Consider my mea culpaed.

There was ✨discourse✨ on Threads a few weeks ago after a social media marketing influencer posted that businesses with a basic Gmail address have less credibility, and people had FEELINGS about that declaration.

As someone who started my business with a @gmail.com email address, I went from worried to indignant. How dare this internet rando tell me that a Gmail address makes me look illegitimate?? Plenty of people run successful businesses with a Gmail address! Plus, I have a Gmail address because I started my business with intention — trying to utilize free options wherever I could to save money, and not signing up for subscription services (ie. Google Workspace) with abandon before I knew this business was going to be something real! I have 15% storage left in my Drive and you bet your ass I’m going to use ALL of that before I pay for an upgrade!

Welp. Consider my mea culpaed.

After reading through more posts about free email domains, I realized that the Free Gmail Discourse™ is not just about whether your business looks legit to outsiders — it’s also about whether your email address is considered legitimate (aka. not spam) by email providers when you’re sending out things like newsletters. Like I decided to start doing last month 🙃

​Changes to DMARC policies that were implemented in early 2024 now require the following:

• Authenticating your emails using DKIM, SPF, and DMARC
• Reducing spam and maintaining a spam complaint rate under 0.3%
• Allowing people to unsubscribe by clicking just one link

… among other things. The first two requirements, obviously, need a custom domain for tracking purposes. Otherwise, if you’re sending from an @gmail.com email address? You run the risk of messages being rejected or delivered to recipients’ spam folders.

With that in mind, I pulled the trigger and signed up for Google Workspace, including a custom domain, which means that Golden Hour is now coming to you from the very fancy, very custom, very DMARC-compliant tori@goldenpoppydigital.com.

And I gotta be honest, even though I hate to admit it … I do feel more legit.

🌱 Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is reviving Vine as an AI-free platform (🥳) named diVine. For those who don’t remember, Vine launched in the 2010s and featured 6-second looping videos (maybe you remember BatDad?).

🚫 Threads quietly took away the ability to block people across platforms, and people are MAD. It used to be that if you blocked someone on Threads, they were also blocked on Instagram, but no more. This post from @mambo_fredericka did a pretty good job of summing up my feelings on this change.

📱 Kate Baer (who is one of my favorite poets and you should check out her work if you’re not already familiar) tested out the new Instagram Teen Accounts and … had some concerns. I guess we now know why none of the Meta executives let their own kids use their products.

💸 Speaking of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s beloved Metaverse has lost more than $70 billion and is being functionally abandoned as people pivot towards using AI over VR.

Don’t forget: I'm offering a free 20-minute consult to Golden Hour subscribers! This gives us a chance to go over your social media and digital presence, and for you to ask any questions you have about platforms, strategy, and more!

Consider it a thank you for being here. And you know what? Even if you don't need a social media consult, feel free to book the call anyway — I'm always down to shoot the shit for 20 minutes 🥳

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📚 To read: A friend of mine recommended Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood, and this book is shaking me to my CORE. As I approach teendom with my oldest kiddo, I’m trying to find resources to better understand literally any of their behavior 😂 So far, this book has helped me to understand that everything they’re doing that drives me crazy is totally developmentally normal, which is both reassuring and terrifying.

📺 To watch: I recently discovered the AMC Stories channel on YouTubeTV, which should probably be rebranded as the Mad Men on Repeat channel. Thanks to this, I am now on my 2439087th rewatch of Mad Men. If you’re a fan of the show, trust me — go back and watch it again … and maybe again and again after that! Every time I go through the series (which I’ve done a considerable number of times since it premiered almost 20 years ago 😱), I pick up new details, new layers, and new meanings that make for an all-around richer viewing experience.

🎧 To listen: My frog-obsessed 8-year-old recently informed me that there’s a cover of the song “Who Let the Dogs Out” that is, instead, “Who Let the Frog Out,” and now I have to listen to it every morning on the drive to school. It’s certainly no musical masterpiece, but it’s no more cringe than the original, and I love bopping out to anything my kids enjoy 🧡

🍜 To eat: Thanksgiving may be over, but that didn’t stop me from purchasing a pumpkin cheesecake from Costco when I was there last week. Is this too much cheesecake for one person? Definitely. Is the cheesecake going to live indefinitely in my freezer, only to be brought out when I have an occasional hankering? Unfortunately. Is it worth it? Absolutely.

🚶🏻‍♀️To do: I am feeling overwhelmed by ✨stuff✨ lately, especially my kids’ stuff. So I handed each of them a box and challenged them to go through their ✨stuff✨ and find 10 things they were willing to give away. It could be anything — stuffies, books, whatever — but they had to fill the box. Would you believe me if I told you these children were delighted to purge their rooms?? I kept hearing, “I was wondering where this was!” and “I found xyz!” and “I forgot I had this!” Now I have two boxes of stuff to get rid of, their rooms are a little bit cleaner, and they actually found that Pusheen stuffy that’s been missing for a year. A win-win all around!