Month: August 2014

“Facebook Is a Weatherless World”

enhanced-buzz-10580-1366730524-14(image)

This quote, from a piece in Motherboard,  hit me straight between the eyeballs:

Facebook…will not let you unFacebook Facebook. It is impossible to discover something in its feeds that isn’t algorithmically tailored to your eyeball.

“The laws of Facebook have one intent, which is to compel us to use Facebook…It believes the best way to do this is to assume it can tell what we want to see based on what we have seen. This is the worst way to predict the weather. If this mechanism isn’t just used to predict the weather, but actually is the weather, then there is no weather. And so Facebook is a weatherless world.”

– Sean Schuster-Craig, AKA Jib Kidder

The short piece notes the lack of true serendipity in worlds created by algorithm, and celebrates the randomness of apps (Random) and artists (like Jib Kidder) who offer a respite from such “weatherless worlds.”

Read More
Leave a comment on “Facebook Is a Weatherless World”

SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date on the latest from BattelleMedia.com

Writing Is Code, Reading Is Visualization

http://video.pbs.org/viralplayer/2365315496

Yesterday I stumbled onto a fascinating PBS Newshour interview with book designer Peter Mendelsund, well-regarded for his cover treatments of titles ranging from George Dyson’s Turing’s Cathedral to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Mendelsen argued that when we read, we visualize the text, each of us creating a different reality in our minds. Those co-created images – created by both the author and the reader – are unique and vital to the process of reading – and by extension, to our ability to imagine and to create.

Read More
2 Comments on Writing Is Code, Reading Is Visualization

NewCo New York 2014: My Chairman’s Picks To Visit

newcony

Last week I created my schedule for NewCo San Francisco, and wrote about them here. What many folks don’t know is that there are now nine confirmed NewCo festivals around the world. Three weeks after San Francisco, nearly 100 New York companies will be opening their doors and welcoming festival goers in our second annual NewCo New York, Sept. 30th-Oct. 2nd. If you live in NY, or are going there for Advertising Week this Sept.29-October 3rd, please register and visit some of your favorites.

With that in mind, here are my picks for New York.

Read More
Leave a comment on NewCo New York 2014: My Chairman’s Picks To Visit

AdTech Is Alive and Well: I’ll Have the Full Stack, Please

National-Pancake-Day-at-IHOPReading The Information’s piece on Facebook’s reported re-introduction of the Atlas ad-serving technology, I wondered – Does the market really need six or more full stack adtech solutions?

Google is the undisputed leader in the field – it’s spent nearly ten years stitching its own technology into acquisitions like DoubleClick (the original ad server), AdMeld (supply side platform), AdWords (search), AdMobs (mobile), Teracent (targeting), Invite Media (demand side platform),  spider.io (anti-fraud), Adometry (attribution) and many others.

So why would anyone want to challenge Google’s dominance? Because if you’re a major Internet player, you can’t afford to hand Google all the leverage – both financial as well as data and insight. If you have hundreds of millions of logged in customers (all of whom create valuable data), you need to be able to understand their actions across multiple channels and offer those insights to your marketing clients. And that means you need to own your own ad stack.

Read More
3 Comments on AdTech Is Alive and Well: I’ll Have the Full Stack, Please

Why I’m Watching Deep Linking In Mobile

first web page
The first ever web page, created by Sir Tim Berners Lee to explain, naturally, the WWW.

We are at a turning point in the mobile app ecosystem where deeplinking is becoming a priority and not just a feature. – URX blog

This week marks the beginning of a journey I’m taking to understand “deep linking” in mobile. I’ve kept one eye on the space for some time, but it’s clearly heating up. Last Spring three major mobile players – Facebook, Google, and Apple – all announced significant developments in deep linking. Twitter has also fortified its deep linking capabilities of late, as has Yahoo.

Read More
4 Comments on Why I’m Watching Deep Linking In Mobile

My 2014 NewCo SF Schedule: Hard Choices

NewCoAward
The NewCo award, given to host companies who join the NewCo festival this year.

As I did last year, I picked my NewCo San Francisco schedule early, so I could prepare in advance of the festival this September 10-12. There are nearly 130 extraordinary companies to choose from, so it’s not easy to decide where to spend your time. But decide we must. Here are my choices for this year’s SF festival (there are festivals in Amsterdam, New York, Silicon Valley, LA, Detroit, Boulder, London, and Istanbul so far).

Haven’t heard of NewCo? Learn all about it here. In short, we pick extraordinary companies that are mission-driven and changing the face of our city and our society, and they open their doors to the public for a one hour session on a topic of their choice. It’s free, but if you want to insure that you get into the companies you care about, you can pay a small fee to jump to the head of the line right now. Some companies are already full, others are almost full. When we open General Admission, which is free, they’ll all fill up quickly. So it’s worth $90 to get in where you want to go. Here are the ones I plan to visit:

Read More
Leave a comment on My 2014 NewCo SF Schedule: Hard Choices