7 notable things…
When catching up with my reading online after a weekend without devices, I found these seven things interesting enough to sharing.
“We didn’t think before about the idea that buying an iPad to take pictures on was actually more important to somebody than buying a handbag.” Suzie Menkes, Vogue’s international fashion editor in an interview. Fashion people forget that fashion is what represents the time. Tech represents today, and thus is fashion.
QVC is buying Zulily for $2.4 billion and using that as a way to jump start its web-commerce efforts. Almost two-and-a-half years ago, when Avis bought Zipcar, I had pointed out the inevitability of the Internet. This latest QVC-Zulily deal is just an affirmation of that observation. In a recent survey by PwC, 1,322 global CEOs, and half of the U.S. CEOs said that “a significant competitor is emerging or could emerge from the technology sector.”
Here is some further proof that Internet is people and we can learn a lot from it. Royal Society of Open Science came up with a “machine learning algorithm to infer the probability of finding people in geographical locations and the probability of movement between pairs of locations,” applied it to Flickr and what they have determined is that — human mobility obeys universal statistical patterns mathematically described by Lévy flights.
“I think we’re in a golden age of television, so if you go back in time even just five years, you couldn’t get A-list talent to do TV serials, or, if you could, it was a rare thing. But that’s flipped completely. The investment is very high now in serialised TV, and the amount of time you have to tell a story is much greater. That format change opens up a lot of storytelling possibilities, which, when mixed with the movie-like production standards, and the A-list talent, is why we’re seeing amazing television.”— Jeff Bezos on on-demand Internet video, cord cutting and Amazon Prime TV.
Leichtman Research points out that thirteen largest pay-TV providers in the US – representing about 95% of the market – lost about 470,000 net video subscribers in 2Q 2015, compared to a loss of about 305,000 video subscribers in 2Q 2014. Top nine cable companies lost about 260,000 video subscribers in 2Q 201. Satellite TV providers lost 214,000 subscribers in 2Q 2015.
“I strongly believe that anyone working in a company that really is like the one described in the NYT would be crazy to stay. I know I would leave such a company.” Jeff Bezos, founder & CEO, Amazon.com in a company wide memo in response to an article in The New York Times that criticized company’s culture. Culture is key to hiring and hiring is key to growth of technology-enabled companies — Bezos swift response shows that he is aware that Amazon is in fight for talent.
“We are all replaceable” Jonah Peretti, founder, Buzzfeed. For a minute I thought he was talking about the impermanence of his publication, then realized that he was talking about online journalist unions. Question: will you miss Buzzfeed it went away?