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Cal Newport, in his book Digital Minimalisn, explains that there are two forces that encourage behavioural addiction when using social networks. The first force, intermittent positive reinforcement, exploits the fact that rewards delivered unpredictably are more enticing than those delivered with a known pattern. The expectation of likes/hearts/retweets after posting online is comparable to gambling. The second force is the the drive for social approval. Social media is tuned to offer us a rich stream of information about how much (or how little) our friends are thinking about us at the moment. Read more...

A difficult aspect of facing technological innovation is the decision to change your business model in ways that disrupts your current business. It’s not easy to leave the safe shores of what works and is known. NiemanLab published this interesting article about the L.A. Times and its difficulties competing in the digital business once the advantage of physical distribution of newspaper that gave them market power disappeared. Among other things, the L. Read more...

There are several good options for publishing content online. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Medium, and others offer a convenient and cost-free way to publish content and, potentially, reach a huge audience. It’s important to understand why social networks are free. Like Michael Ende’s Momo Men in Grey, social networks are dependent on their ability to get humans to invest time on their platforms. Social networks revenue comes from selling carefully segmented “user attention” to advertisers1. Read more...

Wars are often fought to win over strategic resources. Huawei is the #1 telecom supplier in the world1, and the #2 smartphone maker2 after Samsung. It’s also a major player in next generation 5G network technology. “As of April 2019, Huawei tops the global rankings in nearly every category of 5G development, from its ‘contributions’—a technical term meaning standards proposals—to the number of standards meetings around the world that company representatives attend3”, writes The Wall Street Journal. Read more...

Several companies have recently announced new subscription-based services: gaming (Google, Apple), video streaming (Apple, Disney), and news (Apple News). On a different plane, software is definitely trending towards a subscription model, which makes sense from a business model point of view. In his book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future , Kevin Kelly explains that “access is so superior to ownership in many ways that it is driving the frontiers of the economy. Read more...