gamble (NYSE:PG), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) and Merck (NYSE:MRK). (Nasdaq) Keeping with the theory that venture capital spreads cash across the sector, betting big in hopes another Google (NAS:GOOG) will surface from the faces in the crowd, Vanguard is also the principal investor in Omnicom (NYSE:OMC). (Nasdaq) OMC is one of the largest ad agencies in the world and even though its venues are different, it stands in direct competition with Facebook for consolidating the worldwide advertising publishing market. They are on a collision course, in effect, a head-on train wreck.

When the crews clear the debris, it will be clear OMC survived due to a given number of basics, depending on global reach across a wide variety of venues, diversification in content, the ability to undercut the cost, and add to that the variability of clients it can attract for advertising. As FB revenues decline, Vanguard will opt to keep its particular portfolio in the sector balanced and the money will go not just to OMC but others who, as disruptive innovation requires, will emerge from the rubble. The timeline, as in any good deductive inquiry, is always up for speculation.

It depends on the market as a whole, global pressure on the survival of social media as a bona-fide cultural necessity, emergence of it in regions such as the poorer Global South and the ability of those in the sector to support the infrastructure required to keep it online. There are the other usual restrictions, such as political, as seen every time some general decides he wants to topple a Third World country in a coup and an internet blackout is ordered with surveillance and shutting down of social media to contain organizing and dissent. Can Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all of the cars on the train survive the crash?

Works Cited:

Disruptive Innovation, Lepore, Jill, The Disruption Machine, 2014, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/the-disruption-machine

Chafkin, M., Friendster, How to Kill a Great Idea, https://www.inc.com/magazine/20070601/features-how-to-kill-a-great-idea.html

FB Revenue, https://www.statista.com/statistics/218701/largest-source-of-revenue-of-leading-tech-companies/

FB Growth, https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2018/07/25/facebooks-ad-revenue-jumps-42-in-q2/

MySpace, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jun/30/myspace-sold-35-million-news

FB Revenue Graph, https://martechtoday.com/despite-ongoing-criticism-facebook-generates-16-6-billion-in-ad-revenue-during-q4-up-30-yoy-230261

Vanguard Top, https://www.nasdaq.com/quotes/institutional-portfolio/vanguard-group-inc-61322?sortname=sharesheld&sorttype=1

OMC Investors, https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/omc/institutional-holdings

JOUR 304.3001

James L'Angelle

Univ of Nevada, Reno

Dr. Paromita Pain

Summer 2019

False News: Financial, Cultural and Political

Social media is quite often used by those who have clear objectives of deception in mind, making unsubstantiated claims and going unchallenged because they are in a position of trust, authority or influence. That influence can be financial, cultural or political, just to name a few.
At the beginning of summer in 2018, 12 Thai soccer players found themselves trapped along with their coach inside a treacherous flooded cave in what became known as the "Tham Luang cave rescue." (Wikipedia) Various methods were fielded to extract the young boys and one of those was suggested by Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk. It was immediately rejected by one of the divers involved in the successful rescue, Vern Unsworth, who characterized it as a PR stunt;
“He can stick his submarine where it hurts,” (Wyatt, Independent)
It was also officially rejected by the Thai government as "not practical." Musk reacted by posting defamatory comments on his Twitter social media account that Unsworth was a "pedo guy," a pedophile. Musk depended on his financial status for credibility.
Unsworth, in turn, filed a defamatory lawsuit against Musk and the case is now pending in a Los Angeles courtroom for October of this year. In spite of such low-brow accusations being hurled in the ongoing dispute, Twitter itself appears to have stepped away from getting involved one way or another, as can be seen by the hashtag "#vernunsworth" which is still up and running at the social media site. (Twitter) False impressions created by those of financial status are common across the board at Twitter, this being just one example.
Celebrity singer Cher twitter-tiraded the US President following release of the long anticipated Mueller report involving Russian meddling in the 2016 election;
"I Would *love* 2 See trump Impeached,Brought 2 Trial, *locked* Up In *prison* & Toy Boy Big Bubba!!" (TMZ)
Cher later apologized but the damage had been done, not just to the roller coaster public image of the president, but also self-inflicted harm done to her own through a crude false impression, news in its own right as being misleading. Cher depended on her cultural credibility.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was viciously attacked recently in a doctored video that made her appear slurring words and intoxicated. Facebook was the culprit this time and the company CEO still defends its decision to continually run the disgusting blatantly false clip on its social media site;
“It took a while for our system to flag the video and for our fact checkers to rate it as false... and during that time it got more distribution than our policies should have allowed,” (Reuters)
What the Facebook CEO also failed to report was the number of gullible gossip mongers who viewed it and were victims of an insensitive choreographed clickbait scheme to drive up advertising revenue. Why else was the decision delayed? Zuckerberg relied on his financial-cultural credibility.
This week, Twitter announced it has plans to muzzle those who are paving the way for false reports deemed newsworthy, including ones by US President Trump;
"We may sometimes add a notice to an account or Tweet to give you more context on the actions our systems or teams may take. In some instances, this is because the behavior violates the Twitter Rules. Other times, it may be in response to a valid and properly scoped request from an authorized entity in a given country." (Twitter)
In response, President Trump labelled big tech companies as "all Democrats;"
"These people are all Democrats, it’s totally biased toward Democrats." (Franck, CNBC)
Keeping in line with his defensive false tweeting profile, the President's allegation is pure fabrication. Checking campaign contributions from Twitter, Inc., #PAC at Open Secrets, the campaign funding organization gave 47% of its money to Democrats and 53% to Republicans in the 2018 election cycle. (Open Secrets) President Trump's assertion is pure poppycock. President Trump depended on his political credibility.
Agenda is the bottom line for all targeted tweets, comments, assertions and reports, true or false, circulating on social media. Sometimes it takes a great deal of effort to ferret out the false, the "fake," news. Otherwise, it is apparent and the motives thinly concealed. To what degree any kind of control by official government agencies will be effective is questionable. It is in the nature of those who run the companies, and those who use social media, to assume responsibility for content. That includes billionaires, celebrities and politicians.

Works Cited
Tham Luang Cave Rescue, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tham_Luang_cave_rescue
Wyatt, T., Court Case, Trial, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-vernon-unsworth-thailand-pedo-paedophile-twitter-defamation-trial-a8909241.html
#vernunsworth, https://twitter.com/hashtag/vernunsworth
Cher, https://www.tmz.com/2019/05/30/cher-impeachment-president-trump-toy-boy-big-bubba-tweet/
Pelosi, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-deepfake/facebook-ceo-says-delay-in-flagging-fake-pelosi-video-was-execution-mistake-idUSKCN1TS023
Twitter Rules, https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/notices-on-twitter
Franck, T. "All Democrats," https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/26/trump-says-big-tech-companies-like-twitter-are-all-democrats-and-purposely-repressing-his-reach.html
Twitter, Inc., #PAC, https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2018&strID=C00548065

JOUR304.3001

James L'Angelle
Univ of Nevada, reno
Dr. Paromita Pain
28 June 2019

Mid Term Proposal: Disruptive Innovation and Social Media

PROPOSAL: Option One:-- Define that pressure; the breaking points, the fall of the social media paradigm and if and when it does, what caused it and what lies beyond.

BACKGROUND: Trace the evolution of social media from the chat room to the all pervasive leviathan, "too big to fail."

METHODOLOGY: Apply scientific processess such as deductive and inductive analysis to examine how social media might be vulnerable to a paradigm shift brought about by disruptive innovation.

CONCLUSIONS: Present convincing arguments that social media is here to stay or just another cultural trend; subject to internal and external forces such as privacy issues and economics.

JOUR 304.3001

James L'Angelle

Dr. Paromita Pain

12 June 2019

ASSIGNMENT 002: Origin and Evolution of Digital Culture.

Information transmission by packets has been around since the invention of symbols painted on walls by Cro-Magnon man. Alphabets were formed by Phoenicians and other ancient more organized societies as they advanced from savagery to some form of civilization. As interaction between these various pre-Hellenic societies in the form of trade developed, numerical systems, also a form of packet transmission, became useful for calculating weights, quantities and cost. Hieroglyphics and other cuneiform pictograms related histories of entire kingdoms, as they rose and fell according to various natural and man made phenomena.

Following the plague that swept across Europe and plunged continental Europe into the Dark Ages in the 14th century, there arose several more advanced cultiral stages that would eventually propel man into modern times. One of the key features that arose out of the first, The Renaissance, was the printing press. The press enabled the church, scholars and intellectuals a new form of cultural exchange, borne from simple pieces of lead or wood block that could be rearranged in sequence to generate text. Yet again, another form of "packet switching" became a cardinal method for communication. As civilization moved to the New World, the colonies rapidly consolidated into what became known as the United States and an entirely new era was born, in several stages, that would be personified by industrial revolutions.

Experimentation with electricity led to the discovery, invention, of the telegraph, utilizing the Morse code. It became the signature packet signalling system of the 19th century and paved the way for a greater understanding of the role electricity would eventually play in what was to come, that being a breakthrough in electronic communication in the form of the telephone, radio and teletype. Still, no one could anticipate the next steps: television, the transistor radio and eventually a global network of communication satellites. However, the system was incomplete.

Beyond the wonders of advanced communication as the 20th century drew to a close was an even more startling discovery, cyberspace. There, beginning with two new advances, personal computers and the cellphone, man advanced quite rapidly into the 21st century and into an entirely new form of civilization, a digital culture. Expansion into cyberspace was paralleled only by that of the expanding universe in which it existed, with hitherto unknown ideas, concepts and communication methods evolved. Keynote amid the advances in banking, education, political and medical breakthroughs was a rather peculiar one that came to be known as "social media."

With it came a completely new host of platforms that allowed people to talk, write and share in ways that were just not possible a decade before, the process still in its early stages. With it, however, has come a Pandora's box of unexpected twists in the form of theft of personal information, cyberbullying and live podcasts of criminal activity. The scale has increased dramatically and not just on a personal level, involving governments, politicians, cybercrooks and intellectual property thieves. Addressing the issues has become a priority for those responsible for internet accountability, not just the federal agencies but the corporations themselves as service providers.

It remains to be seen just how far society will be able to travel into cyberspace and carry with it all the new components, what will survive and what will eventually become obsolete, like the transistor radio and the reel-to-reel tape. And, in a passing note, will text messaging remain the preferred method of contact for students in lecture halls, or will it someday return to just simple passing notes in class?

JOUR 304.3001

James L'Angelle

Dr. Paromita Pain

11 June 2019

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Assignment 002: The Web: A Clash between the Old and the New

Library research was a long drawn out tedious process. Depending on the research facility, one might make great progress, or none at all. Rare books were found at libraries with those names, located usually at a large metropolitan venue with a prestigious university. Ancestry research was futile unless readily available records could be located at points of entry of immigrant grandparents. Military record books of relatives who served in the armed forces had to be tediously located, requested and, with the patience of a monk, waited for delivery by what, later on, became known as "snail mail."

ASSIGNMENT 001: What is Social Media and What Has it Done for Us?

Opportunity comes in all forms today for anyone with a bit of creativity and credibility to rise from obscurity in the world. The tools for this ascent into recognition can be found in various forms, but none more evident than what has come to be known as "social media." Found in any number of forms on the World Wide Web, social media is the interconnection of thoughts, ideas, organizations, events and just plain sharing; of anything from theories, innovations, chat, and even the simplest communication as family photos.

Origin can be traced to various chat sites on the web dating back to the late 1990s but real emergence came in the form of one in particular, Facebook. Founded by a small group of ambitious college students, it became the foremost social interaction device in the world, and still is today. Copycat sites that streamline various processes, such as Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and Snapchat each offer a different approach to web socializing depending on interest. Foremost in the field of directed communication is Twitter, where for a given number of characters, the individual can follow a hashtag (#), create posts related to immediate events and add images and links to each post. Most of the various social sites also allow for comments, which many times prove to work against the person who supplied the original post.

Politicians and hacks alike have found phenomenal use in Twitter as it allows for instantaneous communication with not just the world, but to immediate followers who wait, sometimes by holding their breath, for the next signal; whether it comes from the White House or from some distant village in Africa where the latest case of ebola has just been reported. Social media has also been used as a tool to promote careers as seen in phenomena known as "You Tube" and "Instagram" stars, but not always to the star's advantage. Too often, the star goes a stunt too far and is fished out of the river at the base of a waterfall or from a canyon where the selfie turned out to be the last one.

Positive or negative use of any technology can only be graded by how beneficial it is to not just the individual, but to society as a whole, after all it is "social."

JOUR 304.3001

James L'Angelle

Dr. Paromita Pain

10 June 2019

UNDATED--

..VII. Analytical Report: Advertising on Facebook

Introduction: Social media has become the premier platform for promotion, whether it be brand awareness, marketing a product, or getting a candidate elected to office. The myriad of websites where promotion is possible, as well as the various rules of engagement, will confound the layperson. For writers wishing to attract an audience, at least one method has proven tried and true, that being the Facebook ad network for blog posting. The process is straightforward enough but a step by step method is usually employed for best results.

Procedure:

1.) Create the Post: The first part of the process requires having a blog. The ideal address for that blog is Google’s Blogspot as it is easy to use and requires little or no knowledge of code or tools that other blogs use in order to add not just text, but images and videos as well. The new format at Blogspot has an option dropdown on the Create New Post page that allows for direct entry of text that can also be switched to HTML for adding embedded objects such as YouTube videos, Soundcloud audio and similar iframes. Once the post is written and published, the link in the address bar needs to be copied and pasted at the desired Facebook page location. Note that a personal Facebook site is not adequate for promoting a blog post; an actual Facebook page is necessary. Also note that whatever image is included in the blog post will be carried over onto the Facebook page. For this reason, it is suggested to be careful and use an attention getting image that includes neither individuals nor excessive text, as they will cause time consuming delays and possible rejection of the ad entirely during the approval process.

2.) Copy and Paste: The link from the blog post is then pasted into the Create Post frame at the Facebook page. It is necessary to have an Ad account with Facebook with the usual relevant information that is somewhat similar to what one might find at any other site that sells merchandise, such as Amazon or EBay. When the post is pasted into the create frame at the page, there is an option button to boost the post. Engaging that button and posting will bring up the Boost Post dialogue box with a set of options in order to tailor for a number of specifics.

3.) Boost Post Options: The variables related to the post that has been added to the Facebook page are many; ranging from the goal, the ad category, the audience to the actual budget. Depending on what the intent of the advertiser is, the Goal option can range from automatic (let Facebook decide), website visitors, get more visitors, engagement and leads. Obviously, the best choice is to route traffic to the website where the blog post is located. The Call Out button allows for certain interactive options such as “book now,” “learn more,” “shop now” and other categories usually related to merchandise marketing and not brand awareness of the writer.

4.) The Special Ad Category: Due to certain in-house problems Facebook experienced in past political elections, such as the selling of private information to campaign analysts, the Special Ad Category is designed to make it difficult to place false and misleading information on the page. In order to qualify to place ads in the categories of Housing, Social Issues, Credit, Employment, Elections and Politics, the advertiser has to qualify through a series of difficult steps. These include strict rules of citizenship, identification, notarized proof of address, and restrictions on where the ads can be placed (by country) to name just a few. Because of these rules, it is advised to avoid the special ad button altogether and opt for tailoring the blog title, post and image so that it appears none of the category rules are violated. Otherwise the ad will be rejected. Whether the approval process is done artificially or by the human eye is not known; but it does happen, and frequently.

5.) Creating the Audience Profile: The next section of the boost post dialogue box allows for the campaign to be directed to a specific location. If it isn’t related to the special ad category, a post can be sent worldwide and a map allows for the name of the country to be entered and added to a group for distribution. Included in the audience profile is adjustments that can be made for gender and age. It is wise to only use a range that will not include those under the age of consent as it will also add to the delay of approval. If the ad targets the younger set, between the ages of 18-24, there is a high likelihood that an additional linked Instagram account will benefit the return on the post. The Facebook ad account allows for Instagram to be linked.

6.) The Budget: Again, a number of options are available to adjust how much the ad will cost and how many days it can run. Depending on the content of the post, it makes sense if it is a “time is of the essence” article to spend more money in a shorter amount of time. Another factor that isn’t always made available to the advertiser, only after the fact, is the cost per click of the ad. A general interest article can be sent out anywhere, all the way to China if desirable. Due to demand, ads running in the United States are costly, as are those in other industrialized nations. Asia, Africa and other developing nations are ideal targets for ad distribution if numbers alone are the objective, in other words, website visitors. US ads can cost as much as $1.00 per click as opposed to one penny in foreign nations. The account is billed according to cost per click, not how many times it is displayed on the viewers’ pages. The resultant ratio is usually around one percent no matter where it is shown, that is the clicks divided by the reach. It makes sense with that kind of low return to ensure the article is worth distributing in the right market to the right audience. That can only be determined in a trial and error process.

7.) Approval: Having done all the right things, the ad is then sent out for distribution following a review. Whether that process is artificial or under a human eye is uncertain. It is noteworthy that non special category, generic image ads are approved immediately. Others get hung up somewhere in the chain. Another delay is related to Blogspot itself. When the ad is sent for approval, the review process involves scanning the actual content at the page to determine if it conforms to the numerous Facebook ad policies. The scanning at Blogspot can delay approval for as much as a day or longer. A link to a different site, such as one that promotes music as Soundcloud, returns near immediate approval. A link to YouTube content also returns near immediate content approval. Depending on the brand, the advertiser needs to take the approval time into consideration when posting to the Facebook page. Embedding a Soundcloud recording or YouTube video at Blogspot will not increase or decrease approval rate of the post, but will be useful in visitor analysis.

8.) Analyzing the Results: Once the ad is approved and running, the ad center provides statistics on returns including visitor metrics, cost per click and total cost. From the View Results page, the audience can be viewed and is broken down into age groups and divided by gender. Locations are also given as well as the device, whether mobile or desktop. Different ad styles are run on different devices. If the ad is only displayed in the United States, the location is given by state. Usually the leading states are the largest; California, Texas, New York and Florida. Again, there appears to be some computer guided system for the distribution process itself depending on content and previous metrics. None of that is available to the consumer so the variables for targeting the audience can be limiting. It is suggested to have a linked Google analytics account and some other method to track locations and visitors, such as a Statcounter, to get better metrics on the audience. A visit to the ad center yields the basic parameters of cost and visitor statistics as well as buttons to pause the ad entirely if unsatisfied with the results.

9.) Conclusion: No guarantee exists that advertising on a Facebook page will increase traffic to the blog. Facebook provides a comment box at the post for visitors that can give insight where simple statistics fall short. Comments are often not constructive and many only serve to undermine others who have posted their remarks. However, it is valuable interaction with the content that can be taken into consideration when the topic is revised for publication. In addition, a blog post isn’t meant to replace an in depth research paper or proposal for a novel. It is meant to get an idea of how the public might respond to the topic without doing all the work in vain. At the same time, the like and share buttons allow for yet other indications of just how well the content is received. Social media has many of these options that do not exist through mainstream offerings to promote the writer’s style, content and brand.

10.) Recommendations: Be prepared to start at the ground floor and experiment with blog content that will be suitable for posting on the Facebook page. Keep the title of the blog post informative and brief, as most of the audience views the content on a mobile device. Make the associated image interesting but avoid individuals and text. If the post does not display properly, it will be necessary to rewrite and publish it again until the desired blog address copy and paste results are achieved.

Begin with the simplest ad variables regarding Goal, Options, Audience and Budget. Avoid the Special Ad Category. Consider the location, age and gender of the audience. Be considerate of the comments, delete those that are personal attacks or use profanity. Note the non-verbal responses of likes, emojis and shares. Above all, pause the ad if the response falls short of expectations.

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