Ged Carroll

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.

  • Robots demoralise coworkers

    Faster Robots Demoralise Coworkers | Careers | Communications of the ACM – If you get the pace wrong would the effect of robots demoralise coworkers limit productivity? Is the future not robots augmenting coworkers, but replacing coworkers a more productive alternative. A Cornell-led team has found that when robots are beating humans in contests for cash prizes, people consider themselves less competent and expend slightly less effort—and they tend to dislike the robots – to be fair I’d expect to see something similar if the same person kept winning employee of the week. I know that workers on the line at Vauxhall in Ellesmere Port used to sabotage the robots on the line on a regular basis. This might phenomenon of robots demoralise coworkers be part of their motivation (along with laziness and malice)

    Flickr Cofounder Questions Tech’s Impact on Humans – WIRED – it’s easier to ask the big questions when you’ve made it and can reflect in the tech industry. These weren’t questions that we asked back in the day. More on Caterina Fake here.

    Marbridge Consulting – China’s February 2019 Domestic Handset Shipments Down 20% YoY – 14.51 mln mobile handsets were shipped in China in February 2019, down 19.9% YoY and 57.4% MoM, according to new figures released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a department of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). The significant month-on-month drop can be explained in part by the week-long Chinese Lunar New Year holiday towards the beginning of February. Of total shipments in February, 13.98 mln were 4G handsets, down 20.2% YoY, 37,000 were 3G handsets, and 0.49 mln were 2G handsets

    A Witch-Hunt on Instagram | Quilette – western PC culture seems to have more and more cases of it eating their own

    Aging Millennials Soothe Themselves With Childlike Fashions – WWD – to try and hang on to youth. The attenuation of youthfulness is a cross generational phenomenon. For instance middle aged dads the still buy streetwear rather than Superdry, skate and go to gigs.

    SXSW 2019: Virtual Cinema – JWT Intelligence – culture is still trying to adapt AR and VR. Whilst it has the energy of an early SIGGRAPH demo reel, I still think the storytelling aspect of things is struggling to find its legs

    Patrick Pruniaux: “There Truly is an E-commerce Potential for Horology” | Luxury Society – Kering haven’t been particularly good at using Ulysse Nardin as a brand in China, but they are rectifying it now. Kering are looking to tap into ‘new’ watch consumers who can’t spend Rolex money on a watch, this position now looks more tenable since Apple has stopped going for the luxury sector with the Apple Watch

    How to Create an Authentic Luxury Experience for Millennials | Jing Daily – if a luxury brand wants to entice today’s consumers, whether it’s in China or beyond, it needs to underscore its authenticity and relevancy. Powerful words, to be sure, but what does it mean to be authentic and relevant? For the moment, let’s start with the opposite. During many of my brand strategy sessions, I often hear the expression “they feel staged” when people describe brands that they would never buy. Needless to say, when brand feels staged, it is neither authentic nor relevant. The synonyms unnatural, deceived, cheated, and faked come to mind. In other words, a staged brand is bullshitt*ng their consumers.

    Louis Vuitton Has a Michael Jackson Problem | Intelligence | BoF – LVMH invested significantly in Virgil Abloh to elevate its menswear line. However, the potential failure of Abloh’s Michael Jackson-inspired collection—whether due to pulled items or lack of consumer interest—is unlikely to significantly impact Louis Vuitton’s overall revenue, as men’s ready-to-wear is a small part of their business. The real concern for Louis Vuitton is protecting its brand reputation, which remains strong unlike some competitors who have faced recent social media backlash. This is especially crucial now, as consumers are quick to criticize any perceived missteps.

    How What Goes Around Comes Around Is Attracting Millennials To Buy Vintage – US chain channels aesthetic of Japanese vintage shops

    You May Have Forgotten Foursquare, but It Didn’t Forget You | WIRED – interesting how Foursquare went from being useful (I use it as spatial bookmarking, so that I can return to new places that I like) to where 2.0 middleware with a bit of ad tech creepiness thrown in for good measure (paywall)

    Pinterest Files for an IPO: What Investors Need to Know | The Motley Fool – interesting for intent driven visual search if they can monetise it effectively on a global scale

    Great video of a Black Hat conference presentation on biometric identifiers.

  • ICYMI | 당신이 그것을 놓친 경우에 대비해서

    UK tariff plans to limit no-deal Brexit damage | Financial Times – the system would mean that products brought into Northern Ireland across the land border would not have any tariffs imposed. But many products shipped across the Irish Sea from Ireland to Wales or England would have tariffs slapped on them. Officials acknowledged that this could be vulnerable to abuse by the unscrupulous. One official played down the idea that smugglers could bring European cars or other expensive goods across the land border — and then into England — to escape tariffs. “That’s the kind of thing we would be monitoring closely,” he said. – interesting UK tariff plans that will be painful for UK industry (paywall)

    Lazada is livestreaming its birthday concert – directly on its app | Techinasia – over a decade after Tokyo Girls Collection

    President Trump’s Twitter feed: Can you really target an ad at him? | Slate – interesting. I used to do the same thing for UN and EU policy campaigns a decade ago

    China’s economy is 12% smaller than official data say, study finds | Financial Times – (Paywall)

    Hands over Siena: How Russian oil is buying the Tuscan city – La Stampa – interesting reading and a warning for UK property

    Facebook sues Ukrainian app developers for scraping user data – SiliconANGLE – Facebook sues Ukranians for ideas that they wished they had thought of

    Over 50s perceptions of post-Brexit changes | Yahoo! Finance – guess they will be in for a shock to be blamed on Europe

    Chinese Tourism Boom That Propped Up Luxury Brands Is Faltering | News & Analysis | BoF – Luxury brands have gained a lot of traction and growth out of China, but the bloom is off the rose

    AI Cameras That Can Spot Shoplifters Even Before They Steal – Bloomberg – pre-crime made real

    Microsoft Band and Health Dashboard Kill-Off Suggests Platform IoT Focus | ProgrammableWeb
    – it makes sense in the face of the Apple Watch

  • The Facebook pivots to WeChat post

    Wonks clearly saw parallels. Hence the short form ‘Facebook pivots to WeChat’. The first thing I’d advise you to do is read Mark Zuckerberg’s notes on how he is planning to move Facebook as a business. There’s a link at the bottom of this post to it, I’ll still be here when you come back.

    Mark Zuckerberg f8 Keynote

    The reactions were:

    • Facebook is trying to ‘kill’ Apple
    • Advertisers need to be concerned about Facebook’s moves
    • Facebook’s pivot is a diversion or play to get out from under future regulation
    • It’s fake, or variants of that
    • It’s about asserting market dominance
    • It’s a move against Snap
    • It’s a ‘China’ type move, trying to corner the free internet

    These takes are mirrors of our own views and concerns as about Facebook. I am not a Facebook apologist, by any means. But I could see a clear parallel between Facebook and concerns about television, the communist threat or big oil. And to a large extent Facebook is highly deserving of our skepticism.

    So let’s start breaking them off one by one:

    Facebook is trying to ‘kill’ Apple

    Apple has managed to differentiate from Google and other web giants by its privacy focus. This is because advertising isn’t that important to Apple’s business model. Where Apple have tried advertising, they haven’t been that successful at it.

    Facebook’s messaging focus ‘doing a WeChat’ has caused others to draw clear parallels with China. In particular, Apple’s problems in China and WeChat. The simple answer is that its complicated:

    • Apple’s problems in China aren’t just about WeChat. WeChat creates a level playing field between Chinese Android-based and iOS user experience. Because consumers spend so much time inside the application, rather than the OS
    • Both Apple and Chinese manufacturers lose services revenue to WeChat. On a per device basis, this particularly penalises manufacturers like Xiaomi who break even on the handset at best
    • Apple has tested the price elasticity of the premium phone market in China (and elsewhere). Channel discounting has been shown to drive a massive uptake in sales

    Facebook’s messaging strategy poses a challenge to mobile operators, Google’s Android messaging offering and Apple Messages equally.

    Mobile phone operators saw messaging traffic drop precipitously over the past decade. China Mobile were one of the first operators of video and SMS over the internet with its Fetion texting service. This was shut down three years ago in the face competition from Youku, QQ Video and WeChat.

    The GSM Association has tried to fight back against the decline in SMS and MMS messaging with Rich Communications Services (RCS). It is supported on Android Messages app and Google has looked as wider implementation.

    RCS is currently supported by 11 smartphone manufacturers and 55 mobile network operators across Asia, the Americas, Africa and Europe. Facebook may support it, but is likely to compete against it. Apple hasn’t announced support for RCS (yet).

    Here’s what Mark said, nothing particularly controversial but a nice analysis of current development options.

    You can already send and receive SMS texts through Messenger on Android today, and we’d like to extend this further in the future, perhaps including the new telecom RCS standard. However, there are several issues we’ll need to work through before this will be possible. First, Apple doesn’t allow apps to interoperate with SMS on their devices, so we’d only be able to do this on Android. Second, we’d need to make sure interoperability doesn’t compromise the expectation of encryption that people already have using WhatsApp. Finally, it would create safety and spam vulnerabilities in an encrypted system to let people send messages from unknown apps where our safety and security systems couldn’t see the patterns of activity.

    A privacy-focused vision for social networking – Mark Zuckerberg March 6, 2019

    What its most likely to do is strip value added services away from carriers, Google and Apple; rather than Apple on it’s own. Encryption alone doesn’t mean security or privacy; but Apple needs to provide that level of nuance to premium consumers. Given the Google Android services there is still blue water between the eco-systems.

    Advertisers need to be concerned about Facebook’s moves

    Advertisers on Facebook always need to be concerned about Facebook’s moves. The people with most to worry are people who build their businesses on Facebook’s platform. But that isn’t a new issue, its been a mistake that marketers have made over-and-over again in the digital realm. And they’ll still keep making the mistake.

    In many respects, Facebook advertising has had to change. The reason why Facebook has been putting out features like stories and carousels is because of ‘context collapse‘. Back in 2015, the Information wrote about how Facebook users were sharing less. Sharing less means less room for ad inventory in the news feed and less reasons for the audience to remain engaged with the newsfeed.

    However, Facebook won’t fully give up on the town hall type environment that the news feed provides to advertisers, don’t take Mark’s word for it: follow the money.

    Public social networks will continue to be very important in people’s lives — for connecting with everyone you know, discovering new people, ideas and content, and giving people a voice more broadly. People find these valuable every day, and there are still a lot of useful services to build on top of them. But now, with all the ways people also want to interact privately, there’s also an opportunity to build a simpler platform that’s focused on privacy first.

    A privacy-focused vision for social networking – Mark Zuckerberg March 6, 2019

    Zuckerberg needed to do something to combat context collapse, even if the regulatory environment hadn’t got a lot worse for him. It also means the declining amount of information available to advertisers will continue to go that way.

    On the plus side if you look at WeChat, you can see the kind of directions Facebook is likely to take:

    • Advertising / promoted content
    • On-platform services and retail
    • E-commerce
    • Mini-applications
    • Payments
    • Ticketing
    • Electronic real ID

    And the one thing that we can be sure about with Mark Zuckerberg is that he doesn’t like leaving money at the table. Expect change, (continue) to be concerned about advertising efficiency and effectiveness, but don’t worry about not having Facebook as a channel in the future.

    Facebook’s pivot is a diversion or play to get out from under future regulation

    There are a few angles to this which I am going to break down into two parts:

    Facebook’s interest

    • The more entrenched across services, the harder Facebook will be to take action against. Facebook would be harder to break apart in any future anti-trust court decision
    • The move towards messaging could reduce the issues that Facebook faces in terms of moderating speech and preventing bad behaviour 
    • Pushes Facebook’s PR / repetitional issues under the rug

    Consumer interest

    • From a consumer interest point of view Facebook is showing a willingness to go beyond encryption by carefully choosing where its data centres go for maximum regulatory protection. (Though one would still fall under the extra-territorial laws of the five Is countries in particular the US, UK and Australia at the moment)
    • Consumer convenience due to focus on interoperability, so one might not need to have both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger on a device – in theory at least

    It’s fake, or variants of that

    We won’t know the true level of sincerity and commitment of Facebook to make a positive impact through this pivot. Facebook’s brand is so low, it is very easy to believe the very worst in them. I can’t say that I am surprised this came out in the commentary but I am prepared to hold fire on judgement just yet.

    It’s about asserting market dominance

    Some commentators saw a clear link between Facebook’s pivot and Microsoft’s push into web browsers. Both companies were threatened by disruption and utilised their existing market dominance in their markets in current products to extend their dominance into future eras. Businesses by their very nature try to maintain and grow themselves. It would be a natural outcome of Facebook’s pivot.

    Microsoft’s move eventually led to the Judge Jackson ruling against Microsoft. Something that Facebook would be very keen to avoid.

    Part of the reason why Facebook bought WhatsApp originally was partly put down to Mark Zuckerberg’s concern about only having one great idea. He wanted to bulk up the Facebook brain trust with WhatsApp’s management. We know that didn’t end well with the management team eventually departing. This pivot could be seen as an antidote to Zuckerberg’s creative bankruptcy.

    It’s a move against Snap

    The competition posed to one-to-one messaging was perceived by analyst Richard Greenfield of BTIG as a threat to Snap. Facebook is very competitive, but Facebook has bigger markets to focus on with this move. Effects on Snap would be a welcome bonus rather than a key focus. Snap has bigger issues at the moment:

    • User growth is moribund. Instagram has already ‘outsnapped’ Snap with its fast follower copying of Snap’s features
    • Snap needs to do better in generating advertising revenue

    In essence it’s like sleeping with a hippo. It could roll over and crush you without even realising what it managed to do in its sleep. Its a move that is likely to adversely affect Snap, but its by no means all about Snap.

    It’s a China type move trying to corner the free internet

    This particular trope came from Fox Business. What’s interesting is that one would expect the outlet to be pro-free markets. The commentary by Kurt Knutsson talks about the inescapability of Facebook and conflates the similarities with WeChat to argue Facebook is sinister in a similar manner to ‘China’. The thing I took away from it is the cross-party skepticism on Facebook, privacy and market power.

    If you would have told me a decade ago that a right wing business publication would have been concerned about free markets and market dominance I wouldn’t have believed you.

    Facebook’s assumptions

    Facebook’s pivot requires some major changes in the companies technical ability:

    • Currently Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp use encryption from the Open Whisper Systems project that gave us Signal Messenger. Signal is an open source product funded by donations to the Signal Foundation. It isn’t a core strength of Facebook
    • A lot of WeChat’s secret sauce is how they managed to build so much functionality into its mobile app without taking away from the user experience. This is in sharp contrast to the plethora of apps currently used for Facebook. It poses a major UX design challenge for Facebook
    • Facebook can expand to new areas successfully such as payments – again not an area where Facebook has previously known to be successful

    There is an assumption that Facebook’s communications team can give it enough space to allow the pivot to be put in place. Facebook’s management team won’t drop the ball between now and the pivot.

    More information

    A privacy-focused vision for social networking by Mark Zuckerberg – shared on his facebook page.

    Facebook’s pivot must be viewed with scepticism | Financial Times

    Facebook’s former chief of security says its privacy pivot is ‘punting’ on its hardest issues | The Verge

    Facebook’s Biggest Bull Sees Privacy Pivot as Move Against Snap | Bloomberg

    Facebook’s Awkward Pivot to Privacy | Slate

    Facebook’s pivot is bigger than privacy | Axios

    Facebook’s Fake Pivot To Privacy | Forbes – As a social network, Facebook, has 15 million fewer users today than in 2017. During October – December of 2018, 23% of Facebook users in the U.S. showed signs of activity, e.g. updated their status or posted a comment, as compared to 32% at the same time in 2017. In 2016, Facebook accounted for more than half of time spent on social networks, but that figure is anticipated to be 44.6% in 2019, while, for the first time, from 2018 on, it was expected that Facebook usage among the 11-24 demographic – highly coveted by advertisers – would decline.

    Facebook privacy pivot a China-type move, trying to corner the free world: Cyber Guy | Fox Business

    Building your business in Mark’s house | renaissance chambara – on the perils of over-reliance on platforms.

    Facebook and advertising or why Facebook is a dead man walking part III? | renaissance chambara

    Why Facebook is a dead man walking part II? | renaissance chambara

    Why Facebook is a dead man walking | renaissance chambara

    Jargon Watch: context collapse | renaissance chambara

  • Geothermal energy + more things

    Swedish technology could make geothermal energy as mainstream as wind and solar | Quartz – interesting because it deals with the lumpy supply issue of wind and solar in the energy mix. Geothermal energy is closer to the steady production of nuclear or coal fired power stations operated in an optimal manner. Although geothermal energy has been well understood for decades, a key problem has been keeping the fissures open that geothermal energy relies on to create steam.

    UK cash system ‘on the verge of collapse’, report finds | Money | The Guardian – putting the Queen on debit cards anyone?

    Rone artist takeover of hotel site | ABC – right strategic approach to build buzz but wrong vision

    Audi hasn’t forgotten about fuel cells – Roadshow – which makes a lot more infrastructure sense than electric charging due to energy density benefits

    Jibo Is Probably Totally Dead Now – IEEE Spectrum – The servers for Jibo the social robot are apparently shutting down. Multiple owners report that Jibo himself has been delivering the news: “Maybe someday when robots are way more advanced than today, and everyone has them in their homes, you can tell yours that I said hello.” – that’s probably the saddest thing I’ve heard in robotics since I learned about Sony Aibo Mk ! device owners having Shinto funerals for them when they gave up the ghost. It also shows the flaw in cloud connected consumer products

    Europe’s AI start-ups often do not use AI, study finds | Financial Times – Two-fifths of Europe’s artificial intelligence start-ups do not use any AI programs in their products, according to a report that highlights the hype around the technology. The research by London-based investment firm MMC Ventures could not find any evidence, based on public information and interviews with executives, of artificial intelligence applications at 40 per cent of 2,830 AI start-ups in Europe (paywall)

    The Aldi effect: how one discount supermarket transformed the way Britain shops | Business | The Guardian – The checkout assistants, who had been trained to memorise the price of every item in the store, were so fast that shoppers experienced what some would come to call “Aldi panic” – the fear that you cannot pack your goods quickly enough.

    Flickr dumps despised Yahoo login system – CNET – gosh when I remember how controversial the move to Yahoo! ID was for flickr users back in March 2007. It was a defining moment in the community and its obvious that grudge has continued to be held by old skool users

    Huawei Said to Be Preparing to Sue the U.S. Government – The New York Times – interesting move to try and get the US government to show its hand, on the other hand the US government can just go over case studies like T-Mobile and the African Union hacking as evidence

    Revealed: Facebook’s global lobbying against data privacy laws | Technology | The Guardian – Shock horror Facebook lobbyists aren’t just bag carriers but actually do their job

    Bollinger Motors: a Refreshingly Traditional 4×4 Company • Gear Patrol – While other manufacturers fetishize connectivity, Bollinger Motors plans to sever the digital connection. The B1 and B2 won’t offer autonomous capability. There are no current plans for a digital cloud infrastructure. The trucks will have manual windows and door locks. Driving a B1 or B2 won’t be a pure ascetic throwback. You’ll be able to connect your phone to the stereo. But, the goal is to offer an escape. That reads to me like a new definition of automotive luxury.

    UK unicorn Revolut is fighting back after its week from hell | Business Insider – I expect to see many more exposes like this

    Read Pornhub Launches Safe for Work Category that Features Videos without Nudity | Pornhub – interesting that PornHub is branching into SFW (suitable for work) content and that this move seems to be inspired by Starbucks putting a porn filter on its free wifi. Unfortunately Pornhub’s ad vendor Traffic Junky keeps showing NSFW material on the page and you have to wonder about brand safety with Pornhub relying on a creator submitted SFW tag which doesn’t police NSFW content within it. More media related content here.

  • Hasan Minhaj and other things that caught my attention this week

    Supreme by Hasan Minhaj. I hadn’t watched much of Patriot Act mainly because there is more content that grabs my attention on Netflix. This clip is a great dive into hype culture by Hasan Minhaj – often the best humour is that with uncomfortable truths in it.

    Amazon playbook on Amazon Vine. Gartner L2 made this useful clip on the effective use of Amazon’s Vine programme.

    Key take-outs (my observations in italics):

    • Amazon don’t allow vendors any editorial controls over reviews and look to keep them honest and authentic
    • Vine seems to be really good in the process of accelerating product launches for vendors
    • Use Vine BEFORE Amazon’s sponsored products and sponsored brands advertising function; by the sounds of it pretty similar to the way you’d have previously used PR in a product launch marketing campaign
    • L2 recommends ensuring the efficacy of the product; but Vine COULD be used as the last gate in the innovation process before you go gangbusters. Lots of negative reviews could still save you on a massive production run and huge advertising spend

    Sophie Cope (Electronic Frontier Foundation) on digital privacy and the surveillance state. Great video on the World Affairs channel – interesting how this has become such a big issue amongst ‘wonkish’ audiences. More privacy related content here.

    Lynx (Axe for non UK audiences) have latched on to the ASMR meme that has been popular for a couple of years. It feels weird to watch, I am not sure what the strategic insight(s) were for this work beyond the fact that beards are sticking around for a good while yet.

    https://youtu.be/x9T7BJ-jf6o

    The last thing is the positive experience I had with American Express this week when I lost my card. I spoke to a real person on a decent phone line who quickly canceled my old card sent me out a new one that arrived in 48 hours.