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The most important business model for consumers.

  • Newspapers Are Dead; Long Live Journalism

    The fundamental economic model of newspapers is broken; for journalism to survive, new business models must be found.


  • The Stages of Newspapers’ Decline

    The second-most common objection to FiveThirtyEight and the End of Average was along these lines: Love 100% of @stratechery posts but this one off: forgets to segment market. Many don't care about "quality" news http://t.co/KnSmNgZbS2 — Rich Yudhishthu (@yudhishthu) March 17, 2014 That’s very true; those same people – and there are a lot of […]


  • Messaging: Mobile’s Killer App

    Messaging is a completely new kind of social networking that is uniquely enabled by mobile.


  • Google’s New Business Model

    Excepting the patent and panic-driven Motorola deal, prior to yesterday’s acquisition of Nest for $3.2 billion, the previous largest deal Google’s history was DoubleClick for $3.1 billion 2006. Beyond the similar dollar figures, it’s a deal worth considering for what it says about Google then and now. With the acquisition of DoubleClick, Google solidified its […]


  • Business Models for 2014

    Perhaps the greatest continuing disconnect between technologists and normals is the value ascribed to software. As Marc Andreesen famously declared, “Software is eating the world,” and while that is absolutely true, software, especially in the consumer space, is not eating value, at least not directly. In fact, if 2013 taught us anything, it’s that the […]


  • The Multitudes of Social

    Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) – Walt Whitman, Song of Myself Last week Snapchat reportedly turned down a $3 billion dollar all-cash offer from Facebook. Apparently Facebook was worried about losing the teen demographic, or perhaps they were unnerved by the 350 million photos […]


  • Facebook Acquires Onavo

    Earlier this week Facebook acquired the mobile data analytics company Onavo. The original spin was that this was a great fit with Internet.org, given that Onavo’s apps are focused on monitoring data usage and maximizing the amount of data you get per kilobyte. Onavo said as much in their blog post announcing the acquisition: As […]


  • Overstating the Consumerization of IT

    Marco Arment, in Underscore Price Dynamics: This is the real reason why Apple doesn’t care about upgrade pricing: there’s no demand from customers. The market has shown that free apps will be downloaded at least an order of magnitude more than paid-up-front apps, and smart use of in-app purchase in a free app is likely […]


  • There Are Two Twitters; Only One is Worth Investing In

    There are two Twitters. One is for special occasions only, while I am obsessed with the other. The ultimate value of the Twitter stock (TWTR?) is fully dependent on which of these two Twitters is on offer. Twitter #1: What’s Happening? The first version of Twitter isn’t hard to find: Welcome to Twitter. Find out […]


  • Twitter Acquires MoPub

    When Yahoo Acquired Tumblr, I wrote about the Signal-to-Ads Cycle: The result is the signal-to-ads cycle: Information is gathered from first-party sites via analytics, 3rd-party sites via ads, buttons, etc, and owned-and-operated mobile apps tied to your identity (think Instagram) Highly targeted ads are served in search results, display ads, and natively, primarily on PCs […]