Dozen Worthy Reads đ° (No. 173)
This week : More Facebook woes, Big Tech & geo-politics, Facebook's MP challenges, China Tech strategy, LNKD in China, Web3.0/NFT's, Databricks, MasterClass, Swapstack and more ..
Hi All,
I hope you all are doing well and welcome to Dozen Worthy Reads. A newsletter where I talk about the most interesting things about tech that I read the past couple of weeks or write about tech happenings. You can sign up here or just read on âŠ
Tech News : Facebook canât catch a break
Well, Facebook canât seem to catch a break. When I summed up Facebook files a couple of weeks ago I thought, well, how many more skeletons can they have? My thinking has changed a bit and I think Facebook is about to face their most challenging decade as a company. Similar to how MSFTâs lawsuit distracted the company, Facebook is going to be very distracted for a long time. This actually seems 100x worse (given the geopolitical implications). There are human problems, antitrust problems, political problems, employee activism. I donât think Facebookâs leadership (or any companyâs leadership) can, are, or will be prepared to handle the onslaught.Â
In India, Facebook Struggles to Combat Misinformation and Hate Speech
Facebook (FB) Faulted by Its Own Staff Over Jan. 6 Insurrection
'Carol's Journey': What Facebook knew about how it radicalized users
Haugen claims backed by new Facebook whistleblower filing with SEC
Tech and Politics : Big Tech, Geo-politics, who owns communication
Governments around the world are realizing how much tech (and more specifically American tech) is prevalent in most of the world. Of course you have a China, you have an India, you have a Russia all of which are on a spectrum of âHow do we bring order, control what our citizens have access toâ or âOk we have a problemâ. Russia for example recently installed more deep packet inspection tech. China is way further along. India is probably at the starting point of thinking about how/if/do they want to control BigTech influence. The reality is that in a few decades from now weâll have very few common services that work or are allowed in every country. Part of the innovation landscape in every country will be triggered by an American service getting blocked, a local need being identified (for example Koo, the Indian Twitter), or the fact that there is just enough of a vertical market that has a unique need (Uh I donât know lets say a Tamil reading app) : How Big Tech Will Reshape the Global Order
Facebookâs Marketplace
Facebook has managed to become a huge marketplace but as with everything Facebook does it throws out an MVP (since that is the way PMâs are taught to build products). The consequence, of course is, when you release a product, scale it, and see the problems, fixing them after the fact is a lot harder, and comes with more complications that they are not well equipped to handle.
Strategy : China Tech Scale
This article from Future talks about how Chinese tech grows so large and how they keep innovating by disrupting themselves all the time. This scale impacts not only the company but also the users. Just last week a livestream seller called âLipstick Brotherâ sold $2B of product.. In ONE day! : The Brazen Strategy Behind China Tech's Growth - Future
Strategy : LinkedIn and China
LinkedIn entered China with a view of being able to scale and grow revenue (not because of altruistic intentions) so when the cost to do business is more expensive than the revenue from that business plus the danger of pissing off the Chinese government, the decision to leave is easy. Stick with something safe .. like a job board : Why LinkedIn (Mostly) Left China?
Amazon Alexa : Nilay Patel interviews Dave Limp on all things Alexa.Â
How Amazon runs Alexa, with Dave Limp
Web 3.0Â
Decentralized Finance : Decentralized Finance: What It Is, Why It Matters - Future
Mario Gabriele with a deep dive on NFTâs : NFTs that Think
Product
Two great reads from Gibson Biddle and Casey Winters on how they think about HoP roles at a new company
What's your focus during your first 90 days as Head of Product?
What Type of Job is This: My First Year as Chief Product Officer
Profile : Ali Ghodsi of Databricks
A look at Databricks both as a company and a deep dive into the CEO. If youâve kinda wondered what DataBricks does this is for you : Accidental Billionaires: How Seven Academics Who Didn't Want To Make A Cent Are Now Worth Billions
Learning and the creator economy.Â
Two articles that I read this week, one of productivity influencers, and one on MasterClass were extremely interesting since they both tie into learning and the creator economy in different ways. I will admit at this stage that I am still quite skeptical about MasterClass (I havenât tried the product out yet). To me this seems like a product for someone who has a diverse set of interests and wants to continuously learn (and that is definitely me - you can tell by the number of Haas classes I audit ;)) but will that interest wane? The content is mostly evergreen (to a great extent anyway) and MasterClass can continue to build their library thereby creating a NFLX for learning. Interesting but I still feel that something is missing
On the other hand, as I was reading the productivity influencer article (below) I could not help but think of how this ties into Customer Success Managers. For example weâre trying to use customer.io for messaging and our account rep was kind enough to record a video showing us the features and how we can use it. Iâd imagine thereâd be a solid use case for such influencers to run classes or workshops â in affiliation with customer success for more complicated productivity apps such as Notion (which I struggled with a bit to get used to!)
Excel, Notion have inspired fans to turn into influencers
Can MasterClass Teach You Everything?
Startupâs : Swapstack
If youâve read a lot of Substack newsletters recently, one of the things you might have noticed is sponsorships from brands within these newsletters. Writers choose to either have an ad supported model, charge for their newsletter, or both. Of course finding sponsors is not easy to do so Jake Singer created Swapstack to solve the problem. Brand/influencer marketing has existed for over a decade and there are many companies solving the problem for brands. What differentiates Swapstack is their focus on newsletters : Swapstack Goes Off (Deck) - by Jake Singer - The Flywheel
Thank you for reading. Stay safe, be well! If you enjoyed reading this please consider sharing with a friend or two (or sign up here if you came across this or were forwarded this)