Damien Mulley

Actually, this is interesting enough.

So Buzzfeed gets $50 from Andreessen Horowitz, decides it will create a movie studio.

Post this, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz talk “software will destroy the world” and more in this podcast.

Meanwhile one of the other Bens talks on a podcast about why Buzzfeed is a very interesting investment. Supporting blog post from him. The way they do “native” advertising could be one future of media. Advertiser picks a topic/area and Buzzfeed does a Buzzfeed on interesting content with the advertiser marked as a sponsor.

Re/Code are now doing it too. What’s interesting there is their journalists DO NOT write this content but do we really look at who write pieces? Well actually, I do as you can easily spot biases depending on the writer. For example you can see who is in bed with what tech company in the broadsheets quite easily. Metaphorically.

And 2013 content and traffic starlet Upworthy are getting hit by traffic decreases which they blame on training their new staff. New one on me that one. How long does it take to train these staff and does not say something about the structure that bringing new staff on board causes dips in traffic for months?

Upworthy, Buzzfeed and even most Irish media websites are over dependent on Facebook right now. And now Facebook at last have said they’re going to combat click bait articles. Interesting to me is they’re using a lot og techniques Google uses to measure if a site is good content or not e.g. how quickly they click back to FB, the faster = less quality.

These few tips on how to increase or sustain reach on Facebook may be of use.

Now look at this switch too. MLB TV streams are moving away from desktops to devices. They’ll also move from traditional TV stations to streams too. Goodbye TV stations maybe, definitely “channels”.

So this is why Twitch which was meant to be bought by YouTube is being bought by Amazon now for nearly $1 Bn in cash. Twitch is 3 years old. 3! Retaining their independence with Amazon seems to be the message. Remaining independent is the hot new thing. Twitch is where gamers stream their games and millions of people watch them every month. It’s huge and it seems nobody in “traditional’ media saw it coming. This is going to happen more and more.

In January, Twitch reported that 58 percent of its viewers spent more than 20 hours per week on the site.

20 hours!

Stay with me on this. See the recent BBC news piece about a Korean baseball team adding in robots to the crowd so it appears the team is followed more than they are? Sure, people have been buying followers for years in the virtual spaces but now it’s physical spaces.

And at the same time we have these scientific studies showing how humans will mimic the facial expressions of robots. Silly humans.

The spontaneous mimicry of others’ emotional facial expressions constitutes a rudimentary form of empathy and facilitates social understanding

This mimicry occurs even though these participants find the android unsettling and are fully aware that it lacks intentionality

Now the study does say when the android is videoed instead of being in person, less mimicry occurs. They can fix that I bet. See the issue here is we mistrust someone as we can read their face and even the best trained PR people do actually find it hard to physically hide their lies despite what comes out of their mouth. But with with robots you can perfectly program the facial expressions and we’ll smile back to the “genuine” smile. A physiological study shows that when people give their driverless cars names, they are more forgiving when the vehicle has an error.

So another oil spill and this time BP whips out the robo-spokesperson who like Johnny-Cab, tells you with a face full of contrition that they are sorry and it wasn’t their fault. Suckers.

And this from a few years ago when two bots argue with each other