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Interrupt

Ads on Apple Maps — that’s what was missing!

But the best part is:

The idea is that these ads will give businesses a way to connect with users that engage with Maps in real time as they search for and explore nearby places such as restaurants, banks, and grocery stores.

Let’s re-write that in real language:

The idea is that these ads will give businesses a way to interrupt users that engage with Maps in real time as they search for and explore nearby places such as restaurants, banks, and grocery stores.

Coming Soon

SpaceX and Tesla will merge.

At that point, nothing will stop Tesla from building self-driving cars that will take you to Mars where you can say hello to your uncle who traded his condo in LA for the chance of being part of the first colony on the Red Planet. Can’t wait.

Google AI feels like…

Google AI, or ChatGPT, feels a lot like social media. Do you remember Facebook before it became a cesspool of meaningless algorithmically chosen dumb videos?

Up to 5 years ago, it was a cesspool where you had useless conversations with your dumb friends and, much worse, their dumb friends, people who didn’t have a clue about who you were but who felt they needed to jump in your exchanges to call you dumb or racist or a boomer or whatever just because they were bored or sad or thought they could score some points with some chick they could not get.

Nowadays, you can have seemingly productive exchanges with a LLM. Far from perfect, but it easily beats both the old cesspool Facebook and the new cesspool 2.0.

How Wrong We Were

I used to love the Cluetrain Manifesto.

What was not to love? I was young and rather clueless, and with a rebellious streak. Here come The Beatles, and they said that the ways of the world were wrong, which was true, and that everything would change. Which was false.

Quite naturally, I hopped on the Cluetrain. It served me well for some time, so no hard feelings. And yet, it’s incredible how different things turned out to be!

 

We went from…

#62 Markets do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate firewall.

(which was spot-on!)

to…

Companies doing that exactly, outsourcing their ‘conversations’ to PR agencies, flacks and hucksters and people in charge of ‘delivering’ the ‘right’ message.

 

And from…

#2 Markets consist of human beings…

#3 Conversations among human beings sound human…

#10 As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized…

#17 Companies that assume online markets are the same markets that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves…

#89 We have real power and we know it…

#94 To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than they are…

to…

Brands using AI-generated influencers to promote products on social media [link].

(As if ‘real’ influencers were not bad enough)

 

The web is like the freeways in LA. It was great –– until everybody got there.