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A fantastic, insightful essay from Ben Thomson this week on Apple's China problem. Off the back of Microsoft launching a new Surface laptop a the same kind of pricepoint as the Macbook Air, Ben discusses how though it might appear to be a competitor, Apple competes on the experience and exclusivity of iOS and OSX, not just hardware. And it is this, he argues, that is their biggest problem in China, where iOS is just another way of accessing the real platform that matters: WeChat, an app available across both Android and iOS, and so tightly woven into society that were Apple to stop supporting it, their users would just switch.
The most important part of user growth, is user retention, says Alex Schultz, a VP of Growth at Facebook as part of the Y Combinator Stanford Startup School lecture series. 40 odd-minutes of background listening that is very much worth it (and check out the rest of the series on the stanfordonline YouTube channel).
TechCrunch have spotted a potential A/B test in Facebook that might assist with the filter bubble effect. Interested in Politics? No longer may you have to just follow the parties that you've encountered, instead you can follow a Politics topic and get an injection of that entire gamut of conversation.
Another great interview with Lydia Polgreen, the new editor of the new HuffPost, and her ambition to create a tabloid for the modern age. Jim Rich, former editor in chief of the tabloid NY Daily News will join her as executive editor. Readable, or podcastable with Ben Smith.
BuzzFeed are producing a 'Social Barometer' for the 2017 Election, using data to discover what the most popular stories across social networks are and what the sentiment is toward them. Their first discovery: Corbyn is very popular with the vocal sharers online, and the Tories are not.
Facebook plan to launch TV-style shows, specifically a few long-form shows, and a couple of shorter more daily shows, which will be a great fit for their mid-roll video advertising, this summer. This will sit well with pretty much the same announcement from YouTube. The social networks need more reliably high-quality, safe content to match against, at least in the short term.
The New York Times also have a great piece on Instagram, Facebook's next Facebook, where an interesting echo of Jeff Bezos' fast-paced decision making is brought up: the co-founders now regularly have meetings where the sole purpose is to run through a document of decisions to be made at pace.
NYT quarterly results are out: operating profit is up, driven by a strong increase in digital revenue, with a 19% increase in digital advertising, and a 39% increase in digital-only subscription revenue. Of 348,000 new subs, 308,000 of them were to the main product. That leaves 40,000 new subs paying specifically for the NYT Crossword app. Solvers gotta solve.
Speaking of subs, the American Press Institute has released a study on why people pay for news. Some interesting stats (albeit from the US market): 53% of their survey pay for news, 37% of the youngest adults (18-34) do so, and do it for a different reason, more to support the organisation like a donation than a business transaction. Here's the summarised read.
Off the back of YouTube's YouTube TV, Hulu are getting into the game with a $39.99 deal for 50 live channels. Hulu are owned directly by the big traditional media companies (Disney, NBC, Fox) and so this is a skinnier bundle that competes directly with the bundles offered by distributors that are those companie's biggest customers.
The Register have draft documents in the UK for further encroachment into citizen privacy by the government past their already massive surveillance powers, including the kind of mental garbage of encryption backdoors of the like the Amber Rudd would dream about.
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