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  • Tesla Skepticism and Superchargers, Medium for Publishers

    Just because Tesla is achieving an Apple-like brand doesn’t mean they will have Apple’s success: the hard part starts now. Plus, why SuperChargers are a big deal. Then, Medium for Publishers is Medium’s play to own the long tail of publishing, and it’s very exciting in what it enables.

  • Kanye West and Tidal, The Problem with Exclusivity, Pandora for Sale?

    Kanye West says his new album will be available exclusively on Tidal, which doesn’t make sense for consumers or for West as either a businessman or an artist. Then, Pandora is yet another advertising-based business to feel the heat, and it’s exacerbated by backwards-looking labels

  • The FANG Playbook

    The FANG companies — Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google — are far more similar than you might think. Their rise in value is no accident, and it is connected to Aggregation Theory.

  • WhatsApp Drops Subscription Fee, Messaging’s Monetization Potential, GM Acquires Sidecar Remnants

    WhatsApp unsurprisingly dropped their subscription fee and, paradoxically, increased the services value. There are much better ways to monetize messaging. Plus, why it doesn’t matter what car makers do.

  • Netflix Goes Global, iPhone Worry

    Netflix’s surprising announcement that the company was extending its service to nearly every country on earth was impressive in its execution, what it said about the company’s strategy, and it raised interesting points about Aggregation Theory and Netflix’s future opportunities. Plus, there is a lot of smoke when it comes to worries about the iPhone.

  • YouTube Red, Yahoo Stumbles

    YouTube Red doesn’t make much sense at first glance, but there might be something there if Google goes all in. Plus, the sad end of Yahoo.

  • Are Ebooks Declining, or Just the Publishers?, Oyster Goes Out of Business, Media Notes

    A follow-up on e-book publishing, and why there is so much dispute about just how many e-books are sold.

  • Medium and the Publishing Long Tail, Content Blockers and Facebook, Amazon Prime and the Washington Post

    A bit of follow-up on yesterday’s post Popping the Publishing Bubble, and why Medium is potentially trying to replicate Stripe’s strategy. Plus, the key decision-maker when it comes to ad-blocking is Facebook, and it’s not at all clear what they will do. Finally, an experiment from Jeff Bezos with the Washington Post and Amazon Prime.

  • Popping the Publishing Bubble

    For years publishers haven’t had to worry about business models: they just captured attention and watched the money come in. Those days, though, are over: the publications that survive will start with business models and build journalism around it.

  • From Products to Platforms

    Apple was at its best in its most recent keynote: unveiling the sorts of products the company is uniquely capable of creating. The question, though, is whether the company has the vision and capability of making those products into platforms.