The SoundCloud You Loved Is Doomed
Amid rumors of bankruptcy, SoundCloud finds itself where many of its forebears have: slouching unsuccessfully towards scale and profitability.
“Take On Me” music video comes to life with AR
Pack it on up, everyone — someone just won ARKit. We’ve seen loooots of fun stuff made with ARKit already, but this one… this one is something special.
Source: Someone made the “Take On Me” music video come to life with AR and it’s glorious | TechCrunch
Google’s Rules For Designers Working With AI
As part of a new project to humanize AI, the company created a guide to what it calls “human-centered machine learning.”
The digital native is a myth
The younger generation uses technology in the same ways as older people — and is no better at multitasking.
Source: The digital native is a myth : Nature News & Comment
People Have an Irrational Need to Complete ‘Sets’ of Things
People are irrationally motivated to complete arbitrary sets of tasks, donations, or purchases—and organizations can take advantage of that, according to new research by Kate Barasz, Leslie John, Elizabeth Keenan, and Michael Norton.
The Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed With YouTube Kids
Surprise eggs and slime are at the center of an online realm that’s changing the way the experts think about human development.
Source: The Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed With YouTube Kids – The Atlantic
Replacing desktop computers with AR smartglasses
One Silicon Valley startup called Meta is actually doing this right now.
Source: People are already replacing desktop computers with AR smartglasses: VIDEO – Business Insider
Comcast, CBS ‘ahead of curve’ in linear pay-TV business
Putting his futurist hat on, Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar predicts that the linear pay-TV business will lose around 31 million customers over the next decade.
Turn Off Your Push Notifications. All of Them.
RIP my mentions.
Source: Turn Off Your Push Notifications. All of Them | WIRED
Battle for the K-12 Market
If there’s a common thread that unites the rival technology giants Apple, Google, and Microsoft in the education market, it’s this: They’re big. The three major tech companies—along with Amazon, a relatively new player on the scene—go head-to-head in vying for big chunks of school business, most notably in sales of devices and operating systems, and they try to forge their own paths in others. At the same time, all of them are best known for their work outside education, through their sales to consumers, businesses, or both.
The Pendulum Swing Of Disruption
When a new technology disrupts a traditional incumbent, it normally does so by being 3 things to the end user:
- Cheaper/free
- Quicker
- More convenient
Napster, YouTube, Amazon, Uber, Netflix, all of these companies have done exactly this. Because they most often build market share and presence using external funding, such companies turn existing economics upside down with loss leading tactics. The result is that audiences switch in their millions and incumbents are left in tatters. Any old business that relies on scarcity economics will be swept away.
Source: The Internet’s Adolescence: The Real World Catches Up Eventually | Music Industry Blog
22-year-old stopped ransomware malware virus
The researcher — who is known as MalwareTech on Twitter — registered a garbled domain name hidden in the malware to track the virus, a move that halted it.
Source: Marcus Hutchins is 22-year-old who stopped ransomware malware virus – Business Insider
Sports-free cable TV bundles
Several cable networks are trying to put together a sports-free online TV package for less than $20 a month, but Disney doesn’t think it will work.
Source: Sports-free cable TV bundle: Disney, Discovery weigh in – Business Insider
Facebook’s 10-Year Masterplan
Here are the technologies that Facebook is working on to try and transform the company into a $1 trillion behemoth over the next 10 years.
Source: Infographic: The Progress of Facebook’s 10-Year Masterplan
Instagram Hits Escape Velocity
Instagram, now with 700 million users, resembles Facebook in 2009 to 2012, when it went from being something people used occasionally to something they use every day.
Source: Why Instagram Is Becoming Facebook’s Next Facebook – The New York Times
Snapchat Branded Geofilters
Snapchat maker Snap Inc. is allowing its ad partners in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada to sell and manage sponsored geofilters for the first time.
Source: Snapchat opens up paid geofilters to outside ad partners – Business Insider
How to make Twitter profitable
So, here’s a proposal to radically change the economics of Twitter: Charge businesses that exceed a set number of followers (perhaps 250,000) a monthly fee based on their total number of followers. To provide a sense of scale, here are the follower counts for a cross-section of well-known brands:
@TeslaMotors 1.4 million
@Verizon 1.7 million
@Pepsi 3.1 million
@CocaCola 3.4 million
@McDonalds 3.4 million
@Intel 4.7 million
@Marvel 4.9 million
@GoogleChrome 6.1million
@SamsungMobile 12.1 million
@Google 17.6 million
The More You Use Facebook, the Worse You Feel
Online social interactions are no substitute for the real thing.
Source: A New, More Rigorous Study Confirms: The More You Use Facebook, the Worse You Feel
Snapchat Goes Down
Things haven’t gone so well for tech’s most darling IPO of 2017. Snap had a blistering March 2 debut, which saw its first trade occur at $24 after pricing at $17. The stock hit an all-time high of $27.09 on March 3, but has been in a tailspin ever since.
Snap received several “sell” ratings early on as analysts questioned its ability to deal with competition from bigger companies. “Investors in Snap will be exposed to an upstart facing aggressive competition from much larger companies, with a core user base that is not growing by much and which is only relatively elusive,” Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group, wrote as he placed a $10 target on the stock the day Snap went public.
Netflix Knows What You Really Like to Watch
Netflix, as you may have heard, is killing off its stars. At a recent news conference at its headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif., the company announced it was shedding its former one-to-five-star rating system in favor of binary digits: namely, thumbs up or thumbs down. “Now it’s easier to tell us what you like,” the site promises.
Music Industry Now Likes Streaming but Hates YouTube
Spotify, the world’s biggest streaming music service, is and always has been unprofitable. Maybe that’ll change in 2017? The RIAA cautioned people that the industry’s recovery from it steep losses in the mid-aughts “is fragile and fraught with risk.” Sales of CDs and song downloads are declining fast, especially as Apple more heavily favors its streaming service over iTunes. Digital music is hard.
Pandora, one of the first services to offer streaming radio and formerly the music industry’s archenemy, just released an on-demand streaming service that faces stiff competition from Spotify and Apple Music. Investors are pressuring Pandora to sell itself, just as the company started to be on better terms with the recording industry.
Some things don’t change, though. The music industry is still mad at YouTube for how little it pays artists:
Source: The Music Industry Kind Of Likes Streaming Now, But It’s Still Nervous
Will Advertisers Abandon YouTube?
A web giant promises to tighten its safeguards to avoid pairing ads with offensive content, but advertisers are not convinced.
Source: YouTube Advertiser Exodus Highlights Perils of Online Ads – The New York Times
Millennials on Social Media
It’s hard enough to hold one person’s attention, let alone an entire generation’s. Millennials—now the largest generational group in the U.S.—have grown alongside advancements in technology and media platforms, placing them in intriguing territory with regard to media habits. When it comes to television, their eyes are glued to the screen. With commercials, they’re still tuned in—but their eyes are on their cell phones.
Source: Millennials on Millennials: A Look at Viewing Behavior, Distraction and Social Media Stars
The Future of Wearables
Have wearable devices and smart clothing been on the market for some time now? Yes. Have consumers been buying them? Not really. But that’s expected to change, in oh, five years or so.
AYTM Market Research polled 1,000 US internet users ages 18 and older in February 2017 and asked them if they ever purchased smart clothing or wearable devices. While roughly one in five respondents said they purchased at least one item, a large share—about three-quarters—said they had never purchased any. But many said they are at least somewhat likely to buy either smart clothing or wearables within the next five years. In fact, nearly half of respondents surveyed said that was their plan.
Source: Despite the Hype, Wearables Not Really a Thing – eMarketer
How Twitter’s New Algorithm Works
As a result of the experiments made possible by the algorithm, Twitter knows more about its users than it ever did before, such as how much they value recency or how they react to seeing multiple tweets in a row from the same person. The company has tried out new features that group tweets about a given topic or hashtag within your feed. It has even experimented with showing you occasional tweets from people you don’t follow, if Twitter’s ranking system shows that you’re likely to want to see them. Twitter can now evaluate the efficacy of such new features by comparing their effects on user behavior to the effects of the ranked timeline and “In case you missed it,” another newish feature. “Our algorithm changes on an almost daily to weekly basis,” Rao said.
Source: Twitter’s timeline algorithm, and its effect on us, explained.
Is There a Market for Virtual Reality Marketing?
Dos Equis’s “Masquerade Party,” a 2014 virtual reality film, transported viewers into an interactive party
As the hype around virtual reality pushes its way into the mainstream, big brands are increasingly looking for ways to incorporate it into their marketing. Yet there are also pitfalls — from cost to tepid audience reaction — that make the decision to enter the virtual reality world a bit more complicated than it may first seem.
Source: Virtual Reality Leads Marketers Down a Tricky Path – The New York Times
Mobile World Congress Four Years from Now
As over 108,000 attendees from 208 countries filed into the echoing halls of Mobile World Congress last week, I was reminded of the old First World War chant, sung by the soldiers on the front lines in a tone of heavy irony: “We’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here!”
Every year, Mobile World Congress positions itself as the world’s meeting place for the Mobile industry. That’s OK. I get it. But every year, I increasingly wonder, whether it’s really still all about the “mobile world” after all. The fact is that MWC is slowly but surely losing its reason for existing as a mobile-focused event.
A 20 minute taxi drive away from the Gran Fira of MWC is the strangely-named 4YFN (“Four Years From Now”). This conference resembles your average future-focused startup conference these days: there’s a pitching stage, a main stage for speakers and panels to pontificate, an exhibition hall — the usual. But although claiming to attract a healthy 20,000 people, it’s oddly removed from Mobile World Congress, even though anyone who has an entrance pass to MWC also has full access to 4YFN. All the devices which are unveiled at MWC, will eventually run the apps and cloud services which the startups down the road are producing. And yet, they are stuck back in the city.
I hope the rumours are true that next year they will co-locate 4YFN in a new, large, annexe at the main MWC exhibition area.For slowly but surely, the issues that are discussed at MWC, are gradually resembling the solutions and startups showcased at 4YFN.
Source: Let’s face it, Mobile World Congress isn’t about the mobile any more | TechCrunch
Google Assistant on Every Android Phone
Little things that seem unimportant — how many of us are interested in a particular movie or what time of day we tend to buy gas — are a gold mine of data for a truly smart computer. For Google, too, because the companies producing movies and selling gas are interested in working with the advertiser who knows these things. Assistant may seem like an altruistic offering from Google to mankind, but it’s a money-making opportunity first.
Source: Google Assistant for every phone was the best move Google will make in 2017 | Android Central
Snapchat Now Worth a Lot
Snap Inc’s pop in its trading debut Thursday made the company larger than many established corporations. Based on the opening price of $24, the Snapchat parent’s market capitalization — the total value of its outstanding shares — rose to $33 billion.
Snap is not yet profitable, and there are questions about whether its valuation is justified. None of the three analysts who had ratings on the stock on its first day advised investors to buy. “Investors in Snap will be exposed to an upstart facing aggressive competition from much larger companies, with a core user base that is not growing by much and which is only relatively elusive,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research, in a note.
Google’s YouTube TV Strategy
But even if YouTube succeeds in nailing the tech, and getting a leg up on its competition, that doesn’t mean the streaming TV market will be an instant goldmine. The margins on the early streaming TV services appear to be razor-thin, and the price point YouTube is offering isn’t going to change that.
But the crux of that opportunity doesn’t lie in big initial margins, it comes from the potential to fundamentally shift how TV ads work. As it stands now, TV networks sell most of the ad inventory for their shows. And in the early days of a YouTube streaming TV service, that will continue, with YouTube itself selling only a few minutes of ads per hour on its own service. But that will change, Pacific Crest analyst Andy Hargreaves wrote in a note last month.
“Google’s vastly superior data should allow it to monetize its ad inventory at superior rates to networks,” he wrote. “Over time, this disparity should allow Google to capture a greater share of total ad inventory on its service. Played out over several years, we believe the natural evolution of a successful Google vMVPD service [YouTube TV] would be for the roles of content supply and ad selling (both currently done by TV networks) to split, with Google managing the ad selling and networks relegated to content suppliers.”
Source: YouTube TV needs to nail technical performance – Business Insider
Will Investors Get Snap?
Snapchat is popular among teens and twenty-somethings, but their parents, or even grandparents, are more likely to consider buying into Snap Inc.’s $3.2 billion public offering. And that’s an issue as Snap’s initial public offering approaches. Unlike Snapchat’s young user base — Snap says the majority of users are between 18 and 34, and users younger than 25 are the most active — many professional investors neither use nor understand the disappearing-message app. Combined with Snap’s large losses and decision not to issue voting rights to investors, the dissonance is holding back some from investing in the offering and may cause issues for the stock down the line.
Source: Snapchat still a mystery to investors, and that’s a problem for Snap IPO – MarketWatch
When Amazon’s Cloud Goes Down
The dynamics between public and private cloud tip a little more towards private cloud every time that there is an outage or with each new generation of IT technology that folks like Cisco Systems, Dell/EMC, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Huawei Technologies, IBM or Lenovo bring to the market. It is unlikely that businesses will halt their march to the cloud and move back to hosting all their applications on the traditional bare metal or virtualized server environments that had been popular for the last 20 years, but these episodes may cause people to think a little harder about data location and availability. This makes private cloud more interesting. Hybrid IT, gives businesses a combination of their datacenters, co-location and external cloud for hosting applications that could be traditional, virtualized, public cloud or private cloud.
Source: With Its Recent Outage, Amazon Web Services Is Helping To Sell Hybrid IT
Netflix Nabs Brad’s ‘War Machine’
On Wednesday, Netflix revealed the teaser trailer for its upcoming satire on the war in Afghanistan starring Brad Pitt, “War Machine.” Based on the best-selling book “The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America’s War in Afghanistan,” the movie follows Pitt as a four-star general who has been tasked with commanding the US war in Afghanistan, but the complexity of the job becomes overwhelming. Netflix reportedly nabbed the movie, on which Pitt is also a producer, for $30 million. It also stars Tilda Swinton, Ben Kingsley, and Lakeith Stanfield.
Source: The teaser for Netflix’s ‘War Machine’ starring Brad Pitt is here – Business Insider
Blockchain Goes Legit
Blockchain was originally developed as the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. A vast, globally distributed ledger running on millions of devices, it is capable of recording anything of value. Money, equities, bonds, titles, deeds, contracts, and virtually all other kinds of assets can be moved and stored securely, privately, and from peer to peer, because trust is established not by powerful intermediaries like banks and governments, but by network consensus, cryptography, collaboration, and clever code.
For the first time in human history, two or more parties, be they businesses or individuals who may not even know each other, can forge agreements, make transactions, and build value without relying on intermediaries (such as banks, rating agencies, and government bodies such as the U.S. Department of State) to verify their identities, establish trust, or perform the critical business logic — contracting, clearing, settling, and record-keeping tasks that are foundational to all forms of commerce.
Given the promise and peril of such a disruptive technology, many firms in the financial industry, from banks and insurers to audit and professional service firms, are investing in blockchain solutions. What is driving this deluge of money and interest? Most firms cite opportunities to reduce friction and costs. After all, most financial intermediaries themselves rely on a dizzying, complex, and costly array of intermediaries to run their own operations. Santander, a European bank, put the potential savings at $20 billion a year. Capgemini, a consultancy, estimates that consumers could save up to $16 billion in banking and insurance fees each year through blockchain-based applications.
Fonts and Info Hierarchy
By now, we’ve all seen the replays and read the analysis, breaking down how Warren Beatty could have gotten the wrong envelope for Best Picture. But something else could’ve prevented the biggest screw-up in Oscar history. If the card inside the envelope were clearer—if it had proper typography and a logical information hierarchy, rather than a wall of monotonous text—Beatty (or any person) would have caught the mistake.
Source: Typography Ruined The Oscars’ Biggest Moment. This Guy Fixed It | Co.Design | business + design
Connected Spenders
Middle class income is no longer enough to define the consumers that drive the global economy. As technology revolutionizes shopping, it’s creating a new consumer demographic—one that’s plugged in, ready to spend and at the forefront of consumer trends. Connected Spenders span all income levels and are defined by two characteristics: They have internet access and they are willing to spend their discretionary income. What’s more, new research from The Demand Institute projects that they will account for 46% (or $260 trillion) of global consumer spending over the next decade.
Source: Meet the Connected Spender, Digital Consumer of the Future
Things Smartphone Users Don’t Need Anymore
Over the past decade, smartphones have made a number of once-popular gadgets all but irrelevant to society. While the dollar value of smartphone shipments has grown 536% in that time, those of the MP3 player, digital camera, and portable GPS have sunk.
Source: Devices killed by the smartphone: CHART – Business Insider
Tracking What You Look At
“Eye tracking sensors provide two main benefits,” says Oscar Werner, vice president of the eye tracking company Tobii Tech. “First, it makes a device aware of what the user is interested in at any given point in time. And second, it provides an additional way to interact with content, without taking anything else away. That means it increases the communication bandwidth between the user and the device.”
There’s a chance that soon eye tracking will be a standard feature of a new generation of smartphones, laptops and desktop monitors setting the stage for a huge reevaluation of the way we communicate with devices—or how they communicate with us.
Source: Unlocking the potential of eye tracking technology | TechCrunch
See also: Towson University eye-tracking lab
Why Snap is a Camera Company
Technically speaking, Snap is a camera company, and has been for a number of months. In September, it announced the launch of Spectacles, camera-equipped sunglasses that allow you to record a ten-second video by tapping a button near your left eyebrow. (For the moment, Spectacles are sold exclusively in itinerant vending machines called Snapbots.) But the company’s vision of the future appears to be more expansive than that. “In the way that the flashing cursor became the starting point for most products on desktop computers, we believe that the camera screen will be the starting point for most products on smartphones,” it writes.
Source: Why Is Snap Calling Itself a Camera Company? – The New Yorker
Will Voice-Enabled Gadgets Kill Google’s Cash Cow?
The big player in voice computing right now is Amazon, which sells the Amazon Echo speaker as well as a slew of new and coming products with the Alexa voice assistant built in. Amazon doesn’t need to make money from search ads. Instead, it can use Alexa as a way to encourage users to buy more stuff from Amazon and sign up for services like Amazon Prime.
Google makes its own voice-enabled gadgets to compete with the Echo, called the Home. The problem is that Google can sell plenty of Home devices, but they won’t make up for the bigger loss of ad revenue if voice really catches on and the world moves away from screens. Google needs to figure out a new type of ad or a new business model.
Source: Google CEO Sundar Pichai answers concerns over monetizing voice search – Business Insider