VentureBeat has the story today of Facebook’s new partnership with Dutch airline KLM to integrate boarding passes, flight information, and customer service into Messenger. As I’ve written before, Facebook Messenger has completely embraced the platform approach and integrated everything from mobile payments to Uber booking to customer service, all in one app. And it’s compelling to see … Continue reading We Have Met the Future, and It Is Messaging
OK GO’s most recent music video, “Upside Down & Inside Out” is pretty stunning. Seriously, watch it now: What makes the video particularly interesting is the fact that it premiered on Facebook, not on YouTube. In fact, a visit to the band’s YouTube channel yields only a snarky prompt to watch the video on Facebook. Devoted … Continue reading The Stars Aligned with Facebook
On Wednesday, Facebook announced a substantial increase in revenue, earning $5.8 billion in Q4, and reaching nearly 1.6 billion users. What struck me was how deeply certain Facebook products – which until somewhat recently had been just side features – are now both intrinsic to its growth strategy and a direct threat to many of … Continue reading Out-Googling Google
Within the past few days, two large car manufacturers have announced significant investments into companies that may, if successful, reduce actual car ownership. General Motors has invested in ridesharing startup Lyft, and Audi has put money into premium car rental service Silvercar. GM announced that it was putting $500 million into Lyft, valuing the company at $5.5 … Continue reading Looking Down the Road
December 2015 was a record month for Ben and me, in terms of page views on Silicon Spatula. We leveraged Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, word-of-mouth, and sympathy clicks from our parents to grow our monthly hits from just a few dozen a month to something much larger. However, as I’ve written, metrics remove, to a certain … Continue reading Page Views
After I wrote my post about Tumblr’s hidden value the other day, Ben Schenker and I got into a conversation about if Yahoo! might present an appealing takeover target, similar to Verizon’s acquisition of erstwhile internet behemoth AOL. It’s hard to imagine, but AOL also seemed equally improbable. Despite its somewhat dated brand image, it’s still … Continue reading Who Would Buy Yahoo?
Google recently announced that it was expanding Google Fiber, its gigabit internet service, to four new regions, for a total of 18 cities. Although the Fiber initiative has been around for a year or two, the recent expansion to a number of larger regions – including Atlanta, Charlotte, and Nashville – makes it seem as … Continue reading Now With More Fiber!
Android OEMs seem bent on making the most bizarre, alienating commercials they can manage. Samsung was the first offender – immediately below – but LG now seems to have taken the cake with its latest bit of insanity.
Apple did a lot right on the software front in 2013 – mostly in the form of iOS 7 on mobile and OSX 10.9 on desktops. And for better or worse, it continued the debatable trend of migrating iOS features to OS X. These changes – Notification Center, Dashboard, iMessage, iBooks, Airdrop, among others – fall into two categories: they either supplant existing third party features (Growl, Google Notifier, or the Kindle app), or supplement your desktop with an app that previously only existed on your phone. The logic from Apple’s point of view is clear: Continue reading “iMessage Not Delivered”
Microsoft is acquiring the phone part of Nokia for a cool $7.2 Billion. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is staying on board, which, I think will fuel rumors that he was a corporate trojan horse – leaving Microsoft for Nokia, only to oversee the latter’s sale to his former employer – and that he is in the running to fill Ballmer’s shoes. To that end, if will be very interesting to see if, in fact, Elop does get the promotion, because it would be indicative of Microsoft’s pivot from a PC and Office-based company to a mobile-oriented one. Continue reading “Microkia”
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