Amazon is opening a London hair salon to test AR and other retail technologies — techcrunch.com
Had to check — this is not from April Fools! @neilperkin said Yikes! and I agree!! -> Amazon is opening a London hair salon to test AR and other retail technologies #AR #Retail
Video Avatar
Looks pretty cool! RT @rachelmercer I genuinely believe as we continue to see (1) AI scrape public sites for images of real people to use (2) a rise in deep fakes and (3) the public become more versed about privacy concerns that Avatars like this could become the next best profile picture / point of interaction.
AI judges “How bad is your Spotify?”
Fun tool: AI “trained on a corpus of over two million indicators of objectively good music, including Pitchfork reviews, record store recommendations, and subreddits you’ve never heard of.”
Technology
The Future
Wisdom from @rishad: The past year has accelerated, accentuated and amplified all these trends. There is no going back to December 2019. If you take the entire world and shake it with a health, financial and social crisis for over a year and we do not restart or return to a new normal. Instead, we start again and prepare for the new strange. Once a champagne cork is out of the bottle it swells and does not fit back. A mind and behavior expanded does not go back to its original shape.
Facebook plans to go after Clubhouse — and podcasts — with a suite of new audio products
MT @sarafischer Products announced so far:
— Soundbites: Short-form audio clips, can be strung together or posted individually
— Podcasts: Zuckerberg says Facebook is going to build a podcast discovery tool
— Live audio: A product akin to Substack
— “Project Boom Box”: Music partnerships w Spotify #Facebook
NFL Teams With Social Media Audio App Clubhouse For Draft Programming — news.yahoo.com
Facebook audio editing tools in the app, podcasts, and “superhuman hearing”
MT @earleyedition Ok, this is not a small thing… It’s not just a clubhouse clone (although it is also that), it’s also audio editing tools in the app, and bringing podcasts to Facebook. cc @milesage. FB also appear to say they’ve invested in “superhuman hearing” so…
Facebook begins testing ads in Instagram Reels
Facebook said it will begin testing ads on its TikTok clone Instagram Reels in India, Brazil, Germany and Australia, as the social media giant aims to make money from its short-form video feature. #instagram #ads
Apple launches new subscription platform. Will it be the ‘Netflix of podcasts’?
Apple said it will make podcast subscriptions available on its Podcasts app next month. One analyst called it “an offensive and defensive move” against Spotify. #Apple
How Apple designed AirTags to be privacy-first and stalker-proof — www.fastcompany.com
MT @michaelgrothaus My interview with Apple execs about AirTag’s privacy features (for non-Apple users as well!). And using AirTags to track your pets.
Shoppertainment
MT @CassandraReport SHOPPERTAINMENT: Simple, yet effective, e-commerce livestreaming resonates with young consumers. A range of retail stores & brands are adopting livestream shopping campaigns, collaborating with social media platforms & top influencers.
Digital 2021 April Statshot Report — datareportal.com
A lot of data about internet and social media use.
Twitter may let you tip people for their great tweets right from their profiles
www.theverge.com
App researcher Jane Manchun Wong shared images revealing designs Twitter is apparently working on for some kind of tipping button that would live right on a user’s profile.
Will NFTs Revolutionize the Art Market or Repeat Its Greatest Failures? These 4 Factors Will Determine Their Fate — news.artnet.com
Could NFTs Work in Publishing?
@copyrightandtec doesn’t think so.
Playboy payoff: NFT prospects drive stock surge for reinvented nude magazine publisher — www.cnbc.com
Perhaps no company has benefited as quickly or as dramatically from the NFT market as Playboy Group. #NFT
Publishing & Media
Clubhouse rolls out payments to over 60K creators following initial test— techcrunch.com
Clubhouse is rapidly expanding access to payments, its first revenue-generating feature for creators, since its launch into testing earlier this month. At the beginning of April, Clubhouse said it would give a “small test group” of creators the ability to accept payments from their fans and supporters through the social audio app. These donations go 100% to the creators. Though tests began with just 1,000 users, Clubhouse this weekend rolled out payments to another 60,000-plus users in the U.S., the company said during its Town Hall weekly event. And it expects to have payments roll out to everyone over the next few weeks. #Clubhouse
Cutting through the noise: is the social media audio trend here to stay?
HT @michellemanafy The rise of the audio social trend has been one of the most talked-about social media advances in the last year. With new apps like Clubhouse and big players such as Twitter and Facebook all battling to be heard, does the future of social media really lie in audio?
New investments in audio are pouring in even as rising platforms like Clubhouse face content challenges
MT @michellemanafy Driving the news: Clubhouse said it closed a new Series C funding, valuing the buzzy live audio app at $4 billion.
Malcolm Gladwell’s New Word Order: Audiobook First — www.wsj.com
A growing number of books, including several from a startup co-founded by author Malcolm Gladwell, are conceived as slickly produced audio projects, complete with sound effects and original music. Traditional text-based titles, paper or digital, are an optional afterthought.
Is content moderation a dead end?
Can we get content moderation to work, or is it as much of a dead end as virus scanning? Do we need to change the whole model of social instead? From @benedictevans
What’s the Difference Between a Paid Content Creator and a Content Entrepreneur?
Content entrepreneurship is the now and the future for successful content creators. Ignore the gig economy; build a content business. Via @thetiltnews
How Book Publishers Can Balance Paid and Organic Efforts on Amazon
ICYMI
The Magic Number for Business Book Sales
MT @JaneFriedman A fascinating look at business book sales by @toddsattersten: if a book doesn’t sell 10k copies in its first year, there is only an 11% chance it’ll ever sell more than 10k copies. There is only a 2% chance sales will exceed 25k copies.
How the Pandemic Is Affecting Book Publishing — www.janefriedman.com
In which @JaneFriedman gives clarity to the NY Times article about how the pandemic is affecting publishing.
The Amazon Super URL
Good tip from @miralsattar on the Amazon Super URL and how it’s killing your book reviews #selfpublishing #indiepublishing #indieauthors
Libraries Can Use ARPA Funds on E-books, but Change May Be Needed
www.publishersweekly.com
Because ARPA funds must be used within a 16-month window, some of the metered access licenses currently offered by publishers may not qualify without an adjustment.
Kindle Adds “Stunningly Obvious” Ability to Display Actual Book Jacket On Lockscreen
#Oscars Looks as Books
Fun from #teamPRH
Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ series will cost at least $465 million for first season — www.cnbc.com
Amazon’s “Lord of the Rings” could be one of the most costly television series ever made, with its season one price tag coming in at around $465 million. #Amazon
Wave of New Newspapers Sue Google and Facebook — www.editorandpublisher.com
Publishers of 125 newspapers in 11 states filed or announced lawsuits against Google and Facebook claiming the tech giants have unlawfully monopolized the digital advertising market and engaged in an illegal secretive deal, nicknamed “Jedi Blue,” to thwart competition.
The New York Times is readying a big newsletter push as Substack tries to poach its top writers with advances worth hundreds of thousands
RT @lpolgreen Students of NYT history will remember Times Select, the first foray into digital subscriptions in 2005, which put the op ed columnists and a few other things behind a paywall. It lasted two years. In 2011 the full paywall launched & changed media history.
South by Southwest Stake Is Sold to Owner of Rolling Stone in Effort to Keep Festival Alive
ICYMI Penske Media, the publisher of magazines like Rolling Stone, Billboard and Variety, agreed to acquire a 50% stake in South by Southwest, the famed tech, music and movie festival.
TIME Magazine to Accept Crypto for Subscriptions — www.thestreet.com
TIME Magazine to start accepting crypto for its digital subscription in the US and Canada, plans worldwide rollout by July 2021. #Bitcoin
Bloomberg offering $20 to in-office staffers for lunch
This is NOT the Village Voice you know. It’s masterminded by the same Orange County Republican activist who sank the LA Weekly. It’s the clearest example of a “false flag” investment by right-wing dark money. Avoid like the plague it is
I didn’t realize this when I posted last week that the Village Voice was returning to print.
Resources & Opportunities
NYC Walk Up Vaccination Locations
MT @MarkLevineNYC Amazingly helpful interactive map by @aliciaefshows all the vax sites in NYC now accepting walk-ins. Includes City-run sites (no appt needed for aged 16+), and State-run sites (walk-ins for aged 60+ only) (h/t @nycshotslots)
COVID-19 Vaccination Site at the American Museum of Natural History— www.amnh.org
Everyone who receives their vaccination under the blue whale at AMNH will receive a voucher for complimentary general admission to the Museum for up to a group of four.
Where Can I Run for Office?
MT @runforsomething If you want to run for local office to protect Black lives, we want to help you. Use this tool to find out when, where and how you can run for office.
H&M Offers Young Men Free Suits in Campaign to Inspire Confidence in Job Hunt — www.adweek.com
The One/Second/Suit ad will run in both the U.K. and the U.S. over the coming months.
The Authors Guild Foundation Gala — www.authorsguild.org
MT @AuthorsGuild Join us for the 29th annual Authors Guild Foundation Gala. We celebrate authors and the power of literature to transform our society, with host Samantha Bee. Free and open to the public.
Free School Library Journal Day of Dialog 5/20
Native Children’s and YA Writing Intensive — diversebooks.org
RT @diversebooks Applications are OPEN for the Native Children’s & YA Writing Intensive from April 1, 2021 to June 1, 2021! Learn from esteemed faculty @CynLeitichSmith, @DawnEQuigley, @qnrisawesome, @Jacqui_Lipton, @leefrancisIV, and @rosemaryhb: http://bit.ly/NativeWriting
Editor-Writer Mentorship
MT @wordisdiversity April 30 will be here before you know it! Apply now for our 2021 #EditorWriterMentorship program, where you’ll get the chance to work closely with a professional editor on your manuscript. #voicesfromthemargins
Publishing Fellowship Latinx in Publishing
RT @LatinxinPub Big News: We’re so excited to announce our very first Publishing Fellowship! 2021 Fellows will have a chance to remotely shadow an editor at Macmillan for 10 months. Must be *Latinx to apply. Deadline May 15th. Click the link to apply https://latinxinpublishing.com/publishing-fellowship
Narrator Mentorship Program | Penguin Random House Audio
www.penguinrandomhouseaudio.com
MT @PRHAudio PRH Audio Narrator Mentorship Program is here! Actors new to audiobooks get the chance to work with our producers to strengthen their craft & gain industry knowledge. Now accepting applications for June–November 2021 session. Deadline is 5/14. #teamPRH
Jane Friedman: Today’s Key Book Publishing Paths: Traditional, Self, and Everything in Between 4/30 6:30pm
MT @PrincetonPL We are thrilled that we will be able to kick off our Local Author Day with a special event the night before designed for authors and featuring @JaneFriedman talking about the various paths to publication. This session is open to all and free.
Free Writing Resource PDF
MT @jkhoey Peeps seeking info on writing, publishing etc. etc. @ZoeNWalters @paulinatenner @natalietheo + I have assembled the resources we frequently mention in our #authorlife room on Clubhouse into this handy, dandy downloadable guide #authors #writingtips
FREE Women’s Media Group Online Movie Screening Featuring WMG’s Sarah Montana
Come one, come all to this FREE movie screening on 5/20 at 6pm. The screenplay for this meet-cute Hallmark film was written by @WMG_NYC’s talented @sarahemontana. Come register and tell your friends — open to members and non-members! It’ll be a lot of fun!!