I have been busy researching two long pieces, which have my mind going in many directions. I need to calm down and start writing. But up until then, enjoy these random bits I have accumulated on my blotter. They are bits of data, quotable quotes, and stuff worth reading. And just me thinking out loud.
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While Mark Zuckerberg fiddles in the metaverse, in the real world, his social platform burns. According to some Chinese media reports, ByteDance’s TikTok has surpassed 1 billion daily active users. Others in the billion-a-day club: Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube. And WeChat. Just a reminder, TikTok’s global penetration rate is less than 20 percent. And it is also banned in India, one of the largest mobile markets.
Make what you may, the Chinese now own culture as well.
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Ben Smith (formerly of Politico, Buzzfeed & The New York Times) has launched his new publication, Semafor. I am not sure I am in love with the design or the name. But I do like Ben’s reporting. And he didn’t disappoint in his first piece. In his crosshair: his former employer, The New York Times. It is a great piece about a company that is stuck in the past and has to confront it now. One of the bombshells in the article was a comment by opinion section editor James Bennett who was fired because he ran a very controversial opinion piece by Senator Tom Cotton. The 19-year veteran of the Times was all salt and vinegar in his comments.
“I actually knew what it meant to have a target on your back when you’re reporting for the New York Times. None of that mattered, and none of it mattered to AG. When push came to shove at the end, he set me on fire and threw me in the garbage and used my reverence for the institution against me.”
AG is Sulzberger, the owner of the Times. As a reporter, Bennet was involved in incidents in the West Bank and Gaza.
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Microsoft laid off 1000 employees. Their documents show they had 221000 employees. So this is a very small number. It would be more interesting to see how many have taken buyouts or have been quietly cut. Otherwise, this feels like a big company using downturn for cleaning house! But the amount of attention given to these “layoffs” versus real news is astonishing and yet another sign of what’s wrong with Internet-era media: headline culture.
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There was a time when my beloved Webpass was the fastest broadband provider around. And then, Google bought the company. The founder left. And things have not been the same. It is now even falling behind Comcast’s Xfinity, which is introducing a 2 Gbps tier across the country. Oy Vy!
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When I saw that dumbass Ye was buying Parler, I thought a fool and his money should be separated. And then tweeted, “Are you really a rockstar (or a billionaire/space cowboy) if you have not bought your own social network?.”
As I said before, we are at or near the end of the social media era.
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The US is no longer a mall nation. The total number of malls is down from an estimated 2,500 in the 1980s to about 700 today and will shrink to about 150 in a decade, according to retail advisory firm SiteWorks. I am guessing more photos of abandoned malls will litter social media. WSJ
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According to a World Bank report, 97 million more people live on less than $1.90 a day because of the pandemic. Ironically, I read this in an article in Bloomberg about billionaires whose fortunes ballooned in the pandemic and have shrunk since.
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On that note, where did all the boom-time charlatans go?
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Let’s end on a positive note and a celebration of the good people.
Just a wonderful and very personal reflection on Nobel Prize (for chemistry) winner Carolyn Bertozzi. The line that stood out for me: was “The importance of caring about the people you work with and for, even when you’re busy.” I wish more young founders would pay attention to that. Highly recommended.
October 19, 2022. San Francisco