The Low-Down: 2016-04-03

Apr 9, 2016

You Are What You Drive: How the Most Popular Cars in the US Vary By City

Are we really that predictable? Well, as a matter of fact, yes we are. JL

Price Economics reports:

The proportion of American cars is particularly low in the Bay Area. While over 75% of the cars we service in Detroit are American made, this is true of less than 30% of the cars in San Francisco and San Jose.

Trans-gender? Cross-racial? Inter-faith? Just wait till you try to reconcile different operating systems. JL

Caroline Moss comments in Medium:

How do you save an inter-operating-system romance?

Customers can just be so darned unreasonable. JL

Nate Smith reports in Digital Journal:

According to observations from human workers still employed by one such restaurant, the robots lacked the intelligence to effectively wait on guests. The robots were unable to pour beverages for guests, nor were they able to consistently take accurate food orders. Robots still maintain a presence, but as greeters and not as wait staff.

Not that you'd want to get in their way, but the economics suggest this will soon be an awesome and increasingly common sight. JL

Joon Wong reports in Quartz:

When trucks autonomously follow one another, it’s called “platooning.” They’re connected by wifi and can leave a much smaller gap between vehicles than when humans are at the wheel. Platooning can reduce fuel use by up to 15%, prevent human error from causing accidents, and reduce congestion. Two trucks clocking 100,000 miles annually can save €6,000 on fuel by platooning, compared to driving on cruise control

Video gaming, health care and engineering are projected to be the primary applications - and beneficiaries. Which suggests that any activity which can benefit from its visual enhancement is likely to do so. JL

ETCIO.com reports:

According to Goldman Sachs, virtual reality will be a $35 billion annual industry by 2025. Video gaming takes the cake, followed by health care and engineering.

The economy has not been performing well for the bottom 90% for the past forty years.

The arguments of those concerned about the impact of technology on jobs appears to be based primarily on data. The counter-arguments of those who believe in the promise of a technologically-driven future seem mostly based on hope.

It may be that the data are backward-looking and irrelevant. And it may be that the hope is naive and misplaced. Or Both. The challenge is finding the will to ease the burden of these changes until we are surer of where this leads and what its ultimate impact could be. JL

Moshe Vardi reports in The New Republic:

Are today’s technological innovations like those of the past, which made obsolete the job of buggy maker, but created the job of automobile manufacturer? While automation is eliminating many jobs once done by people, there is no sign that the introduction of technologies in recent years is creating an equal number of well-paying jobs to compensate for those losses. In 2010, only 0.5 percent of the labor force was employed in industries that did not exist in 2000.

Innovation can take many forms. The question, beyond their ability to fill us with wonder - and sometimes even joy - is, in an increasingly crowded world of devices, all owned by companies trying to figure out how to generate more revenue out of them - which ones are simply cute and which ones we really need. Because it is unlikely that consumers in this techno-financial environment are going to want or be able to afford all of them. JL

Matthew Schneier reports in the New York Times:

The company bags are smart — in the Silicon Valley sense of the word. The included battery, which is approved by the Transportation Security Administration, can charge phones or USB-connected devices and sync to a app that geo-locate(s) your bag (it can send you a push notification when it reaches the baggage carousel) or weigh it, using a handle sensor. Tell the app your flight details, and it will find what overage fees apply if you’ve overstuffed it.

Yahoo Bidders Emerge: Verizon Definitely, Google Maybe. Time Inc. and Others Wavering. Microsoft Out: The Whys

For a business widely derided as useless and hopeless, Yahoo sure is attracting a lot of interest from primo bidders.

Which reminds us why the comments of activist investors criticizing the management of companies in which they have taken a stake is called 'talking their book.'

As the following article explains, investors are hoping to get some valuable assets on the cheap, including Yahoos customer data and its advertising technology. This will strengthen the offerings the bidders already have, and a lot less expensively than building the same capabilities from scratch. JL

Alex Sherman and colleagues report in Bloomberg, Timothy Lee reports in Vox:

Verizon buying Yahoo looks like Verizon buying AOL. Both are internet brands whose best days are in the past. Yahoo makes money by creating content and selling ads against it. Verizon could use data gathered from its broadband and mobile networks to target ads effectively. Scale (is) important in the online advertising business. (They) prefer a few big deals rather than many small ones, so larger companies command premium prices. With Yahoo and AOL, Verizon would integrate ad sales teams and offer packages.

From punch cards and accumulated points to instant mobile gratification. JL

Jon Cifuentes reports in Venture Beat:

In a modern marketing ecosystem with 1-1 engagement becoming the rule rather than exception, the old “buy ten get one free” punch cards of yore won’t cut it (so) anticipating your customers’ next steps by developing a real-time feedback loop was critical to sustaining growth in mobile.

Larry Summers, Harvard economics professor, former Harvard president and former US Treasury Secretary, is a controversial figure. So is the notion that government has a role in anything, especially a field of human endeavor as sensitive as personal information.

But he makes the argument that data is essential to improving the functioning of government which, in turn, has the capacity to improve our lives, ideological cant to the contrary. He addresses the concern that government collection of communications data is, in the post-Edward Snowden era, by its nature intrusive and destructive.

His point, argued indirectly, is that all data collection: census data, consumer price indexes, etc are intrusive, but that we are better off for having that knowledge. The challenge is how to collect such information without threatening those who provide it. There is currently no easy answer, due in part, to past abuses and because we are living in deeply untrusting times. The question is whether the decision not to collect is somehow better - or worse - than doing so. JL

Larry Summers comments in the Washington Post:

It is fantasy to suppose data will come into being without government effort. Equally, we will sell ourselves short if we stick with traditional collection methods and ignore innovative providers and methods such as the use of smartphones, drones, satellites and supercomputers. Communication technologies will allow us to better hold policymakers to account with reliable and rapid performance measures. We will gain capacities we cannot now imagine but will come to regard as indispensable.This is the work of both governments and the private sector.

From social media to messaging, brands have been both enticed by the potential to connect with consumers and wary of becoming the proverbial skunk at the garden party, whose unwanted presence alienates more than attracts.

The use of branded emojis may provide a partial solution, assuming people find pictures less offensive than ads, but the larger question of how to engage without antagonizing remains a significant challenge - and a huge opportunity for whoever can figure it out. JL

Robert Hof reports in the New York Times:

With 1.4 billion monthly users collectively worldwide, apps such as Snapchat, WhatsApp and Kik, and Weixin and Line, have become the main daily hangout for young people, even surpassing the time they spend on social networks and games. (But) who wants ads from Pampers cluttering their most intimate chats?Avoiding that potential to antagonize is one reason that many messaging services have either not allowed marketing or severely limited it.

The law of big numbers makes it increasingly difficult for large corporations to grow at rate investors find exciting. Apple has relied primarily on the sale of tangible products - its devices. But growth has slowed.

Consumers, especially those facing income constraints as the developed world's population ages and competition keeps compensation down in the developing world, need only so many of them and are not necessarily willing to replace them every year or two.

There is an answer: the intangibles made manifest by the service economy. From texting to cloud storage to Apple Music, there is potentially significant growth available. Some of this may come from new offerings, but as the following article explains, Apple does not currently charge for many of its extant services which could become revenue sources. Intangible services providers like Google - and even Microsoft - enjoy higher price-earnings multiples than Apple. To keep up, it will have to change. JL

Kif Leswing reports in Business Insider:

Apple has 588 million users worldwide. This is important as Apple is trying to change its story: The vast majority of its revenue comes from selling premium hardware. But Apple wants to become "a services company," like Google or Microsoft, because services provide a lot of the value in using a device. The challenge is to increase the services it can generate from one of its customers. Apple services revenue could more than double by 2020 to $53 billion.

We tout our ability to multi-task 24-7. But the reality, as the following article explains, is that we are easily distracted.

The psychology of notifications - and of productivity - suggests that people search for technological solutions designed to help them overcome their idiosyncratic personal inefficiencies - but then simply fall into the same old habits by relying on 'fixes' that make matters worse: multiple to-do apps of varying complexity which themselves demand constant maintenance and can not be synched; incessant reaction to push notifications - 'the Pavlovian Bell of the 21st century;' addiction to multiple communications media, each with its own beguiling attractions.

The reality is that becoming seamlessly connected means becoming endlessly distracted. The advantages of the technological age and mobility are also its detriments. We want convenience, instant global connectivity and simplicity. We got them - but we just haven't figured out how to manage. And no, there's not an app for that. JL

Peter Schiff comments in Tech Crunch:

We have an aversion to getting told what to do versus getting told we’re being talked about. Notifications (are) “the Pavlovian bell of the 21st century.” For app designers and users, notifications are (an) exciting way to engage users, but kill our ability to do focus work. To-do list apps help you form habits of ignorance, where Twitter forms an addiction.

How Rwanda Got the World's First Network of Delivery Drones

As a strategy, going from extreme to common in order to prove the concept and establish the brand is probably more productive and cost-effective than attempting to go from mass market to exclusive.

Especially with a technology many favor, but few understand or can manage well. JL

MIT Technology Review reports:

Drone delivery currently makes most sense only in extreme situations. Zipline is working with the Rwandan government to create a network of delivery drones that will ferry medical supplies across the country. The network will be capable of making 50 to 150 deliveries per day, using a fleet of 15 aircraft, each with twin electric motors and an almost eight-foot wingspan. The(y) will use GPS to navigate, and will airdrop supplies.

Every business that sub-contracts runs risks in doing so. Whatever the contract may say, not being there to oversee quality is chancy. The trade-off is usually lower cost, which translates into higher margins and greater profit.

But if there is anything the owner of a brand must understand, it is that if your name is on it, you own it, no matter how tenuous the actual supply chain relationship may be. This may be even more so when your father is running for President and routinely castigates those who manufacture outside the US. JL

Megan Friedman reports in Elle:

It seems like her fashion line might be feeling the Bern (er, burn).

Uber hoisted on its own technological prowess? JL

David Kravets reports in ars technica:

"Agreement 'among hundreds of thousands of independent transportation providers all across the United States is the 'genius' of Mr. Kalanick and his company, which, through the magic of smartphone technology, can invite hundreds of thousands of drivers in far-flung locations to agree to Uber’s terms." Advancement of technology, judge rules, "need not leave antitrust law behind."

What do you do when you have too much inventory? You either put it on sale or re-purpose it. Or both.

Given the inroads ecommerce has made on traditional retailers, one 'product' they definitely have way too much of is space. So Staples, the office products giant, as well as Sears and Macy's, are offering space to others in their better locations.

Sears and Macy's are basically just trying to sublet to other retailers - a longstanding practice that Bloomingdale's, among others - pioneered by encouraging the opening of designer boutiques (Ralph Lauren, et al) in their stores.

But Staples may have the most intriguing model. Entrepreneurs already use the company's business services like copying, shipping, printing, etc. Now they can lease communal office space in a Staples store, a concept not unlike a business incubator - but with plenty of printer paper, thumb drives and energy bars for sale, as well. Further evidence that intangibles are out-selling tangibles in creativity and, increasingly, volume. JL

Drew Fitzgerald and Suzanne Kapner report in the Wall Street Journal:

Staples (will) unveil a partnership with Workbar, office-sharing startup that manages a network of locations with desks and conference rooms that subscribers can access for a monthly fee. For Staples, which has had declining shopper traffic, the arrangement will draw small-business owners and mobile professionals who will then shop for office supplies. “Obviously, it drives traffic for us.”

Tesla's Model 3 has captured all the attention, but just as Samsung/Android has proven to be a notable competitor to Apple, GM's Chevrolet brand may challenge Elon Musk's enterprise.

Chevy introduced the Bolt in January. It will be priced to compete with the Model 3. But just as execution is more important than concept in many businesses, GM's century of actually building, delivering and servicing cars may prove to be a strategic advantage once the hype about plunking down a $1,000 Tesla deposit fades and the wait for taking ownership begins. JL

David Welch reports in Bloomberg:

GM and Tesla have a lot riding on the release of their newest EVs, as both companies go after the middle market.

Technology biting the hand that funded it. Ouch. JL

Matt Egan reports in CNN/Money:

Former Barclays (BCS) CEO Antony Jenkins has likened this to the banking industry's Uber moment. The smartphone revolution threatens more established players. The payments business has experienced some of the greatest changes, with platforms like PayPal, Apple (AAPL, Tech30) Pay and Square (SQ) transforming the way consumers make payments. Sophisticated robo advisers can manage money automatically. Even highly paid Wall Street jobs aren't safe.

Record amounts of money are flowing into venture capital funds. Growing numbers of smart people with tech experience have interesting, innovative ideas.

The crucial differentiator between success and failure as the following article explains, is neither concepts nor funding, it's the ability to effect the vision. JL

Caroline Howard comments in Forbes:

Ideas will continue to evolve the more you tweak them and the more you learn. Too much funding in the beginning is death. The trap is that founders will spend too much and not focus enough on income. When designing the amount of money you want to raise, try to think 18 months or 2 years. More, and you will use the money too fast.

And the Last Shall Be First? How Twitter Beat Amazon, Verizon With Low Bid for NFL Streaming Rights

Why would the National Football League, America's media dominatrix, sell video streaming rights to the lowest bidder, who also happens to be an enterprise many believe is on its last legs?

No, the NFL is not stupid. It's actually re-selling media inventory it has already sold in other formats - broadcast and mobile - to the CBS and NBC networks and to Verizon. This enables the NFL to keep the various digital, broadcast and mobile players competing with each other so that none gains too much power in the battle for football viewing rights.

Meanwhile Major League Baseball appears to be propping up yet another also-ran, Yahoo, by permitting it to stream one free game a day. Why cannibalize the insanely successful mlb.com? Because Yahoo, despite its desperation as a business proposition, still attracts millions of sports-minded fans thanks to its stats and extensive coverage. Again, a league looking to find ways to keep its suppliers on their digital heels while it attracts more eyeballs for advertisers to think about.

All of which suggests that digital enterprises will be harder to kill or acquire inexpensively than their more tangible forebears, and that their intangible assets are far more attractive than GAAP accounting of their value may suggest. JL

Peter Kafka reports in Re/code:

CBS and NBC have their own digital rights. So Twitter will be rebroadcasting the CBS and NBC feeds of the games, and will have the rights to sell a small portion of the ads associated with each game.Further generating more revenue for the NFL — is the fact that Verizon already owns the mobile rights to NFL games. Which means that the NFL gets more money for the same games it has already sold a couple of times.

Feeding into tech's gender cluelessness meme while possibly retarding the growth of a potentially huge market? JL

Jacqueline Wernimont reports in Slate:

The wearable industries are valued at $15 billion in 2015 and estimated to be worth $25 billion by 2019. But the style and knowledge on offer is highly gendered. While a woman can gather information on athletic performance and basic biometrics just like her male counterpart, women’s wearables remain firmly entrenched in old gender norms that suggest what women want and need is beauty, love, protection, and motherhood.

Millennials gigging while they write that screen play? Not so much.

As the following article explains, most gig work is being performed by Boomers (them again!) whose jobs have been outsourced or right-sized and, quite possibly, because they haven't saved enough to retire since the corporate elimination of pensions and most other benefits began early in their working careers.

The double whammy, from an economic policy standpoint, is that not only do the Boom-sters not have enough moolah put away to do much consuming, but their needs are cascading down the demographic ladder and preventing successive generations from establishing a firmer economic base as well. JL

Justin Fox reports in Bloomberg:

The gig economy, is being driven not so much by struggling millennials lining up gigs online as by 60-year-olds working as independent contractors.Workers ages 55 to 75 and workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher have been more likely than others to be in alternative work arrangements. The share of older and better-educated workers in alternative work has also continued to rise, at a pace faster than that of the rest of the workforce.

Availability is useful, but the big challenge will be getting automakers to preload it as a marketable feature. Most of the manufacturers are trying to sort through whether to partner with a third party vendor like Google - or make their own.

The issue, as with so much else around tech today, is not so much the technology as who gets overarching rights to the data the system will generate.

Sam Byford reports in The Verge:

The smart car interface now has functionality in 18 new countries plus the territory of Puerto Rico; the list now includes potentially huge markets like India and Russia, along with several countries that mark a major expansion into South America.

Siri, Clara, Amy and their like are playing a growing role in organizing professional as well as personal lives. Amazon's Echo may soon follow. While adding a familiar feature to an increasingly tech-driven work-scape, these virtual digital assistants may also drive improved productivity and performance - or at least make executives feel so in a Hawthorne Experiment sort of way.

The only caveat, for those who are - and should be cognizant of these matters - if the proclivity towards female voices and names. One suspects gender will soon become a feature of choice not tradition...JL

Elizabeth Woyke reports in MIT Technology Review:

While Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana get the attention, AI-powered assistants and software geared toward businesspeople are increasingly popular.

Our own experience - and anecdotal evidence - tells us that technology has played a growing role in the economy. But as the following article explains, tracking this movement via the tech buying habits of consumers gives us much more granular information about trends whose precise dates and import are often hotly debated.

The more significant implication may be that we can discern future developments by employing statistical methods which correlate governmental records like the Consumer Price Index with the ever more detailed data coming from technology itself. Given the growing role of technology in our lives as well as the amounts of resources and time devoted to understanding it, this may lead to better decision-making about such elusive concepts as the impact of tech on productivity as well as the optimal role for private and public investment. JL

Adrienne LaFrance reports in The Atlantic:

When the television appeared, it was weighted three times as heavily as radio. By (the 1990s), habits had changed so dramatically that it was time to overhaul the way (we) measured the nation’s economy. In 1997, the Internet finally showed up on the Consumer Price Index. In 1998, telephone services cost more than twice their previous peak in the 1960s. The index began tracking wireless service in 2004; but from the data people began dropping landlines around 2010.

As Marketers Take Control of Ad Tech, Complexity Follows

Data is money, information is more money and wisdom is gold. All of which can be monetized, traded and invested. JL

Jack Neff reports in Advertising Age:

In-house trading desks make suppliers into buyers and partners into rivals. Expect to see more marketers go in-house for transparency, everything from the cost of the technology to the rates you pay the publishers as the industry evolves into a complex web of partners, competitors and frenemies.

Has there ever been a consumer electronics product whose unlamented demise was repeatedly declared with an installed base of almost 2 billion devices and sales of a quarter billion a year? With apologies to Will Shakespeare, methinks the rest of the industry doth protest too much. JL

Quentin Hardy reports in the New York Times:

Last year, 289 million PCs were sold worldwide, an 8 percent drop from 2014.The falloff is expected to level off this year, with PC sales expected to begin growing slowly in 2017. But that still leaves the question of whether PCs can seem cool again..“I hear ‘post-PC era’ and think it’s rubbish,” said Jeff Clarke, president for client solutions at Dell. “We sell a quarter-billion devices. The installed base is 1.9 billion. "

In a world where the meaning of data can transcend the information itself, the question is no longer just what to report - but why to report it - and, often - how. JL

Tatyana Shumsky reports in the Wall Street Journal:

About two-thirds of Adobe’s revenue comes from online subscriptions, instead of packaged discs. (It) is just the latest company to change the way it defines success. As they are forced to adjust to new delivery methods or changing consumer tastes, corporate finance chiefs are reconsidering what benchmarks they should share with investors.

It helps to understand that Echo was created in the wake of the Amazon Fire smartphone, which had failed miserably. For a proud company with a demanding CEO, this imposed an even higher bar than might have been expected ordinarily.

And though consumer testing suggested music was an attractive 'hook' for getting consumers excited, the company wanted to avoid the market trap that labeling it 'just' another music-oriented device would mean. Ultimately, the issue of 'latency' - how quickly it could respond to how many disparate demands became the key - with 1.5 seconds becoming the ultimate achievement.

Echo appears to be a runaway hit. And the lesson may be that making a copycat product like a smartphone will never differentiate a company known for innovation in service. Keeping the creative team's eye on the real prize, technological and consumer supremacy, is essential. JL

Eugene Kim reports in Business Insider:

The gadget was stuck in Amazon's in-house labs for years, subject to the perfectionist demands of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and debates about market appeal. It’s added checking bank accounts, ordering pizza, or calling Uber by just talking to it. It’s compatible with internet-connected home devices. Echo hit a million pre-orders in less than two weeks, better than the iPhone, which took 70 days to reach the same milestone.

Statisticians know that it is impossible to make accurate predictions based on data generated during times of great change. Social media is only ten years old. The populations use of it is evolving - and in classic co-evolutionary fashion - the media are changing in response to and in anticipation of further change.

What this means is that the way we viewed and used social media up to now may not, in fact probably will not be the way we do so going forward. The implication for both users, social media owners and advertisers is that both utilization and monetization are going to evolve as well. Uncertainty's a bitch, but for anyone who can accurately anticipate the direction, it's a huge opportunity. JL

David Moth reports in The Guardian:

Organic reach on brand pages had plummeted to just 6%, a sharp fall from 12% in October 2013. Brands are being crowded out of social media platforms as content from publishers and people’s friends is given priority in the news feed. It could be that it comes down to producing content that is both relevant to your audience and tied to long-term business goals, rather than chasing virality and looking for quick wins.

Models are evolving. In addition to the worker classification legal challenge that may continue for years, startups are finding that customers demand premium quality if they are going to charge premium prices (and in order to justify their valuations).

The result is that they are finding it is better to control more of the process in order to capture gains while delivering optimal service.

It's what some might call an old model - but it's one that technology can now enable.

Sarah Kessler reports in Fast Company:

Paying a premium for instant delivery is dubious beyond transportation and food delivery. You might be hungry right now, but for most goods and services, Amazon Prime’s one-day delivery works just fine. Instead of functioning only as a technology layer on top of other businessest's it's better for business to own more of the process, not less.

Apps were - and are - a response to both powerful new technologies and the need to optimize them. But, as the following article explains, technology and the web have progressed, moved and morphed.

It's not that apps have become the brick phones of this moment, but that better solutions are available now and more will be soon. And that tends to be how this revolution works. JL

Donny Reynolds comments in Medium:

Mobile apps succeeded because of the right combination of fast network and capable handheld processors. Technologies have progressed much further than that, and the world of apps has grown beyond a healthy size. People don’t care how it all works, they just want to throw birds at pigs and show off their #nofilter selfies. Of the headaches that follow the impenetrable mobile market today, the two most urgent would the delivery and discoverability of content.

Plan B For Millennials' High City Rents: Adult Dorms?

Spending 30% of your income on rent is considered affordable - and sustainable. By which measure no one can afford to live in New York, San Francisco and other cities - at least without help from their parents or proverbial sugar daddies...JL

Eliot Brown and Laura Kusisto report in the Wall Street Journal:

The typical renter between 22 and 34 years old living alone would have to spend 53% of his or her income to pay the median apartment rent in the U.S. Spending 30% of one’s income on rent is considered financially sustainable. Widening income gaps and the resurgence of the city create the market conditions for the rebirth of rooming houses. The way people have (traditionally) afforded to live in central cities is to have less space.

Since increasing the supply is time-consuming and expensive (even with the outreach to developing nations), an alternative is to democratize, ie make more comprehensible and broadly available, the predictive tools required.

This mimics the popularization of technology, wherein the priesthood of IT experts has been, to a large degree, supplanted by a somewhat more educated and skilled user base accessing knowledge crafted for them. Technology's power increased as it spread. Analysis of the data it generates may follow. JL

Gil Press reports in Forbes:

The shortage of data scientists is giving rise to new self-service tools, automating all stages of data science so business analysts, marketing managers, IT staff and others could perform advanced analytics as part of their jobs. By 2017, Gartner says, the number of these citizen data scientists in small and large organizations will grow five times faster than the number of highly skilled data scientists.

Talk about NOT burying your head in the sand, unlike some other economies we could name...JL

John Micklethwait and colleagues report in Bloomberg:

Saudi will sell shares in Aramco’s parent company and transform the oil giant into an industrial conglomerate. The initial public offering could happen as soon as next year. IPOing Aramco and transferring its shares to PIF will technically make investments the source of Saudi government revenue, not oil. What is left now is to diversify investments. So within 20 years, (it) will be an economy or state that doesn’t depend mainly on oil

Juries want to know why victims permitted such videos in the first place - and then shared them or saved them on their phones. JL

Matthew Goldstein reports in the New York Times:

(A) decision to drop charges may illustrate the difficulties in pursuing such cases because they require a jury not to hold the victim partly responsible for creating the sexually explicit images in the first place and either sharing them with a former partner or storing them on a cellphone.

The fractured media attention-scape, as the following article explains, is reducing the amount of impact that multiple brands and extensions may have.

It makes sense, in this environment, to focus on the master brand in order to cut through the clutter, and then lead consumers to the specific attributes they seek. This does not mean spending less, it means more data-driven, intelligent spending. JL

Denise Yohn reports in Harvard Business Review:

In today’s fragmented media landscape, despite the lower levels of reach that broadcast media outlets deliver today, as well as the proliferating niche social media channels, an advertiser can maximize the exposure it generates in a single media channel by spreading it across multiple brands and products.

Remember eyeballs? It was a metric. And as such it was accorded an elevated level of respect because, first of all, it was a number, which meant it was derived from math, a subject most of the population fears.

But also, because it wasn't one of these bloodless GAAP accounting head-fakes attempting to explain something that only the financial priesthood could discern. It actually measured something real. Or so people thought. And there was a time, back in the halcyon days of dotcom, when lots of smart people thought that was a measure of attention.

It just made sense: the more time you spent on a site, the more interested you were, right? And that would pretty much automatically lead to sales because, well, why wouldn't it? And if you doubted that, you were, sadly one of those who 'just don't get it.'

But it turned out that famous metrics then were not unlike famous metrics now. Not necessarily what they appeared to be. Further research demonstrated that the time people were spending on a website - from their desktop or laptop - often was the result of their immensely frustrating inability to enter a credit card number. Or worse, that they were on-hold with customer service - back when customer service meant you could talk to a human - and when there even was customer service.

So the fact, as the following article explains, that people are spending record amounts of time on their phones is not leading to similar increases in sales (so far, we hasten to add) - and that credit cards are once again a primary suspect - suggests that the move to more seamless mobile transactions is rather more urgent - and potentially profitable - than current emphasis might indicate. It may, in fact, be essential. JL

Jason Del Rey reports in Re/code:

Shopping on mobile phones is growing at its fastest rate ever. But there’s still a huge gap between how much time shoppers spend on mobile websites and apps, and the percentage of total e-commerce sales that happen on these mobile sites. One big reason for this 44 percent gap: entering credit card and shipping details on a phone can be a pain, both on mobile websites and in apps.

The Cult of the Attention Web: How the Free Internet Is Eating Itself

On the web, time is money. JL

Jesse Weaver comments in Medium:

The finite nature of time means that, in the attention web, everything is in competition with everything else. Facebook is as much in competition with Twitter, as it is with Apple Music, Amazon and Walmart, Xbox, Chipotle and your family dinner table. Time spent shopping, eating, talking, playing, or sleeping is time that you are not looking at ads. It’s why Facebook has experimented with in-feed shopping. They have to compete on all fronts to win the attention war. If they could serve up your meals they would.

People waiting in line, overnight, just like for the latest iPhone. In fact, some of these were probably the same people, only this time they were plunking down a $1,000 deposit for an electric car with a base sticker price of $35,000.

Given the backlogs still extant for previous Tesla models - and the global shortage of charging stations - there are clearly a few logistical and operational details to clear up. But a hit is a hit. JL

Charles Fleming and Samantha Masunaga report in the Los Angeles Times:

Vehicles pre-ordered in the first 24 hours had climbed to 180,000 orders. The selling price with an average option mix was probably about $42,000, which came out to a total of about $7.5 billlion in a day.

Times of organizational transition are also periods of vulnerability. Health care systems are being asked - or ordered - to digitize everything from their records to their procedures.

While this will hopefully have long-term benefits, institutions already operating - literally and figuratively - under extreme pressure must now also ask doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals to digitize what they are doing, all while learning how to do so.

The resultant conditions create mistakes and oversights which hackers are beginning to exploit. JL

Carolyn Johnson and Matt Zapotosky report in the Washington Post:

If you’re a hacker... you’re going to go where the money is and the safe is easiest to open.

Just one: the person responsible for the bottom line. JL

Daniel Gross reports in Slate:

GE just sold 1.4 million LEDs to JPMorgan. The deal could help cut the branches’ lighting-related energy costs in half. The transaction encapsulates just how rapidly the value proposition surrounding energy-efficiency lighting has changed. The very banality of this energy-efficiency effort is what makes it so important.

Michigan is one of the only states with such a law, but as search for privacy and state tax revenues grows, others may follow.

It is also worth noting that one obscure judicial circuit in East Texas dominates the national debate over intellectual property rights so Michigan, with 10 million residents and many corporate headquarters, could be even more powerful. JL

Jeremy Barr reports in Advertising Age:

The suit alleges that personal information was divulged to unnamed third-party, data-mining companies without the consent required under Michigan state law. The Michigan law has national implications, because any media company that has customers in Michigan can face costly class action lawsuits. Even if a fraction of those (10 million) residents are customers of a media company, that company could face tens of millions of dollars in damages in a class action

Amazon is supremely efficient. And customers who value that - and can afford to pay for it - love the service benefits.

But as the company uses its clout - including ownership of the Washington Post - to press for regulatory, tax and operational advantages, questions are being raised about whether Amazon's self-interest is superseding that of consumers and citizens. Many tech companies have overreached while underestimating the power of government, Microsoft and Google being two notable examples.

It is not yet clear whether Amazon is following their path or forging a new one. JL

Cecilia Kang reports in the New York Times:

Amazon has pushed officials to allow new uses for commercial drones, to extend the maximum length of trucks, to improve roads and bridges, to prop up a delivery partner, the United States Postal Service (and) an overhaul of international delivery rates that give foreign e-commerce rivals an advantage to deliver to American homes. “Drones and longer trucks, what are all these efforts for? “To get you your toothpaste faster?”

The technologically-driven intellectual property which provided hedge funds and private equity firms with an unassailable advantage are now available to a broader set of investors at a lower price.

Thanks, of course, to that self-same technology. Despite the fact that financial services funded and nurtured tech, evolution is relentless and has little time for sentiment - as the bankers are now discovering. JL

Timothy Martin and Rob Copeland report in the Wall Street Journal:

A new “engineered equity” product that is similar in approach to a hedge fund uses models—instead of traders—to bundle together stocks that limit volatility or market risk. Investment strategies once available only at hedge funds can now be purchased at a fraction of the cost.

Apr 9, 2016

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