Making Money
Business models are the surest way to understand a company’s motivations.
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For Apple, hitting middle age means a strategy primarily focused on monetizing its existing customers. It makes sense, but one wonders what happens next.
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The impact of Facebook’s News Feed changes on the media is far less interesting than what the changes — and their stated purpose — say about Facebook itself.
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Google is at its best when its product focus follows its business model; for too long Android was a detour.
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Nest and Podcasting Follow-up, Box Earnings, Microsoft’s Cloud Challenge
Follow-up on Nest and Podcasting, then why Box’s numbers are a bit more worrisome than the company is letting on. Plus, a must-read article on Microsoft.
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The Future of Podcasting
Podcasting is stuck between the open model of the past and the push for monetization in the future. Might there be a third way that actually benefits publishers?
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Trouble at Lending Club, Lending Club and Aggregation Theory, What Went Wrong
FinTech seems like the perfect application of Aggregation Theory, but over this past week it has blown up in the face of serious issues at Lending Club. The mistakes that were made in do to a degree validate why I haven’t covered the space to date.
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Apple, Didi, and Occam’s Razor; Uber in China
Apple investing $1 billion in Didi could signify all kinds of things, but only one explanation makes sense. The big loser, though, is Uber.
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The Full TSLA Experience, Twitter vs LinkedIn, Nintendo vs Sony
Elon Musk may be a lot of things, but he’s not exactly straight with investors, and now he’s making his biggest bet yet. Plus, the differences between Twitter and LinkedIn, and Nintendo and Sony
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Amazon Earnings, Amazon’s Cloud War
Amazon’s earnings were even better than reported: it looks like the retail business is gaining real economies of scale, and AWS was even stronger than it appeared.
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Apple’s Run, Apple Earnings and the iPhone Upgrade Cycle, The iPhone in China
Apple had an amazing run, but now there are very real questions about the iPhone, in no small part because Apple itself doesn’t seem sure what is going on.
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Prince, Bowie, and Beyoncé; Google’s Margin Squeeze; Microsoft’s Miss
Prince and David Bowie both understood the Internet, but took drastically different approaches. Then, Google’s business is fine, but it has almost certainly peaked, and the company could learn something from Microsoft about managing expectations.