DataDownload: Can Salesforce be the Netflix of content marketing? A weekly summary of all things Media, Data, Emerging Tech View this email in your browser
Some weeks, the newsletter is easy. Other times it’s hard. This week it’s complicated. Yes, the Salesforce Netflix-of-biz-content story is interesting, the creator economy strikes a cord, and AI Powered Codex is fascinating… but the non-tech news of the world is hard to ignore. Fires burning in California, the danger of climate change on our doorstep, and the rapid sweep of the Taliban in Afghanistan all overwhelm our newsfeeds. Meanwhile, the resurgence of Covid in its new Delta form is creating both a medical and political crisis.
Which isn’t to say the matters of the Media Lab are irrelevant, far from it. We always say we like big problems. And sitting here in the the hot summer of 2021, certainly we have problems to solve.
Reach out with any ideas about how we can do that together.
Best,
Steve
Steven Rosenbaum
Steve@NYCMedialab.org
Executive Director
The NYC Media Lab Must-Read Salesforce Wants Salesforce+ to Be the Netflix of Biz Content
Hot on the heels of its $28B purchase of Slack, Salesforce is sinking its teeth into what TechCrunch calls the “largest content marketing scheme of all time.” Salesforce+ is a new streaming service that aims to “bring the magic of Dreamforce to viewers across the globe with luminary speakers, Trailblazer success stories, and groundbreaking innovation.” Salesforce has demonstrated that there’s substantial interest in its content in the real world — the last Dreamforce conference in 2019 involved over 100K people. But is there a big enough audience hungry for what TechCrunch describes as “your LinkedIn feed brought to life, but in video form”?
Salesforce is considered the most successful SaaS company ever and disclosed almost $6B in revenue in Q2 ’21 — up 23% YOY. But given that Salesforce+ is free, “will it prove to be a money pit, costing buckets of cash to produce with limited returns?” If Salesforce+’s expensive attempt to become the Netflix of business content doesn’t pay off, how long will shareholders support it?
TechCrunch / 4 min read
Read more The Creator Economy Is in Crisis. Now Let’s Fix it.
The creator (or passion) economy now comprises 50M+ independent content creators getting paid for their work in the US. It was supposed to alleviate many of the gig economy’s problems — such as lack of labor protections, income instability, and lack of autonomy. In a perfect world, individual creators would “build an online audience, cultivate direct user relationships, and monetize skills/knowledge, content, and other individualized services” with nothing more than an internet connection and their own talents and abilities.
Passion economy workers may have more autonomy than an Uber driver, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that they too are reliant on a handful of platforms that don’t have their best interests at heart. As platform-meditated work becomes more prevalent, passion economy workers need to fight for their rights. According to Li Jin: “Creator empowerment will be the product of concerted efforts by founders, investors, creators, and the broader tech community to craft structures and platforms that prioritize creator control and ownership.”
Li’s Newsletter / 20 min read Read More Tech+Media Facebook Shares Its Time Card Atomic Clock Tech to Speed Internet Services
Telling time is something we take for granted — just look at your phone. But all of our smartphones and devices — not to mention the servers that underpin modern technology — rely on 100% accurate timekeeping to function. For years, the answer to “what time is it” was provided by the Network Time Protocol. In a related TechCrunch article, Oleg Obleukhov, production engineer at Facebook said: “Almost every single electronic device today uses NTP which you have on your phone, on your watch, on your laptop, everywhere.”
NTP relies on specialized time-keeping boxes like a Stratum 1, built by a handful of companies. Getting new features for these fancy clocks proves difficult and, because of their proprietary nature, Facebook couldn’t fully control the boxes. Obleukhov and his colleague Ahmad Byagowi set out to build a better timepiece. Now Facebook has made the tech open source. For the price of a $300 PCIe card, you can now have your very own atomic clock. According to the developers: “Building a device that is very precise, inexpensive, and free from vendor lock was an achievement. [Now] anyone can build their own Time Card for a fraction of the cost of a regular time appliance.”
CNET / 2 min read Read More OpenAI Can Translate English Into Code With Its New Machine Learning Software Codex
Last year, GPT-3 struck fear into the hearts of writers and editors everywhere with its uncanny imitations of natural language. Now coders are in the crosshairs. OpenAI’s new machine learning tool…
