Amazon is working on smart glasses. I get the idea (get their voice platform, Alexa, into as many non-phone products as quickly as possible). But without altering the lenses (i.e. Apple AR glasses/Google Glass), isn’t this just a bluetooth headset?
Apple News is still not driving meaningful ad revenue for publishers — it didn’t when I was at The Times and I tried hard to make it happen. Open it up for publishers to run programmatic (like DFP) and that would change things dramatically. The audience volume is there.
Google is relaxing its first-click-free policy. That’s a huge win for publishers. Now fix monetization on AMP and we’ll be talking.
Augmented reality geofilters in Snap are cool. The data that powers them, however, is quite costly.
NBCU CEO Steve Burke had some interesting thoughts on platforms in an interview with The Information (paywall).
One more from The Information: safety is the biggest concern when it comes to driverless cars. Curb space, apparently, is also a biggie.
Fascinating read in Time how kids sports became a $15b industry. IMO, youth sports + local has huge revenue potential.
A Stratechery post on aggregation theory (he does it every couple months) is always a quality read.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver wants the game to be Twitchified.
Finally, Apple has a new job opening: Siri’s mental health counselor.
Rock and Roll.
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