Proximity

How Long Can Instagram Distance Itself From the Facebook Backlash? 

Apr 7, 2018 |

A recent Verge survey discovered that 60 percent of respondents didn’t know Facebook owns Instagram, and Google searches containing the question “Does Facebook own Instagram?” reached an all-time high the week the Cambridge Analytica story broke. Comparing the two platforms, you can see why people might not assume they’re connected. Facebook presents as a minefield of circa-2007 “wall posts” and comment threads in which distant friends and relatives reveal themselves to be conspiracy theorists. Instagram, on the other hand, is a relatively simple experience. There are no features that automate nostalgia, no trending topics or sprawling groups—just a stream of carefully edited flat lays, food, and matcha latte foam art. The less cute ephemeral content is relegated to Instagram Stories, which disappear after 24 hours. Text on the platform is minimal compared to Facebook, and comes in the form of intentionally opaque captions and comments. Overall, a relatively low-fi image-centric medium just feels safer.

Source: How Long Can Instagram Distance Itself From the Facebook Backlash? – The Ringer

Facebook said the personal data of most of its 2 billion users has been collected and shared with outsiders 

Apr 4, 2018 | , ,

Facebook said Wednesday that most of its 2 billion users likely have had their personal information scraped and shared by third-party developers without their explicit permission.

Source: Facebook said the personal data of most of its 2 billion users has been collected and shared with outsiders – The Washington Post

See also: Accessing Your Facebook Data

How an Acronym You’ve Probably Never Heard of Will Change TV Advertising Forever 

Apr 4, 2018 | ,

What’s really going to kick the addressable revolution into overdrive is the rise of ACR (automated content recognition) data. If you’re unfamiliar, ACR is a technology used to automatically detect and index content that is playing on television in real-time. As a result, brands are able to use this information to determine when a given consumer sees their ad. As ACR data becomes more widespread, the sky’s the limit for addressable TV.

Source: How an Acronym You’ve Probably Never Heard of Will Change TV Advertising Forever – Adweek

The real threat to Facebook is the Kool-Aid turning sour 

Mar 31, 2018 | , ,

The more benign leaks merely cost Facebook a bit of competitive advantage. We’ve learned it’s building a smart speaker, a standalone VR headset and a Houseparty split-screen video chat clone.

Yet policy-focused leaks have exacerbated the backlash against Facebook, putting more pressure on the conscience of employees. As blame fell to Facebook for Trump’s election, word of Facebook prototyping a censorship tool for operating in China escaped, triggering questions about its respect for human rights and free speech. Facebook’s content rulebook got out alongside disturbing tales of the filth the company’s contracted moderators have to sift through. Its ad targeting was revealed to be able to pinpoint emotionally vulnerable teens.

In recent weeks, the leaks have accelerated to a maddening pace in the wake of Facebook’s soggy apologies regarding the Cambridge Analytica debacle. Its weak policy enforcement left the door open to exploitation of data users gave third-party apps, deepening the perception that Facebook doesn’t care about privacy.

Source: The real threat to Facebook is the Kool-Aid turning sour | TechCrunch

Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It? 

Mar 31, 2018 | , , ,

A diagram included with an Amazon patent application showed how a phone call between friends could be used to identify their interests. Credit United States Patent and Trademark

Amazon and Google have filed patent applications, many still under consideration, that outline how digital assistants can monitor more of what users say and do.

Source: Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It? – The New York Times

Apple updates the iPad for schools, but the price remains the same

Mar 28, 2018 |

Apple sent the iPad back to school, literally. At an event at Chicago’s Lane Tech High School on Tuesday, Apple unveiled a new model of its entry-level tablet designed to appeal to teachers and students.

The new iPad got a speed boost and support for Apple’s Pencil stylus, but keeps its familiar design and $329 price. The changes are welcome, but stop short of a full-on assault on the simple — and inexpensive — Google Chromebook laptops that have stolen Apple’s thunder in American schools.

Source: Apple Chicago event: New iPad announced at same price – The Washington Post

Spotify told Wall Street it is going to have a very good year in 2018

Mar 26, 2018 |

Spotify thinks it is going to do very well this year, by generating a big increase in revenue and paid subscribers, while improving its margins. And it thinks its losses will shrink. It would be surprising if Spotify didn’t have a good story to tell at this point. Its shares will start trading — via a “direct listing” instead of a traditional IPO, next Tuesday, April 3.

Source: Spotify told Wall Street it is going to have a very good year in 2018 – Recode

Admit It, You Don’t Really Understand Facebook

Mar 26, 2018 |

Whatever your position on the ethics of Facebook, the biggest challenge facing the world’s foundational social network right now is not #deletefacebook, data security, or PR punditry over whether Mark and Sheryl took too long to talk to journalists. It’s not even that the company has inadvertently been cast in history’s greatest spy drama–which just happens to be playing out on our TVs and in our news feeds and is the reason this story penetrated news cycles beyond tech media. (Despite all these things, business continues to boom.) Facebook’s real problem–its vulnerability–is the gulf that exists between people’s negligible understanding of its business model and what Facebook’s business really is.

Source: Admit It, You Don’t Really Understand Facebook

The 4 Design Changes Facebook Should Really Make

Mar 23, 2018 | ,

“In my opinion, the biggest issue that Facebook needs to address is its business model that relies on data surveillance,” Ricks says. “Facebook is one actor in a complex web of data brokers, digital services, political organizations, social platforms, and financial institutions that have profited off the mass exploitation of people’s data. Until that changes, I worry that Facebook may just be making cosmetic fixes to its platform.”

Source: The 4 Design Changes Facebook Should Really Make

Facebook Has An App Problem

Mar 22, 2018 | , ,

An “app,” in the eyes of your average consumer, is something you literally download onto your phone or computer. It’s a piece of software in your possession. Implied in this mental model is a sort of containment. An app is like a caged tarantula we can take out now and again. But when we put it away, it stays put away, because no one wants to wake up in the middle of the night with a giant arachnid on their face.

When Facebook began allowing apps to connect with its service to expand what users could do on the social network in 2007, this model was destroyed overnight. You were no longer downloading a piece of software that you somehow owned or that you somehow could unplug. You were connecting to a service that lived on servers, an omnipresent entity that was always there and always watching, even after you long stopped tending those Farmville crops or responding to those Words with Friends requests.

Source: Facebook Has An App Problem

Youtube, Wikipedia team up to combat conspiracy theories 

Mar 14, 2018 |

Youtube CEO Susan Wojcicki announced at a SXSW panel the company’s plan to add Wikipedia information to videos pertaining to conspiracy theories.

Source: Youtube, Wikipedia team up to combat conspiracy theories – Business Insider

Netflix’s real advantage is that it’s a tech company first

Mar 14, 2018 |

Netflix hasn’t been coy about its plans to take over Hollywood. The company has already said it could spend up to $8 billion on content this year alone. But, for all the awards House of Cards and Icarus rack up, one of the reasons Netflix has tasted success so rapidly is its streaming technology. That’s an area it has been perfecting in-house since 2010, when it became more than a simple mail-order DVD rental shop.

For Netflix, the tech is just as important as the storytelling. Regardless of how many shows or movies Netflix produces, it needs to ensure that its 118 million subscribers can watch them without issue — no matter where they are in the world, which smartphone they own or how fast their internet is. Netflix even recently re-encoded its entire catalog (said to be around 6,000 titles) to produce the best possible picture using the smallest amount of bandwidth, which was made possible by an AI technology it developed called Dynamic Optimizer.

Source: Netflix’s real advantage is that it’s a tech company first

Alexa’s Creepy Laughter Is A Bigger Problem Than Amazon Admits

Mar 9, 2018 | ,

Alexa owners report being startled by Alexa’s phantom chuckles, revealing one of the flaws of today’s voice assistants.

Source: Alexa’s Creepy Laughter Is A Bigger Problem Than Amazon Admits

Android Continues to Have More Loyal Customers Than iOS

Mar 9, 2018 |

Android customers continue to be more loyal to the Android operating system than iOS users are to the iOS operating system, according to new data shared today by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.  Android saw a 91 percent loyalty rate in 2017, compared to 86 percent for iOS, with loyalty rates for the two operating systems remaining largely steady since early 2016. Android loyalty has hovered at 89 to 91 percent since January 2016, while iOS loyalty has been between 85 and 88 percent.

Source: Android Continues to Have More Loyal Customers Than iOS – Mac Rumors

How Lies Spread Online 

Mar 8, 2018 | ,

For all categories of information — politics, entertainment, business and so on — we found that false stories spread significantly farther, faster and more broadly than did true ones. Falsehoods were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted, even when controlling for the age of the original tweeter’s account, its activity level, the number of its followers and followees, and whether Twitter had verified the account as genuine. These effects were more pronounced for false political stories than for any other type of false news.

Source: How Lies Spread Online – The New York Times

Where Millennials end and post-Millennials begin 

Mar 5, 2018 |

In order to keep the Millennial generation analytically meaningful, and to begin looking at what might be unique about the next cohort, Pew Research Center will use 1996 as the last birth year for Millennials for our future work. Anyone born between 1981 and 1996 (ages 22-37 in 2018) will be considered a Millennial, and anyone born from 1997 onward will be part of a new generation. Since the oldest among this rising generation are just turning 21 this year, and most are still in their teens, we think it’s too early to give them a name – though The New York Times asked readers to take a stab – and we look forward to watching as conversations among researchers, the media and the public help a name for this generation take shape. In the meantime, we will simply call them “post-Millennials” until a common nomenclature takes hold.

Source: Where Millennials end and post-Millennials begin | Pew Research Center