My week was dominated by Social Media Week. I got to see Battenhall’s opening presentation and catch up former colleagues from past agency and in-house lives. A lot of Social Media Week is useless, its like as if the industry doesn’t move on from the late 2000s. I was very disappointed that I didn’t get to see Ogilvy’s presentation on Twitter cards, which look extremely useful. So will have to make do with Slideshare:
Category: online | 線上 | 온라인으로 | オンライン
The online field has been one of the mainstays since I started writing online in 2003. My act of writing online was partly to understand online as a medium.
Online has changed in nature. It was first a destination and plane of travel. Early netizens saw it as virgin frontier territory, rather like the early American pioneers viewed the open vistas of the western United States. Or later travellers moving west into the newly developing cities and towns from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
America might now be fenced in and the land claimed, but there was a new boundless electronic frontier out there. As the frontier grew more people dialled up to log into it. Then there was the metaphor of web surfing. Surfing the internet as a phrase was popularised by computer programmer Mark McCahill. He saw it as a clear analogue to ‘channel surfing’ changing from station to station on a television set because nothing grabs your attention.
Web surfing tapped into the line of travel and 1990s cool. Surfing like all extreme sport at the time was cool. And the internet grabbed your attention.
Broadband access, wi-fi and mobile data changed the nature of things. It altered what was consumed and where it was consumed. The sitting room TV was connected to the internet to receive content from download and streaming services. Online radio, podcasts and playlists supplanted the transistor radio in the kitchen.
Multi-screening became a thing, tweeting along real time opinions to reality TV and live current affairs programmes. Online became a wrapper that at its worst envelopes us in a media miasma of shrill voices, vacuous content and disinformation.
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Keybase + more news
Keybase – ‘Keybase is a website, but it’s also an open source command line program’ – outlines one of the key problems with encryption right there for widespread consumer adoption. (Note: Keybase ended up being acquired by Zoom in 2020). More security related content here.
FMCG
What Chinese brands know that MNCs don’t – Campaign Asia – marketers targeting too small a segment of Chinese middle class. Don’t really get Chinese middle class dynamics (paywall)
Hong Kong
One in five Hongkongers may emigrate over political reform ruling | SCMP – no they won’t and the people who feel the most strongly about this are in the least good position to leave
Ideas
LOOK Google gamifies search with Google Mo Lang | Marketing Interactive – interesting Google tactic to increase usage
Luxury
Luxury brands in a quandary as China’s wealthy young develop resistance to bling | The Observer – picking Wendi Deng as an ambassador won’t do anything for their appeal to a Chinese market and they could have got more contemporary than Gong Li (gorgeous as she is)
Media
Facebook Earns 10% of Digital Ad Dollars, More Than Any Other Online Platform | Adweek – a third of global social spend is in APAC
VML China acquires Teein, fills hole in social media capability – Campaign Asia – really interesting that IM2.0 didn’t already have social and used to outsource it. VML in China is formidable
Online
Line temporarily cancels its IPO | Techinasia – avoiding the kerfuffle around Alibaba
Quality
iPhone 6 Is the Most Durable iPhone Yet, Says Insurer – WSJ – you would need to do a larger sample of phones for statistically significant sampling
Security
MIT Students Battle State’s Demand for Their Bitcoin Miner’s Source Code | WIRED – it’s all a bit weird
The free wifi war’s security edge in China | WantChinaTimes – interesting that Chinese internet companies are rolling out free wi-fi. Where does this leave the likes of China Mobile?
The Athens Affair – IEEE Spectrum – anatomy of the Vodafone Greece hack. Very Snowden-esque
Microsoft no longer Trustworthy | The Register – interesting that it is getting shut down, I suspect integrated is a better way of looking at it
Wireless
Apple – Press Info – First Weekend iPhone Sales Top 10 Million, Set New Record – take this with a pinch of salt may have something to do with not all markets being address which has driven demand and scarcity
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Yahoo stock + more things
Yahoo Stock Crashes As Alibaba IPOs – Business Insider – Yahoo stock represents an ideal target to do an LBO and asset strip to pay down the debt. The challenge for shareholders of Yahoo stock is how to minimise
Ashley Madison Steps Up Search For Asian PR Support | Holmes Report – they are banned in South Korea and Singapore. Thailand would likely be added to the list if Ashley Madison launched there
Logistics: The flow of things | The Economist – explains why e-railers are building their own logistics networks (paywall)
Dude, where are my socks? | the Anthill – great story about a small TaoBao reseller
Bits Blog: Net Neutrality Comments to F.C.C. Overwhelmingly One-Sided, Study Says | New York Times – paywall
Apple – Privacy – interesting that Apple didn’t do this sooner
Peter Thiel Says Computers Haven’t Made Our Lives Significantly Better | MIT Technology Review – Peter Thiel often comes across as a bit of a dick but is right on the money with regards the lack of hard innovation and excess of soft innovation
Single Chinese company owns 60% of world market for tantalum | WantChinaTimes – which is really important for electronics manufacture
Move over Hong Kong, here comes…Chengdu? | SCMP – huge economic growth in Chengdu which is viewed as an important city due to its proximity to the western edges of China which are the current high growth areas
Smartphone stress in Coolpad cuts, China Mobile ‘naked’ strategy | SCMP – bottom end of market suffering with Coolpad laying off 1,000 employees
Why news extortion is so hard to uncover | China Media Project – not just a Chinese problem, look at the uncomfortable aspects of media power with NewsCorp / News Int’l
Clamshells Gets Smart | CSS Insight – could we see a return of clamshell devices?
Facebook Is Hiding Important Information – Business Insider – nothing new pointing out yet again that mobile app adverts count for a significant amount of their revenue sales
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DJ equipment + more stuff
Pioneer To Sell DJ Equipment Business For More Than Half A Billion Dollars » Synthtopia – interesting move, particularly with the launch of the new turntable. Pioneer’s DJ equipment business gave them a fill up as hi-fi revenue dropped. Pioneer CDJs managed to replace Technics as the industry standard in DJ equipment for many clubs. What will happen with things like IP?
Fareed Zakaria Never Stopped Plagiarizing: How Dozens Of Episodes Of His CNN Show Ripped Others Off | Our Bad Media – looks like a potential new media storm-in-a-teacup. If he plagiarises, he has good taste with the material he takes
Daring Fireball: Apple Watch: Initial Thoughts and Observations – a key point missing here is that you don’t buy a watch when you pay for a luxury watch; you buy into the support network behind it which will keep it running at a price decades from now.
Foreign firms should not control so much of the Chinese economy | WantChinaTimes – explains antitrust crackdowns
This Chennai startup thinks the first click for an e-commerce purchase will soon be on a camera – reminds me of the virtual Homeplus (Tesco) stores in Korea
Daring Fireball: Promotional Images That Hide the iPhone 6 Camera Bulge – interesting that John Gruber has called it a mistake
Using app-specific passwords | Apple – Apple’s way around dealing with recent hacking scandals
Facebook partners with Google, Twitter, others to launch ‘TODO’ – Inside Facebook – interesting move and interesting omissions in the participants
The Apple Watch Won’t Kill the Swiss Watch Industry | The NextWeb – it makes sense that TAG Heuer would make a smart watch being the most feminine of the brands in LVMH’s roster of serious watch brands
Are Agencies Killing Their Programmatic Golden Goose? | WSJ – opaque practices and pricing models of some of these agency groups have recently led marketers to question how their money is being spent, and in some cases to shun the groups completely in favor of building their in-house alternatives. More related content here.
The single, buried statistic that explains China’s slowdown – Quartz – implication that construction is down
DisplayPort 1.3 announced w/ support for upcoming 5K displays, enhanced 4K performance | 9to5Mac – 5k displays already
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iPods cultural impact + more things
On Death and iPods: A Requiem | WIRED – on the cultural impact of iPods. Each medium including iPods, CDs and vinyl before it defined and shaped the public. The design was a media in and off itself that was affected by the heritage that went before. iPods were very much in this mould of media. I miss the time when we were still defined by our music. When our music was still our music. I miss being younger, with a head full of subversive ideas; white cables snaking down my neck, stolen songs in my pocket. There will never be an app for that. More on consumer behaviour here.
As Phones Expand, So Does the Word ‘Phablet – WSJ – the etymology of the word phablet – originally from GSMA and first mentioned in print by TelecomTV
Grandparents Accidentally Tag Themselves As Grandmaster Flash | NPR – genius.
IBM News room | IBM and Yonyou to Accelerate Big Data and Analytics Adoption – interesting Chinese partner on big data
Apple Watch ‘too feminine and looks like it was designed by students’, says LVMH executive – Telegraph – ok a bit over-exaggerated coming from the man who heads up TAG Heuer, but beneath the comments lies a deep truth about the watches that I agree with
Huawei In Bad PR Move With Anti-Corruption Campaign | Young’s China Business Blog – interesting analysis of Huawei’s corruption drive
China May Be Heading for a Japanese-Style Economic Crisis | TIME – the Chinese have a lot more levers to pull and a stable government (rather than a new prime minister every year like Japan); both of which are in China’s favour. On the downside China has bigger internal security issues than Japan
阿里美国IPO首场路演的38张PPT（全） – Alibaba IPO deck
Microsoft is found in contempt of court for refusing to hand over user emails | The Inquirer – Microsoft has to go to the line on this as it is likely to affect future international cloud services businesses
China Misses Out on First Wave of New iPhone Releases | Re/code – I wouldn’t be surprised if the government is holding it up deliberately rather like the FCC did with H-silicon-powered Huawei phones
A Watch Guy’s Thoughts On The Apple Watch After Seeing It In The Metal (Tons Of Live Photos) — HODINKEE – some interesting observations, kudos for their industrial design and manufacturing but some really good questions
For Alibaba’s Small Business Army, a Narrowing Path | Foreign Policy – TaoBao needs to fix its model for smaller merchants