BBC wants to add 3rd parties to its Sounds app to balance Apple and Spotify dominance in podcasts and music

Earlier this week, the BBC pulled its podcasts from Google’s Podcast app and Assistant platform after determining that it wasn’t getting enough out of the relationship, specifically noting that Google wasn’t providing it with enough audience data and search links to its own sites and services. Today, we get some more context and development on that decision.

The UK media giant announced that it is working on an expansion of its own Sounds app: it’s in talks with other media companies to add their podcasts and live radio streams to it, a move it hopes will help not just the BBC itself but other media owners find some more competitive leverage against not just Google, but also Apple and Spotify — with the latter two currently accounting for 80 percent of the podcast and music streaming markets in the UK.

The plan to expand Sounds — which has had 1.7 million downloads since being launched just over four months ago — with third-party content producers was outlined today in the broadcaster’s annual report, where it details strategy for the year ahead. James Purnell, the former politician who is now the BBC’s head of radio and education, dove a little deeper into the details in a separate blog post.

“Choice and plurality are good. But dominance by one or two gatekeepers would not be,” Purnell wrote. “With BBC Sounds, we are already offering an alternative audio destination to the global platforms. But for the last few months we have also been talking to colleagues in British radio to see if Sounds could help them… We would like to make Sounds a platform that serves British audiences and British creativity.”

Purnell also made clear that this was not a grand move to building a walled garden of its own.

“We want to continue to make our content available to third party platforms,” he said. “But we want to do so in a way that ensures choice and competition.”

He is, of course, referring here to the kerfuffle earlier this week when the BBC pulled its podcasts from Google platforms, after Google refused to link to other places (apart from on Google) where the content could be heard.

“We’ve asked Google to stop favouring their own app from search, but were told this wasn’t possible, and instead that the only option was to take our podcasts off their service. This is disappointing,” he notes. “We are in discussions with Google to resolve the situation.”

The blog post published today by Purnell provides an interesting template and one more example of how the BBC has tried to double down over the years on building its own platforms and technology to determine its own digital destiny, rather than have it be too tied to third-party platforms it cannot control.

(As with other TV broadcasters and their own streaming platforms, one of the more notable examples of how the BBC has struck out on its own is its development of iPlayer, the online and OTT on-demand service for catching up on all the TV and radio programming that the BBC puts out on its linear channels. Sounds was built to complement that since there has been a strong and clear trend for people opting to use specific and purpose-built audio apps for audio services.)

But for all that, it is also still early days.

The blog post does not detail what other content providers and producers are in conversations with the BBC, nor is there any mention of how the BBC would handle the commercial aspects of those relationships, considering that its own content within the UK is delivered as an ad-free, free public service. (Internationally, this is not the case.) Nor does it say whether the BBC would consider how to export Sounds to other markets.

Purnell also takes the opportunity at the mike, so to speak, to level a strike against the likes of Facebook and the false sense of security that many media companies fell into during the early days of using social networking sites to build audiences for their content online.

“Colleagues from other industries often tell me they wish they had put more emphasis on building up their distribution channels rather than relying on social media,” he notes. “Many of them are addressing that through changes to their business models.”

Radio, he adds, “isn’t in that situation yet” since only a small porportion of listening happens online in the UK. But  with Spotify seemingly expanding its podcast strategy by the week at the moment, and Apple making a very large move this week to lay out its own ambitions for media services, even if social media’s star is no longer in the ascendant, there will be many others tussling to own the digital consumer.

“We should heed the lessons of other industries and change before we have to,” Purnell notes.

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Artiphon raises $2M round led by Warner Music

Artiphon, the startup behind the electronic instrument that it’s dubbed the Instrument 1, has raised $2 million in seed funding.

We previously described the Instrument 1 as a symphony, rock band and DJ that you can hold in your hand. It’s a device that allows you to create the sounds of a guitar, violin, bass, piano or drum machine without any real training.

Back in 2015, Artiphon raised $1.3 million for the Instrument 1 on Kickstarter, blowing past its goal of $75,000. The new funding is a more traditional investment, led by Warner Music Group — in fact, it’s the first publicly announced investment from WMG Boost, Warner’s seed investment fund for music-related startups.

“As true innovators in music creativity, Artiphon is a strong example of the types of companies and products we seek to support,” said WMG’s head of innovation and emergin technology Jeff Bronikowski in a statement. “They’ve already expanded the concept of the musical instrument as a smart, connected device and we’re excited to help them drive the future of interactive music.”

Artiphon co-founder and CEO Mike Butera told me that his goal for the Instrument 1 is to remove skill as a barrier to entry for creating music. In fact, he recalled receiving responses to the Kickstarter campaign that said, “How dare you let anyone sound good? I worked so hard to sound good, and now you’re making that accessible to anyone.”

Butera’s response? “Welcome to the future.”

To be clear, he isn’t trying to replace traditional instruments — he said he still plays his classical violin. Nor does he think the product is just for beginners. Instead, he says the Instrument 1 can also augment the skills of trained musicians, allowing them to make sounds they never could with a regular instrument.

While I spent more than a decade playing classical piano, it was basically half a lifetime ago — I think it’s fair to say that I fall closer to the beginner side of the spectrum.

So it was a real delight for me to try out the Instrument 1. With just a few pointers from Butera, I quickly found myself noodling around and making different instrument sounds. In some ways, it reminded me of playing Guitar Hero, but with far more expressiveness.

Butera, by the way, fully embraces that comparison. He told me, “We’re interested in making music as fun, or more fun, than playing games.”

Artiphon Founder and CEO Mike Butera

While the product is called the Instrument 1, Butera told me the name is meant to emphasize the idea of many instruments in one — it doesn’t mean Artiphon is already working on an Instrument 2. The startup may release more hardware in the future, but he said he wants to move away from “a consumer electronics mindset” where you convince someone to buy a new gadget every year or two, and instead create an instrument “that could last for years.”

“We are committed to the quality of the Instrument 1,” Butera said.

So the next steps for Artiphon include exploring more distribution channels, as well as building more software.

Artiphon has already created its own app for the Instrument 1, and the device is also compatible with a wide range of music software like Garage Band, but he said, “Okay, what can we do to help people actually play a song? It starts with the instrument … This is the foundation, now we’re getting to design experiences for people around the instrument that are in software.”

Kickstarter smash hit INSTRUMENT 1 from Artiphon is now available to buy

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European parliament votes for controversial copyright reform (yes, again)

The European Parliament has voted to pass a controversial reform of online copyright rules that critics contend will result in big tech platforms pre-filtering user generated content uploads.

The results of the final vote in the EU parliament were 348 in favor vs 274 against.

An amendment that would have thrown out the most controversial component of the copyright reform — aka Article 13, which makes platforms liable for copyright infringements committed by their users — was rejected by just five votes.

Dark day for internet freedom: The @Europarl_EN has rubber-stamped copyright reform including #Article13 and #Article11. MEPs refused to even consider amendments. The results of the final vote: 348 in favor, 274 against #SaveYourInternet pic.twitter.com/8bHaPEEUk3

— Julia Reda (@Senficon) March 26, 2019

In an earlier vote last fall the EU Parliament also backed the copyright reform proposal, passing negotiations to the EU Council. Months of closed door negotiations followed between representatives of EU Member States and institutions, in so called trilogue discussions, culminating in a final text being agreed last month — which was then handed back to parliament for its final vote today.

Tweaks to the reform agreed by Member States agreed during trilogue appear intended to address criticism that it imposes so-called ‘upload filters’ by default — instead requiring larger platforms to obtain licences for certain types of protected content ahead of time. Though critics still aren’t impressed.

Speaking out against the proposals in the parliament ahead of the vote, Pirate Party member and MEP Julia Reda, who is part of Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance in the EU parliament, highlighted the scale of popular protests against the copyright reform, saying 200,000 people attended demonstrations in the region this weekend and five million have signed a petition against the reform — claiming there has “never been such broad protest” against an EU directive.

She also accused of the parliament of “thoroughly ignoring” the popular protests and warned it risks convincing young people there’s no point in engaging with democratic protest.

“The most tragic thing about this process is a new generation who are voting in the European elections for the first time this year are learning a lesson: Your protests aren’t worth anything, politics will spread lies about you, and won’t care for factual arguments if geopolitical interests are at stake,” said Reda in an impassioned speech in parliament this afternoon ahead of the vote.

Her speech was interrupted several times by shouts from other MEPs disagreeing.

Freedom of expression vs creative industry

The copyright reform campaign has been massively polarized throughout, with one side claiming it means the end of the free Internet and the death of memes because it will result in all online uploads being pre-filtered; and the other accusing opponents they’re in the pay of tech giants which they accuse of freeloading and leaching off Europe’s creative industries by monetizing copyrighted content without paying for use.

Both sides have also accused each other of spreading disinformation to further their cause. There’s been zero love lost across this divide as lobbyists from the two sides have piled on (and on).

Another element of the reform, Article 11, is a proposal to extend digital copyright to cover the ledes of news stories — which aggregators such as Google News scrape and display.

Unsurprisingly that measure has strong support among European media giants like Axel Springer and critics of the reform accuse its architects of being in hock to the newspaper industry which hopes to benefit financially by being able to charge link aggregator platforms like Google for displaying its content in future.

In recent years a couple of individual EU member states have passed similar laws to extend copyright to news snippets — which led Google to pull Google News entirely from Spain, while in Germany publishers ended up providing their snippets for free. An EU-wide rule could change the dynamics, though.

It’s certainly a much bigger business decision for Google to pull the plug on Google News across the whole of Europe, rather than just in Spain. Though, equally, Google could just come up with a compliance workaround to evade the requirement to pay.

Less discussed elements of the reform include proposals around text and data mining (TDM), which have implications for AI research — including a mandatory copyright exceptions for TDM conducted for research purposes. Teaching and educational purposes are also exempt. But rightholders can opt out of having their works datamined by entities other than research organisations.

The European Commission’s VP for the Digital Single Market tweeted in support of the parliament’s vote today — dubbing it a “big step ahead” which he said will reduce fragmentation across the bloc.

This #copyright vote is a big step ahead. It cuts fragmentation; a key step to completing the #DigitalSingleMarket. For the first time Europe has clear common rules on cultural heritage & text and data mining, essential for future of #AI#CopyrightDirective pic.twitter.com/ysIMXk6jaF

— Andrus Ansip (@Ansip_EU) March 26, 2019

But in a follow up tweet he sought to address concerns that the reform will chill freedom of expression online, writing: “I know there are lots of fears about what users can do or not – now we have clear guarantees for #FreedomOfSpeech, teaching and online creativity. Member States must make full use of these safeguards in national law.”

In a press release following the parliament’s vote the Commission confirms the text will need to be formally endorsed by the Council of the European Union — which will take place via another vote in the coming weeks, so likely early next month.

Assuming the Council gives its thumbs up the final text will be been published on the Official Journal of the EU, and Member States will then have 24 months to transpose the rules into their national legislation. So the timetable for the copyright directive coming into force is likely 2021.

An accompanying Commission memo on the directive also seeks to address some of the criticisms, with the Commission claiming it “protects freedom of expression [and] sets strong safeguards for users, making clear that everywhere in Europe the use of existing works for purposes of quotation, criticism, review, caricature as well as parody are explicitly allowed”.

“This means that memes and similar parody creations can be used freely. The interests of the users are also preserved through effective mechanisms to swiftly contest any unjustified removal of their content by the platforms,” it adds, in what critics will surely dub cold comfort attempts to paper over the overarching chilling effect on expression from pushing content liability onto platforms.

In another section of the memo, the Commission also writes that the directive does not “impose uploading filters” — nor add any specific technology to recognise illegal content.

“Under the new rules, certain online platforms will be required to conclude licensing agreements with right holders — for example, music or film producers — for the use of music, videos or other copyright protected content. If licences are not concluded, these platforms will have to make their best efforts to ensure that content not authorised by the right holders is not available on their website. The “best effort” obligation does not prescribe any specific means or technology,” it writes.

Though, again, critics argue that will simply translate into upload filters in practice anyway — as platforms will be encouraged to “over-comply” with the rules to “stay on the safe side”, as Reda tells it.

Also critical of the reform, former MEP Catherine Stihler, who’s now CEO of an open data advocacy not-for-profit, called the Open Knowledge Foundation.

In a reaction statement she dubbed the vote “a massive blow for every internet user in Europe”. “We now risk the creation of a more closed society at the very time we should be using digital advances to build a more open world where knowledge creates power for the many, not the few,” she suggested.

Following the vote, Tal Niv, GitHub’s VP of law and policy, also took a critical but more nuanced position, writing: “We’re thankful that policymakers listened and excluded ‘open source software developing and sharing platforms’ from the potential requirement to implement upload filters, which would have made the software ecosystem more fragile. However, the Directive that passed still contains challenges for developers.”

“Anyone developing a platform with EU users that involves sharing links or content faces great uncertainty. The ramifications include being unable to develop features that web users currently expect, and having to implement very expensive and inaccurate automated filtering. On the other hand, inclusion of a mandatory copyright exception for text and data mining in the Directive is welcome, and puts EU developers on a more even playing field relative to their US peers in the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence; looking ahead it will be crucial for member states to implement this exception in a consistent fashion.”

The Computer & Communications Industry Association reacted with disappointment too, warning in a statement that Article 13 undermines the legality of the social and sharing tools and websites that Europeans use every day and saying the reform falls short of “a balanced and modern framework for copyright” despite citing some “recent improvements”.

“We fear it will harm online innovation and restrict online freedoms in Europe. We urge Member States to thoroughly assess and try to minimize the consequences of the text when implementing it,” added Maud Sacquet, CCIA Europe’s senior policy manager.

Monique Goyens, director general of The European Consumer Organisation, BEUC, also described it as a “very unbalanced copyright law”.

“Despite the warnings and concerns of academics, privacy bodies, UN representatives and hundreds of thousands of consumers across Europe, the European Parliament has given its go-ahead to a very unbalanced copyright law. Consumers will have to bear the consequences of this decision,” she warned.

On the flip side professional content creators were jubilant.

“Through this historic vote, a message was sent by Europe to the world, in favour of culture, creation, authors, artists and journalists, and their right to fair remuneration in the digital world,” wrote the Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music in a wordy statement that goes into detail in an attempt to rebut specific various laid charges against the reform. (Such as pointing out that the final text of Article 13 includes an exception for startups — “whose growth will be promoted by clarifying their situation for the use of content protected by authors’ rights”, it suggests.)

“This vote was an act of European sovereignty and a victory for democracy, because it was possible despite one of the most violent campaigns of lobbying and disinformation in the history of the European Union, on the part of those who wanted at all costs to avoid adopting a balanced text,” it added.

In an analysis following the vote law firm Linklaters’ Kathy Berry suggests the controversy and polarization around the copyright reform debate is part of a broader “Hollywood v Silicon Valley” tension — between “content creators that want a high level of copyright protection based on traditional models, and the tech industry that wants to clear the path for new and innovative ways to use and share content”.

“While Article 13 may have noble aims, in its current it functions as little more than a set of ideals, with very little guidance on exactly which service providers will be caught by it or what steps will be sufficient to comply,” she writes delving into the implications for big tech. “This is likely to result in an ongoing lack of legal and commercial certainty until the scope of the Directive is fleshed out by either the Commission’s proposed guidance or by European jurisprudence.”

On Article 11 extending copyright to news snippets Berry says the final version of the text is “much watered down” — noting that it excludes both hyperlinks and “very short extracts” of publications — going on to suggest it’s “unlikely to have any significant impact on news aggregators like Google News after all”.

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TikTok quietly picked up the assets of GeoGif, which created animated, location-specific overlays for video

Video sharing app TikTok passed 1 billion downloads last month, and its parent company ByteDance is ramping up its efforts to monetize those users with ads, while also continuing to add more features to the app to keep people engaged. In a move that could help both of those efforts, ByteDance has made a small acquisition, picking up the assets of a defunct startup called GeoGif, which developed location-specific, animated stickers and overlays for videos, suggested to users when they capture video or images in specific places.

It seems that the location-based, animated element of what GeoGif built is the key part of what might be coming soon to TikTok, since the app already had a range of visual and audio filters and stickers to alter appearances and your voice, or just to embellish and further personalize your video.

Here’s the general gist of what GeoGif can do for a video if you are, for example, in Miami for Spring Break. (Note: This is not the greatest example given the naff and objectifying subject matter, but it’s the only example the startup has provided.)

The terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed, although we are asking both Dean Glas, one of GeoGif’s co-founders, as well as ByteDance and we will update if we learn more. In any case, the deal appears to include only the assets of the startup, which ceased operating more than two years ago, judging by activity on its social media accounts and LinkedIn profiles. CEO Dean Glas and his co-founder Mendy Raskin are now both working on new startups.

“We are excited for GeoGif to have a new home at TikTok,” said GeoGif’s CEO Dean Glas, “and we believe our features will be enjoyed by millions of users. We will work closely to make sure it’s a smooth transition that provides a long-term positive impact for the TikTok community.”

A TikTok spokesperson also confirmed that the features that were built for GeoGif will get rolled into the main TikTok app: “GeoGif and TikTok share a common goal which is enabling people to connect, consume, and create great content. We’re impressed with what the team at GeoGif has built and with TikTok’s resources, we believe that we will deliver an even better user experience for our millions of users who love using TikTok to express their creativity through short videos.”

With TikTok, China’s ByteDance has created one of the world’s biggest video apps — and subsequently become one of the world’s most valuable startups — and it has used acquisition as a key lever for adding both users and features.

To help break into the US, the main app itself merged with Musical.ly last year after being acquired for between $800 million and $1 billion by Toutiao (a ByteDance sub-brand) in 2017. Other acquisitions have included Flipagram — another music-video app and startup — in 2017 for an undisclosed sum; the AR selfie camera FaceU in 2018, reportedly for $300 million; payments startup UIPay also in 2018; and — just last week — it appears ByteDance acquired a gaming startup, Mokun Technology, from previous owner 37 Interactive, also for an undisclosed sum.

It’s likely that the GeoGif acquisition was for a small sum: the company did not have anything close to mass-market traction, and it had raised only seed round of an undisclosed amount. It was originally spun out of parent company Bivid — which is also now defunct but had been a hyperlocal social network akin to YikYak, Highlight and Zenly, suggesting friends and others who were near to you for chit-chat and simply to know their whereabouts.

TikTok already runs ads and has other paid features in China, but in Western markets like the US, the company has largely only been doing limited runs and tests of different formats, such as this native video ad test we spotted in February.

In January, a leaked ad deck from the company in Europe also mentioned several advertising and marketing units it was running and planning to run including brand takeovers; in-feed native video; hashtag challenges; Snapchat-style 2D lens filters for photos; and 3D and AR lenses. It’s the latter of these where GeoGif’s efforts could be rolled in.

Also in January, Bloomberg reported that in 2018, ByteDance, for the first time, had failed to beat its own revenue forecasts: It had told investors when it was fundraising a monster $3 billion round that it expected to make between $7.4 billion and $8.1 billion in revenues for the year, and sources said it would be coming in at the lower end of that range.

These are, relatively speaking, huge numbers when you consider that ByteDance’s currency is social media apps, which often spend years making no money at all. But in the context of missing growth expectations, this slower expansion could be a lever for the company launching more ad formats in more places and launching more products, such as the Slack competitor it is also reportedly building.

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Creatividad, la base de una estrategia de marketing: entrevista con Enrique Rojas, MD Consultoría

En el mundo de la publicidad y mercadotecnia la creatividad es un ingrediente imprescindible si se quiere crear, diseñar y ejecutar con éxito las ideas pensadas para conectar con el público.

Esto es algo que vemos reflejado es una gran cantidad de trabajos creativos manifestados a través de anuncios de televisión, digital o publicidad exterior y en activaciones BTL.

Pero, con el inevitable avance de la tecnología y la evolución de los procesos de creación, se ha llegado a cuestionar si la creatividad podría llegar a ser sustituida por algoritmos o procesos de recopilación y análisis de datos.

Y no es que sea casualidad, vemos cómo la inteligencia artificial es capaz de conversar como un consumidor casi si lo hiciera un ejecutivo de atención a clientes, escribir textos como un editor web o reportero, crear animaciones como un diseñador o animador, realizar anuncios como un publicista, incluso ya se vendió una obra de arte creada por una IA.

Sin embargo, esto no quiere decir la tecnología va a sustituir a la creatividad. De hecho, sigue siendo muy importante y decisiva, así lo concluye un reciente reporte de Warc en el que se señala que lo que tienen que hacer los responsables de marketing es “comprender las nuevas reglas del juego”.

De acuerdo con el artículo, lo que ha hecho la tecnología es que han servido para poder ser mucho más específicos y, por tanto, eliminar algunos potenciales problemas, por lo que estas herramientas deberían permitir a la industria crear mejores anuncios, más relevantes para el público, lo que conducentemente abrirá mayores oportunidades a que la gente evite la publicidad.

Platicamos sobre el proceso creativo y su importancia en la mercadotecnia y publicidad con Enrique Rojas Rojas, director de MDA Consulting, quien subraya que de poco sirve ejecutar de forma magistral un pan si este no tiene creatividad.

La importancia de la creatividad en mercadotecnia y publicidad: Entrevista con Enrique Rojas

La creatividad es muy importante porque aunque tengamos muy clara la idea, si no sabemos ejecutarla, se pierde.

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How to develop a brand identity system (like Intercom)

[Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of articles that we’re writing about branding for startups. It’s part of our latest initiative to find the best brand designers and agencies in the world who work with early-stage companies — nominate a talented brand designer you’ve worked with.]  

When designer Ryan Hubbard joined Intercom, a SaaS unicorn that makes customer engagement tools, he knew that he would be working at the forefront of brand design. The company’s leadership empowered its Intercom Brand Studio to help Intercom stand out in an increasingly crowded field.

“I always look to figure out what is possible or push expectations,” Hubbard says. “There’s a more traditional view on brand design — the idea that people are there to create order and make rules. And that’s valid, but it’s not how I look at it.”

Now a senior designer at Medium, Hubbard has a lot more to say on how startups should approach branding to make a memorable impression.  

The essential principle of branding

“The one thing you should probably have buttoned up prior to investing in brand is some kind of clear point of view about who you are as a company and what makes you different,” says Hubbard.

While the elements of a brand are primarily visual, brand identity is based on foundational values and attitudes that define a company.

That’s why it’s essential to start with your company’s unique story. Those who approach branding as an exercise in defining and expressing their core ideas will find it much easier to create a striking and memorable brand.

Intercom has a compelling origin story about friends in Dublin longing for online customer service to mimic the welcoming atmosphere of the coffee shop where they liked to work. Accordingly, Intercom’s brand focuses on values like approachability, personality, warmth, and helpfulness.

Those values translate into the brand’s visual language: a smile-like logo, joyful colors, quirky illustration.

“You could start with, ‘What is the story you’re telling?’” says Hubbard. “The stronger and better you can be with your story, that’s a really strong foundation for a good brand.”

How to define your look and feel

The basic elements of visual branding include logo, language, colors, imagery, and typography. A strong brand is one that can be distilled down to the most basic elements and still be recognizable. Even a single word written a particular way can convey volumes.

“There’s a lot you can communicate with just typography,” says Hubbard. “The best identity systems I’ve seen – not just in tech – are all brands that are really strong with typography.”

Free-flowing creativity is key in experimenting with these elements. You’ll be holding on tight to your brand identity as you refine your story and identify your values. But it’s important to be open to all kinds of creative expression when you start designing.

“Don’t be too precious with exactly how you want everything to look,” advises Hubbard. “You can’t have a predetermined direction in your mind when you’re going into it.”

Get ideas and images out onto the page quickly. Then identify which draft elements light a spark and develop them. It will soon become obvious which connect most strongly.

How to deploy your branding

Once you have a brand identity system in hand, the next step is deploying it consistently. Your brand must be consistent across touch points, both inside and outside the organization.

But don’t mistake consistency for rigidity. If your brand is built on ideas and not just on a simple collection of visual elements, you can be consistent and creative. Allow your brand to have a life of its own, anchored by its core values and principles.

“It’s really easy to create a brand system that gives you no flexibility for expression, so you wind up putting the same thing over there over and over again,” says Hubbard. “If you don’t give yourself any room to do new exciting things with your brand, you’ll get stagnant and forgotten.”

That’s a death knell for any company, but a strong brand identity system will keep your brand at the forefront of customers’ minds.

Help us find the best startup brand designers and agencies in the world — nominate a talented brand designer you’ve worked with.

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Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen steps down

Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen issued an open letter on the site’s blog today, noting that he will be stepping down from his role. The executive served as one of three cofounders for the service, launching the site in 2009, with Yancey Strickler and Charles Adler. He served as CEO for Kickstarter’s first five years and returned to the role two years back.

He notes in his post that he will stay on board with the service as chairman of the board, focusing “on high-level and long-term company needs.” Kickstarter will be promoting its Head of Design and Product Aziz Hasan as interim CEO, as Chen steps away from day to day operations.

“When I returned as CEO in 2017, I initially intended to spend about six months working to set up a long-term foundation to ensure Kickstarter remained aligned with its mission, and to set the next leader up for success,” Chen writes. “Those months quickly became two years dedicated to developing a better way to deliver on the core aspects of our service through a robust operating system, a strong product, and the team we have assembled at Kickstarter today.”

This key change in management comes as the company’s staff announced plans to unionize. Kickstarter employees are teaming with the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 153.

The staff notes in a statement,

Kickstarter United is proud to start the process of unionizing to safeguard and enrich Kickstarter’s charter commitments to creativity, equity, and a positive impact on society. We trust in the democratic process and are confident that the leadership of Kickstarter stands with us in that effort.

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Facebook loses CPO Chris Cox and WhatsApp VP Chris Daniels

13-year Facebook veteran, Chief Product Officer, and the spirit animal of the social network Chris Cox is departing the company after two years of seeking to do something new. Cox’s exit is part of a big executive reshuffle as Facebook embarks on prioritizing privacy through messaging, groups, Stories, and integration of its chat features.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained the departure of his long-time friend, saying “For a few years, Chris has been discussing with me his desire to do something else . . . But after 2016, we both realized we had too much important work to do to improve our products for society, and he stayed to help us work through these issues and help us chart a course for our family of apps going forward. At this point, we have made real progress . . .  As we embark on this next major chapter, Chris has decided now is the time to step back from leading these teams.”

VP of WhatsApp Chis Daniels leaves Facebook

Cox bowing out after so long is understandable, but more surprising is today’s departure of Chris Daniels, an 8-year employee who was moved from being head of Internet.org to VP of WhatsApp just last May in a major re-org. Daniels always felt like a strange choice to oversee international chat leader WhatsApp and its struggles with misinformation in India given he’d led Internet.org when its zero-rated Free Basics app was banned in India for violating net neutrality.

The changes solidify that Facebook is entering a new era as it chases the trend of feed sharing giving way to private communication. Cox and Daniels may feel they’ve done their part advancing Facebook’s product, and that the company needs renewed energy as it shifts from a relentless growth focus to keeping its users loyal while learning to monetize a new from of social networking.

Here’s the breakdown of the executive changes:

• Chris Cox will depart Facebook, but hasn’t revealed plans for what’s next. He will not be immediately replaced
• Chris Daniels will leave WhatsApp, and Facebook declined to provide any details on why or the circumstances
• Will Cathcart will go from running the main Facebook app to VP of WhatsApp
• Fidji Simo who was the VP of Product for Facebook video, news, and advertising will take over Cathcart’s role running Facebook’s main app
• Javier Olivan who was Facebook’s VP of growth will lead the task of identifying how to integrate Facebook’s products, including the plan to unify the backend of Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram direct to expand encryption and allow cross-app messaging that some see a shield against Facebook being broken up.
• Instagram VP Adam Mosseri, Messenger’s VP Stan Chudnovsky, Simo, and Cathcart will now report directly to  Zuckerberg, while Chief Marketing Officer Antonio Lucio reports to COO Sheryl Sandberg

Cox was one of Facebook’s first 15 engineers, joining in 2005 after Zuckerberg convinced him to drop out of a Stanford grad program. He became Facebook’s Director of Human Resources and then in 2008, its VP of product. He was promoted to CPO in 2014 and aided in Facebook’s clean up after the 2016 presidential election, working on misinformation and at-risk countries to deter future attacks on democracy. Over the years, he remained a fixture of Zuckerberg’s inner circle of friends and lieutenants. Oh, and he’s a wicked keyboardist who plays is a very respectable reggae band.

Known for his hit talk revealing the Timeline profile at F8 2011 and giving rousing orientation speeches to each batch of new Facebook employees, Cox’s departure could drag on Facebook’s already-shaky morale. Some staffers saw him as a preferred replacement for Zuckerberg should he ever leave the CEO role. That leaves the line of succession an open question at Facebook, with Sandberg, Olivan, and Mosseri as the most likely candidates. Cox was seen as so essential that Facebook filed an 8-K disclosure with the SEC about his departure.

The change in priority from growth to sustainability through privacy is cemeted by Olivan’s new responsibilities. While rarely in the spotlight, his team was seen as one of the most important and powerful at the company. His talents will be applied to making Facebook’s apps work together to prevent churn of its enormous user base, which will take careful product design and a savvy understanding of people’s expectations. Instagram and WhatsApp have become golden geese for Facebook, and Olivan will have to ensure they’re not tarnished through deeper connections to Facebook’s battered brand.

Mark Zuckerberg’s blog post

Hey everyone — I want to share some important updates as we organize our company to build out the privacy-focused social platform I discussed in my note last week. Embarking on this new vision represents the start of a new chapter for us.

As part of this, I’m sad to share the news that Chris Cox has decided to leave the company. Chris and I have worked closely together to build our products for more than a decade and I will always appreciate his deep empathy for the people using our services and the uplifting spirit he brings to everything he does. He has played so many central roles at Facebook — starting as an engineer on our original News Feed, building our first HR teams and helping to define our mission and values, leading our product and design teams, running the Facebook app, and most recently overseeing the strategy for our family of apps. Along the way, Chris has helped train many great leaders who are now in important roles across the company — including some who will now take on bigger roles in our new product efforts.

For a few years, Chris has been discussing with me his desire to do something else. He is one of the most talented people I know and he has the potential to do anything he wants. But after 2016, we both realized we had too much important work to do to improve our products for society, and he stayed to help us work through these issues and help us chart a course for our family of apps going forward. At this point, we have made real progress on many issues and we have a clear plan for our apps, centered around making private messaging, stories and groups the foundation of the experience, including enabling encryption and interoperability across our services. As we embark on this next major chapter, Chris has decided now is the time to step back from leading these teams. I will really miss Chris, but mostly I am deeply grateful for everything he has done to build this place and serve our community.

At the same time, as we embark on this new chapter, Chris Daniels has also decided to leave the company. Chris has also done great work in many roles, including running our business development team, leading Internet.org, which has helped more than 100 million people get access to the internet, and most recently at WhatsApp, where he has helped define the business model for our messaging services going forward. Chris is one of the clearest and most principled business thinkers I’ve met and the diversity of challenges he has helped us navigate is impressive. I’ve really enjoyed working with Chris and I’m sure he will do great work at whatever he chooses to take on next.

While it is sad to lose such great people, this also creates opportunities for more great leaders who are energized about the path ahead to take on new and bigger roles.

I’m excited that Will Cathcart will be the new head of WhatsApp. Will is one of the most talented leaders at our company — always focused on solving the most important problems for people and clear-eyed about the challenges and tradeoffs we face. Most recently he has done a great job running the Facebook app, where he has led our shift to focusing on meaningful social interactions and has significantly improved the performance and reliability of the app. In his career here, Will has helped lead our teams focused on security and integrity, and he believes deeply in providing end-to-end encryption to everyone in the world across our services.

I’m also excited that Fidji Simo will be the new head of the Facebook app. She is one of our most talented product and organizational leaders — passionate about building community and supporting creativity, and focused on building strong teams and developing future leaders. She has played key roles in building many aspects of the Facebook app, including leading our work on video and advertising. She believes deeply in helping people get more value out of the networks they’ve built. She has already led this team for much of last year while Will was out on parental leave, and she is the clear person to lead these efforts going forward.

Our family of apps strategy has been led jointly by Chris Cox and Javier Olivan. Chris managed the leaders of the apps directly and Javi has been responsible for all of the central product services that work across our apps, including safety and integrity, analytics, growth, and ads. Javi will now lead identifying where our apps should be more integrated. Javi is an incredibly thoughtful, strategic and analytical leader, and I’m confident this work will continue to go well. Since we have now decided on the basic direction of our family of apps for the next few years, I do not plan on immediately appointing anyone to fill Chris’s role in the near term. Instead, the leaders of Facebook (Fidji Simo), Instagram (Adam Mosseri), Messenger (Stan Chudnovsky), and WhatsApp (Will Cathcart) will report directly to me, and our Chief Marketing Officer (Antonio Lucio) will report directly to Sheryl.

This is an important change as we begin the next chapter of our work building the privacy-focused social foundation for the future. I’m deeply grateful for everything Chris Cox and Chris Daniels have done here, and I’m looking forward to working with Will and Fidji in their new roles as well as everyone who will be critical to achieving this vision. We have so much important work ahead and I’m excited to continue working to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. 

Chris Cox’s Facebook Post

It is with great sadness I share with you that after thirteen years, I’ve decided to leave the company.

Since I was twenty-three, I’ve poured myself into these walls. The pixels, the code, the products we’ve built together, the language, the culture, the values, the big ideas, and most of all, the people. Most all my personal highs and lows of the last decade have been tied up in the journey of this company, with Mark, and with so many of you. This place will forever be a part of me.

On Monday I gave my last orientation at Facebook to a hundred new faces. For over a decade, I’ve been sharing the same message that Mark and I have always believed: social media’s history is not yet written, and its effects are not neutral. It is tied up in the richness and complexity of social life. As its builders we must endeavor to understand its impact — all the good, and all the bad — and take up the daily work of bending it towards the positive, and towards the good. This is our greatest responsibility.

As Mark has outlined, we are turning a new page in our product direction, focused on an encrypted, interoperable, messaging network. It’s a product vision attuned to the subject matter of today: a modern communications platform that balances expression, safety, security, and privacy. This will be a big project and we will need leaders who are excited to see the new direction through.

I’m proud of the team who will succeed me: Fidji, Will, Adam, Stan, and Antonio. They are strong leaders, serious thinkers, good managers, craftspeople, and most importantly, deeply good people. I trust that, along with Mark, they will carry on the work of building out our platforms in a way that honors the responsibilities we have to the billions of people who rely upon our tools each day.

Mark, thank you for creating this place, and for the chance to work beside a dear friend for over thirteen years. Thank you Sheryl, Schrep, and Javi for your partnership, and for showing me what a wise and dedicated team is meant to be. And to the company: thank you for your creativity, humanity, resilience, and sleepless nights. It has been an honor to work alongside you and I will miss you dearly.

-Chris

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Marking 30 years of the web, Tim Berners-Lee calls for a joint fight against disinformation

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has published an open letter to mark the 30th anniversary of the day — March 12, 1989 — when he submitted his original proposal for an information management system that went on to underpin the birth of online services.

The proposal, dubbed “vague but exciting” by his boss at the time, married hypertext with Internet TCP and domain name system ideas. Berners-Lee also had to design and build a web browser and put together the first web server. The first website was put up a couple of years later, running on a NeXT computer at CERN, where Berners-Lee had worked.

The rest, as they say, is Internet history.

Thirty years on from the free and open online information playground Berners-Lee had envisaged it’s fair to say today’s web isn’t quite the academic, egalitarian paradise he dreamt of.

In recent years Berners-Lee has made a series of public interventions, warning especially about corporate capture of the online sphere. He’s also working on new decentralization technologies to try to break the grip of dominant digital walled gardens.

The academic turned entrepreneur certainly cannot be accused of shying away from the societal challenges his invention now poses.

But his anniversary letter urges people not to give up on the web. “If we give up on building a better web now, then the web will not have failed us. We will have failed the web,” he suggests.

The letter, which can be read in full here on the Web Foundation’s site, boils the problem of web misuse into three distinct categories:

1. Deliberate, malicious intent, such as state-sponsored hacking and attacks, criminal behaviour, and online harassment.
2. System design that creates perverse incentives where user value is sacrificed, such as ad-based revenue models that commercially reward clickbait and the viral spread of misinformation.
3. Unintended negative consequences of benevolent design, such as the outraged and polarised tone and quality of online discourse.

“While the first category is impossible to eradicate completely, we can create both laws and code to minimize this behaviour, just as we have always done offline,” Berners-Lee continues, setting out an action plan for tackling disinformation and web misuse. “The second category requires us to redesign systems in a way that change incentives. And the final category calls for research to understand existing systems and model possible new ones or tweak those we already have.”

He also warns against reacting to online problems with “simplistic narratives”.

“You can’t just blame one government, one social network or the human spirit. Simplistic narratives risk exhausting our energy as we chase the symptoms of these problems instead of focusing on their root causes. To get this right, we will need to come together as a global web community,” he suggests.

Though that argument elides the problem of digital information being maliciously and deliberately weaponized in order to sew social division — which works against the kind of collaboration and compromise he’s saying is essential to successfully manage and maintain a healthy online space and thus society.

Last year Berners-Lee’s Web Foundation launched a set of core principles — billed as a “Contract for the Web” — seeking to loop in governments, the private sector and citizens to work together on tackling problems of online abuse and misuse by collaborating on contributions that drive “equality, opportunity and creativity”.

The letter points again to this initiative, with Berners-Lee writing: “Governments, companies and citizens are all contributing, and we aim to have a result later this year.”

Albeit, it’s difficult to read his plan for action without thinking of the old adage that “falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it“.

“The Contract for the Web must not be a list of quick fixes but a process that signals a shift in how we understand our relationship with our online community,” Berners-Lee suggests. “It must be clear enough to act as a guiding star for the way forward but flexible enough to adapt to the rapid pace of change in technology. It’s our journey from digital adolescence to a more mature, responsible and inclusive future.

“The web is for everyone and collectively we hold the power to change it. It won’t be easy. But if we dream a little and work a lot, we can get the web we want.”

While you wouldn’t expect the ‘father’ of the World Wide Web to give up on his now adult-aged child, however wayward in habits it’s become, the letter is still striking on account of the breadth of societal problems being linked to the Web — from competitively distorted markets; to human rights infringements and threats to democracy, privacy, diversity and security; to the undermining of science fact and public safety; and even a conduit for further increasing inequality via digital divides.

Equally, nothing on that list of negatives is surprising anymore.

Though that’s to concentrate the negatives, of course.

Berners-Lee also writes positively that the web has become “a public square, a library, a doctor’s office, a shop, a school, a design studio, an office, a cinema, a bank, and so much more”.

And in another upbeat moment he had praise for tech workers who have taken individual ethical stances against tech-misusing employers — “to demand better business practices”.

“We need to encourage that spirit,” he writes, calling for more ethical activism from tech workers.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says labor should not fear automation

It’s impossible to discuss the seismic shift toward automation without a conversation about job loss. Opponent of these technologies criticize a displacement that could some day result wide scale unemployment among what is often considered “unskilled” roles. Advocates, meanwhile, tend to suggest that reports of that nature tend to be overstated. Workforces shift, as they have done for time time immemorial.

During a conversation at SXSW this week, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered another take entirely.

“We should not be haunted by the specter of being automated out of work,” she said in an answer reported by The Verge. “We should be excited by that. But the reason we’re not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don’t have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem.”

The response to an audience member’s question is a take that doesn’t too often get repeated in broader conversations about automation. Often times industry spokespeople will discuss technology’s potential to replace jobs that are deemed “dull, dirty and dangerous” — menial tasks that many roboticists will suggest no one really wants in the first place.

This just such a shockingly intelligent thing for any politician to say. https://t.co/QcRJNW12g6

— William Gibson (@GreatDismal) March 10, 2019

Ocasio-Cortez’s answer, on the other other hand, speaks to a viewpoint more in-line with her own Democratic Socialist views. It’s a suggestion that, if harnessed correctly, such technologies could one day liberate workers from a capitalist system where being a worker is inexorably tied to one’s identity and livelihood.

The newly elected Congresswoman elaborated on her position by pointing out the benefits that automation could bring to a society.

“We should be excited about automation, because what it could potentially mean is more time educating ourselves, more time creating art, more time investing in and investigating the sciences, more time focused on invention, more time going to space, more time enjoying the world that we live in,” The Verge quoted Ocasio-Cortez as saying. “Because not all creativity needs to be bonded by wage.”

And Ocasio-Cortez cited Bill Gates’ suggestion (first floated in a presentation on Quartz) that a robot tax might be a way to make that vision real. “What [Gates is] really talking about is taxing corporations,” she reportedly said. “But it’s easier to say: ‘tax a robot.’”

Her response to the automation question has met with applause from some writers who have been notably prescient about the future.

“This [is] just such a shockingly intelligent thing for any politician to say,” novelist William Gibson said via tweet. It is, at very least, a fresh perspective on a well-trod topic and the kind of outlook that could breath some life in a vital conversation about our collective technological future.

Automation will have an unquestionably profound impact on jobs in the coming decades — we’ve already seen much of that already, for roles in places like warehouses. Every study on the subject acknowledges this, with jobs “destroyed” number in the tens of millions and above, while jobs “created” are often times a fraction of that massive number.

The congresswoman’s comments, however, suggest that, independent of those numbers, perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong the question all along.

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