The Full Monty: As the Pendulum Swings – September 24, 2018

We're seeing shifts in the use of technology, but it's nothing new; A.I. will results in more net jobs; how humans can tell if you're not a robot; Alibaba's autonomous car goals; the future of advertising; Amazon's play for media, advertising, retail, and whatever else it wants; Chatter Matters takes a look at word of mouth; the most relevant brands in the U.S.; retail vs. e-commerce (again, and more); Instagram is getting out the vote; why absentee ballots are a pain for college students; the Old Twitter is here; Slideshare is dying; audio captions to a print magazine; the EU's approach to copyright is dangerous; Airbnb wants hosts to own part of the company; Adobe buys Marketo; celebrating Mister Rogers; "look at your fish," and other sage advice; plus the podcast pick of the week and more in the As the Pendulum Swings edition of The Full Monty for the week of September 24, 2018.

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Announcements

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Also, each Monday at 1:00 pm ET, I'm hosting The Weekly Tease, a 5-minute preview of what you'll hear in The Full Monty podcast and what I'll write about on ScottMonty.com this week. I hope you'll tune in.

Top Story

We like to think that the developments we're seeing today are unique. Thanks to the incredible innovation and advanced technology, we're seeing business and consumers change in ways we've never seen before.

Except when we have.

Whether it's personalized content (hello, letters and postcards, anyone?), or grocery delivery (tell that to the milkman and grocer from the early 20th century), or a move to more private conversations away from public social networks (private phone lines that evolved from party lines), we've seen it all before, just in a different format.

Walmart tries to become more like Amazon while Amazon takes on more traditional retail functions. Teens are becoming less public with their updates, spending less time on social networks and more on messaging apps and texting.

Watch the trends. See the pendulum swing wildly in one direction, then head back for a correction, before finally settling in the middle. It'll happen.

“Read it up—you really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before.”

– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A Study in Scarlet

“The old wheel turns, and the same spoke comes up. It’s all been done before, and will be again.”

– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Valley of Fear

Thanks this week to these fine folks who poked around in the darkness to find some of the links in this week's edition: Josh Spector of For the Interested; Scott Stratten from UnMarketing; Tamsen Webster from Find the Red Thread; Ann Handley of Total Annarchy; and Jay Baer of Convince & Convert.

I hand-curate all of the content you see below (plus other stories on Flipboard that don't make the newsletter). If you've got something you think I should see, @ me on Twitter, Facebook, or email.

Speaking Engagements

Always looking for recommendations for speaking engagements – including executive briefings / workshops and keynotes. Can I speak to your organization or at your event? Feel free to contact me to discuss it.

I'll be in New York City later this week. Ping me if you're around.
Brandemonium in Cincinnati, October 3-4. BR18FRIEND gets you $100 off.
Pubcon in Las Vegas, October 16-18.
Now booking for 2019. Hit me up!

Artificial Intelligence / Autonomous

The latest in AI, machine learning, bots, and blockchain, mobility, and autonomous everything.

Aʀᴛɪꜰɪᴄɪᴀʟ Iɴᴛᴇʟʟɪɢᴇɴᴄᴇ / Mᴀᴄʜɪɴᴇ Lᴇᴀʀɴɪɴɢ

According to the World Economic Forum, machines and algorithms could displace 75 million jobs by 2022...but demand for new tasks might create 133 million jobs over the same time period, a net gain of 58 million jobs. (CNBC)
SAP is looking at the softer side of artificial intelligence, as it brings in a theologian to help with the ethics of A.I. (Telegraph) We've long said that the humanities need representation just as much as STEM in the creation of the next generation of technology.
Access to data and a shortage of experts is slowing the uptake of artificial intelligence. (Peltarion)
According to Upwork's SVP of marketing, A.I. will not displace or overtake a large number of jobs, but will instead create opportunities that require more specialized skills. (CMO.com)
If you've long held that A.I. can't compete with humans in the arts, you might want to skip this.

A new A.I. system called Amadeus Code trained on existing hit music can generate new song compositions. (Techcrunch)
And artist Anna Ridler used a machine-learning algorithm trained with 10,000 images of tulips to create a piece of video art called Mosaic Virus. (Fast Company)

If you want to make better decisions, just think like a computer. (TED)
According to a forthcoming paper, humans can tell you're not a robot if you use the word "poop." (Science) This new Turing test is the 💩!
Amazon's big announcement last week included eight Echo-powered devices. (CNBC) Expect voice to continue to creep into aspects of our lives. In fact, one in three U.S. adults own a smart speaker and are comfortable with voice tech.

Aᴜᴛᴏɴᴏᴍᴏᴜs / Mᴏʙɪʟɪᴛʏ

Alibaba is developing a microchip for autonomous vehicles as part of its Made in China 2025 plans. (Business Insider) The technology giant from China has the power to make a large impact with such an advance, putting China into a very competitive position.
Volvo will supply Uber its self driving car fleet. The automaker will provide 24,000 vehicles based on its XC90 platform, capable of holding seven passengers. (SFGate)
All the things that still baffle autonomous cars, including seagulls, tree shadows, and foam. (Quartz)
IKEA designs future autonomous cars that work as hotels, stores, and meeting rooms. (MIT Technology Review) Perfect for the gig economy worker that can't afford their own place!
The coming electrification of planes, trains, ships and trucks gives us “the right to remain hopeful about our chances of limiting the impact of climate change.” (Bloomberg NEF)
The one autonomous vehicle that seems to be making headway: the bus. (The Hustle)

Communications / Marketing / Business Strategy

Industry developments and trends, including advertising & marketing, journalism, customer experience, content, and influencer relations.

Sᴛʀᴀᴛᴇɢʏ / Mᴀʀᴋᴇᴛɪɴɢ / Cᴏɴᴛᴇɴᴛ

Experts weigh in on the future of advertising. One take-away: budgets will shift to more controlled environments, with targeting that looks at context versus just demographics. (CMO.com) Contextual relevance is everything.
WPP's new CEO Mark Read has said that he will unveil a strategy update by the end of the year and has said merging creative and digital firms makes more sense than combining creative agencies. (WSJ) The time has come for digital and creative to leave their own swim lanes.
For all of the coverage of Facebook and Google, here's a look at social ad spending on other platforms. How has a dip in user growth affected Snap’s ad revenue potential? What’s behind Twitter’s rebound? And how much money does Pinterest make from digital advertising? (eMarketer)
Amazon’s ad business will bring in $4.61 billion this year, up 60% from its predictions earlier this year, making it the third largest digital advertising platform. (Axios)
We often get stuck in the same kinds of updates, or simply can't decide what to create. Here are 105 ideas to add to your editorial calendar. (Convince & Convert) Bookmark this post and refer to it when you need inspiration.
How mature are companies' digital transformation efforts? In a word? Mixed. (eMarketer)

Jᴏᴜʀɴᴀʟɪsᴍ / Cᴏᴍᴍᴜɴɪᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴs / Rᴇᴘᴜᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ

Word of mouth—online and offline—impacts every business, organization, candidate, and cause. Chatter Matters is a report that contains the results of a proprietary study of 1,001 individuals about how they decide what to buy, how to vote, and more. (Convince & Convert)
"Influencer marketing" doesn't equate to celebrities with huge followings. It should be about who can move the needle. Working with micro-influencers can have many benefits. (MarketingProfs)
Consumers are pushing brands to deliver on innovation—with greater ethical responsibility. (Agility PR) Consumers want their favorite brands to stand for something.
These are the brands considered most relevant by Americans in 2018, according to Prophet. Four characteristics generally shared by the most relevant: customer obsession; ruthless pragmatism; distinctive inspiration; and pervasive innovation. (MarketingCharts)

Retail Apocalypse

Humans are a transactional species, and the practice — if not the very notion of what retail is — is undergoing a historical metamorphosis.

Walmart says more than 17,000 Oculus Go headsets will be used in its U.S. stores by the end of the year to train its employees, in an expansion of a pre-existing program. Employees will be trained on technology, compliance, and soft skills like empathy and customer service. (ZDNet) I witnessed these firsthand last summer at a visit to Walmart's training facilities. It was impressive.
Macy's CEO says that it's more difficult for an e-commerce player to tackle physical retail than it is the other way around. (Recode) It's certainly more capital-intensive. The question for physical retailers is build or buy the technology to catch Amazon. Walmart has done a solid job with Jet.com and its other purchases.
Product search is shifting from Google to Amazon, and Amazon's sales growth trails its rivals. These are some of the interesting points about Amazon shopping behavior. (MarketingCharts)
Financial services may be a future business for Amazon, but would consumers put their money in an Amazon bank? (eMarketer) Walmart already enjoys this relationship with some customers.
Amazon is considering 3,000 cashierless stores by 2021. (Venture Beat)
Want a provocative, nonstop pummeling about the future of retail? Check out Scott Galloway at the Recode Commerce conference.

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Platforms

News to know about relevant social, virtual, and augmented reality platforms that may affect your business.

Fᴀᴄᴇʙᴏᴏᴋ / Iɴsᴛᴀɢʀᴀᴍ / WʜᴀᴛsAᴘᴘ

Facebook advertisers will soon be on their own finding consumer data as the social network eliminates sharing through its Partner Categories ad targeting. (Digiday)
Facebook is letting job advertisers target only men, playing to stereotypes about certain jobs. (ProPublica) Taking 'bro' culture to a whole new level.
How to promote your blog posts with Facebook dynamic ads. (Social Media Examiner)
So far, Facebook's attempts to fight fake news seem to be working. Twitter's? Not so much. (Social Media Today, Nieman Lab)
Instagram is testing the ability to add hashtags without including them in the caption. (TNW) #ItsAboutTime
Instagram is partnering with TurboVote to help users get voter registration and polling location information. (The Verge)
It's a good thing, since officials in Fairfax County, Virginia learned that college students were failing to send back their absentee ballots because they didn't know how to get a stamp. (Business Insider) I wonder what Stamps.com thinks about all of that podcast advertising they spent in the last couple of years?

Tᴡɪᴛᴛᴇʀ

Twitter is making it easier for users to see a full time-ordered list of messages from users they follow — the way the service worked at the start for everyone. (Axios)
But some think that the platform’s return to a chronological timeline won't be enough to recapture its original magic. (The Atlantic) As Nick Carroway told Jay Gatsby, "You can never go back."

Oᴛʜᴇʀ

On YouTube, video creators with at least 50,000 subscribers can now offer memberships for $4.99 per month for access to exclusive content, badges and other extras. (Engadget)
YouTube wants to compete with Twitch, and its gaming hub offers faster access to top streams of games. (Engadget) E-sports viewing is a huge industry, with hundreds of millions of fans participating.
The White House is considering an executive order to investigate Google and Facebook for online platform bias and antitrust considerations. (Business Insider)
Mobile social network Path is officially closing. (Techcrunch) You probably didn't even know they were still open (or if you're new enough to the industry, that they even existed).
And Slideshare seems to be gasping for breath as well. (MarketingProfs)
Pinterest has given SMBs the ability to access Shop the Look pins, a free product-tagging tool for organic search. (MarketingLand) Any business or influencer can use a self-service tool to tag home decor and fashion products, putting Pinterest in square competition with Facebook, Instagram, Amazon and more.
Did you know that Quora is netting some 300 million monthly users? (MarketingLand)

Media

The latest in the world of streaming video, audio, and the advertising, pricing and bundling models related to them.

Vɪᴅᴇᴏ

Given the Emmy battle between HBO and Netflix, it should be no surprise that Amazon is aggressively pushing into entertainment. (Axios) From devices to content to technology, the company seems to be clearing the way for its growing advertising network.
Comcast outbid Fox in a $39 billion takeover of Sky. (CNBC) Suddenly, Comcast has a foothold in international markets.
Disney says it has a million paying subscribers for its ESPN+ streaming service, which it launched five months ago. (Recode)
Almost everyone in India is borrowing someone else's login to stream movies and TV. (Quartz) Netflix and Amazon wondered why they only had 37 subscribers in India between the two of them.

Aᴜᴅɪᴏ

SiriusXM is buying Pandora in an all-stock deal worth $3.5 billion. (Yahoo Finance) This puts the largest streaming service inside of millions of vehicles.
Spotify will let indie artists upload their own work to the platform. (TechCrunch) Hard not to see this as a threat if you're a music label.
With a sponsorship from GE, The New York Times Magazine’s “Voyages issue” this weekend featured stories told through audio that corresponded with full images without captions in the magazine. (AdWeek) A bold and different approach to content consumption. Exclusive content is a great driver to technology you want consumers to use.
BuzzFeed is cutting its in-house podcast production team as it shifts resources away from audio and toward creating original shows similar to the ones its produced for Netflix, Twitter and Facebook. (WSJ) Similarly, Mic.com is seeking financial assistance. (CJR) It's like the Kubler Ross stages of strategy. Pivot to video. Pivot to podcasts. Pivot to denial. Pivot to acceptance.
Program of the Week: Our pick this week is Last Seen: The Largest Art Heist in History. It's a look at the notorious theft of artwork from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It's a great true-crime pod without a corpse.

And don't forget about The Full Monty podcast, our own brief weekly business commentary.

Privacy / Security / Regulatory

Business disruptions in the legal, regulatory, and computer security fields, from hacking to the on-demand economy and more.

Pʀɪᴠᴀᴄʏ / Sᴇᴄᴜʀɪᴛʏ / Hᴀᴄᴋɪɴɢ

Windows is recording every keystroke on devices with handwriting recognition enabled. (Techspot) Check your settings.
Apple is giving everyone 'trust scores' based on their iPhone data, to "help identify and prevent fraud," according to privacy updates. (The Independent)
Government Payment Service Inc. — used by thousands of U.S. state and local governments to accept online payments — has leaked more than 14 million customer records dating back at least six years. (Krebs on Security)
Credit freezes from all three major credit bureaus are free. (Krebs on Security)
GDPR is having an effect on digital marketing. (eMarketer)

Rᴇɢᴜʟᴀᴛᴏʀʏ / Oɴ-Dᴇᴍᴀɴᴅ Eᴄᴏɴᴏᴍʏ

The EU Parliament passed a Copyright Directive that would overhaul its copyright law and would force platforms to impose strict filters for copyright violations or face fines. Critics say the rules constitute a "link tax" and undermine the openness of the internet. (Axios)

As always, the smart take from Ben Thompson. (Stratechery) Effectively, the regulators don't seem to understand how the Internet works.

Teenagers are flocking to electric scooter services like Bird and Lime, ignoring requirements that riders be age 18 or older. (The Verge) And they're typically riding without the helmets as well.

A Detroiter saw inner-city kids playing with electric scooters whose charge had run out. He wanted to figure out a way to get these kids their own scooters. (Detroit Free Press)
And so, he started PlayFreeBird.com and the donations started rolling in.

Uber is in talks to acquire food-delivery company Deliveroo, one of Europe's largest startups. (Bloomberg) Once again, the marriage of food delivery and ride sharing is irresistible.
Lyft has logged one billion trips in six years – the same amount of time it took Uber to reach that level. But Lyft is only in North America. (The Verge)
Airbnb wants to give its hosts equity in the business. Specifically, Airbnb is seeking a change to the SEC’s Rule 701 — which governs ownership of equity in companies — to allow a new kind of shareholder class for workers who participate in gig economy companies and their services. (TechCrunch)

Measurement / Analytics / Data

The future is not in plastics, but in data. Those who know how to measure and analyze it will rule the world.

Adobe announced that it's acquiring Marketo for $4.75 billion. (CNBC) This sends shockwaves through the marketing technology industry, particularly toward competitors like Hubspot, Salesforce, Oracle, and SAP.
And with a hot take on that is Scott Brinker. (Chief Martech) Perhaps the Martech 5,000 will decrease in size next year.
According to a new study, many B2B marketers are having issues with leveraging their customer relationship data. Many companies haven’t structured themselves in a way that makes data ingestion efficient. (eMarketer) Garbage in, garbage out.
There's still a lot of variability out there on just how to calculate video metrics. This ROI / Attribution Providers guide offers A Comparison of Leading Providers of Media Performance Analyses via a study by the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement. (CIMM).
The Ultimate Guide to SEO in 2018. (Hubspot)

Mental Nourishment

Other links to help you reflect, improve, or simply learn something new.

The Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Maine, is one of the most in-demand restaurants in the country. It accepts reservations one way only — by mail. (The Washington Post) via Ann Handley
On the 51st anniversary of the taping of his first show, Google honored Mister Rogers with a Google Doodle.

Related: Four Leadership Lessons from Mister Rogers (The Pragmatic Futurist)
One of the few things that could raise anger — real, intense anger — in Mister Rogers was the willful misleading of children. He thought superheroes were the worst culprits. (LongReads)

Digital minimalism is all about how to simplify your digital life. (Medium | The Startup) They might tell you to unsubscribe to this newsletter. Don't listen to them.
For the curious: this is how much VCs are paid. (TechCrunch) That's of course without successful exits.
A branch of the New York Public Library lends out ties, briefcases and handbags for job interviews. (The Washington Post) We applaud humanity.
This 1999 interview with David McCullough captures the wisdom behind the work of this historian and biographer. Most poignant advice for writers and creators: look at your fish. (The Paris Review)
And finally, my take on the connection between emotional intelligence and the power of silence. (The Full Monty podcast)

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Top image credit: The Inquisition Tribunal by Francisco de Goya, 1808/1812 (public domain)

Monday, September 24, 2018