🤺 Welcome (Back) to the Browser Wars
We used to browse into the web. Now the browser is the web? Yes. Maybe.
This week’s issue of Social Signals was written to The Faint’s Wet From Birth upon the announcement they will be playing First Avenue here in Minneapolis this fall (yes, I bought tickets).
Remember the thrill of stumbling on a true Googlewhack? Don’t remember what that was? It was when you would Golgle something in the early-2000s and you would find ONLY ONE ANSWER! One.
That parlor trick is now essentially impossible: today’s algorithmic autocompletes, hyper-indexed archives, and AI-generated content have flooded the index with variations on every phrase imaginable, turning once-rare one-hit queries into crowded SERP parties.
In a way, the demise of the Googlewhack is a perfect micro-case study in digital abundance and where things are headed with this week’s news of AI companies launching their own browsers.
It’s proof that our collective appetite for publishing, scraping, and remixing has saturated even the oddest corners of language, leaving no stone (or keyword pair) unturned.
Imagine there only being one answer to a question!? Never again. Never again my friends.
Let get into it! -Greg
Is ChatGPT Making Us Dumb or Are the Headlines?
Does sharing a headline or an article about how ChatGPT might make you dumb—without actually reading the article or investigating the research methodology—confirm we’re all pretty dumb even without ChatGPT?
Jenny Swan and I are back at The Cave Project with a brand-new episode that dissects the MIT “Your Brain on ChatGPT” study that hijacked every timeline in the last two weeks. Spoiler: the study’s sample size is smaller than a freshman dorm, hasn’t been peer-reviewed, and might be less about AI brain melt and more about über-clickable fear bait.
But don’t worry! Your brain cells (and ours) survived long enough to record 60 minutes of myth-busting, moral-panic-smashing, and one rabbit hole about blue book exams that we promise is worth it.
🤺 Welcome (Back) to the Browser Wars
Remember when the most dramatic question in tech was “Chrome or Safari?”. And yes, there were a few rocking Opera, and of course I had Flock rolling until it completely maxed out my PC tower’s RAM (I can still hear the chunky favicon hitting my taskbar).
Those battles felt existential at the time, but they were all fighting on the same field: faster page loads, slicker tabs, better bookmarks.
Today? Different sport, different stadium, brand-new rulebook. Game changed. Again.
The AI Browser Blitz
In the last 48 hours alone:
Perplexity rolled out Comet, an AI-powered browser that can tap your Slack workspace, answer voiced questions mid-scroll, and costs Max subscribers a cool $200/month. There will be a free version, too.
OpenAI is soft-launching a Chromium-based browser baked with ChatGPT, Operator agents, and a chat-first UI. It’s aimed squarely at Chrome’s 3-billion-user pie.
Here’s a demo of Comet doing the shopping research for you:
All of a sudden browsing is shifting from link-hopping to task-completing. Your next “search” might look like: “Book me a flight to Austin for SXSW, fill out the speaker app, and tell me which panels mention ambient computing.”
…and the browser quietly does the chores while you sip cold brew. It’s gonna happen.
Why This Isn’t Just Another Browser War
Data is the prize. Chrome’s dominance feeds Google’s ad machine. If OpenAI and friends own the front door, they own the clickstreams, and the training fuel for their next-gen models.
SEO becomes AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). The blue-link hierarchy we’ve all optimized since 2009? It collapses into a single synthesized answer. If your brand isn’t structured, semantic, and cite-worthy, you’re invisible.
Interfaces invert. We used to browse into the web. These AI browsers will pull the web into the interface: summaries, snippets, and one-click actions that live above the fold (or rather, inside the prompt). NOTE: THIS IS A MASSIVE SIGNAL.
A Brief Nostalgia Check
Back in the Flock days, we debated RSS sidebars and Digg integrations at meet-ups over boring bookmarks bar-only options. Well, actually, the most exotic feature was “social bookmarking.”
Today’s browsers will soon to the work for you, autonomous agents will make the decisions. And all without ever showing you a URL. It’s coming. It’s here.
And do you know what could be next? Hardware. Laptops, phones, and little personal devices like the Humane AI Pin. Yep, your kid’s new Chromebook could be a GPTbook. If a browser birthed a computer before, it can do it again.
The browser is dead. Long live the browser.
✍️ Webcomic of the Week
📲 Instagram (finally) cracked open its walled garden
Starting yesterday, Google’s crawler can finally see inside Instagram! Granted, it’s only indexing if the post comes from a Business or Creator account run by someone 18+, but if I didn’t just write about how much Google is becoming irrelevant above, this would have been groundbreaking news.
Photos, carousels, Reels, captions, and alt-text published since Jan 1, 2020 are now eligible to surface in regular search results alongside blog posts and YouTube videos. It’s a welcome move, because Instagram search is garbage. And for business accounts, discoverability of the second hottest social app is a big signal.
The fine print
Personal profiles are not included unless you flip Settings → Account → Switch to Professional.
Private or under-18 accounts remain invisible. Of course.
Every eligible user gets a new “Search-engine indexing” toggle inside Privacy. You can flip it off to stay dark.
Anything posted before 2020 is still off-limits (for now). That’s the biggest bummer to me.
What smart brands should do this week
Audit your handles. Be sure you’ve converted them to Business.
Treat captions like meta titles. Front-load keywords, answer a search intent, and think SEO.
Write real alt-text. Google will read it; visually-impaired users will thank you but also we know it’s important for both the algorithm and indexing.
Rescue the long tail!! Dig up evergreen posts (think FAQs, how-tos, UGC testimonials), refresh the copy, and re-share so they date-stamp into the index. Boom.
Measure outside the app. I spent some time fudging with Google Search Console filters for instagram.com/gregswan, but of course Insta doesn’t allow for typical verification measures. Google and Meta have both hinted that a one‑click “Verify with Instagram” handshake could be coming, and I’m sure someone smarter than me will find a way to better index and game this.
As noted above, this is a welcomed addition, but LATE. Imagine Google doing this five years ago? It would have been massive. Potentially even heading off some of the ad spend migrating to TikTok. Today? It’s welcomed, but late.
📢 See Greg Speak
Here’s a quick recap of Destinations International’s annual convention this week!
Digital Summit Minneapolis: Who Knew the Best Brand Advocates Already Work Here?, Minneapolis, MN - August 6-7
University of St. Thomas: Marketing, Insights, and Communications Team Onsite, St. Paul, MN - August 12
💥 JUST ANNOUNCED ➡️ Minnesota Blogger Conference: The State of Blogging in 2025: The Blog Is Dead, Long Live the Blog, Minneapolis, MN - September 13 (GET TICKETS)
PRSA Iowa's OctoPRfest Conference: Reboot Required: Rewiring Strategy for Today’s Cyborg Audiences, Des Moines, IA - October 9
Interested in Greg speaking at your event? Hit me up.
🐝 Swarm gets a facelift (finally)
Foursquare didn’t die, it became the geolocation tech backbone of apps you use every week like Uber, Snapchat, X, and Nextdoor.
But you may have thought they went out of business because the company spun it’s “check-in” and “tips” features into two separate apps back in 2014: Swarm and Foursquare City Guide.
For some of us, we never stopped checking in places. I absolutely LOVE the data trail and breadcrumbs as part of my offboard brain (e.g., Have we been to this restaurant before? How many times do you think we’ve been here? When was I last in Louisville, KY?) available because of Swarm.
At my oldest favorite birthday restaurant this week, we looked up how many times we’ve been there —> 33 times!? Wow. Just… wow. Maybe I didn’t need that data after all when I think of how much we’ve spent there. They should name a booth after our family, I think.
And yeah, even though mayorships never mattered and still don’t, I’m the proud mayor of 63 locations, including my kids’ high school, our local Kwik Trip gas station, and my dentist. #FLEX
But the app hasn’t been touched for years, and in fact, is more or less unsupported (as documented by me BEGGING Foursquare to turn off the prompts that mocked us during the lockdown when clearly nobody was monitoring the app or social):
So I was absolutely thrilled to see the app has been updated this week, it’s not integrating the (now defunct) City Guide tips back in, and there’s an active Discord server for identifying bugs.
Maybe they’ll finally accept my edit suggestion to the correct spelling of “Firemen's Park” from “Firemans Park” in Chaska — an edit I’ve submitted each of the 31 times I’ve checked in there since 5/4/2009.
Download Swarm here and take on my mayorship of Walgreens. I welcome the challenge.
⚡️ Social Signals
AI-video creation gets more accessible and mainstream by the week! Google just baked photo-to-video into Gemini, so Pro/Ultra users can now turn any still image into an 8-second, 720p landscape mini-movie with AI-generated sound via Veo 3. The model has already spit out 40M clips in Flow over seven weeks, but now that same magic is live on the web today (mobile by the weekend). You’re limited to three renders a day and each carries visible + SynthID watermarks (which is good, given my example above). For now, at least.
TikTok is preparing to launch a standalone app for U.S. users that is expected to operate on a separate algorithm and data system from its global app, which is the signal that you should absolutely keep TikTok on your social plan consideration list for 2026.
Imagine texting friends with no cell signal and no Wi-Fi needed. That’s the promise of two emerging “off-grid social” tools. Meshtastic is an open-source network that turns tiny, low-cost LoRa radios into a modern ham radio. Messages hop miles from device to device, and I’ve been trying to get my neighbor to get one so we can test it for two months now. Then this week Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey jumped into the space with Bitchat, a Bluetooth-mesh app that lets nearby phones relay encrypted chats up to 300 meters. When a tech heavyweight like Jack pours weekend energy (and soon, likely money) into the same idea hobbyists have been nurturing, it’s a flashing neon sign of a signal: decentralized, infrastructure-free communication may soon be graduating from geeky experiment to the next frontier of social connectivity. I gotta get my neighbor to get one of these!
Classrooms are about to get a major AI upgrade! OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic pledged $23 million to launch the National Academy for AI Instruction to upskill 400,000 K-12 teachers over five years. Think of it as a “teacher prompt-engine” with free, hands-on workshops and a Manhattan flagship hub. Huge signal here as the companies who are breaking education norms are investing in to help teach educators how to become both confident AI power-users and also help the next generation become power-users, too.
Forget the browser wars already? Samsung’s new AI update will allow users to create AI summaries for any article they’re browsing via the phone itself.
Is AI going to kill April Fool’s Day stunts for brands? In an example shared on LinkedIn, Google’s AI Overview reports that Dark Arts Coffee was acquired by Nude Coffee Roasters in 2022 except the source was a cheeky April Fools’ Instagram post. Is this a signal that sarcasm and jokes live forever as “facts” in the algorithmic ether? If so, brands may want to think twice about what they think is funny for April 1, 2026.
Starting this week, Tinder requires California users to pass a FaceTec video “Face Check,” turning a quick 3-D selfie into an encrypted badge that zaps bots, dupes, and catfish. For those following along, yes, Tinder is also a World partner (the orb already scanned my irises and proved my humanity this year), but this rollout is strictly FaceTec for now. Still, this is a loud signal: proof-of-humanhood checks are moving from fringe to mainstream, and I think you’ll see a lot more of them in the next year.
Netflix’s animated K-Pop Demon Hunters catapulted its fictional boy band Saja Boys to #2 on U.S. Spotify, beating BTS’s “Dynamite” and pushing the soundtrack to #8 on the Billboard 200. It’s the latest entry in a rich canon of made-for-screen chart success that includes TV-born phenoms like The Monkees, cartoon crooners The Archies, virtual pioneers Gorillaz, and esports idols K/DA.
Meanwhile The Velvet Sundown broke the fourth wall, updating its Spotify bio to admit its 900k-monthly-listener catalog is 100 % AI-generated. They framed it as an “ongoing artistic provocation” about authorship and identity.
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke says AI won’t replace coders but instead “it will super-charge them.” He saystThe savviest companies will hire more engineers, because AI can 10× each developer’s output, expanding backlogs and speeding innovation. Talent + AI leverage beats tech alone. Boom.
Social Team Staffing Data Point of the Week: A new survey from
and cuts through the “one-person social army” myth: accounts topping 500K followers run with an average team of six (vs. the overall average of four), and one 5-million-follower juggernaut reports a 30-plus-person squad. Translation: scaling your audience means scaling headcount. If your social team is still one person, you’re running a five year-old playbook.Platform Momentum Signal of the Week: In June, Meta’s Threads surged to 115M daily mobile users, which is up 128% YoY and only a whisker behind X’s 132 M, which slipped 15%. Bluesky posted a dazzling 373% leap but still hovers at just 4M DAU. While my heart is with Bluesky and its mission, as a marketer I’m bullish on Threads for brands in 2026.
Headline of the Week: Can the New York Times Turn Its Writers Into Video Stars? via Vulture.
Thread of the Week:
Long Video of the Week: The vatican has astronomers on staff and an observatory? Turns out yes. This story prompted some big discussions about exerting power through science at my house.
Tool of the Week: Forget weighting things in pounds or kilograms. Here’s a website that converts any weight into bananas, corgis, black holes, and more.
Insta of the Week: If you’re not following the Enron parody account, you’re missing out.
MSP Thing to Do This Weekend: 612 POAP Challenge. Explore Minneapolis. Collect digital art. Discover the city like never before.
Podcast of the Week: My former colleague and good friend Marc Jensen was a guest on From Where I Sit with Tom McGee.
TikTok of the Week: Tipping your pizza delivery driver with a dog.
Keep going! 🚀✨
Greg