TechCrunch notes from Snap’s filing that Snap are committing to spend $2B with Google over the next 5 years on Cloud Infrastructure. $400M per year isn’t big compared to Google’s other revenues (from ads), but it shows the growth coming. Similar to how Apple’s watch business is tiny compared to the iPhone sales, but is huge compare to other global companies eg Rolex (Apple...
Medium launching subscription plan this quarter
Good news. I think. Via TechCrunch:
Medium CEO Ev Williams announced today at Upfront Summit that his company will launch a consumer subscription product, with the first version coming this quarter.
Ev called the product “an upgrade to your Medium experienceâ€
I can pretty much guarantee I’ll be subscribing.
I love Medium and spend time in there every single day.
Amazon head count hits 341,000
That’s a lot of people for a ‘technology company’. And the growth rate is staggering – more than 110,000 in the last 12 months. And they plan to add another 100,000 in the next 18 months. Incredible.
via GeekWire
BloomBerry
Potentially useful tool for analysing the types of questions people are asking about a topic:
BloomBerry is an ever expanding database containing millions of real questions from across the web.
Questions are then intelligently grouped into topics for easy analysis.
But heavily weighted with Quora posts it seems – for example.
Salesforce is doomed. Apparently
This, kids, is why you need to take most opinion pieces on tech blogs – even the respected ones – with a grain of salt. The title – Why Salesforce is the new Blackberry – is a clever title. It certainly got me interested. But then *sigh*, as the post attempted to position Salesforce as being in danger of sudden death – but never clear what causes that death (ie the...
Just say Thank You
Useful reminder from James Clear with 7 times you should just say Thank You. #1 on his list is where I usually stuff up – responding to compliments. As James notes: We often ruin compliments by devaluing the statement or acting overly humble. Internally, you might think this prevents you from appearing arrogant or smug. The problem is that by deflecting the praise of a genuine compliment...
Google Featured Snippets
A good post from Moz covering some featured snippet testing they conducted. Featured snippets are predominantly paragraph snippets, although other formats (list and tables) are increasing. Here’s a quick takeaway for you: Key findings: Featured snippet paragraph lengths The optimal length of a featured snippet paragraph is roughly 40 to 50 words, or around 300 characters. Lots more to learn...
Who the hell uses QR Codes?
I was reading through Belle magazine this morning – this is a higher end magazine covering interior design and beautiful apartments/homes. One of the early ads (ie expensive placement) was this double-page spread: My eye was caught by the QR code in the bottom right corner. I’m always amazed when companies promote a QR code – seems like a waste of good call-to-action real estate...
Apple App Store Personalisation Opportunity
Full marks to Apple for being seasonally aware and promoting apps related to Chinese New Year: But I can’t help wondering if there’s a massive opportunity they’ve missed. I don’t speak Chinese, I’ve never shown any interest in Chinese apps, and nothing in my past activity would suggest an interest in Chinese Apps. Apple has no idea about me it seems. Google would be...
Instagram on Tumblr
Not quite sure why I find it strange that Instagram use Tumblr for their blog platform… Perhaps I thought they would have moved to Medium by now. Or use Facebook notes. Or at least use a responsive theme: Tumblr in a browser is an unpleasant user experience. Especially on mobile. The continual prompts to open AND get the app are web site amateurism. So at odds with the user experience of...