Good morning. It’s Monday, February 5th. The federal government has four days of funding remaining. Watch for a vote in the House on Tuesday. Without an agreement, the federal government could be forced to close again on Friday.

Today’s Spotlight takes an average of 3 minutes and 45 seconds to read.

Highlights

• Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be “…good for your well-being and for society”.
• He’s onboard with the themes of the “Time Well Spent” movement without explicitly saying so.
• Amazon posted $2 billion plus in Q4 operating income, leading speculation that another major acquisition is in the cards.

Tristan Harris’ TED talk on how giant tech companies command the attention of several billion people is gathering a lot of fans. It’s only 17 minutes. Save this issue of Spotlight and watch it when you can. 

Former Google ethicist Harris is raising the same issues we told you about last fall when Facebook’s first President Sean Parker said that Facebook knowingly exploits human psychology. 

Zuckerberg is publicly embracing the “less is more” mantra of Facebook usage and speaking about tech addiction. This was the first time that Facebook average usage decreased, and the company is steadfast in its support of that trend. Zuck is also talking about Facebook creating local news channels that might not be as divisive as national news channels. That suggests he hasn’t attended a contentious local meeting. And not surprisingly, Google announced its own plans to test local news in Nashville and Oakland.

The entire issue is ultimately about tech addiction. We’ve all gone down a YouTube or Wikipedia rabbit hole–it’s easy to do. But people like Harris and Parker are forming an umbrella organization called The Center for Humane Technology and shouting about this issue so it’s worthy of your attention.

Have a look at the group’s data from a 200,000 person study showing how increasing time on apps lowers overall satisfaction with that app. App ratings here

We now talk about Amazon’s growth in ways that we once used for Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM, AT&T. It’s time for their closeup. 

It’s not a story about cloud business Amazon Web Services. Pay attention to advertising this year. Amazon sold tens of millions of voice-powered devices in 2017.  And the company is not shy about saying publicly that it wants a healthy slice of the advertising pie that Google and Facebook currently share.

The growth machine Amazon has created will require disrupting another industry to maintain its growth. The company ranked #29 in revenue on the Fortune 500 two years ago and 18th last year. The three largest ad agencies are each increasing their spending on Amazon by 40% to 50%. That money is coming out of other digital companies. Advertising could easily be Amazon’s next huge opportunity.

Spotlighted

Facebook’s second biggest property is now WhatsApp, not Instagram or Messenger. Details

Restaurants can now add their menus to their Google My Business listing. Learn how

Snapchat is selling branded merchandise inside their app. It’s not for revenue generation. The company is testing whether its users will buy things while using the app.

Monday Coffee Break

No one who knows why is talking, but Elon Musk added to his legend by selling 20,000 “Not A Flamethrower” devices for $500 each. The device shoots a 10 foot flame, which allows it to be sold as a non-weapon.  Advised that customs agencies wouldn’t allow a product called a flamethrower to be shipped into their country, he had the name changed to “not a Flamethrower”.

He’s still only 46 and will go down as an engineer/inventor at Tesla’s level. Nope, we don’t get it either. But he may be the best business leader in the world today for executing on a project. And if it was all a distraction, it was one that came with a $10 million revenue line in 6 days.

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Good morning. It’s Monday, January 29th. This is earnings week. Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, PayPal, and eBay are all reporting financial results on Wednesday and Thursday. Each report creates news we’ll cover next Monday.

Highlights

• Net neutrality opposition is growing and now includes AT&T (sort of)
• Google is testing hyperlocal news like the kind that Patch publishes
• Google is also giving consumers the ability to stop those remarketing ads on other websites

Burger King’s buzz-worthy ad that introduces “Whopper Neutrality” to explain the net neutrality concept:

 

The Montana and New York governors directed their organizations to only buy Internet services from companies that abide by net neutrality standards. That doesn’t change the FCC’s rule, but other states may follow or join the lawsuit that nearly two dozen states are parenting on to that seeks net neutrality’s reinstatement.

The states have a powerful ally in AT&T, which is calling for “free and open” Internet services that companies won’t slow down. The kicker: AT&T wants Facebook and Google to be governed by the same regulations. The Washington Post reports that a Senate resolution with 50 supporters may be introduced to reinstate net neutrality. Legislation could be introduced if that resolution fails.

Facebook and Google are giving consumers new tools that allow them to sculpt more of their own experiences online. The free-flow of content is already being stopped in some ways. One example: we successfully appealed a blocked Facebook ad with political content for a non-profit client this month. The messaging wasn’t new, but the automated system stopped it and required a human intervention. That’s exactly what Mark Zuckerberg promised would happen.

Facebook disclosed to Congress that about 90,000 people expressed interest or sent an RSVP to phony political events advertised on the site during the 2016 presidential election.  Now the company is rolling out new “branded content” policy to cover Facebook and Instagram while also limiting the amount of non-friend content appearing in a user’s news feed.

Google is doing the same with ad remarketing. That’s the process advertisers use to show you “reminder ads” if you’ve visited them in the past. Google is reinvigorating its “Mute this Ad” feature to work on all your devices and on more websites. Read the Google post here.

And to fight against larger publishers, Google is testing Google Bulletin, a hyperlocal news service similar to Patch.com in Nashville and Oakland. Patch has been part of Hale Global Media for nearly four years and is reportedly profitable while operating in more than 100 markets.

Monday Coffee Break

The map above shows my suburban Washington, D.C. neighborhood. It was generated by Strava, a data company that receives trillions of data points from fitness activity trackers and similar devices. The company then uses a connection to Google Maps to show running, driving, or other maps. This project is free and has been accessible for years.

What people didn’t realize was that members of the armed forces might be using those trackers. And sure enough, media reports over the weekend claimed that military and other sensitive sites were lit up as brightly as my Virginia neighborhood. That’s apparently a pretty big deal for places in Afghanistan or Iraq.

This type of data is something that we all have to learn how to think about because the lives of convenience that we lead also have surprising repercussions–even years later.

 

Good morning. It’s Monday, January 22nd. Amazon Go, the company’s retail store without cashiers, opens today in Seattle.

Highlights

• Facebook plans to have users vote on news sources’ trustworthiness
• The speed of a mobile website is now officially a Google ranking signal
• Bing is adding appointment booking for local services

Facebook Users To Vote on News Sources

Facebook’s Monika Bickert tells NBC that the content appearing online during the 2016 election was “unacceptable”. She later testified with Twitter and Google execs in a nearly three hour Congressional hearing.

Bickert is not only the public face of Facebook during these discussions. She’s in charge of issues like counter-terrorism for the social media site.

But a day after her testimony, Facebook announced that it will ask users to rank news sources that they trust. As much as 5 percent of Facebook content is created by news organizations. Surveys show that the majority of American adults now receive at least some of their news from Facebook. 

Media experts, sociologists, and psychologists doubt that the company can create a process where the wisdom of crowds creates rankings that can be trusted.

“Today we’re announcing that starting in July 2018, page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches.”

That was Google’s blog last Wednesday. 

They almost never make those kinds of announcements. 

“The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users…”   

Google execs openly mock search marketers for naming major updates. Then they named their own for the first time in many years. The post ended with links to five tools and resources.

Google’s usual inscrutability is nowhere in sight for this announcement. This is great news for anyone who has used a phone to access a website. And it’s a wake up call to any organization that ever wants people who are using a phone to access its website.

Spotlighted

Amazon Go opens the cashier-free store in Seattle. Recode has details and images

How does Google select which result its Google Voice product uses for search? A new report suggests it’s from a website structure called featured snippets. Search Engine Land has coverage.

Local service businesses will be happy to learn that Bing now has appointment booking directly in search results. Read more. 

Monday Coffee Break

Your organization’s analytics can tell many stories. And the truth is that most data-driven marketers can get lost for hours examining trends and teasing data out of different parts of your business.

We’ve seen content sites like Spotify and Netflix create great advertising around their member usage, but adult website Pornhub (75 million daily visits and 10 million registered users) maintains an analytics blog. And that blog paid off big after the missile scare in Hawaii uncovered a huge drop in traffic followed by a, um, traffic surge after the all clear.

As you look at the data consider this: Pornhub made itself part of the news about what many people thought was an impending bombing of Hawaii. Even better: the data wasn’t a trick or manipulation. It said something real about people.

What stories are hiding in your organization’s data?