Archive
Category: Social Media
‘Like, Comment, Subscribe’ Details YouTube’s Existential Struggles, Creator Frustrations
Many books have been written about tech’s biggest platforms. From Hatching Twitter to How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars, Elon Musk, Super Pumped, No Filter, and An Ugly Truth, deep reporting provides readers with an inside look into the influence of these firms. But one platform largely remained ignored by book authors, until now: […]
Facebook’s VR (Dys)topia
As I watched Facebook unveil the latest developments in virtual reality at last month’s Oculus Connect developer conference, there were two things going through my mind. First, there’s excitement in hearing about the latest game titles that’ll be available with Oculus VR, but it’s the second that has me the most concerned: the VR incarnation […]
Zendesk’s New Developer Platform Lets Brands Incorporate Customer Chat Support Into Apps
“If you don’t reach them on channels where they communicate, you’ll lose them,” Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane told me in an interview three years ago. It was at that time when the company head detailed how the customer service and support landscape was changing. “You have to embrace all the platforms, but you have to […]
Facebook Touts Privacy Future, But Critics Question Sincerity
“Today we are going to talk about building a privacy-focused social platform,” said Mark Zuckerberg as he began his keynote address at this year’s F8 developer conference. Facebook’s soon-to-be 35-year old chief executive took the stage to introduce the world to what he hoped his creation could become, one that pressured its users to be […]
Mark Zuckerberg To Make Case To Developers That Privacy Is A Good Thing
On a May morning, Mark Zuckerberg, weeks after an intense grilling by members of Congress, made what would be his first public address, telling a room full of developers: We have real challenges to address, but we have to keep [our optimism for the future] as well. And what I’ve learned this year is that […]
LinkedIn Takes On YouTube, Facebook With Live Video Service
If you looked at the video space earlier than 2017, LinkedIn would not have been associated with it. The Microsoft-owned professional social network hadn’t dipped its toes into the media, essentially surrendering opportunities to the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and of course, YouTube. Fast-forward to today and LinkedIn is rolling out its latest feature that […]
Facebook Going to Facebook
In the Aaron Sorkin-created show “The West Wing”, there’s an episode in which fictional President Jed Bartlet (played by Martin Sheen) argues with his Chief-of-Staff Leo McGarry (the late-John Spencer) about stances on political issues — the latter wished Bartlet would be more aggressive about his positions. Ultimately they reach the conclusion that it’s time […]
User-Generated Marketing Service Chute Acquired by Private Equity Firm ESW Capital
A few years ago, companies clamored for solutions to help them capitalize on free media, the content people were producing on social media and voicing their support or displeasure about a particular product or brand. Companies created tools to facilitate communication from marketing managers and customer service agents to these influencers. Several, including Buddy Media […]
Snap Has a Startup Accelerator, but Who Benefits?
A fad these days is for corporations to launch startup accelerators, a program designed to help legacy incumbents innovate. We’ve seen these initiatives sprout up time and time again, like with Orange, Samsung, and Qualcomm. In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs view independent ones like 500 Startups and Y Combinator as a badge of honor. In many […]
Klout’s Role in the Weaponization of Influence
For some, it’s considered to be the punch line to a joke or just a vanity metric. For others, it’s a badge of honor — the dispensation of the “+K” that for years, bolstered their designation as being what has become an overplayed term: influencer. With such a polarizing service, it’s not surprising that the […]