🎛️ Bitcoin is Still The Future of Payments
🔗 Calling It Now: Elon Musk’s Micropayments Gambit Will Flop Big Time
🎙️Though Musk and Twitter aren’t specifically called out, it is clear that Lightspark’s David Marcus agrees - mainly because Micropayments can’t work while we continue to organize our payments as we do.
You should really listen to the whole thing, but this snippet particularly pertains to the MicroPayment comment above.
What if Amazon offered used readers, in bulk, to people in states that are banning books, and in school districts that are limiting what kids can read? What if it offered special deals on banned books, and brought titles to young people some of their “betters” are forbidding for them, to encourage reading?
💬 Dana Blankenhorn
🔗 Just finished listening to the latest Core Intuition.
At one point in the conversation @manton and @danielpunkass were talking about community guidelines, social norms et al. Hate speech on Bluesky …
Funny - I am writing my next newsletter and 🔗 this is one of the top of mind issues that I am covering off in it. Might add it as a link in the final newsletter.
FINALLY - 🔗 The backfill is completed.
If you have been following along, you will know that I am a big fan of Lockhead and Category Design. But on this one - I totally disagree. It’s only 15 minutes - less if you remove the top and tail. For example - jump right in at 1’ 56” and you can stop at 12’ 50# - so what 11 minutes?
🔗 Elon Musk’s New Category Design For Twitter: Will it work? - Lochhead on Marketing
I do agree that Musk is up to something. BUT
The thesis of Category Pirates lands on how this Blue Checkmark fiasco is the start of ‘great thinking … marketing even … from Musk … in that this is ‘the first time we have seen an attempt to deliver a paid for social platform at scale’. Me - no idea if that is true, BUT riffing on ‘Theodore’ for a moment … people are on Twitter not because they want a blue checkmark - but rather to ‘say and write stuff and have it pushed out to the unsuspecting world’.
I don’t disagree that Musk is up to something as he works through the monetisation question - BUT - the idea of faffing around with the check mark is the result of some great marketing mind is nuts. The idea that he is in the process of creating an entirely new category is nuts. Trying maybe - but not yet creating,
🔗 A bullying politician or snowflake civil servants? The downfall of Dominic Raab
I do not know Raab, other than his public persona, so take my thoughts with a pinch of NaCl. That said, there is a consistency to the back stories that keep getting published. Bottom line - to me - he doesn’t seem to be a nice man.
That said - I am sympathetic to his claims. We are living too much in a world where if I even feel offended - you will pay. To continue down that path will result in more and more people being ‘quietly silenced’.
Silencing Raab is one thing - but it will work (is working?) both ways.
🔗 Dream dinner party guests: Obama, Springsteen and Spielberg delight Barcelona restaurant staff.
Love Those Smiles. Warming the cockles of my heart
🔗 Worldwide public cloud spending heading for US$600 billion
“If you found yourself wondering why the cloud hyperscalers have chosen this moment to build in New Zealand, the answer lies in Gartner’s latest cloud forecast.”
@billbennettnz not sure you actually answer that question? I mean I get that Gartner is predicting outsized growth - and why NZ would want those data centers - but you don’t seem to offer a reason why MSoft and AWS are making the investments? Or have I read too fast?