Can VR Survive in a Cutthroat Attention Economy? | WIRED
Why virtual reality is struggling to take hold in a world of Too Much Content—and where (and how) it can thrive.
Source: Can VR Survive in a Cutthroat Attention Economy? | WIRED
Are the Most Innovative Companies Just the Ones With the Most Data?
Do you still use Yahoo? Do you still remember MySpace? Compaq? Kodak? The cases of startups with superior ideas dethroning well-established incumbents are legion. This is the beauty of “creative destruction” – the term coined by innovation prophet Joseph Schumpeter almost a century ago. Incumbents have to keep innovating, lest they be overtaken by a new, more creative competitor. Arguably, at least in sectors shaped by technical change, entrepreneurial innovation has kept markets competitive far better than antitrust legislation ever could. For decades, creative destruction ensured competitive markets and a constant stream of new innovation. But what if that is no longer the case?
Source: Are the Most Innovative Companies Just the Ones With the Most Data?
A Guide to Snapchat for People Who Don’t Get Snapchat
Snapchat has an unearned reputation for being difficult to use, but it’s not, if you get the basics.
Source: A Guide to Snapchat for People Who Don’t Get Snapchat – The New York Times
The Songs That Bind
Data drawn from Spotify listeners reveal that we are all teenagers in love.
Android Wear is getting killed, and it’s all Qualcomm’s fault
This weekend will mark two years since Qualcomm’s last smartwatch chip was announced.
Source: Android Wear is getting killed, and it’s all Qualcomm’s fault | Ars Technica
Test finds HomePod’s Siri ‘at the bottom of the totem pole’ in smartspeaker AI
While the Apple HomePod is the “best sounding” smartspeaker and has a “measurably better” user experience in many areas, its underlying AI assistant — Siri — failed dramatically in a query test versus Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana, according to Loup Ventures.
Source: Test finds HomePod’s Siri ‘at the bottom of the totem pole’ in smartspeaker AI
The CD is dead? Not so fast
Best Buy might have dumped it and we’re all addicted to Spotify, but the truth about the format’s health is complex.
Many Users Will Stop Viewing Content That’s Slow to Load
Nearly 80% of the 1,011 US adults Adobe surveyed in December 2017 said that if a piece of content takes too long to load, they will either stop viewing it altogether or switch to a different device. Survey respondents expressed more sensitivity toward slow loading times than they did to other issues, like broken links or content not displaying properly on a device.
Source: Many Users Will Stop Viewing Content That’s Slow to Load – eMarketer
Snapchat Will Let You Make Your Own Custom Lens For $10
The crown jewels of millennial social media are finally up for sale, and not just to brands. Starting today, every Snapchat user can stamp their name on the company’s most successful product: the face-distorting, ferry-rainbow-ironman-vomit filters known as Lenses.
Source: Snapchat Will Let You Make Your Own Custom Lens For $10
Twitch is tightening its policies around harassment and sexual behavior
Twitch is enacting stricter policies in the interest of curbing harassment and sexually suggestive behavior. The company announced today that its new rules will kick into effect on February 19th at 9AM PT — time intended to give users enough warning to remove any clips or videos on demand that violate new guidelines. “During the transition period, we’ll be reaching out to some streamers whose current and past content may violate these new guidelines to help you be successful on Twitch,” the company says. “Our goal is to ensure everyone understands and adheres to the updated Community Guidelines so you can keep creating content for your communities.”
Source: Twitch is tightening its policies around harassment and sexual behavior – The Verge
Facebook confirms test of a downvote button for flagging comments
How can Facebook promote meaningful interaction between users? By letting them downvote inappropriate comments to hide them. Facebook is now testing a downvote button on a limited set of public Page post comment reels, the company confirms to TechCrunch. But what Facebook does with signals about problematic comments could raise new questions about censorship, and its role as a news editor and media company.
Source: Facebook confirms test of a downvote button for flagging comments | TechCrunch
The New Neural Internet is Coming
So, at the end of the day, we are going to see a fully personalized content everywhere on the Internet.
Everyone will see fully custom versions of all content, that is adapted to the consumer based on his lifestyle, opinions, and history. We all witnessed arousal of this Bubble pattern after latest USA elections and it’s gonna be getting worse. GANs will able to target content precisely to you with no limitations of the medium — starting from image ads and up to complex opinions, tread and publications, generated by machines. This will create a constant feedback loop, improving based on your interactions. And there is going to be a competition of different GANs between each other. Kind of a fully automated war of phycological manipulations, having humanity as a battlefield.
The driving force behind this trend is extremely simple — profits.And this is not a scary doomsday scenario, this actually is happening today.
Radio Is Streaming’s Next Frontier
Streaming music has got where it has today largely by being the future of retail and replacing the download model, which in turn replaced the CD model (though vestiges of both remain). That premium model will continue to be the beating heart of streaming revenues for the foreseeable future but will not be enough on its own. The next big opportunity for streaming is to become the future of radio, which incidentally is around double the size of the recorded music market. In doing so, it will be a classic case of disruptive insurgents stealing market share from long-standing incumbents.
Source: Radio Is Streaming’s Next Frontier | Music Industry Blog
A Field Guide to Fake News and Other Information Disorders
Recent scandals about the role of social media in key political events in the US, UK and other European countries over the past couple of years have underscored the need to understand the interactions between digital platforms, misleading information and propaganda, and their influence on collective life in democracies,’ writes First Draft, an online journal published by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy.
Why Twitter is now profitable for the first time ever
There’s no indication that Twitter benefited from changes to Facebook’s algorithm, analysts say.
Source: Why Twitter is now profitable for the first time ever – The Washington Post
Conversational Commerce: Why Consumers Are Embracing Voice Assistants
What do consumers think of Conversational Commerce, and how can retailers and brands devise a sound voice-driven Conversational Commerce strategy?
Source: Conversational Commerce: Why Consumers Are Embracing Voice Assistants
Instagram tests resharing of others’ posts to your Story
Instagram purposefully lacks a “Regram” button to promote original sharing, but it’s easing up on that philosophy when it comes to Stories. Instagram now confirms to TechCrunch that it’s testing an option that lets you share public feed posts from other users to your Story. This could let you add commentary and overlaid stickers to a meme, celebrity post or even a friend’s photo. For users whose lives aren’t so interesting, resharing could give them something to post.
Source: Instagram tests resharing of others’ posts to your Story | TechCrunch
Google eyes gaming with ‘Yeti’ streaming service, standalone console
Google is developing a game streaming service, codenamed Yeti, according to a report released on The Information website. The service would add Google to a growing part of the video game business that lets people play games without having to download them, and would reportedly use cloud servers for broadcast. So far, Yeti has been discussed with game developers, although it’s unclear whether the games will be developed specifically for Google’s service.
Source: Google eyes gaming with ‘Yeti’ streaming service, standalone console – Business Insider
Key iPhone Source Code Gets Posted Online in ‘Biggest Leak in History’
Source code for iBoot, one of the most critical iOS programs, was anonymously posted on GitHub.
Source: Key iPhone Source Code Gets Posted Online in ‘Biggest Leak in History’ – Motherboard
Snap reports Q4 2017 earnings
Snap, the company that makes the Snapchat app, reported a big earnings beat that sent the stock soaring more than 20% in after hour trading. The company said it now has 187 million Daily Active Users, thanks to improvements made to the Android version of the Snapchat app. Snap’s CEO Evan Spiegel says Snapchat’s delayed redesign is testing well and will launch for everyone during the first quarter of this year.