This week Wordpress acquired Tumblr for $3m - it sold for over $1b to Yahoo many moons ago. It has been a fascinating week of what will happen and how will Wordpress save the community. WP Founder Matt Mullenweg was interviewed a bunch and suggested he wanted an alternative Social Experience (love this and what he means by the incredibly engaged and loyal fanbase on and of Tumblr) and wants to bring blogging back to its glory days.
Expect Tumblr to have better ads, better context and more subscription models for you to pay (support who you follow or use of templates etc) or get paid (for being a curator). I for one think it will be a good match from October when the deal closes and look forward to seeing a new alternative to the social networks out there.
🤩 10 Must Reads 🤩
🎶Spotify to podcasters - use our data, we will make it easier and you better
🥅Why Air Jordan is interested in football / soccer — Air Jordan have flirted with soccer with a few years, Neymar cross over and PSG offering exclusive European kits, this would be a power-play for Nike and Jordan Brand especially with the right star
⚽️How style icon David Beckham led the way for athletes like Conor McGregor
👂Facebook has been caught out around their transcribe service and sending it to humans to transcribe and reviewing these messages (you did have to opt in btw). Facebook have pointed to doing the same as Google, Amazon and Apple.
🤝 Business Reads Of The Week:
Here is a detailed read into how Netflix is lobbying in different ways to grow
& How WeWork tried to pass itself off as a tech company (not property) and is losing $221k + per day coming up to it’s IPO (image (source) below shows how WeWork works)
🗣Want to know the secret of successful people’s meeting structures and communication - this is a good read
Apple’s Secret was “Simplicity’s Best Friend: Small Groups of Smart People”👩💻As I commented in last week’s Must Reads’s, Google have commonly leveraged their technology and moats (anti competitive), there is now under investigation for antitrust complaints from competitors for Google Jobs Product.
⛺️Find out why Glamping is important to Will Smith and Jay-Z? (And a16z)
😳 It’s been a challenging week for Google, Googlers don’t want government contracts, “Google Employee Writes Memo About ‘The Burden of Being Black at Google’.
Two important reads you might have missed:
🍌Why Banana’s are close to disappearing
⛈Why more lightening strikes in the Arctic is so worrying
🐧 Tweet of the Week 🐧
Product Hacking 101 -
Find something no-one really wants + Cause friction between users = Get more usage & insights
Below is an interesting look at app downloads in the Social Media Category - Facebook typically leads the way but interesting to see Social Editing Apps and gaming platforms appear. TikTok $1b Marketing strategy is still ensuring they are continued to get downloaded.
🧐 Final Thought 🧐
Twitter announced this week they were going to test following “Topics” on Android devices.
It is rare in 2019 platforms want to attempt to reshuffle its core product function so much and fundamentally change the way the site and app operates.
As you might expect, I have thoughts:
Topics over people: Twitter have said for many months it’s reliance on following individuals and curating your own feed has hurt them, it will be interesting to see how well this is executed and if Android users are the right sort of high value / best first user
Deeper connections: Twitter needs a way to move people from casual users to more regular users and interests and topics are four main reasons why we use social networks
Topic & Interests > People & Connections: For the last ten years Social Media have been follow a person or account and get updates when they post, you are unlikely to know what they are going to post and many accounts have mixed themes or topics.
This is a way to tap into topic graph and get closer to Reddit’s model of topic and interest rather than follow person graph. Remember Twitter’s DAU and MAU’s are way lower rather than rival networks.Play for Daily Active Users: Curated topics is a way for Twitter to increase DAU's and expand the product to new audiences
AI Driven Future: TikTok has led the way for let the machine offer you compelling content, this is a lite way for Twitter to push algorithmic content long term
Best First Timeline: Twitter curating topics means it is testing best (trusted) accounts first, this is something Twitter have been doing with “News” and was used more
Social Communication Over Social Networks: With social media and network shifting to more private based chat (self selected groups) and communication, Twitter is shifting towards news and discussion with topics and topical experts, it was something Twitter had early success with and looks like they are hoping this shift will bring Twitter back.
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Danny Denhard
The Obvious Disclaimer ~ All views (mostly in italic) are my own, apart from if you click a link, then that’s the authors.