mobile internet Archives

Thought Starters: mobile internet, adblockers, sexism in the workplace and the developing world

Thought Starters provides me with a chance to look through the articles, research and opinion pieces I’ve read over the last week or so, highlighting the more interesting trends, developments and changes in the world we live in. This time we’re looking at the growth of mobile, the role of adblockers, the impacts and origins of sexism in the workplace and the internet in the developing world among other things. Happy reading.

The growth of mobile has seen the emergence of a whole new range of digital channels, but Visual Capitalist’s research points to the largest platforms all being controlled by Microsoft, Google or Facebook. That being said, there are range of platforms (WeChat, Snapchat, Slack, Netflix, Spotify) that fall short of a billion users but dominate within their respective sectors or geographies and could present a challenge to the market incumbents:

The IAB (US) recently released research which profiles how American consumers are using their PCs and smartphones. What is apparent is the continuing move to mobile although the same research points to computers still registering a higher volume of internet views pointing to the different ways these devices are used:

Google and Facebook have responded well to consumers’ growing use of smartphones, taking more than half of the available mobile ad revenues and leaving the remaining players fighting over the scraps in the US. eMarketer’s forecast suggests this isn’t going to change any time soon:

A continuing note of concern for media operators is the growth of adblocking with 22% of Britons using the software with this rising to 47% among 18-24 year olds according to Internet Advertising Bureau (UK) commissioned research.

Dean Dubley’s analysis suggests the introduction of mobile adblocking services won’t decimate the online media sector but is likely to further strengthen the hand of Google and Facebook:

The bottom line is that screaming headlines in stories like those from ZeroHedge (link) about “the risk to Internet companies’ business models” are nonsense. Ironically, it’s Google and Facebook’s approach to advertising that is safe. Small online publications using other advertising channels may not be so lucky. I noticed this tweet referencing mobile advertising growth forecasts from Goldman Sachs (link) which seems to suggest that Wall St is sanguine about the adblocking “threat” and that rapid growth in revenues will continue.

Among the likely responses by media operators to growing adblocker usage is a growing reliance on native advertising which is reflected in Enders Analysis’ recent forecast for Yahoo:

Whilst a few apps such as Facebook are nearly universal in their appeal, others give a clearer indicator as to who the user might be. Researchers have looked to profile the correlation between the ownership of different mobile apps and various demographic characteristics and income to develop profiles of mobile users. You can check out who they think you are in quiz – they got my gender and age wrong (I’m definitely male and over the age of 32) although I’m guessing not being a US resident probably didn’t help the profiling process.

Slack has been touted as the solution to the problem of information overload in the workplace with over 2 million daily active users. Samuel Hulick provides a more sceptical view warning that this “asynchronish” is in many cases compounding rather than addressing the problem:

Maybe you will say I’m afraid of commitment, but I’m just not interested in a relationship that seems to want to swallow up more and more of my time and attention, and demand that more and more of my interactions with other people go through you first.

Jeff Goodell has written an extended feature article on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Worth a read if you’re keen to get up to speed with what’s happening in the sector:

Despite advances like smarter algorithms and more capable robots, the future of superintelligent machines is still more sci-fi than science. Right now, says Yann LeCun, the director of Facebook AI Research, “AIs are nowhere near as smart as a rat.” Yes, with years of programming and millions of dollars, IBM built Watson, the machine that beat the smartest humans at Jeopardy! in 2011 and is now the basis for the company’s “cognitive computing” initiative. It can read 800 million pages a second and can digest the entire corpus of Wikipedia, not to mention decades of law and medical journals. Yet it cannot teach you how to ride a bike because its intelligence is narrow – it knows nothing about how the world actually works

Developments in software technology including artificial intelligence are rapidly expanding the scope of what computers can do. Nathaniel Popper profiles Kensho’s role in automating some of Goldman Sach’s research roles, highlighting how automation is increasingly emerging as a threat to white collar jobs:

The lead author on the Oxford paper, Carl Benedikt Frey, told me that he was aware that new technologies created jobs even as they destroyed them. But, Frey was quick to add, just because the total number of jobs stays the same doesn’t mean there are no disruptions along the way. The automation of textile work may not have driven up the national unemployment rate, but vast swathes of the American South suffered all the same. When it comes to those A.T.M.s, there has, in fact, been a recent steady decline in both the number of bank branches and the number of bank tellers, even as the number of low-paid workers in remote call centers has grown.

This points to a disconcerting possibility: Perhaps this time the machines really are reducing overall employment levels. In a recent survey of futurists and technologists, the Pew Research Institute found that about half foresee a future in which jobs continue to disappear at a faster rate than they are created.

Virtual reality is another technology that’s spilling out of the lab. Whilst it’s great to see the technology in the real world, Daniel Harvey profiles how a lack of diversity is leading to accidental sexism reflecting wider problems in the tech sector:

Based on that pattern it should come as no surprise that VR suffers from much the same. Motion sickness in VR has plagued the format since its inception. Women have shown a greater tendency toward VR-induced nausea than men. But why? It’s all about unconscious bias and technology’s notorious self-selection bias.

Discrimination is certainly not something exclusive to the tech sector. The absence of women in the boardrooms of many FTSE 100 or Fortune 500 companies reflects a range of barriers and will hold back their performance given they’re less able to reflect the needs of half the world’s consumers. It’s worth heading over to The Economist site where you can play with an interactive version of the following:

Facebook recently released its State of Connectivity report which profiles barriers to internet access for the developing world as part of its internet.org initiative. The key barriers to access highlighted in the report are the state of connectivity, availability of infrastructure, affordability, relevance and readiness of the population:

A valuable complement to Facebook’s report is Pew Research Center’s recently released research which looks at smartphone ownership and internet usage around the world including developing countries:

With Britain’s Brexit referendum coming up on the 23rd of June, The Economist has profiled the regions that are europhile and eurosceptic:

Whilst Europe is generally becoming more urbanised, this process (like technology) is unevenly distributed with different cities experiencing significant growth (Istanbul, Brussels, Amsterdam) or decline (Katowice, Ruhr, Katowice, Ostrava, Bucharest):

Claire Cain Miller and Quoctrung Bui profile changes in patterns of relationships and marriage in the US, highlighting the role of assortative mating in reinforcing social class and undermining social mobility:

Assortative mating is the idea that people marry people like themselves, with similar education and earnings potential and the values and lifestyle that come with them. It was common in the early 20th century, dipped in the middle of the century and has sharply risen in recent years — a pattern that roughly mirrors income inequality in the United States, according to research by Robert Mare, a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. People are now more likely to marry people with similar educational attainment — even after controlling for differences between men and women, like the fact that women were once less likely to attend college.

The featured image is a mural by ecb / Hendrik Beikirch for the St+Art India event in New Delhi and published in StreetArtNews

Thought Starters: mobile’s evolution, the gang of four, sadness on Tumblr and Brexit

Thought Starters provides me with a chance to look through the articles, research and opinion pieces I’ve read, highlighting the more interesting trends, developments and changes in the world you and I live in. This edition looks at the evolution of mobile, Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook’s stranglehold on media and technology, Tumblr’s role among teens and the upcoming Brexit referendum among other things. Happy reading.

With the Mobile World Congress on in Barcelona, Benedict Evans looks back at how we’ve got to today’s mobile ecosystem and how various incumbents were wrongfooted by these changes:

It’s always fun to laugh at the people who said the future would never happen. But it’s more useful to look at the people who got it almost right, but not quite enough. That’s what happened in mobile. As we look now at new emerging industries, such as VR and AR or autonomous cars, we can see many of the same issues. The big picture 20 years out is actually the easy part, but the details are the difference between Nokia and DoCoMo ruling the world and the world as it actually happened. There’s going to be a bunch of stuff that’ll happen by 2025 that we’d find just as weird.

The recent launches of Facebook’s Instant Articles and Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages aim to get content to consumers faster on their mobile phone (as well as keeping content within their respective domains). The following graph should give you an idea of why load times are so important for consumers:

Bruce Schneier gives a valuable defence of Apple’s refusal to handover the ‘keys’ to the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone. I am not so sure if it’s quite as cut and dry as Schneier makes out but there’s a strong case for not opening back doors given that there are plenty of people whose governments are less benevolent than are own:

What the FBI wants to do would make us less secure, even though it’s in the name of keeping us safe from harm. Powerful governments, democratic and totalitarian alike, want access to user data for both law enforcement and social control. We cannot build a backdoor that only works for a particular type of government, or only in the presence of a particular court order.

NYU Stern Professor Scott Galloway provides a rapid fire look at the growing stranglehold that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have on the media and technology sector – entertaining and informative:

A valuable companion to Galloway’s video is The Guardian’s presentation on key trends in the media sector focusing on where consumers are spending their time, emerging media models and podcasting among other things:

Whilst Tumblr might not be living up to Yahoo’s expectations with its monetisation, theres’ no denying its cultural impact. Elspeth Reeve provides a window into where Tumblr fits into teens’ digital lives:

Wong explained that teens perform joy on Instagram but confess sadness on Tumblr. The site, he said, is a “safe haven from their local friends. … On Tumblr they tell their most personal stories. They share things that they normally wouldn’t share with their local friends because of the fear of judgment. That has held true for every person that I’ve met.”

The IAB UK is pushing the importance of online advertising in the living room, pointing out that television isn’t the only game in town if you want consumers’ attention:

“Second screening is ingrained to such a degree that all screens are now equal, there’s no hierarchy, only fragmentation of attention – actually switch-screening is a much more accurate term,” says Tim Elkington, the IAB’s Chief Strategy Officer. “Furthermore, entertainment is only a small part of the living room media activity. It’s now a multifunctional space where people jump between individual and group activities, be it shopping, social media, emails, work or messaging.”

Ben Carlson explores why bear markets are so painful for consumers and businesses (and it’s not just the hole it leaves in their pockets):

One of the reasons for this is because of the difference between the nature of bull and bear markets. There’s an old saying that stocks take the escalator up but the elevator down. Bull markets are fairly slow and methodical. Bear markets are violent and come in waves. Bull markets take time to climb the wall of worry while bear markets can wipe out a decent amount of those gains in a hurry.

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has provoked renewed interest in the issue of income inequality. Dr Max Roser’s analysis points to rising inequality in English speaking countries which contrasts with the other developed economies profiled:

Britain is now in Brexit fever as debates rage over whether the country should leave the European Union following the announcement by Prime Minister David Cameron of a referendum in July. The Economist has done a quick roundup of some of the arguments those for and against Brexit are pushing:

One of the big uncertainties is the impact that Brexit will have on the UK’s economy. Chris Giles looks at three possible scenarios, a Booming Britain, a Troubled Transition and a Disastrous Decision.

The Economist point to the importance of education as key arbiter in determining Briton’s perceptions of Brexit. Tertiary education in particular providing a different filter to view these changes as well as increasing the potential benefits from being part of the European Union:

In the long term, this bodes well for pro-Europeans. University attendance has exploded, which suggests that Britain will become more internationalist and comfortable with EU co-operation. Yet in the meantime it seems the country will be increasingly polarised: liberal, Cambridge-like places on the one side; nationalist, Peterborough-like ones on the other and an ever-shrinking middle ground between the two, as the population bifurcates into those whose skills make them globally competitive and those who must compete with robots and the mass workforces of the emerging economies. Democracy—especially in a system as centralised and majoritarian as that of Britain—assumes some common premises and experiences, a foundation that thanks to the great educational-cultural divide is now at risk. Eventually Britain will look more like Cambridge than it does today. But until then decades of division and mutual alienation await.

Another country that is having a rather mixed relationship with the European Union is Poland. Christian Davies follows Jarosław Kaczyński and the Law & Justice party’s rise to power and concerns about growing nationalism and authoritarianism:

Commonly labelled conservative or nationalist, Law and Justice blends the religious and patriotic rituals of Poland’s long history of resistance to foreign oppression with hostility to free-market capitalism and a heavy dose of conspiracy regarding the machinations of Poland’s enemies. It is the vanguard of a movement that goes far beyond the party itself, supported by sympathetic smaller parties, ultra-Catholic media, nationalist youth organisations and an assortment of cranks and cynics who share a hostility to liberalism in all its guises. As foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski told the German tabloid Bild, his government “only wants to cure our country of a few illnesses”, such as: “a new mixture of cultures and races, a world made up of cyclists and vegetarians, who only use renewable energy and who battle all signs of religion … What moves most Poles [is] tradition, historical awareness, love of country, faith in God and normal family life between a woman and a man.”

Valentine’s Day this year was awash with media coverage of online dating and the impact it is having on relationships. It’s interesting to look back on how people have met their other halves in the past. These figures might not be right up to date (certainly pre Tinder) but they do give a valuable indicator of changing social trends:

The featured image is a Hitotzuki mural from the POW! WOW! festival in Hawaii and published in Arrested Motion.

Thought Starters: the move to mobile, Oculus Rift, post Arab Spring and experiments with universal basic income

Thought Starters provides me with a chance to look through articles, research and opinion pieces, highlighting interesting trends, developments and changes in the world you and I live in. This edition includes a look at the growing importance of mobile, questions about Oculus Rift, coverage of Middle East post Arab Spring, Finland’s experiment with the universal basic income and much more.

The International Telecommunications Union’s Measuring the Information Society Report provides a valuable collection of telecom statistics with an accompanying webpage enabling users to quick compare different countries and regions. What becomes quickly apparent in some of the statistics is how less developed countries have skipped of fixed telecoms as they make the transition directly to a mobile world:

Whilst the move to mobile is particularly apparent in many developing countries, figures from Enders Analysis point to UK’s own transition to mobile in internet use, ecommerce and online advertising:

Taking this further, Benedict Evans puts forward 16 hypotheses on how mobile has reshaped the technology landscape. Well worth spending time with this and the his accompanying articles.

Neural nets are one of the areas where we’re seeing significant advances in artificial intelligence. Steven Levy has an entertaining profile of the work Alexander Mordvintsev and his attempts to understand how these neural nets work which has led to computationally produced images that are probably best described as psychedelic:

Oculus Rift has become the poster boy for the virtual reality community but Jason Pfaff suggests the need for expensive goggles tethered to a powerful Windows PC and poor user experience could see it quickly disrupted:

Which brings me to Oculus, and their flagship product, the Rift. Today, as anyone with an Oculus development kit (DK2) will tell you, the experience provided by the hardware is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. It is pure, blissful magic. But, and this is key, to get to that experience you have to do a few things you haven’t done in a long time. For starters, you need to buy a premium and Windows based PC. Then, you have to find a massive file on an online store and wait minutes for it to download and eat large swaths of your memory. Then you go into Windows Explorer, paste it from your download folder to the folder Oculus will read from, and then you extract the files. Think about that. Then you crack open that folder to find the one that launches it, then you click, then you wait, and then you hope. And if it doesn’t work, you try another folder or another file, or look for another file called “Direct to Rift mode” to see if that forces the app through to the display. This is repeated for every app, piece of content or game you want to display on your Rift. A lot of friction.

The media sector continues to evolve as consumers move their content consumption online and content producers find their access to consumers increasingly dictated by social media. The Nieman Foundation has asked a long list of opinion makers what they think are the important issues and trends for journalism in 2016.

Consumers are moving to non linear television with the use of PVRs (eg Sky+HD box), catch up television services (eg BBC iPlayer) and subscriptions to streaming video services (eg Netflix). James Poniewozik looks at what this means for the makers and consumers of television programmes:

HBO series like “Deadwood” — which jettisoned the ad breaks and content restrictions of network TV — have been compared to Dickens’s serial novels. Watching a streaming series is even more like reading a book — you receive it as a seamless whole, you set your own schedule — but it’s also like video gaming. Binge-watching is immersive. It’s user-directed. It creates a dynamic that I call “The Suck”: that narcotic, tidal feeling of getting drawn into a show and letting it wash over you for hours. “Play next episode” is the default, and it’s so easy. It can be competitive, even. Your friends are posting their progress, hour by hour, on social media. (“OMG #JessicaJones episode 10!! Woke up at 3 a.m. to watch!”) Each episode becomes a level to unlock.

With those new mechanics comes a new relationship with the audience. Traditional television — what the jargonmeisters now call “linear TV” — assumes that your time is scarce and it has you for a few precious hours before bed. The streaming services assume they own your free time, whenever it comes — travel, holidays, weekends — to fill with five- and 10-hour entertainments.

Tom Mitchell and Patti Waldmeir look at the massive growth in China’s business elite and the growing tension with the ruling Communist Party which has seen the temporary disappearance of a number of business leaders:

Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is about to come out of copyright in Germany which has prompted The Economist to look at the shadow Nazi rule casts on contemporary German society:

If a country can ever be said to be good, Germany today can. And yet Germans know that whenever others are angry with them, they will paint a Hitler moustache on posters of their chancellor. Many Germans are fed up with this—with being “blackmailed”, as Bild, the leading tabloid, complained this spring, when Greece unexpectedly brought war reparations into negotiations about bail-outs in the euro crisis. Other Germans, mainly on the left, fret about a new “post-post-nationalism”, as Germany tentatively articulates its self-interest abroad. For most countries, this would count as normal. For Germany, it remains complicated.

Gilbert Achcar and Nada Matta look at the more recent legacy of the Arab Spring five years on from its beginnings in Tunisia, and they point to why some countries where more successful in their transitioning than others:

Five years into the uprisings, however, counterrevolutionary forces composed of the old regimes and Islamic fundamentalist forces have regained the political initiative, and are now violently vying for control. Egypt is under a worse dictatorship than before its uprising, and civil wars have broken out in Syria, Libya, and Yemen. Hundreds of thousands have died, and many millions have been displaced.

It’s also well worth reading Scott Atran’s detailed analysis of the rise of ISIS in which he draws parallels with earlier revolutionary movements and the conviction of its members which is in stark contrast to much of its opponents:

Civilisations rise and fall on the vitality of their cultural ideals, not their material assets alone. History shows that most societies have sacred values for which their people would passionately fight, risking serious loss and even death rather than compromise. Our research suggests this is so for many who join ISIS, and for many Kurds who oppose them on the frontlines. But, so far, we find no comparable willingness among the majority of youth that we sample in Western democracies. With the defeat of fascism and communism, have their lives defaulted to the quest for comfort and safety? Is this enough to ensure the survival, much less triumph, of values we have come to take for granted, on which we believe our world is based? More than the threat from violent jihadis, this might be the key existential issue for open societies today.

There’s been a lot of talk about a movement from corporate to self-employment. For those people whose skills are in demand, this can offer substantial benefits but for the less in demand, the transition to the freelance economy can pose significant challenges to individuals financial security. One of the solutions being suggested to this problem is the introduction of a universal basic income, guaranteeing all members of society an income regardless of their situation. Ben Schiller covers Finland’s experiment with the model, with the country seeing real potential benefits in terms of security, incentives to work and reduced bureaucracy:

The Finnish government likes the concept, and it’s putting serious resources behind a national experiment. Starting in 2017, up to 100,000 Finns could get up to 1,000 euros a month, in lieu of other benefits. These lucky souls won’t have to work. They won’t have to prove they’re in poverty to get the money. For two years, they’ll get a fixed amount to do with what they will.

The featured image is a mural produced by 108 for Bien Urbain in Besancon, France and found on ekosystem.

Thought Starters: Chinese digital media, iPhone’s dominance, Holacracy and Europe’s lagging digital innovation

The following is a look through articles, research and opinion pieces highlighting interesting trends, developments and changes in the world you and I live in, with an emphasis on technology.

We are seeing Chinese businesses increasingly innovate and excel, providing business models that set themselves apart from businesses in the West. Digital media and communications have been a particularly fertile ground illustrated by the following table which illustrates how diversified the revenue streams of Tencent and YY are compared to their American counterparts:

Apple is carving an increasingly dominant place in the world’s smartphone marketplace in terms of market share and profit. Some critics have questioned whether Apple can continue this growth trajectory, but Ben Thompson provides a strong defence for why we’re not likely to see this train derailing in the near future:

Closely tied to the issue of smartphone ownership is the penetration of different mobile browsers. Here again Akamai’s figures point to Apple’s Mobile Safari browser dominating globally:

Roger D. Hodge looks at the ups and downs of Zappos’ introduction of the Holacracy system for self-organisation. It’s a long article but provides a valuable window into the challenges (and some of the opportunities) of introducing radical organisational change:

As we embed the internet in an more aspects of our lives, countries’ digital readiness provides an increasingly important measure of future economic health. Tufts University created the Digital Evolution Index to measure the building of digital capacity and many European countries don’t come out particularly well according to Bhaskar Chakravorti and Ravi Shankar Chaturvedi:

One digital innovation with its roots in Europe is the blockchain platform Ethereum (although there’s definitely an argument for it being a global project). Vinay Gupta provides a valuable look at the development of blockchain and smart contracts within the wider context of the evolution of databases and the internet.

Christina Farr looks at the rise and fall of the home cleaning service Homejoy, providing important lessons for startups aiming for growth at all costs.

A lot of media attention has focused on the rapid rise in San Francisco property prices, so it’s interesting to see UBS’ comparison of how overvalued the city’s real estate is compared to other leading cities:

Eric Jaffe’s analysis of trends in working hours over the last 130 years points to a downward trend – lets hope that we see this trend continue without leaving us all unemployed:

The featured image is a mural in Covilhã, Portugal by Pantonio and published in StreetArtNews.

Thought Starters: the changing media landscape, smartphones’ impact on our lives and Volkswagen’s blunder

The following is a collection of articles and thought pieces highlighting interesting trends, developments and changes in the world you and I live in, with an emphasis on technology:

The last year has seen growing interest among banks and other large financial institutions in blockchain based solutions. The technology has real benefits but also comes with limitations which Ben Milne from Dwolla explores.

Blockchain and bitcoin have been closely associated with open source technology, but Brian Armstrong argues for a more balanced attitude to intellectual property as the technology matures and patent trolls emerge.

Facebook is looking to grow its presence in developing markets as it rebrands its Internet.org app as Free Basics by Facebook:

The marketing and media landscape is continuing to evolve rapidly with Goldman Sachs pointing to the growth of closed advertising systems, the role of Google and media consolidation as being key drivers for change.

Jason Kint and Vincent Peyrègne in their analysis point to the unfettered chasing of advertising dollars as inevitably to the growth in ad blockers (see below). In response, they’re calling for the industry to proactively respond with the development of guidelines which will see a more responsible attitude to consumer privacy and online advertising banners:

Armando Biondi on the other hand looks at the increasingly fragmented marketing technology landscape and points to how this is redefining the role of the CMO to one who increasingly manages a range of technology service providers.

SAP have worked with the team at Information is Beautiful to produce an interactive infographic providing an introduction to the internet of things. You can get a taste of it below but I’d recommend clicking through to get the full interactive version:

Dan Frommer asks why we’re still calling that device in our pocket a phone when talking makes up only a small part of its use according to Akamai research:

It’s worth having a look at comScore’s 2015 U.S. Mobile App Report if you want to a window into how consumers are using their smartphones:

Smartphones are reshaping the way that consumers communicate with each other, not just digitally but also impacting on our conversations in the real world. Sherry Turkle looks at those aspects that change and stay the same.

Volkswagen’s rigging of emissions tests in the US has seen the automotive brand deservedly take a big hit. Nature takes a closer look at the story and some of the wider problems associated with diesel automotive emissions. But before you single out Volkswagen, it’s also worth looking at research from Transport & Environment which points out other brands that have been pushing the boundaries:

The United Nations Refugee Agency have produced the following video which does a great job of putting Europe’s refugee crisis in context and suggests who could be doing more:

The featured image is Black Machine by NEVERCREW in Turin, Italy and was published in unurth.

If you’re interested in a more regular and unfiltered stream of information and insights, I’d suggest you follow my Pinboard and Pinterest accounts.

Thought Starters: innovation, incomes, employment and happiness

The following is a collection of articles and thought pieces highlighting interesting trends, developments and changes in the world you and I live in, with an emphasis on technology:

The Global Innovation Report as the name suggests ranks the innovation levels of various countries. The Economist recently published the following which points to Britain doing strongly:

Figures from the US Census Bureau indicate growth in jobs but no commensurate increase in median incomes as represented in the following graph from the Economic Policy Institute:

Whilst there’s been a lot of noise about the growing wealth of the top 1%, analysis by the Brookings Institute points to the relative success of the upper middle class in the US in recent years:

“While the rise in income and wealth at the very top is eye-catching, it also distracts attention from the action a little lower down the income distribution. The idea that the real divide is between ordinary members of the bottom 99 percent and the rich 1 percent is a dangerous one, since it makes it easier for those in the upper middle class to convince themselves they are in the same economic boat as the rest of America; they’re not.”

Maintaining overall income is not going to get any easier in the future due to an ageing population, with Morgan Stanley figures point to a decline in the total working population since 2005:

There’s been lots of speculation recently on the effect that technology is having on the labour market. James Bessen suggests that we’re looking at a process of displacement rather than replacement of labour with a need for a labour force that is more adept at using technology:

“While technology takes over some tasks, it also increases demand for goods and services and hence increases demand for workers performing the remaining tasks. Instead of just eliminating jobs, new jobs are also created, sometimes in different occupations.”

Eurostat figures point to where Europeans spend comparatively more (or less) of their income on proportionately. Rather surprised to find UK’s spend on alcohol and tobacco to be lower than the European average:

Marco Arment’s launch and then pulling of the Peace adblocker for iOS has led to renewed focus on the plight of the online media industry. Ben Thompson takes a look at some of the key pressures facing the industry and comes up with some recommendations if they want to be profitable.

Among the recent announcements at Apple’s Special Event on the 0th of September was the launch of the iPhone Upgrade Programme. Benedict Evans‘ takes a closer look at the initiative and how it shifts the balance of power from the mobile networks to Apple.

It’s also worth reading Benedict Evans’ piece critiquing talk of the mobile internet given that internet access via mobile devices is increasingly the norm rather than the exception

Facebook has updated its Pages offering as it looks to provide a more relevant platform for small businesses’ which includes an ecommerce offering and better design for mobile users:

Adam Piore writing for Nautilus looks at the role of human contact in making us happy and the impact that social networks are having on these relationships.

The featured image is a piece called Huemul produced by Pastel in Buenos Aires and published in StreetArtNews.

Thought Starters: Facebook’s M, Privacy, Driverless Cars, the Dating Apocalypse and more

The following is a collection of articles and thought pieces highlighting interesting trends, developments and changes in the world you and I live in, with an emphasis on technology.

Research from Flurry profiled by Yahoo points to the dominant role that apps have in the mobile ecosystem. The following graph doesn’t tell the entire story given the ability to reach web pages within a mobile app but does show the comparatively marginal role of the mobile browser:

Facebook has launched its M virtual assistant as part of its Messenger offering and was recently profiled in Wired. It has been rolled out to only a limited audience at this stage and what’s particularly interesting about the service is its use of humans as the system’s artificial intelligence develops a robust knowledge base:

“In the larger world of AI-driven personal assistants, M may seem like a regression. And as Facebook tests the tool with the public, it’s unclear whether this human-machine partnership can keep pace as the project expands to an ever-larger audience. But in a counterintuitive way, M may actually be a step forward for AI.”

Instagram now offers consumers and brands the opportunity to share photos and videos that are rectangles and not simply the iconic squares that we’ve become so used to. Advertising Age has a look at the likely impact for brands:

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WeAreSocial follow up their profile of China with a profile of the world’s other fast developing behemoth with topline digital, social and mobile statistics for India:

A lot of noise has been made by commentators and critics about the cost in privacy that consumers are paying for the free services provided by Facebook and Google (“If you’re not paying for it; you’re the product”). Andrew McAfee jumps to their defence arguing that consumers are getting a fair deal, particularly given the plethora of consumer information already available to marketers:

“It’s true that all the information about me and my social network that these companies have could be used to help insurers and credit-card companies pick customers and price discriminate among them. But they already do that, and do it within the confines of a lot of regulation and consumer protection. I’m just not sure how much “worse” it would get if Google, Facebook and others started piping them our data.”

Maxwell Wessel looks at how the introduction of driverless cars is likely to restructure the auto industry, with the car forecasted to become less of a personal luxury and more of a utility.

The launch of UberPool brings Uber into closer competition with public transport with users picked up along what are being labelled as Smart Routes. Given this, it was encouraging to see Nate Silver and Reuben Fischer-Baum argue that Uber and public transport are complementary and will hopefully get more cars off the road in urban centres:

China’s economy seems to have hit the skids recently with Tyler Cowen giving a good overview of some of the key reasons for the downturn. The BBC put together the following infographic which show why China’s economy isn’t significant just for the Chinese and investors in the country’s economy:

Nancy Jo Sales‘ report on the impact of Tinder on relationships kicked up more than its fair share of criticism. Moira Weigel rightly points out that there’s been a long list of societal and technological changes that have created significant changes in courtship rituals without human society falling apart. Looking at the issue from another angle, Jon Birger’s analysis points to imbalances in education levels among men and women as creating a source of growing tension in relationship patterns.

Europe’s refugee crisis has deservedly dominated news headlines recently and the following infographic from the Washington Post illustrates why the scale of the crisis in Syria is so tragic. Please show your support:

If you’re in London between now and the 20th of September, I’d recommend a visit to the Photographers’ Gallery where the Shirley Baker exhibition Women Children and Loitering Men is well worth a view:

The feature image was produced by Eko and published in his Flickr stream.

Thought Starters

Content that has caught my eye recently or got me thinking. I particularly recommend Tim Urban’s article on artificial intelligence.

WeAreSocial provide their wrap up of key digital up of key digital, social and mobile statistics for 30 key global markets as well as regional overviews – a valuable reference source:

Flurry’s mobile statistics point to lifestyle & shopping as growing rapidly in consumers’ use of mobile, providing a stark contrast to the more well established mobile gaming:

Whilst global tablet penetration continues to grow, we’re seeing a drop in the phenomenal growth rates of earlier years according to eMarketer’s forecast:

Joichi Ito compares and contrasts the development of the internet with bitcoin, providing a valuable lens in which to understand the fundamentals of the cryptocurrency and how it may develop in the future.

Steven Levy looks at how Google adapted its business strategy to better accommodate an increasingly mobile driven world:

Knowledge Graph structures the world’s information in a vast database. Voice Search incorporates spoken language into Search. Google Now tells what people want to know before they ask. All three, not coincidentally, are tied to Google’s focus on mobile. Though certainly not an exhaustive list, those components — and the way they work together— have helped transform Google Search in the past three years, from a delivery system of “ten blue links” into something almost psychic: a system that doesn’t behave like a computer but an intelligent hive of knowledge that wisely interprets and satisfies your information needs. And it did it all when you weren’t looking.

Benedict Evans similarly looks at how Google adapted Android and Apple adapted iOS to changing market environment and capabilities. Whilst in some respects, their positions are closer now than they were in the past, the companies strategy are based on fundamentally different underpinnings.

Nick Bilton profiles Snapchat Stories and how it fits in to the increasingly diverse range of communication channels available to consumers and particularly teenagers and young adults. Snapchat is looking to sell the service to advertisers, big question is whether it’s asking too much for the service with commentators both for and against.

Microsoft publicly revealed their HoloLens offering, taking the concept of enhanced eyewear a stage beyond Google Glass. It’s a fascinating project although it will be interesting to see if Microsoft does a better job than Google in overcoming consumers misgivings about wearing a computer on their face. Read a first hand experience of using the eyewear over on Wired:

Tim Urban profiles the growth of artificial intelligence, profiling the transition from Artificial Narrow Intelligence to Artificial Superintelligence and the innovations that are likely to enable this:

The Verge highlights the role of British based Gamma Group International in supporting Bahraini regime through spyware enabling the surveillance and hacking of activists digital communications. Given the more insidious uses that surveillance can be put to, I’m not a fan of David Cameron’s proposal for backdoor access to digital communications and also given the damage this could do to the UK’s digital sector as covered by Cory Doctorow.

Raffi Khatchadourian looks at Affectiva’s move to digitally read consumers’ emotions through the tracking of facial expressions. Obvious implications for measuring the impact of marketing communications but it’ll be interesting to see how it gets used for other purposes.

LSE Cities has pulled together a data visualisation illustrating how much population densities vary among the world’s major cities and published in Vox.

Aaron Sankin looks at racial preferences among users of OkCupid and Tinder which points to biases among different ethnic groups, including among those who typically claim otherwise.

The featured image is mural by Nelio and Simek in Lyon.

Thought Starters

Content that has caught my eye recently or got me thinking, which includes coverage of enterprise technology, changing nature of interaction on the internet and citizen journalism among other subjects.

Recent data breaches at Sony, Target and Home Depot point to serious security issues within large enterprises but Steven Sinofsky points to the move to cloud infrastructure and other developments as addressing many of these concerns in the near future. It’s also worth reading Sinofsky’s look at trends within the workplace in 2015 for Re/code, taking a closer look at cloud and hybrid cloud solutions, email, tablets and mobile device management among other matters.

Ben Bajarin takes a closer look at the emergence of the mobile internet, pointing to its dominant role in China, with Western markets likely to follow. Ignore at your peril.

Complementing Bajarin’s analysis is Chris Dixon’s coverage of the move from a search to social centric model in what he describes as a move from a pull to a push model of the internet:

The Lending Club IPO has placed a spotlight on the emergence of peer-to-peer models within the financial sector. The Economist’s comparison of the costs of the Lending Club versus traditional channels illustrate why Lending Club and other peer-to-peer operators are seen as a disruptors:

The sharing economy has taken a lot of stick for what some critics has described as providing an unfettered form of capitalism. The Nation posits an alternative model of the sharing economy in which associated technologies enable a more collective model of business:

Serial reignited my interest in podcasts even if the show didn’t manage to maintain its early momentum. EJ Dickinson compared reporting of the case on the podcast to that on Reddit, with the latter providing a valuable indication of the value of citizen journalism.

Hannah Kuchler covers Pew Research Center’s study into the Ferguson riots, pointing to the long delay in television news’ coverage of the event when compared to social media:

A pair of Morgan Stanley analysts experiences with the much lauded GoPro point to the fact that there are likely to be limits to the success of the action sports video camera:

1) Our feats as equity research analysts provoke way fewer jaw-dropping oohs and ahhs than the world’s top motorcycle freestylers

2) it is way easier to shoot hours of raw video content (the hardware capabilities are great) than it is to create anything that is even remotely digestible

3) the video editing and creation process is incredibly laborious—it took nearly 8 hours of work to create a sub-2 minute video—even as GoPro’s Studio helped ease the process (we didn’t have to match soundtrack to video, Studio’s [software provided] templated clip lengths and transitions, while providing a general storyboard outline).

Bloomberg reports on how the American economy is becoming increasingly independent of the petroleum sector with an interactive infographic – worth a look:

The Economist profiles the emerging middle class in developing societies as more of the world’s population finds themselves emerging from poverty:

Joseph E. Stiglitz looks at the emergence of China as the pre-eminent global economic power and what this means to the U.S.

The featured image is mural by Patel in Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic and found on StreetArtNews.

Thought Starters

Content that has caught my eye recently, which includes coverage of Amazon, Apple Pay, Facebook’s financial results, the music industry, income inequality among other things.

Vanity Fair has a feature article focusing on the increasingly fraught relationship between Amazon and the publishing industry. The piece charts how Amazon was originally seen as a counterbalance to to the growing power of Borders and Barnes & Noble, but over time it was Amazon that upset the relatively cosy relationships within the publishing industry (albeit at the expense of the consumer).

Whilst Amazon’s hold on the publishing industry appears relatively secure, the company has received a bit of stick recently for its performance in other market segments (most notably the Fire Phone) .

Bezos’ sterling reputation kept few questioning these initiatives, but in recent months that has started to change. A number of recent initiatives seem to be costing more money while not necessarily showing signs of sure success.

Benedict Evans made a strong case a couple of months ago for Amazon’s approach of putting off profits as it invested in new market segments, but Amazon needs to have more winners if this strategy is to work over the long term.

Ben Thompson takes a valuable look at how Apple has carved out a strong strategic position in the payments space by creating a situation of mutual advantage for its customers, credit card networks, banks, and to a lesser degree, merchants:

Technalysis has forecasted healthy growth in the wearable computing category. Whether its enough to provide a lifeline to Samsung and other besieged smartphone manufacturers remains to be seen:

Facebook’s revenue results reported by Benedict Evans point to the company doing a good job of adapting to consumers’ increasing time on their smartphone:

What Facebook is doing a less good of is reducing its reliance on the North American market as reported in Inside Facebook, despite the continued growth of internet and mobile internet penetration in the rest of the World:

Whilst Western consumers are relishing increasing mobile internet speeds, it’s a rather different story for many consumers in the developing world where the cost of data makes internet access a relative luxury. Ben Bajarin talks about the ‘light web’ in which mobile experiences are carefully optimised to reduce the data usage for consumers wary of:

Much has been made of the move by brands from an era of disruption to engagement, enabled by broadening array of interactive digital channels. Given these changes, its valuable to read Tom Doctoroff’s spirited defence of more traditional marketing agencies.

An interesting counterpoint to Doctoroff’s view is Faris who points to the lack of interactivity in the majority of digital advertising, pointing to Honda’s The Other Side campaign as where things should be heading:

You get the idea. I guess I just miss ideas that work on the web, where the user is in control of the interaction. Where everyone gets an interactive experience.

Bradley Leimar takes a look at how banks will look to improve their offering using enhanced digital channels that go beyond simply putting a customer interface online:

We are moving away from a banking relationship defined by the goal of being a customer’s primary financial institution to one where we focus on becoming their primary financial application. It’s no longer about wallet share. It’s about app-driven mindshare – as our customers reach into their pockets for their mobile device or use their glasses or other form of wearable technology and think about their financial relationship choices – before, during, and after a financial moment of truth.

The music industry is adjusting from an ownership to a streaming model. Mark Mulligan argues that the music industry needs to drop the pricing of streaming music if it wants to maximise overall revenues:

Felix Salmon on the other hand focuses his attention on the value of having three dominant record labels in facilitating streaming music services, arguing that an oligopoly in this case serves the interests of consumers.

We take globalisation for granted in the increasingly interconnected world we live in. Given this, it’s interesting to see analysis from Pankaj Ghemawat and Steven Altman which compares how globalised information, trade, people and capital is over the last 10 years:

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has sparked renewed interest in the issue of income inequality. Oxfam has looked into correlations between income and inequality and health outcomes pointing to some of the more tangible negative outcomes associated with income disparities within countries:

Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael Norton’s research points to the vast gap between the income of CEOs and their unskilled workers across different countries, with the wage gap being much larger than most people saw as being appropriate:

The featured image is 25% Black by Elian in Cordoba, Argentina and found on eksoystem.

Tag: mobile internet

Thought Starters: mobile internet, adblockers, sexism in the workplace and the developing world

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Thought Starters: the move to mobile, Oculus Rift, post Arab Spring and experiments with universal basic income

Thought Starters: Chinese digital media, iPhone’s dominance, Holacracy and Europe’s lagging digital innovation

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Thought Starters

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