Lately I have really gotten into Matt Levine’s daily newsletter about “Wall Street, finance, companies and other stuff.” Maybe that’s how I should describe this blog: Cities, real estate, design, and other stuff.
If you aren’t familiar with Matt’s writing, here is an article that he wrote about Kylie Jenner’s recent tweet concerning Snapchat. You know, the one that wiped out $1.3 billion of market value because she revealed – using only 88 characters, I might add – that she was no longer using the app.
sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad.
— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 21, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The article was spurred on by this question:
“Would it be insider trading for Kylie Jenner to buy short term out of money put options on Snap and tweet out that she’s no longer using Snap?”
And this is the start of his answer:
Insider trading, as I am constantly saying around here, is not about fairness; it is about theft. It is not illegal to trade on your own nonpublic knowledge of your own intentions. Warren Buffett can buy stocks before he announces that he’s bought them, even though that announcement will predictably make the stocks go up.
If I did describe this daily blog like Matt describes his daily newsletter, this post would clearly fall into the “other stuff” camp. But maybe you too will find it interesting. If you do, you can subscribe here.
This morning Fred Wilson posted this chart on his blog:
What is clear is that when it comes to US digital ad revenue, it’s the Google and Facebook show, followed by everyone else. Microsoft/LinkedIn is a distant third. Fred calls it “the digital advertising duopoly.” And his view is that the tech industry needs to figure out new approaches to monetization that still allow free content to be consumed.
I’ve said this before, but Facebook buying Instagram for $1 billion seems like a bargain when you look at a chart like this and you see what they were able to do with the platform. Instagram’s 2018 revenues are projected to be bigger than every other company on the list minus Google but including YouTube.
Also notable are the flatlining of Twitter and the projected growth of Snapchat. 2017 was a rough year for $SNAP. But it appears that somebody believes they’ll be able to turn things around with their app redesign and reconstituted ad platform. Be that as it may, it’s still the Google and Facebook show – at least for the time being.
If you’ve ever wondered how Facebook figures out all of the people you may know, here is some reading material.
The short answer is that Facebook doesn’t just know the things you’ve told it about yourself, it also knows what other people have told it about you.
One of the ways in which this is done is through its so called “shadow profiles". These are profiles that get created when other people share information about you with Facebook.
For example, you may not want to share your work email address with Facebook, but if it’s sitting in someone’s phone and that person decides to share his/her address book with Facebook, then it could show up in your shadow profile.
And if there’s a common data point, such a phone number, then Facebook can fairly easily link that work email address back to you and start suggesting people from your work that you may know.
The scary part, of course, is that Facebook is getting your information without you explicitly sharing it with them. It could be coming from that person you gave your business card to at the bar.
It goes to show you just how fierce the competition is for our attention. It may be an assault on our privacy, but more Facebook connections means a higher likelihood that we’ll stay engaged on the platform.
Over the past year I have been growing increasingly intolerant of this demand for my time. Slowly but surely I have been turning off all nonessential notifications on my phone.
Very few now remain, which is why if you’ve been trying to reach me on Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn or some other platform, and I’m not responding, it’s because there’s a good chance I’m not seeing the notifications.
And let me tell, it feels liberating.