Jun 8 2025
Why doctors should look for ways to prescribe hope

This week, I’ve been thinking about the powerful connection between mind and body. Some new research suggests that people with heart conditions have better outcomes when they are more hopeful and optimistic. Hopelessness, on the other hand, is associated with a significantly higher risk of death.

The findings build upon decades of fascinating research into the phenomenon of the placebo effect. Our beliefs and expectations about a medicine (or a sham treatment) can change the way it works. The placebo effect’s “evil twin,” the nocebo effect, is just as powerful—negative thinking has been linked to real symptoms.

Researchers are still trying to understand the connection between body and mind, and how our thoughts can influence our physiology. In the meantime, many are developing ways to harness it in hospital settings. Is it possible for a doctor to prescribe hope?

Alexander Montasem, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Liverpool, is trying to find an answer to that question. In his latest study, Montasem and his colleagues focused on people with cardiovascular disease.

The team reviewed all published research into the link between hope and heart health outcomes in such individuals. Hope is a pretty tricky thing to nail down, but these studies use questionnaires to try to do that. In one popular questionnaire, hope is defined as “a positive motivational state” based on having agency and plans to meet personal goals.

Montasem’s team found 12 studies that fit the bill. All told, these studies included over 5,000 people. And together, they found that high hopefulness was associated with better health outcomes: less angina, less post-stroke fatigue, a higher quality of life, and a lower risk of death. The team presented its work at the British Cardiovascular Society meeting in Manchester earlier this week.

When I read the results, it immediately got me thinking about the placebo effect. A placebo is a “sham” treatment—an inert substance like a sugar pill or saline injection that does not contain any medicine. And yet hundreds of studies have shown that such treatments can have remarkable effects.

They can ease the symptoms of pain, migraine, Parkinson’s disease, depression, anxiety, and a host of other disorders. The way a placebo is delivered can influence its effectiveness, and so can its color, shape, and price. Expensive placebos seem to be more effective. And placebos can even work when people know they are just placebos.

And then there’s the nocebo effect. If you expect to feel worse after taking something, you are much more likely to. The nocebo effect can increase the risk of pain, gastrointestinal symptoms, flu-like symptoms, and more.  

It’s obvious our thoughts and beliefs can play an enormous role in our health and well-being. What’s less clear is exactly how it happens. Scientists have made some progress—there’s evidence that a range of brain chemicals, including the body’s own opioids, are involved in both the placebo and nocebo effects. But the exact mechanisms remain something of a mystery.

In the meantime, researchers are working on ways to harness the power of positive thinking. There have been long-running debates over whether it is ever ethical for a doctor to deceive patients to make them feel better. But I’m firmly of the belief that doctors have a duty to be honest with their patients.

A more ethical approach might be to find ways to build patients’ hope, says Montasem. Not by exaggerating the likely benefit of a drug or by sugar-coating a prognosis, but perhaps by helping them work on their goals, agency, and general outlook on life.

Some early research suggests that this approach can help. Laurie McLouth at the University of Kentucky and her colleagues found that a series of discussions about values, goals, and strategies to achieve those goals improved hope among people being treated for advanced lung cancer.

Montasem now plans to review all the published work in this area and design a new approach to increasing hope. Any approach might have to be tailored to an individual, he adds. Some people might be more responsive to a more spiritual or religious way of thinking about their lives, for example.

These approaches could also be helpful for all of us, even outside clinical settings. I asked Montasem if he had any advice for people who want to have a positive outlook on life more generally. He told me that it’s important to have personal goals, along with a plan to achieve them. His own goals center on advancing his research, helping patients, and spending time with his family. “Materialistic goals aren’t as beneficial for your wellbeing,” he adds.

Since we spoke, I’ve been thinking over my own goals. I’ve realized that my first is to come up with a list of goals. And I plan to do it soon. “The minute we give up [on pursuing] our goals, we start falling into hopelessness,” he says.

This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.

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Jun 8 2025
Inside the race to find GPS alternatives

Later this month, an inconspicuous 150-kilogram satellite is set to launch into space aboard the SpaceX Transporter 14 mission. Once in orbit, it will test super-accurate next-generation satnav technology designed to make up for the shortcomings of the US Global Positioning System (GPS). 

The satellite is the first of a planned constellation called Pulsar, which is being developed by California-based Xona Space Systems. The company ultimately plans to have a constellation of 258 satellites in low Earth orbit. Although these satellites will operate much like those used to create GPS, they will orbit about 12,000 miles closer to Earth’s surface, beaming down a much stronger signal that’s more accurate—and harder to jam. 

“Just because of this shorter distance, we will put down signals that will be approximately a hundred times stronger than the GPS signal,” says Tyler Reid, chief technology officer and cofounder of Xona. “That means the reach of jammers will be much smaller against our system, but we will also be able to reach deeper into indoor locations, penetrating through multiple walls.”

A satnav system for the 21st century

The first GPS system went live in 1993. In the decades since, it has become one of the foundational technologies that the world depends on. The precise positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) signals beamed by its  satellites underpin much more than Google Maps in your phone. They guide drill heads at offshore oil rigs, time-stamp financial transactions, and help sync power grids all over the world.

But despite the system’s indispensable nature, the GPS signal is easily suppressed or disrupted by everything from space weather to 5G cell towers to phone-size jammers worth a few tens of dollars. The problem has been whispered about among experts for years, but it has really come to the fore in the last three years, since Russia invaded Ukraine. The boom in drone warfare that came to characterize that war also triggered a race to develop technology for thwarting drone attacks by jamming the GPS signals they need to navigate—or spoofing the signal, creating convincing but fake positioning data. 

The crucial problem is one of distance: The GPS constellation, which consists of 24 satellites plus a handful of spares, orbits 12,550 miles (20,200 kilometers) above Earth, in a region known as medium Earth orbit. By the time their signals get all the way down to ground-based receivers, they are so faint that they can easily be overridden by jammers.

Other existing Global Navigation Satellite System constellations, such as Europe’s Galileo, Russia’s GLONASS, and China’s Beidou, have similar architectures and experience the same problems.

But when Reid and cofounder Brian Manning founded Xona Space Systems in 2019, they didn’t think about jamming and spoofing. Their goal was to make autonomous driving ready for prime time. 

assembled GPS unit on a wheeled stand in a clean room
Xona Space System’s completed Pulsar-0 satellite is launching this June.
AEROSPACELAB

Dozens of robocars from Uber and Waymo were already cruising American freeways at that time, equipped with expensive suites of sensors like high-resolution cameras and lidar. The engineers figured a more precise satellite navigation system could reduce the need for those sensors, making it possible to create a safe autonomous vehicle affordable enough to go mainstream. One day, cars might even be able to share their positioning data with one another, Reid says. But they knew that GPS was nowhere near accurate enough to keep self-driving cars within the lane lines and away from other objects on the road. That is especially true in densely built-up urban environments that provide many chances for signals to bounce off walls, creating errors.

“GPS has the superpower of being a ubiquitous system that works the same anywhere in the world,” Reid says. “But it’s a system that was designed primarily to support military missions, virtually to enable them to drop five bombs in the same bowl. But this meter-level accuracy is not enough to guide machines where they need to go and share that physical space with humans safely.”

Reid and Manning began to think about how to build a space-based PNT system that would do what GPS does but better, with accuracy of three inches (10 centimeters) or less and ironclad reliability in all sorts of challenging conditions.

The easiest way to do that is to bring the satellites closer to Earth so that data reaches receivers in real time without inaccuracy-causing delays. The stronger signal of satellites in low Earth orbit is more resistant to disruptions of all sorts. 

When GPS was conceived, none of that was possible. Constellations in low Earth orbit—altitudes up to 1,200 miles (2,000 km)—require hundreds of satellites to provide constant coverage over the entire globe. For a long time, space technology was too bulky and expensive to make such large constellations viable. Over the past decade, however, smaller electronics and lower launch costs have changed the equation.

“In 2019, when we started, the ecosystem of low Earth orbit was really exploding,” Reid says. “We could see things like Starlink, OneWeb, and other constellations take off.”

Matter of urgency

In the few years since Xona launched, concerns about GPS’s vulnerability have begun to grow amid rising geopolitical tensions. As a result, finding a reliable replacement has become a matter of strategic importance. 

In Ukraine especially, GPS jamming and spoofing have become so common that prized US precision munitions such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System became effectively blind. Makers of first-person-view drones, which came to symbolize the war, had to refocus on AI-driven autonomous navigation to keep those drones in the game. 

The problem quickly spilled beyond Ukraine. Countries bordering Russia, such as Finland and Estonia, complained that the increasing prevalence of GPS jamming and spoofing was affecting commercial flights and ships in the region.

But Clémence Poirier, a space security researcher at ETH Zurich, says that the problem of GPS disruption isn’t limited to the vicinity of war zones.

“Basic jammers are very cheap and super easily accessible to everyone online,” Poirier says. “Even with the simplest ones, which can be the size of your phone, you can disrupt GPS signals in [an] area of a hundred or more meters.”

In 2013, a truck driver using such a device to conceal his location from his boss accidently disrupted GPS signals around the Newark airport in New Jersey. In 2022, the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport reported a 24-hour GPS outage, which prompted a temporary closure of one of its runways. The source of the interference was never identified. That same year, Denver International Airport experienced a 33-hour GPS disruption. 

Race to securing PNT

“Xona is a promising solution to enhance the resilience of GPS-dependent critical infrastructures and mitigate the threat of GPS jamming and spoofing,” Poirier says. But, she adds, there is no “magic wand,” and a “variety of different approaches will be needed” to solve the problem.

And indeed, Xona is not the only company hoping to provide a backup for the indispensable yet increasingly vulnerable GPS. Companies such as Anello Photonics, based in Santa Clara, California, and Sydney-based Advanced Navigation are testing terrestrial solutions: inertial navigation devices that are small and affordable enough for use beyond high-end military tech. These systems rely on gyroscopes and accelerometers to deduce a vehicle’s position from its own motions. 

When integrated into PNT receivers, these technologies can help detect GPS spoofing and take over for the duration of the interference. Inertial navigation has been around for decades, but recent advances in photonic technologies and microelectromechanical systems have brought it into the mainstream.

The French aerospace and defense conglomerate Safran is developing a system that distributes PNT data via  optical-fiber networks, which form the backbone of the global internet infrastructure. But the allure of space remains strong: The ability to reach any place at any time is what turned GPS from an obscure military system into a piece of taken-for-granted infrastructure that most people today can hardly live without.

And Xona could have some space-based competition. Virginia-based TrustPoint is currently raising funds to build its own low-Earth-orbit PNT constellation, and some have proposed that signals from SpaceX’s Starlink could be repurposed to provide PNT services as well.

Xona hopes to secure its spot in the market by designing its signal to be compatible with that of GPS, allowing manufacturers of GPS receivers to easily slot the new constellation into existing tech. 

Although it will take at least until 2030 for the entire constellation to be up and running, Reid says Xona’s system will provide a valuable addition to the existing GPS infrastructure as soon as 16 of its satellites are in orbit. 

The upcoming launch comes three years after a demonstration mission known as Huginn tested the basics of the technology. The new satellite, called Pulsar-0, will be used to see how well the system can resist jamming or spoofing.

Xona plans to launch an additional four spacecraft next year and hopes to have most of the constellation deployed by 2030. 

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Jun 7 2025
Pro Tennis Player Pivots to Ecommerce

For years Jack Oswald was a touring tennis professional. He aimed for top worldwide rankings, the key to serious earnings. The rankings never came, but constant travel exposed a nagging problem: his tennis bags kept breaking.

Thus began his passion for designing a better bag for athletes on the go. And that led to Cancha, a direct-to-consumer seller of sport and travel bags, which he launched in 2019 from his base in the U.K.

Jack and I recently spoke. He discussed his transition to entrepreneurship — early struggles, raising capital, and more. Our entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is condensed and edited for clarity.

Eric Bandholz: Tell our guests who you are and what you do.

Jack Oswald: I’m the founder of Cancha, which means “court” in Spanish. We design customizable, modular sport and travel bags — gear that transitions easily between work, play, and fitness. Our mission is to make sports travel seamless and help people stay active.

My background is in tennis. I spent years training and traveling to compete, chasing the dream of going pro. I didn’t reach the top, but I learned a great deal and gained valuable global experience, including learning French and Spanish.

Before the pandemic, I began designing bags for myself to meet the needs of an athlete on the move — from court to city to nature. I had no background in soft goods design, but I dove in. During the pandemic, with travel and tennis on hold, I focused full-time on building Cancha and learning ecommerce.

Initially, our target market was traveling athletes, but most customers today are everyday commuters and recreational players. We’re especially popular in the U.S., which accounts for 60% of orders. Brexit made selling in Europe more challenging, so the U.S. became our primary market. Interestingly, we also have a loyal customer base in Asia, including Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, despite not marketing in those locales.

Bandholz: Tell us more about the transition from tennis to entrepreneurship.

Oswald: It was a long, gradual process. As a kid, I believed nothing could stop me from turning pro. But reality hit — tennis is tough to make a living in. Only the top 100 players earn well, and beyond 150 in the rankings, you’re often losing money. Unlike soccer, where thousands of players make a living, tennis is financially brutal unless you’re at the top.

I gave it everything — traveling constantly, chasing ranking points, trying to survive each week. The grind was intense, and you’re often alone without the same resources as competitors. A coach, decent accommodations, or even a meal can make a big difference. The mental and physical toll is enormous, especially when facing losing streaks or setbacks.

I eventually realized I needed a new path. I probably would’ve kept pushing had I not discovered a new passion with Cancha. Many of my peers struggled post-tennis, but I was fortunate to find something meaningful. Even so, it took over a year to fully shift. I was still half-committed to tennis while building Cancha, gradually accepting that it was time to move on.

Bandholz: Bags are expensive to manufacture. Where did you get the money?

Oswald: It started scrappy. I wasn’t spending much at first. I was learning from friends who knew about soft goods design. Between tennis tournaments, I attended trade shows, where I met suppliers who generously offered samples, perhaps thinking I was more established.

In late 2019, I ran a crowdfunding campaign, raising approximately £10,000 ($13,500). I had no marketing experience, but it provided a bit of capital to move forward. Then, during the pandemic, we received a government relief loan, which helped fund our first production run and enabled us to undertake better design work. That was a major boost.

We began with tennis bags because that’s what I knew. The concept was a modular system — bags with add-ons for shoes, laptops, or wet gear. We first tried a backpack with racket add-ons, but it was too bulky. So we pivoted to a dedicated tennis bag and expanded from there.

Having contacts in the U.S. tennis space — reviewers and influencers — helped us get early traction. From there, we’ve grown into other racquet sports and more lifestyle-oriented bags.

A main reason for launching Cancha was frustration — my tennis bags kept breaking. Tennis is a growing sport, but the industry itself remains largely traditional, especially in marketing. Most brands rely on sales representatives and retail, and their bags are often poorly made, used as loss leaders to sell rackets. Unlike golf, where premium bags are the norm, tennis bags lack innovation and quality.

I saw a gap for better materials, thoughtful design, and durability. That became our focus: premium, modular bags that meet the needs of modern players and travelers.

On the marketing side, I also wanted to break the mold. Most tennis brands rely heavily on player sponsorships, but those come with restrictions — players who wanted to use our bags often couldn’t. So we went direct-to-consumer via ecommerce, bypassing the old-school gatekeepers.

Bandholz: How did your growth evolve?

Oswald: It has been gradual. We haven’t had a breakout moment from ads or gifting — no “rocket ship” success. It’s been a steady improvement across the board. Our bags are significant purchases. They last a long time, and people take time to decide. That makes acquisition challenging, especially with rising ad costs.

Our limited production approach has worked well. We’ve leaned into that with email marketing — offering limited-edition drops, exclusive colorways, and brand collaborations within tennis and beyond. We’ve also done a lot of pre-orders.

Creating excitement around the product development process and scarcity has helped drive engagement and interest. Instead of relying on one big channel, it’s been a mix: building hype, maintaining a tight brand, and slowly earning trust.

Bandholz: Do you have repeat buyers?

Oswald: Yes, and that’s been a strength. Our modular design allows customers to add accessories, naturally encouraging repeat purchases. People often buy a base bag first, then return for add-ons.

I design accessories to stand alone while also integrating with our bags. That dual approach gives us crossover appeal — some people buy just the laptop bag, while others build complete travel systems over time.

Limited drops play a role, too. Customers offer feedback on what they want. That helps guide future product development. We’ve had customers spend upwards of $2,000 over a few years. That kind of engagement has been key to our growth.

Bandholz: Where can people buy your bags or reach out?

Oswald: Our site is MyCancha.com. I co-host the Underdog Ecom Podcast for bootstrapped owners. I’m on X and LinkedIn.

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Jun 6 2025
Google’s Update To Recipe Structured Data Confirms A Ranking Criteria via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google updated the Recipe Schema.org structured data documentation to reflect more precise guidance on what the image structured data property affects and where to find additional information about ranking recipe images in the regular organic search results.

Schema.org Structured Data And Rich Results

The SEO and publisher community refers to the text results as the organic search results or the ten blue links. Google refers to them as the text results.

Structured data helps a site’s content become eligible to rank in Google’s rich results but it generally doesn’t help content rank better in the text results.

That’s the concept underlying Google’s update to the Recipe structured data guidance with the addition of two sentences:

“Specifying the image property in Recipe markup has no impact on the image chosen for a text result image. To optimize for a text result image, follow the image SEO best practices.”

Recipe structured data influences the images shown in the Recipe Rich Results. The structured data does not influence the image rankings in the regular text results (aka the organic search results).

Ranking Images In Text Results

Google offers documentation for image best practices which specify normal HTML like the and elements. Google also recommends using an image sitemap, a sitemap that’s specifically for images.

Something to pay particular attention to is to not use images that have blurry qualities to them. Always use sharp images to give your images the best chance for showing up in the search results.

I know that some images may contain slight purposeful blurring for optimization purposes (blurring decreases image size) and to enhance the perspective of foreground and background. But Google recommends using sharp images and to avoid blurring in images. Google doesn’t say it’s an image ranking factor, but it does make that recommendation.

Here’s what Google’s image optimization guidance recommends:

“High-quality photos appeal to users more than blurry, unclear images. Also, sharp images are more appealing to users in the result thumbnail and can increase the likelihood of getting traffic from users.”

In my opinion I think it’s best to avoid excessive use of blurring. I only have my own anecdotal experience with purposely blurred images not showing up in the search results. So, to me it’s interesting to see my experience confirmed that Google treats blurred images as a negative quality and sharp images as a positive quality.

Read Google’s updated Recipe structured data documentation about images here:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/recipe#image

Read more about images in Google’s text results here.

Read about blurry and sharp images here:

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-images#good-quality-photos%20optimize-for-speed

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Dean Drobot

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Jun 6 2025
Social Media As A Customer Service Tool: Trends And Best Practices via @sejournal, @rio_seo

Every tweet, direct message, and comment holds weight. Social media has long been a connectivity platform, where users engage with friends, colleagues, and family.

In recent years, it’s also evolved to become a feedback mechanism for businesses.

In many industries, customers are communicating with a business on social media. It’s a key customer service channel, one in which savvy businesses must consistently monitor to ensure they’re meeting customers’ expectations.

In many cases, it’s the first place customers turn for help.

For brands, this shift presents a massive opportunity but also a real challenge.

Customers expect rapid responses. Research shows that 41% of consumers expect a response from a business within 24 hours. Plus, they’re not afraid to call out a business publicly if they don’t respond or effectively meet their needs.

Today, social media is no longer exclusively about amassing the most followers and likes. It’s about building genuine relationships with customers through timely responses, authentic engagement, and proactive customer service.

The Hootsuite Social Media Consumer Trends 2024 report found that 53% of social media users say the most appealing thing a brand can do on social media channels is to quickly respond to direct questions and comments.

In this post, we’ll explore how social media can be used as a strategic lever for building lasting customer relationships and how your business can implement social-first strategies that elevate both service and reputation.

The Evolution Of Social Media Customer Service

When social media platforms like X (Twitter) and Facebook first launched, brands used them primarily as one-way communication channels.

They’d share promotions, advertise events, showcase new products, and announce pertinent updates.

However, over the last few years, this paradigm has completely flipped. Businesses are now using social media as a two-way communication channel, fostering deeper relationships with customers that turn into loyalty.

With feedback being front and center on social media, customers quickly realized they could get faster responses by mentioning a brand (@brand) rather than using traditional customer service channels, such as chatbots or phone calls.

In turn, businesses realized the importance of social media as a customer service channel, leveraging technology to reply to customer concerns at scale and ensuring timely follow-up.

Social media has become a natural extension of customer support. There are several factors that have contributed to the rise of social as a customer service tool, including:

The Rise Of Mobile

Mobile accounts for over 62% of market share worldwide, with desktop falling behind at 36%.

Mobile phones are the go-to for browsing, shopping, and messaging. With smartphones now the default device, consumers will engage with brands on the go.

Whether it’s sending a direct message to an airline about a canceled flight or mentioning a retail brand on X (Twitter) seeking information about shipping status, customers are more comfortable than ever with connecting with businesses across all social platforms.

Given the convenient nature of mobile devices and mobile apps, social engagement has become more seamless and accessible than ever before.

Generational Changes

Millennials and Gen Z are the dominant force in purchasing power. They’re also the two generations who have grown accustomed to digital-first experiences, including communication.

Both these generations grew up with mobile phones, the internet, and companies that deliver expedited experiences, like Amazon’s two-day shipping.

As such, they demand instant answers to their inquiries, just as they’d expect a friend to reply quickly to a text message.

Platform Maturity

Social media has evolved into a critical customer service tool, and the major platforms are stepping up to make communication easy.

For example, Facebook offers Messenger API integrations, and X (Twitter) supports customer service workflows.

On the other hand, Instagram allows for quick or automated replies, as well as live support features. TikTok is advancing its features to allow brands to address product questions or service complaints.

Customer service has followed the conversation, and those conversations have gone social.

Trends Shaping Social Media Customer Service

Customer expectations continue to rise, and as they do, they’re reaching out for support from businesses in divergent formats, including across social media platforms.

Enter social customer care, which has quickly become a crucial endeavor and a need for every business.

Social customer care is growing smarter and more seamless, powered by automation, fueled by data, and defined by customer expectations for immediacy and personalization.

Let’s break down the trends driving this shift in social media customer service.

AI-Powered Support Has Entered The Scene

Consumers are widely adapting to artificial intelligence, engaging with it for streamlining tasks, seeking information, and contacting support.

AI chatbots have also come a long way from being basic autoresponders with a few canned responses.

Natural language processing (NLP) has become much more advanced, enabling AI to detect sentiment and context at deep levels to:

  • Distinguish between a frustrated customer and one who simply wants more information.
  • Route escalated customers to live agents for human intervention.
  • Recommend products or solutions relevant to the end user based on their past behavior.
  • Tailor responses based on a person’s interests and previous prompts.
  • Produce human-like responses, where customers feel like they’re being helped rather than rerouted to an unhelpful resource.

Be sure to pair AI chatbots with human agents (a.k.a. “agent assist”) to increase resolution speed, ensure human touch in feedback management, and maintain empathy when customers reach out for help.

Full CX Tech Stack Integration

Technology is getting smarter, and social media tools now integrate directly into customer relationship management systems, help desk software, marketing suites, and more.

This allows support teams to have quick access to order history, view past conversations, and personalize responses without asking for repeat information.

Sales, customer success, support, marketing, and customer experience no longer exist in siloes.

Together, they’re able to promote positive customer experiences across every touchpoint, whether a customer is seeking assistance during the awareness stage or needing help post-purchase through improved visibility.

Voice And Video Support Via Social

Customers have become accustomed to receiving quick and seamless support.

Voice and video support offer attractive alternatives to traditional customer service options.

As technology continues to evolve and align with consumer behavior trends, short-form content has opened the door for new and unique types of customer service interactions.

For example, brands responding to customer questions with personalized videos to help walk through concerns or offer visual guidance.

Alternatively, support agents are also leveraging voice messages to talk through customer support, sending customers a short voice message in Instagram DMs or WhatsApp.

This eliminates the need for customers to pick up the phone and talk to an agent in real time, while offering more personal support.

Livestreaming has emerged as a powerful way for brands to build trust and transparency.

Platforms like Facebook Live, Instagram Live, YouTube Live, TikTok Live, and Twitch make it easy to connect with audiences in real time.

Whether hosting Q&A sessions or holding virtual “office hours,” livestreams allow brands to engage directly with customers and address questions on the spot.

These diverse customer support formats help humanize support and can enable faster resolution through rich media.

Proactive Support Through Social Listening

Social listening has emerged as a powerful ally for spotting issues immediately, allowing businesses to be proactive and swift when addressing consumers.

Social media support has evolved from tracking @mentions. Now, social listening tools empower brands to scan for brand mentions, product feedback, competitor and industry keywords, and more – even if the business isn’t tagged.

Smart brands tracking myriad feedback across social media platforms are able to then:

  • Jump into conversations before they escalate further.
  • Address complaints swiftly.
  • Identify opportunities for improvement in service or products.
  • See competitor pain points.
  • Introduce your business to a customer who’s evaluating vendors.

For example, a beauty brand may see numerous mentions about a leaky mascara tube on Instagram and Facebook.

Before it spirals any further and fuels negative brand perception, the brand could investigate the issue, fix it, and proactively respond to comments regarding the product defect and the steps they took to rectify it through the power of social listening.

Rise Of “Dark Social”

Not all social responses are public.

“Dark social” is becoming a preferred communication method through platforms like WhatsApp, Messenger, and Telegram, as conversations are private and not broadcast for all to see, as is typically the case with social media conversations. Although, preference is regional and demographic-specific.

The “dark” nature of this communication allows for more personalized one-on-one conversations, which can be especially valuable in international markets, industries with sensitive queries (like financial services and healthcare), or any other industry where confidentiality is needed.

Best Practices For Effective Social Media Customer Service

Just as with traditional customer service channels, social media customer care requires a nuanced approach to ensure satisfaction at every touch point.

A one-size-fits-all approach will no longer suffice. Smart businesses will evolve from reactionary to proactive support, irrespective of social media channels.

Feedback will be monitored across the diverse, fragmented social media landscape, where new content types are consistently introduced and new platforms emerge, eager to garner attention.

According to a recent study, engagements received on Facebook and Instagram continue to grow year-over-year, whilst engagements on X (Twitter) remain steady.

The study shows that customers are engaging across myriad social media channels.

Whether a customer mentions your brand on Twitter or your product on Facebook, equipping your customer service teams with the tools and technology to respond in near real time is a must.

A few best practices to implement into your social media customer service strategy include the following.

Respond Quickly

Consumers have grown accustomed to speedy responses. The Sprout Social Index™ shows nearly 75% of consumers expect a brand to reply within 24 hours or less.

Quick customer service is necessary, and customer expectations continue to grow.

While speed is critical, it can’t be at the cost of humanity. Aim for a first response to a customer within an hour or faster.

The use of pre-approved templates can be beneficial for common queries, but customization will be necessary for escalated issues where emotions can be heightened.

Be sure to acknowledge each issue with empathy and respond in your brand’s tone.

Customers are still not entirely eager to receive responses from AI. A Gartner study found that over half (64%) of customers would prefer that companies didn’t use AI in their customer service.

Escalate Smoothly

Sometimes, a tweet isn’t enough to squelch an issue.

When deeper issue resolution is needed, brands should keep public replies brief and take the conversation to a more private forum, such as DMs or email.

Brands must train agents to recognize when more personal support is warranted and needed, and how to make the transition to a private conversation more seamless to mitigate customer frustration.

Use Dedicated Support Handles

Customers may feel better served knowing they’re engaging with a member of the support team.

To help users distinguish your business from your support staff, it can be beneficial to have a separate dedicated support handle, such as @NikeService vs. @Nike.

A dedicated support handle can reduce confusion, make users feel heard, and ensure support requests aren’t lost in the void.

Help Your Agents Help You

Consider a customer who has reached out for support in the past via Facebook due to a high-ticket product defect.

Your brand rectified the issue by providing the customer with a new part and a partial refund. Now, consider the product experiences further issues in the future, and the customer reaches out again.

They may start to feel like just a number if the second support agent isn’t equipped with the customer’s full product history and was never made aware of the previous product issue.

This, in turn, creates a negative brand experience, which can lead to a bad review and the loss of a customer.

Smart brands give their social media customer service representatives the tools and resources to access customer history to avoid potential pitfalls like the scenario mentioned above.

Empowering your frontline employees not only helps your customers but also your business’s brand reputation.

Follow Up On Service

Customers want to feel seen and heard, irrespective of where they’re reaching out to you. Check in with your customers after their issues have been resolved.

Customer follow-up surveys are a great tool to employ post-service to assess how your customer service team is doing.

Whether a customer reached out to your business via Instagram DM or a chatbot on your website, it’s important to ensure customers know they matter to your business.

Measure What Matters

Customer support managers should track key performance indicators (KPIs) consistently to accurately assess employee performance and keep a pulse on customer satisfaction.

A few common KPIs businesses will want to measure are:

  • First Response Time: How long it takes for an agent to reach out to a customer after they’ve reached out for support.
  • Average Resolution Time: How long it takes to resolve an issue, beginning from the moment the customer reaches out to closing out the ticket.
  • Customer Satisfaction: How happy a customer is with the level of support your business provides.
  • Social Sentiment: What users say about your business across popular social media platforms (from your brand name to your products)
  • Volume by platform: Which channels receive the most inquiries for support, to better prioritize where your customer support teams spend their time.
  •  Issue Types: The types of issues you see most commonly, such as frequent issues with shipping or quality concerns.

By measuring what matters most, businesses can pinpoint critical issues before they become widespread.

For example, if customers continue to voice concerns over short battery life in a toothbrush on TikTok, the business can flag this for its product team, look further into whether it’s a smaller issue that impacted a batch of shipments, or assess if a bigger quality assurance issue is at play.

Make Social Support A CX Differentiator

Using social media as a customer service tool is non-negotiable.

The social media landscape is no longer just a forum for fun. It’s evolved to the point where customers are actively seeking support and voicing their concerns for the wider public to see.

It’s a service battlefield, where brands either win or lose customer loyalty.

Social media has to be a core support channel, not just a nice-to-periodically check.

When your social support mirrors your online support, brands will differentiate themselves from the businesses that aren’t responding with speed and empathy.

Moving forward, the first step you can take is to audit your social media support today.

Ask yourself: Is your business meeting response time expectations? Is your team equipped with the best tools to enable smooth support? And how will your business escalate issues when they arise?

The brands that will thrive in the long run are those building systems for service, not just likes, today.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Accogliente Design/Shutterstock

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Jun 6 2025
Newly Released Data Shows Desktop AI Search Referrals Dominate via @sejournal, @martinibuster

BrightEdge Enterprise SEO platform released new data showing distinctive patterns across major AI search and chatbot platforms and also called attention to potential disruption from Apple if it breaks with Google as the default search engine in Safari.

Desktop AI Traffic Dominance

One of the key findings in the BrightEdge data is that traffic to websites from AI chatbots and search engines is highest from desktop users. The exception is Google Search which is reported to send more traffic from mobile devices over desktop.

The report notes that 94% of the traffic from ChatGPT originates from desktop apps with just 6% of referrals coming from mobile apps. BrightEdge speculates that the reason why there’s less mobile traffic is because ChatGPT’s mobile app shows an in-app preview, requiring a user to execute a second click to navigate to an external site. This creates a referral bottleneck that doesn’t exist on the desktop.

But that doesn’t explain why Perplexity, Bing, and Google Gemini also show similar levels of desktop traffic dominance. Could it be a contextual difference where users on desktop are using AI for business and mobile use is less casual? The fact that Google Search sends more mobile referral traffic than desktop could suggest a contextual reason for the disparity in mobile traffic from AI search and chatbots.

BrightEdge shared their insights:

“While Google maintains an overwhelming market share in overall search (89%) and an even stronger position on mobile (93%), its dominance is particularly crucial in mobile web search. BrightEdge data indicates that Apple phones alone account for 57% of Google’s mobile traffic to US and European brand websites. But with Safari being the default for around a billion users, any change to that default could reallocate countless search queries overnight.

Apple’s vendor-agnostic Apple Intelligence also suggests opportunities for seismic shifts in web search. While generative AI tools have surged in popularity through apps on IOS, mobile web search—where the majority of search still occurs—remains largely controlled by Google via Safari defaults. This makes Apple’s control of Safari the most valuable real estate in the mobile search landscape.”

Here are the traffic referral statistics provided by BrightEdge:

  • Google Search: Only major AI search with mobile majority traffic referrals (53% mobile vs 44% desktop)
  • ChatGPT: 94% desktop, just 6% mobile referrals
  • Perplexity: 96.5% desktop, 3.4% mobile
  • Bing: 94% desktop, 4% mobile
  • Google Gemini: 91% desktop, 5% mobile

Apple May Play The Kingmaker?

With Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) nearing, one of the changes that many will be alert to is any announcement relative to the company’s Safari browser which controls the default search settings on nearly a billion devices. A change in search provider in Safari could initiate dramatic changes to who the new winners and losers are in web search.

Perplexity asserts that the outcome of changes to Safari browser defaults may impact search marketing calculations for the following reasons:

“58% of Google’s mobile traffic to brand websites comes from iPhones

Safari remains the default browser for nearly a billion users

Apple has not yet embedded AI-powered search into its mobile web stack”

Takeaways

  • Desktop Users Of AI Search Account For The Majority Of Referral Traffic
    Most AI-generated search traffic from from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing, and Gemini comes from desktop usage, not mobile.
  • Google Search Is The Traffic Referral Outlier
    Unlike other AI search tools, Google Search still delivers a majority of its traffic via mobile devices.
  • In-App Previews May Limit ChatGPT Mobile AI Referrals
    ChatGPT’s mobile app requires an extra click to visit external sites, possibly explaining low mobile referral numbers.
  • Apple’s Position Is Pivotal To Search Marketing
    Apple devices account for over half of Google’s mobile traffic to brand websites, giving Apple an outsized impact on mobile search traffic.
  • Safari Default And Greater Market Share
    With Safari set as the default browser for nearly a billion users, Apple effectively controls the gate to mobile web search.
  • Perplexity Stands To Gain Market Share
    If Apple switches Safari’s default search to Perplexity, the resulting shift in traffic could remake the competitive balance in search marketing.
  • Search Marketers Should Watch WWDC
    Any change announced at Apple’s WWDC regarding Safari’s search engine could have large-scale impact on search marketing.

BrightEdge data shows that desktop usage is the dominant source of traffic referrals from AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing, and Gemini, with Google Search as the only major platform that sends more traffic via mobile.

This pattern could suggest a behavioral split between desktop users, who may be performing work-related or research-heavy tasks, and mobile users, who may be browsing more casually. BrightEdge also points to a bottleneck built into the ChatGPT app that creates a one-click barrier to mobile traffic referrals.

BrightEdge’s data further cites Apple’s control over Safari, which is installed on nearly a billion devices, as a potential disruptor due to a possible change in the default search engine away from Google. Such a shift could significantly alter mobile search traffic patterns.

Read more at BrightEdge

The Open Frontier of Mobile AI Search

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Tada Images

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Jun 6 2025
WordPress Plugin Platform Offers Proactive Security Scanning via @sejournal, @martinibuster

WordPress security company Patchstack announced a new security tier called managed Vulnerability Disclosure Program platform (mVDP), which offers both human and advanced AI plugin reviews to help plugin developers keep their software resistant to vulnerabilities and provide greater trustworthiness.

One of the biggest problems with WordPress is vulnerabilities from third-party plugins. An enormous amount of plugins are discovered with vulnerabilities every day and it doesn’t matter if the developer is a one-person shop or a large multinational organization, vulnerabilities happen and when they do user trust goes down, especially if it happens on an ongoing basis.

PatchStack offers a way for software developers to build trust with their users with two tiers of protection, a free and a paid tier that help plugin developers focus on creating high quality plugins that are free from vulnerabilities.

With more and more software being generated by AI, we’re seeing a significant increase in new vulnerabilities and an equal increase in AI-generated security reports, which makes managing the security of plugins more important than ever.

Patchstack offers a standard managed VDP and a new Security Suite that costs $70/month.

According to the announcement, the new paid tier comes with the following benefits:

“$40 worth of AI tokens for code security reviews per month

Team management feature with 5 seats included

Discussion board for direct communication with the reporting researchers

AI code review and human research
The new Security Suite tier combines the best of both worlds. Your plugins will receive boosted visibility (100% AXP bonus) in the Patchstack Alliance ethical hackers community, which encourages security researchers to report significantly more bugs and help plugins fix more vulnerabilities faster.

Additionally, our AI code review tool can scan through your entire codebase to find WordPress-specific security issues and highlight potential improvements. We are currently launching this in beta, but we’ll have much many releases to share in the coming months.”

Security Suite customers will receive security recommendations from their internal security experts, helping developers be proactive about building safe to use WordPress plugins.

Read more at Patchstack:

NEW: Patchstack AI code review tool and Security Suite for plugin vendors

Featured Image by Shutterstock/STILLFX

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Jun 6 2025
Respected SEO Rockstar Deconstructs SEO For Google’s AI Search via @sejournal, @martinibuster

One of the SEO industry’s SEO Rockstars recently shared his opinion about SEO for generative AI, calling attention to facts about Google and how the new AI search really works.

Greg Boser is a search marketing pioneer with a deep level of experience that few in the industry can match or even begin to imagine.

Digital Marketers And The History Of SEO

His post was in response to a tweet by someone else that in his opinion overstated that SEO is losing dominance. Greg began his SEO rant by pointing out how some search marketer’s conception of SEO is outdated but they’re so new to SEO that they don’t realize it.

For example, the practice of buying links is one of the oldest tactics in SEO, so old that newcomers to SEO gave it a new name, PBN (private blog network), as if giving link buying a new name changes it somehow. And by the way, I’ve never seen a PBN that was private. The moment you put anything out on the web Google knows about it. If an automated spambot can find it in literally five minutes, Google probably already knows about it, too.

Greg wrote:

“If anyone out there wants to write their own “Everything you think you know is wrong. GEO is the way” article, just follow these simple steps:

1. Frame “SEO” as everything that was a thing between 2000 – 2006. Make sure to mention buying backlinks and stuffing keywords. And try and convince people the only KPI was rankings.”

Google’s Organic Links

The second part of his post calls attention to the fact that Google has not been a ten organic links search engine for a long time. Google providing answers isn’t new.

He posted:

“2. Frame the current state of things as if it all happened in the last 2 weeks. Do not under any circumstances mention any of the following things from the past 15 years:

2009 – Rich Snippets
2011 – Knowledge Graph (things not strings)
2013 – Hummingbird (Semantic understanding of conversational queries)
2014 – Featured Snippets – (direct answers at position “Zero”)
2015 – PPA Boxes (related questions anticipating follow-up questions)
2015 – RankBrain (machine learning to interpret ambiguous queries)
2019 – BERT (NLP to better understand context)
2021 – MUM (BERT on Steroids)
2023 – SGE (The birth of AIO)”

Overstate The Problem

The next part is a reaction to the naive marketing schtick that tries to stir up fear about AI search in order to present themselves as the answer.

He wrote:

“3. Overstate the complexity to create a sense of fear and anxiety and then close with “Your only hope is to hire a GEO expert”

Is AI Search Complex And Does It Change Everything?

I think it’s reasonable to say that AI Search is complex because Google’s AI Mode and to a lesser extent AI Overviews, is showing links to a wider range of search intents than regular searches used to show. Even Google’s Rich Snippets were aligned to the search intent of the original search query.

That’s no longer the case with AIO and AI Mode search results. That’s the whole point about Query Fan-out (read about a patent that describes what Query Fan-out might be), that the original query is broken out into follow-up questions.

Greg Boser has a point though in a follow-up post where he said that the query fan-out technique is pretty similar to People Also Ask (PAA), Google’s just sticking it into the AI Mode results.

He wrote in a follow-up post about Query fan-out:

“Yeah the query fan thing is the rage of the day. It’s like PAA is getting memory holed.”

AI Mode Is A Serious Threat To SEO?

I agree with Greg to a certain extent that AI Mode is not a threat to SEO. The same principles about promoting your site, technical SEO and so on still apply. The big difference is that AI Mode is not directly answering the query but providing answers to the entire information journey. You can dismiss it as just PAA above the fold but that’s still a big deal because it complicates what you’re going to try to rank for.

Michael Bonfils, another old timer SEO recently observed that AI search is eliminating the beginning and middle part of the sales funnel, observing about AI search:

“This is, you know, we have a funnel, we all know which is the awareness consideration phase and the whole center and then finally the purchase stage. The consideration stage is the critical side of our funnel. We’re not getting the data. How are we going to get the data?”

So yeah, AI Search is different than anything we’ve seen before but, as Greg points out, it’s still SEO and adapting to change is has always been a part of it.

Read Greg Boser’s post on X:

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Jun 6 2025
Crypto billionaire Brian Armstrong is ready to invest in CRISPR baby tech

Brian Armstrong, the billionaire CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, says he’s ready to fund a US startup focused on gene-editing human embryos. If he goes forward, it would be the first major commercial investment in one of medicine’s most fraught ideas.

In a post on X June 2, Armstrong announced he was looking for gene-editing scientists and bioinformatics specialists to form a founding team for an “embryo editing” effort targeting an unmet medical need, such as a genetic disease.

“I think the time is right for the defining company in the US to be built in this area,” Armstrong posted. 

The announcement from a deep-pocketed backer is a striking shift for a field considered taboo following the 2018 birth of the world’s first genetically edited children in China—a secretive experiment that led to international outrage and prison time for the lead scientist.

According to Dieter Egli, a gene-editing scientist at Columbia University whose team has briefed Armstrong, his plans may be motivated in part by recent improvements in editing technology that have opened up a safer, more precise way to change the DNA of embryos.

That technique, called base editing, can deftly change a single DNA letter. Earlier methods, on the other hand, actually cut the double helix, damaging it and causing whole genes to disappear. “We know much better now what to do,” says Egli. “It doesn’t mean the work is all done, but it’s a very different game now—entirely different.”  

Shoestring budget

Embryo editing, which ultimately aims to produce humans with genes tailored by design, is an idea that has been heavily stigmatized and starved of funding. While it’s legal to study embryos in the lab, actually producing a gene-edited baby is flatly illegal in most countries.

In the US, the CRISPR baby ban operates via a law that forbids the Food and Drug Administration from considering, or even acknowledging, any application it gets to attempt a gene-edited baby. But that rule could be changed, especially if scientists can demonstrate a compelling use of the technique—or perhaps if a billionaire lobbies for it.

In his post, Armstrong included an image of a seven-year-old Pew Research Center poll showing Americans were strongly favorable to altering a baby’s genes if it could treat disease, although the same poll found most opposed experimentation on embryos.  

Up until this point, no US company has openly pursued embryo editing, and the federal government doesn’t fund studies on embryos at all. Instead, research on gene editing in embryos has been carried forward in the US by just two academic centers, Egli’s and one at the Oregon Health & Science University.

Those efforts have operated on a shoestring, held together by private grants and university funds. Researchers at those centers said they support the idea of a well-financed company that could advance the technology. “We would honestly welcome that,” says Paula Amato, a fertility doctor at Oregon Health & Science University and the past president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. 

“More research is needed, and that takes people and money,” she says, adding that she doesn’t mind if it comes from “tech bros.”

Editing embryos can, in theory, be used to correct genetic errors likely to cause serious childhood conditions. But since in most cases genetic testing of embryos can also be used to avoid those errors, many argue it will be hard to find a true unmet need where the DNA-altering technique is actually necessary.

Instead, it’s easy to conclude that the bigger market for the technology would be to intervene in embryos in ways that could make humans resistant to common conditions, such as heart disease or Alzheimer’s. But that is more controversial because it’s a type of enhancement, and the changes would also be passed through the generations.

Only last week, several biotech trade and academic groups demanded a 10-year moratorium on heritable human genome editing, saying the technology has few real medical uses and “introduces long-term risks with unknown consequences.”

They said the ability to “program” desired traits or eliminate bad ones risked a new form of “eugenics,” one that would have the effect of “potentially altering the course of evolution.”

No limits

Armstrong did not reply to an email from MIT Technology Review seeking comment about his plans. Nor did his company Coinbase, a cryptocurrency trading platform that went public in 2021 and is the source of his fortune, estimated at $10 billion by Forbes.

The billionaire is already part of a wave of tech entrepreneurs who’ve made a splash in science and biology by laying down outsize investments, sometimes in far-out ideas. Armstrong previously cofounded NewLimit, which Bloomberg calls a “life extension venture” and which this year raised a further $130 million to explore methods to reprogram old cells into an embryonic-like state.

He started that company with Blake Byers, an investor who has said a significant portion of global GDP should be spent on “immortality” research, including biotech approaches and ways of uploading human minds to computers.

Then, starting late last year, Armstrong began publicly telegraphing his interest in exploring a new venture, this time connected to assisted reproduction. In December, he announced on X that he and Byers were ready to meet with entrepreneurs working on “artificial wombs,” “embryo editing,” and “next-gen IVF.”

The post invited people to apply to attend an off-the-record dinner—a kind of forbidden-technologies soiree. Applicants had to fill in a Google form answering a few questions, including “What is something awesome you’ve built?”

Among those who attended the dinner was a postdoctoral fellow from Egli’s lab, Stepan Jerabek, who has been testing base-editing in embryos. Another attendee, Lucas Harrington, is a gene-editing scientist who trained at the University of California, Berkeley under Jennifer Doudna, a winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for development of CRISPR gene editing. Harrington says a venture group he helps run, called SciFounders, is also considering starting an embryo-editing company.

“We share an interest in there being a company to empirically evaluate whether embryo editing can be done safely, and are actively exploring incubating a company to undertake this,” Harrington said in an email. “We believe there need to be legitimate scientists and clinicians working to safely evaluate this technology.”

Because of how rapidly gene editing is advancing, Harrington has also criticized bans and moratoria on the technology. These can’t stop it from being applied but, he says, can drive it into “the shadows,” where it might be used less safely. According to Harrington, “several biohacker groups have quietly raised small amounts of capital” to pursue the technology.

By contrast, Armstrong’s public declaration on X represents a more transparent approach. “It seems pretty serious now. They want to put something together,” says Egli, who hopes the Coinbase CEO might fund some research at his lab. “I think it’s very good he posted publicly, because you can feel the temperature, see what reaction you get, and you stimulate the public conversation.”

Editing error

The first reports that researchers were testing CRISPR on human embryos in the lab emerged from China in 2015, causing shock waves as it became clear how easy, in theory, it was to change human heredity. Two years later, in 2017, a report from Oregon claimed successful correction of a dangerous DNA mutation present in lab embryos made from patients’ egg and sperm cells.

But that breakthrough was not what it seemed. More careful testing by Egli and others showed that CRISPR technology actually can cause havoc in a cell, often deleting large chunks of chromosomes. That’s in addition to mosaicism, in which edits occur differently in different cells. What looked at first like precise DNA editing was in fact a dangerous process causing unseen damage.

While the public debate turned on the ethics of CRISPR babies—especially after three edited children were born in China—researchers were discussing basic scientific problems and how to solve them.

Since then, both US labs, as well as some in China, have switched to base editing. That method causes fewer unexpected effects and, in theory, could also endow an embryo with a number of advantageous gene variants, not just one change.

Company job

Some researchers also feel certain that editing an embryo is simpler than trying to treat sick adults. The only approved gene-editing treatment, for sickle-cell disease, costs more than $2 million. By contrast, editing an embryo could be incredibly cheap, and if it’s done early, when an embryo is forming, all the body cells could carry the change.

“You fix the text before you print the book,” says Egli. “It seems like a no-brainer.”

Still, gene editing isn’t quite ready for prime time in making babies. Getting there requires more work, including careful design of the editing system (which includes a protein and short guide molecule) and systematic ways to check embryos for unwanted DNA changes. That is the type of industrial effort Armstrong’s company, if he funds one, would be suited to carry out.

“You would have to optimize something to a point where it is perfect, to where it’s a breeze,” says Egli. “This is the kind of work that companies do.”

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Jun 6 2025
Over $1 billion in federal funding got slashed for this polluting industry

The clean cement industry might be facing the end of the road, before it ever really got rolling. 

On Friday, the US Department of Energy announced that it was canceling $3.7 billion in funding for 24 projects related to energy and industry. That included nearly $1.3 billion for cement-related projects.

Cement is a massive climate problem, accounting for roughly 7% of global greenhouse-gas emissions. What’s more, it’s a difficult industry to clean up, with huge traditional players and expensive equipment and infrastructure to replace. This funding was supposed to help address those difficulties, by supporting projects on the cusp of commercialization. Now companies will need to fill in the gap left by these cancellations, and it’s a big one. 

First up on the list for cuts is Sublime Systems, a company you’re probably familiar with if you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while. I did a deep dive last year, and the company was on our list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch in both 2023 and 2024.

The startup’s approach is to make cement using electricity. The conventional process requires high temperatures typically achieved by burning fossil fuels, so avoiding that could prevent a lot of emissions. 

In 2024, Sublime received an $87 million grant from the DOE to construct a commercial demonstration plant in Holyoke, Massachusetts. That grant would have covered roughly half the construction costs for the facility, which is scheduled to open in 2026 and produce up to 30,000 metric tons of cement each year. 

“We were certainly surprised and disappointed about the development,” says Joe Hicken, Sublime’s senior VP of business development and policy. Customers are excited by the company’s technology, Hicken adds, pointing to Sublime’s recently announced deal with Microsoft, which plans to buy up to 622,500 metric tons of cement from the company. 

Another big name, Brimstone, also saw its funding affected. That award totaled $189 million for a commercial demonstration plant, which was expected to produce over 100,000 metric tons of cement annually. 

In a statement, a Brimstone representative said the company believes the cancellation was a “misunderstanding.” The statement pointed out that the planned facility would make not only cement but also alumina, supporting US-based aluminum production. (Aluminum is classified as a critical mineral by the US Geological Survey, meaning it’s considered crucial to the US economy and national security.) 

An award to Heidelberg Materials for up to $500 million for a planned Indiana facility was also axed. The idea there was to integrate carbon capture and storage to clean up emissions from the plant, which would have made it the first cement plant in the US to demonstrate that technology. In a written statement, a representative said the decision can be appealed, and the company is considering that option.

And National Cement’s funding for the Lebec Net-Zero Project, another $500 million award, was canceled. That facility planned to make carbon-neutral cement through a combination of strategies: reducing the polluting ingredients needed, using alternative fuels like biomass, and capturing the plant’s remaining emissions. 

“We want to emphasize that this project will expand domestic manufacturing capacity for a critical industrial sector, while also integrating new technologies to keep American cement competitive,” said a company spokesperson in a written statement. 

There’s a sentiment here that’s echoed in all the responses I received: While these awards were designed to cut emissions, these companies argue that they can fit into the new administration’s priorities. They’re emphasizing phrases like “critical minerals,” “American jobs,” and “domestic supply chains.” 

“We’ve heard loud and clear from the Trump administration the desire to displace foreign imports of things that can be made here in America,” Sublime’s Hicken says. “At the end of the day, what we deliver is what the policymakers in DC are looking for.” 

But this administration is showing that it’s not supporting climate efforts—often even those that also advance its stated goals of energy abundance and American competitiveness. 

On Monday, my colleague James Temple published a new story about cuts to climate research, including tens of millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation. Researchers at Harvard were particularly hard hit. 

Even as there’s interest in advancing the position of the US on the world’s stage, these cuts are making it hard for researchers and companies alike to do the crucial work of understanding our climate and developing and deploying new technologies. 

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.

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