Twitter Archives - Inspiral

Thought starters: coronavirus, intergenerational equity and the real Lord of the Flies

A look at interesting articles, features and opinion pieces that have caught my attention since I last posted here…

The UK media has been consumed by speculation over what rules Dominic Cummings broke in his trip to Durham. Unfortunately this attention has left the government off the hook for the bigger picture. John Burn-Murdoch and Chris Giles estimate that the UK has suffered the second-highest rate of deaths from the
coronavirus pandemic after Spain according to excess mortality figures:

Many politicians have claimed their decisions have been driven by science. In Israel epidemiologists have been sidelined which has apparently led to government forecasting to be well off target according to reporting from Meirav Arlosoroff:

All their models were based on mathematical assumptions on the rate of contagion that in the end proved wrong. To their immense disappointment, it turns out the coronvirus is a biological phenomenon that doesn’t fit the rules of mathematics. The bastard killer didn’t study math at an advanced level and to the shock of those doing the calculations tended to change its behavior over time. Why? Maybe because of the change in temperature, maybe because of genetic diversity. The bottom line is all the models predicted a rise in cases with the end of the lockdown and yet the opposite has occurred.

Sweden is continuing to prove an interesting source of discussion with its more liberal approach to quarantining and social isolation. Like many countries, the jury is still out and what was right and wrong on its approach as Sam Bowman and Pedro Serodio explore:

Ultimately, Sweden shows that some of the worst fears about uncontrolled spread may have been overblown, because people will act themselves to stop it. But, equally, it shows that criticisms of lockdowns tend to ignore that the real counterfactual would not be business as usual, nor a rapid attainment of herd immunity, but a slow, brutal, and uncontrolled spread of the disease throughout the population, killing many people. Judging from serological data and deaths so far, it is the speed of deaths that people who warned in favour of lockdowns got wrong, not the scale.

I’ve lived in London for the last 20 years where I have seen countless changes and endless waves of gentrification. The Economist looks at whether coronavirus is going to put a stop on its outsize role in the UK economy:

London is unlikely to slip back into the dismal state it was in before the mid-1980s. It is likely to remain richer and more productive than the rest of Britain. It will remain Europe’s most powerful magnet for talented immigrants. Still, its pulling power is likely to wane. If that happens, Britain’s economy will probably suffer. But a less centralised country, in which opportunity was more evenly distributed, might be a better place in other ways.

Coronavirus has caused further distress to pubs which were already declining in Britain. It was apparently a rather different story after the Black Death swept through the country according to Richard Collett:

By the 1370s, though, the Black Death had caused a critical labor shortage, the stark consequence of some 50 percent of the population perishing in the plague. Eventually, this proved a boon for the peasantry of England, who could command higher wages for their work and achieve higher standards of living. As a result, the alehouses that were simply households selling or giving away leftover ale were replaced by more commercialized, permanent establishments set up by the best brewers and offering better food.

Intergenerational equity has many different facets but economics is one of the areas where inequities can most clearly be seen. Many of us grew up with the expectation that our situation would be better than that of our parents. Reporting from Andrew Van Dam in the US (situation may well be different in emerging markets) paints a different picture for millennials whose poor showing is now being compounded by the coronavirus pandemic:

Donald Trump has at times been a savvy user of social media, using it galvanising his political base and often paying little heed to the facts. Twitter calling out one of his tweets recently which has brought an inevitable backlash from Trump but Peter Baker and Daisuke Wakabayashi speculate this could be counterproductive for the US president:

But the logic of Mr. Trump’s order is intriguing because it attacks the very legal provision that has allowed him such latitude to publish with impunity a whole host of inflammatory, harassing and factually distorted messages that a media provider might feel compelled to take down if it were forced into the role of a publisher that faced the risk of legal liability rather than a distributor that does not.

In a sign of changing times, China now exports more to South East Asia than it does to USA as trade tension rise according to reporting from Dan Kopf:

Ben Smith posits that new tools such as Cameo, Substack and Patreon are making it much easier for creators, celebrities and opinion makers to earn a comfortable living off a small but passionate audience:

In fact, in this new economy, some people may be able to make a living off just 100 true fans, as Li Jin, a former partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, argued recently. Ms. Jin calls this new landscape the “passion economy.” She argues that apps like Uber and DoorDash are built to erase the differences between individual drivers or food delivery people. But similar tools, she says, can be used to “monetize individuality.”

I moved to New Zealand when I was 7, living there for 17 years (1982-1999) but don’t think I ever felt the sense of national identity that many of my Kiwi friends did. That being said, I definitely think the country matured in the time I was there and think this process continues. This ode to New Zealand and Jacinda Ardern from Umair Haque had me feeling a tad ‘homesick’

When I say “new leader of the free world,” I don’t just mean Jacinda Ardern. I mean New Zealand. As a society. New Zealand is a textbook example of what it means to be a thriving, functioning, modern society in the 21st century. It is a leader in that sense. It ranks seventh in the Social Progress Index — and is going to rise far higher after Coronavirus, easily cracking the top five or three. America, meanwhile, ranks a dismal…26th. And it’s going to plummet. There’s something special about New Zealand, happening in it, right about now. The world should pay attention.

There was a lot of noise recently of Rutger Bregman’s story of 6 Tongan boys stranded on a deserted island, providing a counterpoint to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Meleika Gesa provides a more nuanced view of the story pointing to the importance of the boys upbringing and questions who owns the story:

The original article could’ve done more for the six men. The story should have been told by a Tongan. The story should have been told by the men themselves and their families. This is their story, will always be their story. The article doesn’t mention how the boys felt or why they made the choices they made. It lacked their perspective. It lacked the very Tongans the story was about, with the exception of Mano. But even then, Mano was sidelined. He deserves to share his story how he would want to.

Another story of resilience comes from Marga Griesbach’s life which saw her survive her survive the Holocaust in an account relayed by Rebecca Traister:

In late September, the SS told prisoners they were seeking volunteers to work on a job outside the camp. “I said to my mother, ‘Let’s try to be sent away to work.’ Because I can’t go on here.’ ” Therese worried that her daughter’s emaciated frame would keep her from being chosen for the job. “She put the lipstick on my cheeks,” Marga said, “and some on her cheeks, to make her look younger, and make me look older and healthier.”

If you are looking for some aural inspiration, Open Culture’s list of podcasts is well worth a trip with many that are already on my subscribe list.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for something for your reading list, you could do worse than reading John Lanchester’s The Wall (unless what you want is something more escapist).

Finally, if you’re looking for something more calming, O Street’s Roadliners video could be just the trick.

Header image: Concentric Eccentric Circles by Felice Varini at the fortress of Carcassonne in 2018. More photos of the installation here.

Thought Starters: digital landscape, journalism, virtual reality and globalisation in a changing world

Thought Starters provides me with a chance to review and highlight some of the more important or interesting research and opinions that I’ve read over the last week or so. This edition looks at views on the evolving digital landscape, journalism’s changing role, naysayers on virtual reality and the impact of globalisation among other things:

Mary Meeker has released her annual Internet Trends presentation providing a valuable look at the intersection of technology and commerce. You can catch videos of Mary Meeker’s presentation along with those from Jeff Bezos, Bill and Melinda Gates, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai among others from the recent Code conference:

Providing something of an antidote to Meeker and friends’ boosterism are Nitasha Tiku’s and Emily Bell’s analysis of the conference and the less desirable impacts of our move towards an increasingly technology mediated world:

A fascinating aspect of the Kleiner Perkins ritual is how the extremely detailed and comprehensive slide deck leaves unsaid the important extrapolations that can be made from it. There is no room here for a mention of Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor who secretly funded Hulk Hogan’s devastating lawsuit against gossip and news site Gawker, and the subsequent debate about the controls on and role of free speech in a powerful commercial sphere. Population and employment trends are nodded to without a discussion of how every job we currently hold is going to be done better by a robot. There is a celebration of listening devices, and “audio search”, and an unrelated chart about how people feel about privacy and data without an explicit link being made between the two.

LUMA’s State of Digital Media offers another tech positive look at the way the internet is evolving, although as the name suggests, the presentation narrows its view to the world of digital media:

Much has been made about the risks and opportunities presented by ad blocking services. Unfortunately despite all the talk, there’s far from a consensus on how widespread their use actually is as Jessica Davies shows:

Ben Matthews has pulled together a typology of the online video sector for those of you looking to get your head around the different players:

The Economist looks at how Europe’s tighter regulatory environment has stunted the growth of internet based platform companies but goes on to suggest China and USA are likely to follow a similar path in watching over their digital giants in future:

Facebook is one of the platform companies that appears pretty unassailable at present and it’s using its chokehold on consumers’ media consumption to dial back the content reaching consumers according to Hannah Kuchler’s report:

Media companies publishing to Facebook are reaching 42 per cent fewer people with each story since January, a new report claims, putting pressure on the social network to explain how it has changed its algorithm.

Stories posted to Facebook reached an average of 68,000 users in May, down from about 117,000 in January, according to SocialFlow, a platform used by publishers to post half a million stories to Facebook and other social media sites each month.

Twitter has become something of a whipping boy for tech journalists with Paul Smalera highlighting the platform’s abuse problem aided and abetted by the relative anonymity provided to Twitter users (vis-à-vis Facebook):

Today, Twitter is in desperate need of a similarly elegant solution to its abuse problem. Jack Dorsey may have to take a hit to the company’s growth and its stock price, to fix things. But our real world and online identities have merged. And people don’t like to feel unsafe or subject to anonymous attack. If Twitter keeps shedding users who refuse to tolerate hate speech, Dorsey won’t have to worry about Twitter’s viability and future for too much longer, anyway.

Speaking of journalists, Jessica Conditt’s profile of US Bureau of Labour statistics points to the massive decline in people working for America’s newspapers with some of the slack being picked up by internet publishing and broadcasting:

Whilst we’re on the subject of journalism, it’s been fascinating and concerning watching the debates around Peter Thiel’s support for legal action against Gawker. I’d support the view that Gawker regularly overstepped lines of decency. That being said, I’d hate to see publishers change their reporting practices based on the fear of legal action from a few wealthy individuals as reflected in Nicholas Lemann’s musings:

The Republican candidate for President, for whom Thiel plans to serve as a California delegate, has said, “I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money”—meaning, he’ll do what he can to overturn the Sullivan standard. The Gawker case may be only the first in a string of lawsuits that unleash a generation’s worth of resentment against the uniquely legally privileged position of the American press, at a moment when the press is far more vulnerable, economically and culturally, than it used to be. Journalists and their lawyers ought to be arming themselves for a protracted war.

Ericsson has updated its Mobility Report providing statistics on the growth of mobile telecommunications and use of mobile data including coverage of the Internet of Things:

Is virtual reality at the top of the hype cycle? There’s no doubt that there’s huge potential for immersive virtual experiences but questions remain as to whether current offerings have mass market potential. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has questioned whether there is much of a market for a $2000 system (although this will inevitably come down). Probably more concerning is Steve Baker’s critique of the technical limitations of the current platforms which are likely to limit longer periods of use:

I’ve been working with these displays – both the $80,000 kind and the $500 kind – for years. Almost everyone can tolerate wearing them for several minutes before getting sick. About half of people feel sick after a few minutes – and (maybe) half of them get so sick that they have to take off the goggles ASAP. Anecdotal evidence – sadly.

Most of the demo’s that are given at trade shows and other industry events are just a few minutes long. I don’t know whether that’ s intentional or not…but it explains why so many people THINK that they’re going to love VR – sadly, they won’t realize the problem until AFTER they’ve splurged $500 on one of these gizmos.

“It’s way too expensive right now,” Zelnick said at the Cowen and Company Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, “There is no market for a $2000 entertainment device that requires you to dedicate a room to the activity. I don’t know what people could be thinking. Maybe some of the people in this room have a room to dedicate to an entertainment activity, but back here in the real world? That’s not what we have in America.”

Labour productivity is an important indicator of the future health of countries’ economies and despite all the talk of automation and robot apocalypse, recent figures from Steven Rattner don’t look encouraging:

Vincent Bevins looks at the rise of presidential candidates taking a critical view on international trade at a time when the US is doing rather well out of the process of globalisation (although the benefits are often very unequally distributed):

Indeed, down here this seems like an especially odd moment for the United States to complain. China is again an exception, but in developing countries, globalization often meant giving up on financial controls and the long-held dream of producing anything more advanced than raw materials. The logic of comparative advantage dictated that from South America to South Africa, poorer countries would either rip stuff out of the Earth and sell it abroad, or allow their people to provide cheap labor.

For a brief, shining moment in the first decade of the century, it seemed like this was kind of working. We spent time lamenting the environmental and human impact, but we also celebrated that there were at least revenues. The BRICS acronym came to symbolize the power these countries might (again) have a chance to attain. The 2008 implosion of the world economy—caused by the United States—offered a space for them to occupy, or so it seemed. But the last four years have brought a brutal reversal. Commodities prices were dependent on Chinese growth, and when they dropped, along with the price of oil, countries relying on this model saw their entire economic and political systems disrupted. Meanwhile, the United States is again ascendant, having once more proved its ability to reinvent itself as the dominant global power.

The United States is still by far the richest large country on the globe. So why is the boss of the world whining about globalization?

The RSA hosts some great talks providing windows into our current society and where it’s heading. A recent highlight was Parag Khanna’s recent talk examining the world’s evolving geographical landscape in a digital age where connectivity increasingly transcends sovereignty:

Yale’s Environmental Policy Index provides a valuable measure of which countries are doing well in addressing the world’s many environmental problems. Not too many surprises but it’s worth reading the full report for a more detailed analysis across nine different categories:

Cigarette smoking is declining as a health issue across much of the developed world as it gets sidelined by regulations and controls. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for many developing countries where the tobacco industry is making inroads according to WHO figures:

Social media and cultural tribes can sometimes make interesting bedfellows. Tasbeeh Herwees provides a colourful look at the growth of shoplifting communities on Tumblr as American teenagers look for new outlets for their rebellion:

Barbie and Unicorn-Lift abide by a prevailing rule in the lifting community, one of many informal commandments shared among the bloggers: Thou shalt not rip off mom-and-pop shops.

The impact statement from Brock Allen Turner’s rape victim provides a first hand account of why intoxication doesn’t provide any justification for non consensual sexual intercourse. Difficult but important reading:

I was pummeled with narrowed, pointed questions that dissected my personal life, love life, past life, family life, inane questions, accumulating trivial details to try and find an excuse for this guy who had me half naked before even bothering to ask for my name.

The featured image is Gaze, an installation by STFNV in Tbilisi, Georgia for the 4GB music festival and published in StreetArtNews.

Thought Starters: social media, Apple, banking and changes to employment and income

Thought Starters provides me with a chance to review and highlight some of the more important or interesting research and opinions that I’ve read over the last week or so. This edition looks at the competing social media platforms and their roles, whether Apple can innovate, banking and its relationship with fintech and changes in employment and income among other things.

Robinson Meyer revisits Reid Hoffman’s look at social networks and the parallels he draws between them and the seven deadly sins:

“Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins,” the LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist said. “Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed. With Facebook, it’s vanity, and how people choose to present themselves to their friends.”

Research from Social Fresh, Firebrand Group and Simply Measured points to Facebook being comfortably ahead of other social media platforms in terms of ROI:

Whilst Snapchat is making growing inroads among younger audiences in the US, Instagram for the moment is proving a more popular medium for advertisers according to L2 Think Tank’s research:

Twitter recently reclassified its mobile app as a news service rather than social media in Apple’s App Store. Pew Research’s recent findings point to how the services have a different relationship with news content with Facebook driving more traffic whilst users referred by Twitter typically spending more time with the visited content:

Given the increasingly important role that Facebook plays in distributing content, it’s no surprise that commentators cried foul when Gizmodo reported that Facebook was suppressing conservative news. A more careful reading of the news by Tyler Cowen and Ben Thompson suggests this isn’t quite as significant as the headlines suggest:

This, then, is the deep irony of this controversy: Facebook is receiving a huge amount of criticism for allegedly biasing the news via the empowerment of a team of human curators to make editorial decisions, as opposed to relying on what was previously thought to be an algorithm; it is an algorithm, though — the algorithm that powers the News Feed, with the goal of driving engagement — that is arguably doing more damage to our politics than the most biased human editor ever could. The fact of the matter is that, on the part of Facebook people actually see — the News Feed, not Trending News — conservatives see conservative stories, and liberals see liberal ones; the middle of the road is as hard to find as a viable business model for journalism (these things are not disconnected).

James Allworth profiles Apple’s business strategy and suggests that the company’s success is one of the key things holding the company back:

And it appears that Apple has fallen into exactly the same trap. Rather than start anew — with a beginner’s mind—what the above reveals to me is that they’ve tried to take the last paradigm and just jam it into the new one. The old has bled into the new. The result, at least as it stands now: just like Microsoft did, Apple knows what needs to be built — a phone-disrupting device. It’s just that they can’t bring themselves to let go of the past in order to do the job properly.

Whilst the Apple Watch hasn’t proved the breakthrough success for Apple that the iPhone provided, Neil Cybart’s analysis of Apple’s R&D expenditure points to something big coming soon:

At the more nascent end of the technology ecosystem, Jared Friedman’s analysis of applicants to the Y Combinator programme provides a valuable window into the type of startups we’re likely to see more of in the very near future. Think more apps, SAAS businesses and platforms based on messaging, Slack and virtual reality among other things:

For those of you working in startups looking to improve your product and people management, you’d be well advised to read Mike Davidson’s account of life as Vice President of Design at Twitter. He covers a lot of ground so I’m not going to try and summarise it, but it’s well worth checking out.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a more nuts and bolts approach to improving your digital presence, Nick Kolenda’s 125 easy tweaks provides a good starting point, even if you don’t agree with everything he has to say.

The banking sector won no popularity contests over the last 9 years with its practices fueling the global financial crisis. James Surowiecki reviews moves to reform the sector suggesting improvements have been made but there’s still some way to go:

Of course, there’s much about Wall Street that Dodd-Frank has not changed. Bankers still make absurd amounts of money. Hedge-fund and private-equity managers still benefit from the carried-interest tax loophole. The big banks, though smaller, are still too big. “If you wanted financial reform to radically downsize the financial sector, or thought it was going to make a major dent in income inequality, you’re bound to be disappointed,” Konczal says. And Dodd-Frank’s work is still unfinished: many of the rules it authorized have yet to be written, and the banks are lobbying to have them written in their favor. As Ziegler told me, “The progress that’s been made is precarious. It can be unravelled.” But precarious progress is progress. Regulation involves a constant struggle to keep rules in place and to enforce the ones that are there. Dodd-Frank shows that that struggle is not necessarily a futile one: sometimes government really does regulate business, and not the other way around.

In Fintech circles there’s a lot of talk about the power of startups to disrupt the banking sector but Josh Constine suggests that these startups may actually strengthen rather than undermine your relationship with your bank:

But what many of these startups have in common is that they all rely on connecting to your existing bank to fund your accounts with them or receive money. Rather than shun the startups, the incumbents have built bridges to let you hook fintech products into your bank accounts.

The result is that while banking is changing rapidly, you might be more reluctant to change which bank you use, according to several fintech founders and VCs I spoke to.

There’s been increasingly vociferous discussions about the impact that automation will have on employment over the long term. Josh Zumbrun’s analysis of US figures provides an indication of where things are heading. Employment among knowledge workers and non-routine manual workers is proving much less susceptible to automation and is showing much stronger rates of growth compared to employment with routinised workflows:

Pew Research figures point to the polarisation of wealth in American society as not simply coming from growing income and assets among the wealthiest but also due to the relative decline of the country’s middle-income households:

Ed Hawkins’ data visualisation of climate over the last 150 years provides a valuable reminder that now is not the time for us all to put our heads in the sand:

Elisabeth Zerofsky’s profile of Marine Le Pen provides a reminder of the growing tide of nationalism in European politics and attempts to try provide a more “palatable” face on a movement that was previously at the fringe of European politics.

I am keen to hear your thoughts any of the above, whether you vehemently agree or disagree, so please don’t hesitate to use the comments field.

The featured image is a MOMO piece commissioned by the City of Sydney.

Thought Starters: Moore’s Law, Snapchat, questions about online advertising and the perils of Donald Trump

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 Moore’s Law, the ins and outs of Snapchat, some of the questions being raised out online advertising and the threat Donald Trump poses to politics among other things.

Nature recently published an article profiling Moore’s Law and how semiconductor manufacturers are looking at avenues beyond simply adding more transistors to chips. It’ll be interesting to see how the technology industry adapts given the cornerstone that Moore’s Law and the associated industry roadmap of innovation has provided in enabling the computing infused world we live in today.

One of the challenges the semiconductor industry has had to face is the transition from PC to mobile which can be clearly seen in the following graph from Creative Strategies’ Ben Bajarin with the rapid growth of Android, iOS and AOSP:

Quartz’s recent release of a mobile app provides an interesting example of publishers adapting to mobile, offering a stripped back feed of notifications and advertising, familiar to anyone using mobile messaging services:

Snapchat can prove baffling for the uninitiated, with a user interface and visual language that sets it apart from the more traditional social networks (I’m looking at you Facebook and Twitter). Ben Rosen provides a handy guide, drawing on sage advice from his 13 year old sister:

Whilst mobile, PCs and tablets are the dominant paradigms, we’re also beginning to see the emergence of a growing array of new devices blurring the boundaries of what a computing device is. The Amazon Echo is one of the more interesting devices to hit the market recently with the Uber integration providing an indication that the world envisioned in Her isn’t as far off as some people would have you believe:

The online advertising industry has been one of the clear winners over the last ten years with Google and Facebook in particular coming out ahead according to analysis from the Be Heard Group:

That’s not to say the online advertising industry is away laughing. The sector has come under growing scrutiny for failing to deliver for advertisers with Bloomberg last year pointing to growing click fraud with some advertising networks clearly dominated by bot rather than human traffic.

Another key metric is advertising viewability – there’s no point serving an advert to a human if the creative can’t be seen. Research from Meetrics points to a large proportion of European advertising not meeting IAB and the Media Rating Council (MRC) viewability, food for thought for media buyers:

Ben Thompson in a recent posting points to the stranglehold that Facebook and Google have on the online advertising market, offering greater effectiveness, reach, and ROI than their smaller competitors:

Here’s the kicker, though, and the big difference from the era of analog advertising: the Facebook and Google platforms turn TV and radio’s disadvantages on their head:

Facebook and Google have the most inventory and are still growing in terms of both users and ad-load; there is no temporal limitation that works to the benefit of other properties (and Facebook in particular is ramping up efforts to advertise using Facebook data on non-Facebook properties)

It is cheaper to produce ads for only Facebook and Google instead of making something custom for every potential advertising platform

Facebook and Google have the best tracking, extending not only to digital purchases but increasingly to off-line purchases as well

Facebook doesn’t always get its way with the recent judgement by the Indian Government’s blocking the social network’s Free Basics service. A case of neocolonialism by a hungry multinational or an honest attempt to widen internet access to the digitally excluded? I’ll let you be the judge.

Another social network that’s taken a hit recently is Twitter. Whilst the company has been improving its monetisation of traffic, latest figures point to negative user growth which definitely takes some of the shine off things for investors:

Twitter isn’t the only tech company that’s taken a battering of late with talk of a popping of the tech bubble. A more careful examination of stock performances suggest that investors’ FoMO (Fear of Missing Out) has fueled the valuation of some companies well above what they were worth, whilst the fundamentals of others hold up to closer scrutiny:

Donald Trump’s run for president has kept many of us well entertained over the last few months but Ezra Klein gives a pointed reminder of why we shouldn’t be taking his candidacy lightly:

Trump answers America’s rage with more rage. As the journalist Molly Ball observed, “All the other candidates say ‘Americans are angry, and I understand.’ Trump says, ‘I’M angry.'” Trump doesn’t offer solutions so much as he offers villains. His message isn’t so much that he’ll help you as he’ll hurt them.

As Britain’s decision on Brexit looms, President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz provides an impassioned defence of British membership of the European Union:

Dan Fox provides a valuable defence of pretentiousness in The Guardian, suggesting that it typically says more about the accuser than the accused:

Being pretentious is rarely harmful to anyone. Accusing others of it is. You can use the word “pretentious” as a weapon with which to bludgeon other people’s creative efforts, but in shutting them down the accusation will shatter in your hand and out will bleed your own insecurities, prejudices and unquestioned assumptions. And that is why pretentiousness matters. It is a false note of objective judgment, and when it rings we can hear what society values in culture, hear how we perceive our individual selves.

The featured image is a GoddoG mural from LED Thionville in France.

Who to follow on Twitter

There’s been a lot of talk in the press recently about Twitter’s move to an algorithmic feed. There’s definite potential if it eases the burden of sifting through our current feed but there’s a real risk that in doing so, Twitter might loose the ‘special sauce’ that makes it so attractive to its current users (it’s worth reading Adam D’Angelo on this).

I figured now might be a good time to give a plug for the Twitter accounts that provide me with a healthy signal to noise ratio and generally avoid double posting (my current pet hate).

Tech, Startups, Media and Marketing

Balaji S. Srinivasan tech analyst, CEO of 21 inc of, board partner of Andreessen Horowitz and blockchain fan.

Ben Thompson technology analyst behind the Stratechery blog and host of the Exponent podcast.

Benedict Evans technology analyst with a focus on mobile who is now working as partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Apparently not a great fan of cultural world of San Francisco despite living there.

Chris Dixon Hunch founder and another Andreessen Horowitz with pointers on the world of technology and startups.

Ian Maude UK based technology, media and internet analyst working for the Be Heard Group.

Marc Andreessen cofounder of Netscape, Loudcloud and now Andreessen Horowitz with strong opinions on technology, economics, the world of startups and politics (libertarian). Bit more noise to signal than the other recommendations.

Om Malik technology analyst, founder of GigaOm and now partner at True Ventures

News and Analysis

If You Only… Matter cofounder Bobbie Johnson provides a recommended long form journalism read each day.

Max Roser: typically provides an antidote to the naysayers of the world with data that point to human development around the world.

The Economist Daily Charts: provides a regular feed of charts, maps and infographics shedding light on issues in the news.

Tim Harford, journalist who writes as the Undercover Economist at the Financial Times and presenter of More or Less on Radio 4. Great for shining light on some of the issues that matter.

Cycling

Inner Ring: providing updates on the Inner Ring website and announcements from the world of professional cycling

And Me…

Finally, if you’re interested in following me on Twitter, more digital content can be found here and if you like riding bikes there’s here as well.

The featured image is No Amnesia by Pastel in West Palm Beach, Florida, USA

Thought Starters: young people’s media and device use, Facebook Messenger’s evolution, grey zone conflicts and the gender pay gap

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. Among the stories and research we look at in this edition are the habits of children and young adults, the growth of Facebook Messenger, grey zone conflicts, the gender pay gap and lots more.

There’s been growing speculation that Twitter may increase the character length of its posting as it looks to get ahead of Facebook in its user growth stakes (see below). Shira Ovide gives a strong argument for retaining it as it is, although I would argue there’s definitely scope for excluding links, images and video URLs from tweets’ character limit:

Younger audiences given an indication of future habits of the general population. Dan Kopf analysis young adults habits in the American Time Use Survey which unsurprisingly points to growing gaming, computer use and reading and decline in time spent watching television:

Benedict Evans on the other hand has used Ofcom’s Children and parents: Media use and attitudes report to look at the habits of British children which points to the substantial transition to mobile phones and tablets:

Flurry has released their analysis of Europeans’ use of smartphones and tablets based on their app data which shows wide variations in device penetration as well as giving clues on how mobile devices are being used:

Facebook has done a great job of transitioning to a mobile world with 78% of its ad revenues now coming from mobile. Facebook though is not one to rest on its laurels, with Facebook Messenger seen as a key component in strengthening its hold on mobile consumers. Facebook has just published a review of highlights for Messenger from 2015 which gives an indication of the social network’s ambitions for the mobile messaging service:

As mobile phones approach market saturation in developed markets, consumer electronics brands are looking to new categories for a boost in their revenues. Unfortunately for the brands, Accenture‘s global research profiled by Matt Rosoff suggests that consumers aren’t getting caught up in the hype for new products despite a growing array of offerings:

Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey points to growing marketing budgets and an emphasis on digital commerce, innovation, sales conversion and customer retention. You can find further analysis of the survey results from Simon Yates who points among things to the blurring distinction between offline and online marketing:

Interested in knowing what jobs are likely to keep you employed into the future? The Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis has analysed employment and unemployment rates for jobs on the basis of how routinised and levels of cognition which might give you some pointers whether you need to be retraining:

Figures from Bloomberg point to the substantial cuts in employment some banks have taken post financial crisis. It might be rather too optimistic to hope that those people whose actions fueled the crisis might have been among the first to leave:

Cass R. Sunstein profiles Gabriel Zucman’s The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens, examining the growing role that tax havens play in enabling corporations and the wealthy to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Zucman’s analysis provides a guide to the scale of the problem and also points to the successes and failures different institutions have had in addressing the problem of tax evasion:

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, you might expect that there would be an international crackdown on the use of tax havens, and as we shall see, international attention is indeed growing. But the numbers demonstrate that no crackdown has occurred. In Luxembourg, offshore wealth actually increased from 2008 to 2012 (by 20 percent). In Switzerland, the increase has been comparable; foreign holdings are now close to an all-time high. Disturbingly, the new wealth is coming mostly from developing countries, which poses a serious problem in light of the severe strains on their limited budgets.

China’s economy is going through a rough patch, with the share market in a nose dive. Given the over inflated valuation of many of the assets. Given the overinflated value of many of the assets in the country’s equity markets, this trend is unlikely to change (unless the government chooses to prop it up):

High profile Silicon Valley venture capitalist Paul Graham’s recent blog posting in which he argues that income inequality per se is not a bad has inevitably kicked up a storm of reactions. Among the more nuanced responses is Ben Thompson’s analysis who points to the risks and benefits associated with a more deregulated economy and calls out for the need for a strong social safety net that is independent of our employers:

Technology is changing the world, and it is naive to not expect the world to begin to push back. Rather than always be reactionary, it is past time for the technology industry broadly and Silicon Valley in particular to get serious about what that world will look like in the future, especially given the fact there is actually a way forward that is a win for not just technology companies and their investors, but for those who are impacted — i.e. everyone. Just as we should separate the means by which Uber allocates drivers from the ability to pay for a ride, it makes sense to separate work from the provision of a social safety net, and those most able to capitalize on this new world order should be the most willing to pay.

The conflict in Syria and the resulting flood of refugees fleeing to Europe is unfortunately leading to an anti immigration backlash in many European countries. Victims aside from the refugees fleeing harm in the middle of a European winter include the Schengen Agreement which previously allowed the free flow of people across much of mainland Europe:

Peter Pomerantsev uses the examples of China in the South China Sea, Russia in Crimea and Syria and ISIS with its terrorist attacks to highlight the growing importance of messy grey zone conflicts around the world:

It’s a brave new war without beginning or end, where the borders of peace and war, serviceman and civilian have become utterly blurred—and where you and I are both a target and a weapon.

Whilst we’re on the subject of globalisation and its impacts, The Economist has updated its Big Mac Index, pointing to who is paying over the odds for their guilty pleasure:

The Freakonomics podcast is one of my regular listening appointments and this week’s edition looking at the causes and effects of the gender pay gap is well worth downloading.

The featured mural is by eko from his Flickr page.

Thought Starters: China, Twitter, startups and the role of food

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

China’s digital media sector has developed its own distinct characteristics with unique properties and innovations that set it apart from many markets in the West. WeAreSocial profile key digital, social and mobile benchmark statistics for the Chinese that give a taste for the key players:

The markets have not responded kindly to Twitter’s performance with one of the company’s largest investors Chris Sacca pitching in with what he feels Twitter should be doing. James Gleich provides a contrasting opinion, suggesting that it’s doing a great job as it is and leadership should be wary of turning the service on its head (even if the returns don’t satisfy investors):

“Twitter doesn’t just want to make it easy for users to find tweets. They want to make it easier for marketers to find users. Everyone wants to know the secret of how to use Twitter to reach their million potential customers. I will tell you the secret. You can’t do it. Twitter is not a giant megaphone. There is no mouthpiece. Those 300 million people, that glistening prize, are not waiting for your message. They’re not tuning to your channels. They’re choosing their own.”

Research from Branch Metrics points to the benefits of contextual deep linking, something that will become increasingly important as we move more toward an app based world:

There’s been growing speculation about Apple’s development of their own car as the company looks to expand its footprint outside its heartland of computers and portable devices. Benedict Evans takes an insightful look at the market opportunity for the likes of Apple and also how new technologies and business models are likely to see the market evolve.

Mark Suster looks at the dangers of pouring investment into early stage startups where capital inflows can undo the hunger that makes startups so dangerous to the status quo. An interesting complement to this is Andreessen Horowitz’s compilation of startup metrics which provide a guide for those of you looking to assess which opportunities are really in a healthy financial position.

There’s been a lot of talk about unbundling in the cable television industry, particularly in the US which will impact what shows are produced and how they’re distributed in the future. Jan Dawson looks at the factors which will impact on whether consumers will stay with the incumbents or move to the new players such as Netflix and HBO Now.

There’s no denying there’s been a real change in what media consumers are interacting with, particularly among the younger generations. David Pakman takes a closer look, pointing to the growth in media forms which enable self expression and communication:

Tim Wu writing for the New Yorker takes a closer look at the growing hours faced by America’s more educated, as the age of leisure moves further off into the distance:

“What counts as work, in the skilled trades, has some intrinsic limits; once a house or bridge is built, that’s the end of it. But in white-collar jobs, the amount of work can expand infinitely through the generation of false necessities—that is, reasons for driving people as hard as possible that have nothing to do with real social or economic needs.”

The jury is still out on the ultimate effect that the digitisation of culture is having on the careers of artists and other cultural makers. Steven Johnson provides a convincing case of the benefits for musicians, filmmakers and authors with a blurring of the boundaries between professionals and interested amateurs.

We’ve seen food’s profile grow in terms of contemporary culture providing an intersection of material and experiential culture. Eugene Wei profiles this move, drawing on a recent Econtalk podcast feature Rachel Laudan:

“Food has replaced music at the heart of the cultural conversation for so many, and I wonder if it’s because food and dining still offer true scarcity whereas music is so freely available everywhere that it’s become a poor signaling mechanism for status and taste.”

You can see this issue explored further with Joe Pinsker’s interview of Eve Turow focusing on the Millennials’ obsession with food in The Atlantic.

The featured image is Rage & Fury by Nootk! in Moscow, Russia.

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

A mixed collection of materials looking at societal trends and the impact of technology on the way we live.

The European Commission has released the Sixth Report on Economic, Social and Territorial Cohesion. The title might not roll off the tongue but it provides a broad range of European statistics including health outcomes, the environment, human development, demographics, crime, the economy and education among other things:

The Economist has created an index of where the best country to be born is by looking at a range of quality of life indicators. Care to move to Switzerland?

Retale have pulled together an interactive infographic using U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data to providers users with the opportunity to see how the activities of different audiences vary by demographic in the US:

JWTIntelligence has pulled together a report looking at changing family structures in the US. Among the trends highlighted is the evolving nature of the nuclear family, growth in solo living, multigenerational and silver families and the rise of friends as part of family type networks:

The Internet of Things has been getting a lot of attention from the technology sector. The Wall Street Journal looks to pour some cold water on things by pointing out the failure to institute common standards as providing devices interacting that aren’t from the same brand:

Without a common software standard, devices will remain locked into what the German industry experts calls “island solutions”– brands that have a portfolio of products that can talk with each other but won’t be compatible with other brands.

The number of apps available to smartphone and tablet consumers keeps on expanding, but the average consumer only users four according to research from Nielsen:

The GlobalWebIndex continues to infographics providing a window into global consumers use of digital. Recent releases have looked at where WhatsApp, Vine and Pinterest are making an impact:

Zeynep Tufekci gives an impassioned defence of Twitter in its current form, pointing to the advantages of surfacing content by the human flock rather than an algorithm:

I honestly doubt that there is an algorithm in the world that can reliably surface such unexpected content, so well. An algorithm can perhaps surface guaranteed content, but it cannot surface unexpected, diverse and sometimes weird content exactly because of how algorithms work: they know what they already know. Yet, there is a vast amount of judgement and knowledge that is in the heads of Twitter users that the algorithm will inevitably flatten as it works from the data it has: past user behavior and metrics.

As Twitter broadens its offering to partners by integrating ecommerce functionality with consumers’ Twitter stream with the trialling of a Buy now button. Whilst the trial is relatively limited in scope at this stage, we can presumably expect to see it rolling out more widely soon:

Research from AOL Platforms points to Youtube as having an important role in introducing products and closing the sale when compared to other social media:

Facebook’s quarterly earning figures released in July pointed to the company as doing a good job of growing its revenues. Analysis from Neustar suggests this position may well continue given that Facebook’s network offering is proving a leader in terms of reach efficiency and average cost although its position is trumped by ad exchanges in the quality of its audience:

Facebook is looking to be more sensitive to consumers’ privacy concerns with the launch of its Privacy Checkup to help users better manage their privacy settings:

A report from PageFair points to a 69% increase in the number of consumers using adblock software in the US, raising concerns that online media may be increasingly threatened by declining ad revenues.

Adobe recently released its U.S. Mobile Benchmark Report providing a range of charts shedding light on how users and marketers are taking advantage of mobile. Among the interesting statistics is the use of GPS location data and use of beacon technology:

Another interesting data point to emerge from the Adobe presentation is the flatlining of tablet’s share of page views. This provides further ammunition to some commentators’ arguments that tablets are getting squeezed between phablets (smartphones with screen size between 5.01 to 6.9 inches diagonally) and PCs:

The growing importance of phablets is given further credence by Flurry’s recently released figures which point to growing market share and TECHnalysis Research’s forecast for forecasted sales in the coming years:

Unit Forecast by Sales notebooks desktops tablets smartphones phablets

Apple’s launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus is likely to provide a boost to its smartphone marketshare. Samsung on the other hand is likely to find itself increasingly squeezed between Apple above and a growing array of Chinese based manufacturers (Xiaomi, Lenovo, Huawei, Coolpad etc) at the mid to lower end:

Amazon’s Fire Phone was released with much fanfare in late July but the fact that it’s now dropped the price by $200 suggests it hasn’t been a winner among consumers.

Putting this all in perspective is Benedict Evans’ valuable blog post looking at Amazon’s failure to post a substantial profit despite its large revenues:

Evans points to Amazon’s willingness to reinvest any potential profits back into the business. Some of these investments aren’t going to be an immediate success, but others such as the Kindle have enabled Amazon to gain a market leading position:

Reddit gets strongly criticised by T.C. Sottek following its failure to take action on the release of nude celebrity photos:

Reddit, he wrote, is “not just a company running a website where one can post links and discuss them, but the government of a new type of community.” So, then, what type of government is Reddit? It’s the kind any reasonable person would want to overthrow.

Tim Harford looks at how we can improve our forecasting, pointing to better understanding probabilistic reasoning, working collaboratively and being open minded as key contributors:

Masha Gessen looks at how the Russian population is being squeezed between declining birth rates and falling mortality rates, pointing towards a loss of hope as a key contributor:

If this is true—if Russians are dying for lack of hope, as they seem to be—then the question that is still looking for its researcher is, Why haven’t Russians experienced hope in the last quarter century? Or, more precisely in light of the grim continuity of Russian death, What happened to Russians over the course of the Soviet century that has rendered them incapable of hope?

The featured image at the top of the page is a PARKER by GoddoG and DelwooD in Biarritz and found on GoddoG’s Flickr stream.

Messages That Resonate

This is part of an irregular series of blog posts looking at marketing and digital communications which have caught my attention. This will complement Thought Starters which will look more at trends, strategies and ideas.

Guinness has launched a new brand campaign using Kanye West’s Black Skinhead, looking to cement the brand’s strong presence in Africa. It’s an interesting celebration of black culture for a brand that is closely associated with Ireland in the rest of the world.

Gap’s latest campaign is imploring consumers to ‘Dress Normal’ as the brand looks to align itself with normcore whereby people look to blend in rather than stand out.

Newcastle Brown Ale is asking consumers to send in their ‘mediocre’ photos in an interesting spin on user generated content that continues with the brand’s cheeky tone of voice.

A mixture of strong gameplay and fond childhood memories of petanque has made Swag 2014 curiously addictive. You don’t need an elaborate virtual environments to create compelling gaming experiences.

Greggs faced a public relations crisis when a derogatory image turned up on Google’s search results for the brand. Digiday profiles how some nimble footwork from the brand turned around a negative situation and ultimately shone the brand in a positive light.

Instagram launched Hyperlapse over the course of the last week providing consumers with the opportunity to create tracking shots and fast time lapse videos for iPhone . Adweek profiles how brands including Bud Light, Burton, Mercedes-Benz and Mountain Dew have responded quickly to this new opportunity.

Twitter is enabling increasingly rich interactions for consumers and brands via the social media platform with Acura’s car configurator probably the most advanced yet. An interesting case of a brand transporting itself to where consumers although would love to see what the engagement levels are for the campaign.

The eyes dominate how consumers experience digital environments, so it’s interesting to see brands using other senses to engage with consumers.

GE has commissioned electronic musician Matthew Dear to create music using sounds from GE’s research centres from around the world which is downloadable from Soundcloud.

IBM on the other hand has commissioned musician James Murphy to convert data from tennis matches at the US Open into ‘music’, creating somewhat more random output.

Muji is looking to help consumers relax in a seemingly ever accelerating world with a mobile app (Android and iOS) incorporating audio recordings of nature. A simple idea that ties in nicely with Muji’s uncluttered brand aesthetic.

Amplifon is looking to enrich Google’s Street View offering with a sound framework to enable sounds in 3D to be embedded into Google’s mapping offering.

Zach Hamed provides a valuable comparison between Citymapper and Google Maps, pointing out how the former provides a better experience in many use cases with a series of short videos and animated GIFs. Another valuable lesson in the importance of understanding the consumer and aligning your user experience around the relevant insights.

The Cronulla Riots in Sydney marked a sad day for Australia with racially motivated riots over a series of nights. Almost 10 years later Australian television channel SBS reflects back on the events with an interactive documentary. Powerful and rather disheartening viewing.

There has been a lot of talk about how digital tools are enabling the sharing economy but Pumpipumpe has taken a distinctly analog approach. People are encouraged to put stickers on their mailbox letting neighbours know what household goods they’re willing to lend their neighbours. A simple solution to a simple problem.

The featured image at the top of the page is a piece by Pejac in Paris and found on StreetArtNews.

Tag: Twitter

Thought starters: coronavirus, intergenerational equity and the real Lord of the Flies

Thought Starters: digital landscape, journalism, virtual reality and globalisation in a changing world

Thought Starters: Moore’s Law, Snapchat, questions about online advertising and the perils of Donald Trump

Who to follow on Twitter

Thought Starters: young people’s media and device use, Facebook Messenger’s evolution, grey zone conflicts and the gender pay gap

Thought Starters: China, Twitter, startups and the role of food

Thought Starters

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word