Important Note
Tech Narratives was a subscription website, which offered expert commentary on the day's top tech news from Jan Dawson, along with various other features, for $10/month. As of Monday October 16, 2017, it will no longer be updated. An archive of past content will remain available for the time being. I've written more about this change in the post immediately below, and also here.
Apple Launches Curriculum for Teaching Swift at Community Colleges (May 24, 2017)
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Google Execs Say Assistant Will Monetize Through E-Commerce and Ads (May 24, 2017)
Though the original headline on this piece focuses on the e-commerce aspect, the actual content of the article makes clear that Google has every intention of serving up ads too. Google launched Shopping on Home a while back, so hearing that Google intends to monetize through e-commerce isn’t a huge surprise, but it’s interesting to hear confirmation from Google that this is its main focus, because though this is obviously a strength and a motivator for Amazon in this space, it clearly isn’t Google’s main focus. However, as I said, advertising is clearly a big part of that picture too, and it sounds like ads will mostly be served up as they are in other Google search products: alongside organic results when people are looking for something specific. The big question, then, is how that’s done – the first screen of classic Google search results has now been taken over by ads, something that only takes a scroll to get past, but that same experience on a voice device that majors on providing a single answer won’t fly. Linear interfaces like voice assistants can’t take up users’ time with ads before they get to the organic results. So despite these comments, there’s still lots we don’t know about how Google is going to make additional money from Home. And then there’s the point I made previously about the fact that charging real money for a device like this breaks the usual implied contract of free services coming with ads – users won’t have the same expectation of an ad-supported business model on a device like Home that they do with a free online service.
via Recode
Apple Seeks Permission to Test 5G Network Technology (May 23, 2017)
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Uber Has Been Underpaying NYC Drivers, Will Pay Out an Average of $900 to Each (May 23, 2017)
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Google Has an Employee-Run Email Reporting Harassment and Bias Complaints (May 23, 2017)
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Instagram Adds Crowdsourced Geographic and Topic-Based Stories (May 23, 2017)
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Apple Shifts HR Head to Diversity Role, Reporting to Tim Cook (May 23, 2017)
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★ LeEco Cuts 70% of US Staff, Refocuses on Chinese-Speaking Americans (May 23, 2017)
I’ve been both intrigued by and enormously skeptical of LeEco’s US market entry from the beginning, as this piece I wrote after its US launch back in October suggests. The company had been successful in China on the basis of a slow evolution from a content to a hardware company, and yet its US launch seemed to have turned that strategy almost entirely on its head without the compelling content that helped it succeed domestically. It also made many of the same mistakes as other Chinese companies attempting to expand into the US by not making enough changes to its playbook when it moved to the US. There have been reports for a few days now about an impending massive cut to the US business, and today has brought official confirmation. There’s no schadenfreude here from me given the large number of people losing their jobs, but hopefully LeEco’s story serves as a cautionary tale for other Chinese companies entering the US market. As the essay and video in the related narrative suggest, this has always been a tough task, and no Chinese company has really succeeded in building a big, successful ecosystem in the US. Even those that have done well more narrowly, such as in low-cost hardware, have taken years to get there and even then aren’t considered in the same class as leaders like Apple, Samsung, LG, or even Sony. Ironically, LeEco’s retrenchment now to serving Chinese-speaking residents of the US would have made a ton of sense as a market entry strategy last year, starting much smaller and more modestly, and slowly expanding out from that core into the broader US market. Instead, that new focus is the result of a somewhat humiliating defeat, caused in equal measures by an overly hubristic and poorly thought out market entry and financial constraints at headquarters that gave that strategy very little time to play out. This could – and should – have gone very differently.
via CNET
Facebook Creates Smaller Group Viewing Experiences around Live Video (May 23, 2017)
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Google Expands In-Store Sales Attribution to More Ad Types (May 23, 2017)
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Amazon Channels Launches in UK and Germany (May 23, 2017)
Amazon Channels is one of those slightly under the radar offerings that I suspect many people still aren’t aware of, but which has seen Amazon slowly create a version of a pay TV package alongside its Prime subscription. The US version is now pretty comprehensive, with channels from HBO, Starz, Showtime, and Cinemax to more specialized niche and foreign channels. It’s now launching in the UK and Germany, with a different set of channels more relevant for local audiences, but without some of the more high profile channels that are part of the US version. I’m sure that, like the US version, the European versions will evolve over time with additional channels. I’ve said before that this is a great model for Amazon, which gets to bolt on additional revenue to its Prime subscription while learning lots about how people consume pay TV should it want to launch a self-contained pay TV service at some point in the future, and which is also useful in continuing to flesh out the Prime Video service itself.
via Variety
Snapchat Introduces More Flexible Stories Feature (May 23, 2017)
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Apple and Nokia Settle Patent Litigation (May 23, 2017)
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★ Microsoft Announces New Surface Pro, Custom Windows 10 for Chinese Government (May 23, 2017)
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Twitter Hires Former Bloomberg Exec to Lead Live Video (May 22, 2017)
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eMarketer Forecasts Rapid Growth in AR and VR, Almost All Without Headsets (May 22, 2017)
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Apple Launches Website for Android Switchers (May 22, 2017)
A little under two years ago, Apple launched its first Android app, “Move to iOS”, which was designed to help Android users make the switch to an iPhone. Now, Apple has a new section of its website up which is designed explicitly to help (and help convince) Android users switch to the iPhone. Given that almost every buyer of an iPhone in mature markets is going to be an existing smartphone owner, the two key drivers of iPhone sales in those markets are switching from Android and upgrading from earlier iPhones, and both have been a consistent theme on recent Apple earnings calls. So targeting that audience of Android switchers specifically makes perfect sense. The site focuses on a few aspects of buying and owning an iPhone: ease of use, ease of switching, camera quality, speed, privacy and security, iMessage extensions, support from Apple people, and environmental responsibility. Out of all the possible things Apple could emphasize, that’s an interesting list – design, for example, isn’t one of them, though the word appears in other contexts three times on the site, and all the things highlighted here are functional rather than aesthetic. In fact, other than one oblique shot of an iPhone at the top, there isn’t a single full shot of an iPhone or any shot with the screen on until you get to the “buy” section at the bottom. Given how central the design message and product shots have traditionally been to Apple promotional material, that’s an interesting departure and likely reflects research on why people switch from Android. It’s also worth checking out a set of five short videos Apple has made to go along with the site.
via Apple
Dish Allows Alexa Voice Control of Set Top Boxes (May 22, 2017)
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Facebook Moderation Guidelines Leak (May 22, 2017)
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Facebook is Pushing Back Launch of Original Video Content (May 22, 2017)
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