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You have no privacy (still)

A good insight into how much your web and app activity is tracked by advertising and third party tools. Most marketing people will be aware of this, but if outside the industry you may be shocked. New sites were the worst: Among all the sites I visited, news sites, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, had the most tracking resources. This is partly because the sites serve more...

Modern marketing expectations

A good post from Scott Brinker, inspired by Tim Fishburne on what the expectations of a CMO are these days. From Scott’s post: The real challenge is that everything Tom listed in his strip is, indeed, what we now consider the responsibility — officially or unofficially — of marketing leadership:– Grow the business– Make customers happy– Deliver...

HubShots 168: HubSpot Attribution

In episode 168 of HubShots, Ian and I chat through what attribution means in terms of marketing. Turns out it means different things to people. Here’s a few different ways people think of attribution: the HubSpot timelinethe HubSpot Sources Reportthe HubSpot Attribution reportthe Google Analytics channels report These are all correct in their own context. For some enterprises though...

Facebook withholding data from investigators for privacy reasons

Can’t make this stuff up:

But as of today, many of the academic teams remain on hold because Facebook has yet to provide key data required to conduct research into sharing patterns of fake and polarized news, among other projects. Facebook has also declined to provide some of the data it originally said it would offer, citing privacy concerns.

How to tell if a person’s LinkedIn profile is managed by an intern

It’s pretty easy – check what they do on weekends.

Further to my post last week, if they are engaging on weekends (ie replying etc, not the scheduled updates) then there’s a good chance they are actually managing it themselves.

But if all the engagement is on weekdays (and in business hours no less!) then chances are the marketing team (and likely an intern) is managing it.

News spinning like 2005

This article from HuffPost about article spinning news sites is kinda bizarre – it’s like bad SEO from the mid-2000s all over again.

I’ll bet it started as a joke – after all they didn’t even use a decent synonym algorithm – and spiralled into success.

What’s old is new again.

More WeWork

And yes, another link to another WeWork discussion, this time Ben Thompson’s insightful take. Of particular interest (which I haven’t seen highlighted elsewhere), is WeWork’s ability to abandon leases: The company also has another, rather unsavory, advantage in a recession: its opaque corporate structure. While there are many downsides to the fact that the “We Company” is a...

More WeWork lols

Further to my post a few days back, here’s Scott Galloway’s epic WeWork takedown. The last round $47 billion “valuation” is an illusion. SoftBank invested at this valuation with a “pref,” meaning their money is the first money out, limiting the downside. The suckers, idiots, CNBC viewers, great Americans, and people trying to feel young again who buy on the...

Tumblr and WordPress

Such a wonderful interview with Matt Mullenweg by The Verge, discussing Automattic’s purchase of Tumblr. Put aside the riches to rags story of Tumblr (sold to Yahoo for $1.1B in 2013, sold to Automattic for $3M in 2019 – supposably) and instead focus on the well meaning intent of both Verizon and Automattic: Their top priority was not trying to maximize the purchase price. There might...

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