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Spotlight

Silver Beacon Marketing’s Weekly Briefing

 

Good morning. It’s Monday, October 9. This day is still called Columbus Day on federal calendars. There is no regular mail delivery and some big banks are closed. FDR created Columbus Day in the late 1930s, and there is a big movement to rename or abolish the well-intentioned but historically inaccurate holiday. Time has a good article on the controversy.

Highlights
  • The Russian political ads that ran on Facebook were divisive at best.
  • Yahoo admits that all customers were hacked in 2013, not just a third of them.
  • Maybe you’ll use Walmart and Amazon for mail next year. We’ll explain below.

Questions or comments?  Click the green button below & write George.
 

We continue discovering the bad things that happened to our privacy because of data breaches over the last several years. 

That includes Yahoo (now a part of Verizon-owned Oath) admitting that all 3 billion user accounts were compromised in 2013 instead of the 1 billion previously claimed. The breach is four years old so there is little if anything you can do now to protect your privacy from that.

We’ve also learned that the bit.ly and Kickstarter website breaches of 15 million records are now available on black markets. Lifehacker has more info at the link below.

And we’ve been telling you how the Trump administration’s FCC guidance regarding privacy has been to allow Internet companies to sell your browsing data. Google announced this week to publishers that it is testing Insight Engine, a new service that “will include age, gender, relevant search history, shopping history and what visitors seem in the market to buy”.

Learn more: NPR coverage of Yahoo, Lifehacker on data availability, AdAge on Google selling data

Facebook sent Congressional investigators more than 3,000 ads that it says were purchased by Russian organizations in 2016. The post on the left, featuring a hoax image of Hillary Clinton and Osama bin Laden, is reportedly typical of the content. Ads included doctored images of Secretary Clinton in a jail cell and images that sought to exacerbate racial and other divides.

Facebook is now warning advertisers that approval for political and advocacy ads will be delayed by human reviews.

We’re also learning that antivirus software maker Kaspersky may have assisted the Russian government in obtaining classified information from an NSA contractor’s home computer. We warned readers about Kaspersky last month and suggested they use alternatives like AVG or BitDefender. We’ve got a link below from Ars Technica quoting the original article in the Wall Street Journal, which is only available to subscribers.

Learn more: Faked Facebook posts, Russian anti-virus software, Facebook’s comments

Walmart and Amazon traded punches again this week in their battle for 21st century marketplace dominance. Walmart bought Parcel, a logistics company that delivers in 2 hour windows and integrates with smartphone apps.

That move comes on the heels of media reports that Amazon is testing a program called Seller Flex that will compete with UPS and FedEx for the company’s business. Amazon accounts for 5%-10% of UPS revenue and “less than 3%” of FedEx revenue.

Remember that Amazon’s most profitable business is AWS, its web-services division which generated $4 billion in revenue and a 25% profit margin in the second quarter. AWS began as an ancillary service reselling Amazon’s scalable computing services. There’s no reason why the same can’t be true of an Amazon delivery service.

And Amazon announced Friday that AWS will be General Electric’s preferred cloud service provider.

Learn more: Walmart’s Parcel announcement, AdAge on Amazon delivery, Amazon GE announcement

Spotlight Headlines

  • Google search results for movies and television will begin showing audience reviews as the search engine looks for unique data to display.
  • Squaring off against Google, Facebook announced it will expand its use of Wikipedia information throughout the site.
  • Puerto Rico may get cell service back faster thanks to permission granted to Google to launch its large scale Project Loon balloons carrying tech equipment overhead.
  • But the communications world also got word of a loss this week: AOL’s famous AIM chat service will close on December 15, twenty years after its launch.
  • Remember when we told you that Amazon was testing a personal clothing service? They just bought Body Labs, a company that makes 3D images of people so they can try on clothes via computer images.

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Write George

News

 

Highlights
  • The Justice Department wants information about 1.3 million people who visited an anti-Trump website earlier this year. 
  • You can now order food on Facebook and subscriptions on Google. We have other new online examples of industry disruptions.
  • The FTC reached a 20 year privacy agreement with Uber. Yep, 20 years.

Good morning! It is August 21, the day of the solar eclipse. People are excited beyond words about that event. Here is a nice CNN resource with maps, transit times, and explainer videos. And remember that the day without solar eclipse news is coming.

 

The US Department of Justice has filed legal paperwork demanding that web hosting company Dreamhost turn over records related to 1.3 million visitors to the anti-Trump website, disruptj20.org. Dreamhost provides the computer servers that make this website available online.

After the Department of Justice apparently refused Dreamhost’s request to narrow the scope of the information requested, the two are scheduled in D.C. Superior Court on Thursday. At issue is whether the federal government has the right to receive information that can be used to identify individuals (you, me, your groovy Aunt Susie) who simply visited the site online.

The government continues to press for information, even for casual visitors who simply clicked a link. Critics say that the request is “overreach” and called it unconstitutional.

Learn more fast: Dreamhost blog, EFF including filings, Fortune

Uber’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad summer continues. The company again entered a settlement agreement with the FTC regarding privacy complaints. Uber paid a $20 million fine in January and now has agreed to provide the government with third-party privacy audits. The findings of a Justice Department investigation into the company’s alleged avoidance of law enforcement vehicles is still pending. You can read the FTC announcement online.

Other cases involving privacy this week include a court’s ruling that a data broker can continue gathering public LinkedIn profile information even if it does not have a relationship with the person. (Read Chicago Sun-Times coverage)

Facebook also addressed a unique privacy issue in a post that explains how the company handles account information for people who have passed away. It’s worth a read if you have an active Facebook account.

Bloomberg reported on the cutthroat restaurant delivery industry this week with some startling data points. Papa John’s Pizza now calls itself an e-commerce company and receives 60% of its orders online, including from Facebook. McDonald’s and Uber are partnering to have fast food delivered, and voice-activated devices are also taking orders. This shouldn’t surprise many of you. Bloomberg’s data shows that about 70% of people have ordered food online.

One of the most famous online disruptors was Amazon’s patent on one-click ordering technology. This was a big deal 17 years ago. Expect to see changes on some of your favorite websites when the patent expires on September 11.

A March 2000 op-ed piece in the New York Times by Internet pioneer and author James Gleick expressed sarcastic wonder that a company could hold a patent on such a common process. And in prescient words, he wrote, “When 21st-century historians look back at the breakdown of the United States patent system, they will see a turning point in the case of Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com and their special invention: ”The patented One Click(R) feature…”

News of two other disruptions came this week. Google will follow Facebook’s example and start selling subscriptions to news publications. And Apple flashed some of the cash we told you that they had by announcing that they would spend up to $1 billion on video programming like Netflix or Amazon. That leaves Apple with only $255 billion in cash.

Learn more fast: Bloomberg on delivery and Google subscriptions, The Wall Street Journal on Apple video

Headline Scan
  • Facebook will expand its Marketplace service, a Craigslist competitor
  • Tech journalism website Mashable is looking for a buyer
  • White supremacist website The Daily Stormer has been forced to retreat to an underground site after American and later Russian companies refused to host the site or act as its domain registrar
  • Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg donated $100 million of her Facebook stock to charity. It’s become a regular gift for her. She’s now donated about a quarter-billion dollars of her estimated $1.6 billion.
  • Google and ProPublica announced that they will be creating a free database of news about hate crimes. 
Following Up
  • This spring we told you about big brand name advertisers stopping their YouTube purchases because they couldn’t control the type of content that featured their advertising. Those advertisers are coming back now. Verizon is back on YouTube now and will use a third-party auditor in conjunction with their orders.
  • Net neutrality advocates are giving Congress an eyeful. Advocacy group Fight for the Future announced that it had purchased billboards in six states that target members of Congress who oppose net neutrality.

What Silver Beacon Does

We believe that the Internet can be a powerful tool for helping organizations make the world a better, more positive place in which to work and live. We support organizations that are the heart of that positive energy. And we believe that data can help even the smallest firms compete nationally.

To help companies accomplish that change, we offer online marketing services, including Search Engine Optimization, Google, Bing, and Facebook advertising, and amazing social media marketing. There are no long-term requirements. 

Talk with us if you would like to explore working together. Call us at 802.232.2667 or click that green button below this box.

Write George
Images of keyboard courtesy Macedo Media. LinkedIn, Uber, and Facebook logos courtesy of each respective company. Pizzeria photo courtesy Gustavo Garcia.

News

Highlights

  • More than $1 billion in sales flooded Amazon on Prime Day.
  • Feel like booking a spa or salon appointment? Google will do that for you.
  • Amazon might fix your computer soon…in your home.

Good morning! It is July 17th, World Emoji Day. No, we don’t think there should be one either. Microsoft will announce earnings after the market closes Thursday. Keep an eye on them for announcements especially around Azure, their cloud-based business that is challenging Amazon Web Services.

Amazon Prime Day logo

 

Amazon raked in about $1.1 billion during its July 11 Amazon Prime Day according to Bloomberg estimates. This is the third year of Amazon’s giant sale. Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping each generate slightly over $3 billion in revenue. That means that Amazon has cracked the code in creating a non-holiday shopping event. Retail Week says that there were 538,650 transactions in the 8 p.m. hour before slowing to “just” 128,640 sales in the sale’s last hour.

A lot of Amazon’s strategic motivation involves selling its Echo voice-activated assistant and Amazon Prime memberships. About 20% of shoppers and 37% of millennials have ordered using a voice command instead of typing or clicking in the last year according to a Walker Sands report released last week.

Learn more fast: Amazon press release with numbers, Search Engine Land on voice ordering.

Once upon a time

 

This week’s myth: Amazon chose July 11 (7/11) as Prime Day because both numbers are prime numbers, that is, they are divisible only by 1 and themselves. That’s true, but there are dozens of other dates made up of prime numbers that include 2, 3, and 5 so be careful about the myths. Five of our twelve months include multiple prime numbers so by that reckoning, Prime Day could also be February 2.

Woman receiving massage

Ready for a spa day? Or perhaps a quick visit to the salon?

Google can now book appointments from its Search and Map products using five different services with nine other named services coming soon. Three weeks ago, we wrote in this newsletter that “the future value proposition is likely to be some form of signing up businesses and automating their transactions for Google and Facebook.”  This is exactly what we meant.

Google also announced that it would like you to start backing up your photos and your hard drive to the Google Drive service. That was something that Google didn’t encourage before, but see our earlier comment about Microsoft Azure and remember that Amazon, among others, encourages media backups to their services. The Google backup service is free and includes 15 gigabytes for all your Google usage. Space upgrades are available at a cost of $2/month for 100 gigabytes or $10/month for a terabyte.

Amazon is also playing the disruption game again this week. We’ve covered their clothing service and Whole Foods acquisition. Now Amazon is chasing Best Buy’s Geek Squad in seven West Coast cities, according to Recode. The announcement on Monday caused Best Buy stock to shed $1 billion in market cap especially when news reports showed Amazon hiring in other areas including Dallas and Miami.

Don’t count out Facebook from grabbing some old economy money. Digiday reports that the social media giant will start direct selling subscriptions to news products like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Learn more fast: Google announcement for booking and for backups.

Headline Scan

  • Google is actively looking for user content to append to Google Earth, especially in areas where there is no existing content.
  • Facebook’s Marketplace service–a Craigslist competitor–is expanding again.
  • A British wifi provider added a “joke clause” to its terms that obligated users to community service projects like hugging stray animals and cleaning public toilets. More than 20,000 people agreed to the (presumably unread) terms.

 

Images of Amazon Prime Day courtesy Amazon. Myth image courtesy Fathromi Ramdlon. Spa image courtesy Jurgen Rubig.