NICE55 - Social media, productivity, and artificial intelligence with Fred Stutzman

Fred Stutzman is the Founder and CEO of Freedom, software that helps you be more focused and productive by blocking distractions. Stutzman holds a Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Master's degree in Information Science, and a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the same institution.

The Nice Podcast is brought to you by Futureforth.com. We teach leaders to improve employee retention, communication, and culture with the Nice Method™.

What we talked about...

• Freedom is a company that was never intended to be a company.

• He was studying and noticed how much time people spent on social media, so he created a free Mac app to lock the internet for 45 minutes. It went viral.

• In 2015 they created the first iteration of Freedom. 

• They have grown to over 25 employees. 

• He gets excited about human-computer interface problems. 

• When companies shelf the best ideas. 

• His study, “An Evaluation of Identity-Sharing Behavior in Social Network Communities" (2006) - This paper examines the motivations behind users' decisions to share personal information on social networking sites and how this behavior affects their privacy.

• The Internet Identity Workshops and ClaimID.

• The Wild West of the early days of the Internet.

• Early concerns and thoughts about online privacy.

• How to work with social media and avoid falling down rabbit holes.

• Artificial intelligence and our future with AI. 

• How social media can be helpful during life transitions.

• The future of social media, search, and voice interfaces.

• Sensemaking in research and use of artificial intelligence like GPT.

• Stopping doom scrolling and getting sleep. 

• Running Remote Conference.

• Read The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande.

• Try Freedom for free.

• Connect with Fred on Twitter @fstutzman and LinkedIn.

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