Dating app maker and Tinder parent, Match Group, said during its Q2 earnings it will bring audio and video chat, including group live video, and other livestreaming technologies to several of the company’s brands over the next 12 to 24 months. The developments will be powered by innovations from Hyperconnect, the social networking company that this year became Match’s biggest acquisition to date, when it bought the Korean app maker for a sizable $1.73 billion. 

Since then, Match Group has been relatively quiet about its specific plans for Hyperconnect’s tech or its longer-term strategy with the operation, although Tinder was briefly spotted testing a group video chat feature called Tinder Mixer earlier this summer. The move had seemed to signal some exploration of social discovery features in the wake of the Hyperconnect deal. However, Tinder told us at the time the company had no plans to bring that specific product to market in the year ahead.

On Tuesday’s earnings, Match Group offered a little more insight into the future of Hyperconnect, following the acquisition’s official close in mid-June.

According to Match Group CEO Shar Dubey, who stepped into the top job last January, the company is excited about the potential to integrate technologies Hyperconnect has developed into existing Match-owned dating apps.

This includes, she said, “AR features, self-expression tools, conversational A.I., and a number of what we would consider metaverse elements, which have the element to transform the online meeting and getting-to-know-each-other process,” Dubey explained, without offering further specific details about how the products would work or which apps would receive these enhancements.

Many of these technologies emerged from Hyperconnect’s lab, Hyper X — the same in-house incubator whose first product is now one of the company’s flagship apps, Azar, which joined Match Group with the acquisition.

Dubey also noted that the work to begin these tech integrations was already underway at the company.

By year-end, Match Group said it expects to have at least two of its brands integrated with technologies from Hyperconnect. A number of other brands will implement Hyperconnect capabilities by year-end 2022.

In doing so, Match aims to transform what people think of when it comes to online dating.

To date, online dating been a fairly static experience across the industry, where apps focus largely on profiles and photos, and then offer some sort of matching technique — whether swipes or quizzes or something else. Tinder, in more recent years, began to break out of that mold as it innovated with an array of different experiences, like its choose-your-own-adventure in-app video series, “Swipe Night,” video profiles, instant chat features (via Tinder’s product, Hot Takes), and others. But it still lacked some the real-time elements that people have when meeting one another in the real world.

This is an area where Match believes Hyperconnect can help to improve the online dating experience.

“One of the holy grails for us in online dating has always been to bridge the disconnect that happens between people chatting online and then meeting someone in person,” Dubey said. “These technologies will eventually allow us to build experiences that will help people determine if they have that much elusive chemistry or not… Our ultimate vision here is for people to never have to go on a bad first date again,” she added.

Of course, Match Group’s positioning of the Hyperconnect deal as being more interesting because the innovation it brings — and not just the standalone apps it operates — also comes at a time when those apps have not met the company’s expectations on revenue.

In the second half the of 2021, Match Group said it expects Hyperconnect to contribute to $125 to $135 million in revenue — a financial outlook that the company admits reflects some pullback. It attributed this largely to Covid impacts, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region where Hyperconnect’s apps operate. Other impacts to Hyperconnect’s growth included a more crowded marketplace and Apple’s changes to IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers), which has impacted a number of apps — including other social networking apps, like Facebook.

While Match still believes Hyperconnect will post “solid revenue growth” in 2021, it said that these new technology integrations into the Match Group portfolio are now “a higher priority” for the company.

Match Group posted mixed earnings in Q1 with revenue of $707.8 million, above analyst estimates, but earnings per share of 46 cents, below projections of 49 cents a share. Paying customers grew 15% to 15 million, up from 13 million in the year-ago quarter. Shares declined by 7% on Wednesday morning, following the earnings announcement.

Fear is back with the deadly combination of pandemic politics and a vicious variant. The good news is that if enough people took the shots we could cut the damage to something manageable. The other good news is progress on the twin issues of Trump and social media. In both cases some semblance of balanced rationality is seeping in to the public discourse.

First is the former president, who has already done about as much damage as he can. Joe Biden is doing a good job of wrestling Congress into some degree of productivity. As the Gang talks about on this and the next episode, it appears increasingly likely there will be a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Republicans and particularly Mitch McConnell can still shut the whole thing down, but Democrats hold the budget reconciliation process as a hole card to prompt a semi-partisan bill across the two parties. The Biden strategy is to not only force the right to accommodate some center victory but forestall a significant cave by the centrist Democrat Joe Manchin on the filibuster. This may have some value if Congress puts its foot down on voting rights or the effort to destroy them .

Something similar may be playing out on the social side. Facebook and Twitter seem to be circling each other as Congress forces some antitrust positioning. With the courts giving Facebook a little running room on the operational description of what a monopoly is, Twitter reported strong numbers that beat the Street and make Jack Dorsey’s feint toward bitcoin and the creator economy easier to swallow when the smoke clears. The newsletterization of media is giving social media some street cred as Congress tries to force Facebook to grow up. Block an MGM deal here and a Section 530 carveout there seems possible although more likely just the beginning of negotiations.

The big battle is over the shape of post COVID work and lifestyle negotiations. Vaccination reluctance is a five alarm fire, but the 2022 midterms may well be fought over the intersection of climate change and the speed of recovery led by the accelerated digital economy. I don’t believe that it’s a coincidence that back to work and a manageable ecology are deeply related. Silicon Valley can talk all it wants about inventing the future, but desperate consumers are looking for real answers from tech leaders who understand the future to come in a constantly unstable weather crisis that turns a burning West Coast into a choking rest of the country.

Vaccine mandates are a fierce predictor of what’s to come. In a country under constant threat of a constitutional crisis over voter fraud by one of the two major parties, the federal response may be constrained but not the rules at the workforce level. These are serious issues of privacy and human rights, but in the short term the moves toward practical mandates will be swift at the state and company level, and supported by healthy polling. Do you think some version of work from anywhere will be tied to double vaccination? As a mandate, it’s not a done deal; as a choice it seems like a popular way of reducing the crisis from the current 35% to something approaching a too-high but winter-ready time frame of 15% where hospitals and state economies need help, red or blue. And those numbers may become the difference between major crisis and economy-crushing lockdowns if an even more egregious variant emerges.

This is also where social and safety meet at a crossroads. Are we willing to cede a Facebook unimpeded from fueling the misinformation plague, or are we going to look for help from the creator economy to bypass the fallow mainstream media stuck in their controversy-fueled business model rather than a fact-based scientific approach to breaking the back of this turgid political cycle? We can see the outline of newsletter-framed social media courage, coupled with stakeholder-aware ethical values and economic leverage.

Less obvious is the path for Clubhouse and its competitors. The Andreessen Horowitz-backed mobile app came out of invite-only beta and added an internal instant messaging layer to manage moderators, speakers, listener questions, room onboarding and feedback. But the big problem remains why does this mere feature of a live streaming podcast app buttress the high valuation of the startup. And this from Michael Markman:

I’ve largely lost interest in Clubhouse. This may not be a significant data point, but I’m no longer fascinated…. The thing is, I sometimes find myself in rooms where I was learning something or getting points of view that hadn’t occurred to me. But usually I was listening to very frustrating conversations that led nowhere.

Yeah, that would do it. But the bigger problem is the refusal to allow recording as a feature of the UI. Twitter Spaces won’t do it, Facebook is really a winner-take-all newsletter subscriber model (Substack) grafted on, and Spotify already has recording enabled on Anchor, its podcasting tool. Building one app is probably where Spotify will go, but then they have the problem that podcasting is considered only an audio product. So then what? Add video multi-platform streaming like ReStream to the hybrid social audio/podcast/recorder/newsletter and we got something. What’s the holdup?

No recording started as a nod to privacy, a differentiator between the creators and the listeners. The idea was to create a unique quality of serendipity, discovery, and credibility. It’s reminiscent of the theater’s fourth wall, where characters step out of their circumstances to talk directly to the audience. It’s exhilarating to experience, a hybrid between writing and improvisation which is largely an illusion. Illusions are no less valuable just because they elegantly transcend their apparent boundaries. Clubhouse spoke directly to our sense that we had lost our way in the insidious virus of both science and truth.

In the decay of the Clubhouse model, we sense that the creator economy is all hat and not enough cowboy. Brent Leary:

I see this as just another way to accelerate the few getting most of everything with everybody else getting scraps. You’re going to hear all these stories about all the folks, all the people that make it big, but they’re going to be like an infinitesimal fraction of everybody else trying to do the same thing and not being able to do it.

There’s just so much attention that you can give. And the people who know how to use this stuff and put a nice process together and find a way to really create a well oiled process machine; they have the chance of being in that top echelon of creators that get most of the money. But everybody else is going to be there trying and spinning their wheels because it’s just a continuation of what we’ve always had.

Recording and a calendar page will make a difference if only to bring a vote to the floor. Is this something to look forward to, a social version of Andrea Mitchell or Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC, a system of record for issues that matter in the anywhere, creator, or thought leader economies. Markman’s question about Clubhouse viability is a broader hedge against the tendency of social media to add to the problems rather than alleviate them. Recording is really a timeshifting tool for user control, and a driver for leaderboard metadata to annotate a calendar either live or personally maintained. In theory Clubhouse should work, but in practise without recording it could be labeled another do-nothing congress.

from the Gillmor Gang Newsletter

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, July 16, 2021.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Subscribe to the new Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.

Late last year, Amazon launched support for two-way calling that worked with its Fire TV Cube devices. The feature allowed consumers to make and receive calls from their connected TV to any other Alexa device with a screen. Today, the company is expanding this system to enable support for two-way calling with Zoom.

Starting today, Fire TV Cube owners (2nd gen.) will be able to join Zoom work meetings or virtual hangouts via their Fire TV Cube.

To take advantage of the new feature, you’ll need Amazon’s Fire TV Cube, its hands-free streaming device and smart speaker that has Alexa built in, as well as a webcam that supports USB Video Class (UVC) with at least 720p resolution and 30fps. But for a better experience, Amazon recommends a webcam with 1080p resolution and a 60-90 degree field of view from 6 to 10 feet away from the TV. It doesn’t recommend 4K webcams, however.

Amazon suggests webcams like the Logitech C920, C922x, C310, or the Wansview 101JD, for example.

You’ll then connect your webcam to your Fire TV Cube using a Micro USB to USB adapter.

For best results, you’ll want to attach the webcam above the TV screen, Amazon notes.

Once everything is set up and connected, you’ll need to download and install the Zoom app from the Fire TV Appstore. When joining meetings, you can either sign in as a guest or use an existing Zoom account, per the on-screen instructions.

Thanks to the Alexa integration, you can join your meetings hands-free, if you prefer, by way of a voice command like “Alexa, join my Zoom meeting.” Alexa will respond by prompting you for the meeting ID and passcode. Alternately, you can choose to use the remote control to enter in this information.

An optional feature also lets you sync your calendar to Alexa to allow the smart assistant to remind you about the upcoming meetings it finds on your calendar. If you go this route, Alexa will suggest the meeting to join and you’ll just have to say “yes” to be automatically dialed in.

Amazon first announced it was bringing video calling support to its Fire TV platform last fall — a significant update in the new era of remote work and schooling, driven by the pandemic. However, it’s not the only option on the market. Google also last year brought group video calls to its Hub Max devices, and later added support for Zoom calls. Meanwhile Facebook Portal devices have offered video calling of a more personal nature, and last year updated to support Zoom, too.

In other words, Amazon is playing a bit of catch-up here. And its solution is a little more unwieldy as it requires consumers to buy their own webcam, while something like Portal TV offers a TV with a smart camera included.

To use the new feature, you’ll need the latest Fire TV Cube software update to get started, Amazon notes.

Pinterest today is increasing its investment in the creator community by introducing new tools that will allow creators to make money from their content. Now, creators will be able to tag products in their Idea Pins — a video-first feature the company first launched this spring — to make their content “shoppable.” They’ll also now be able to earn commissions through affiliate links and partner with brands on sponsored content, much like on other social platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

Despite its general focus on turning product inspiration into clicks and purchases, Pinterest has been slower to embrace the creator community which today is responsible for driving a significant amount of interest in new products among online shoppers. Over the past several years, brands have increased their influencer marketing budgets from $1.7 billion in 2016 to now $13.8 billion in 2021. However, Pinterest offered few tools for creators to tap into that market on its own site, until its more recent debut of Idea Pins in May.

These Pins are somewhat like Pinterest’s take on TikTok, mixed with Stories, as they offer a way for creators to produce content that combines music, video, and other interactive elements. The videos in Idea Pins can be up to 60 seconds per page, with up to 20 total pages per Pin. Creators can also add other features to their Pins, like stickers or music, and tag other creators with their @username.

Image Credits: Pinterest

While similar in some ways to TikTok, the videos can include “detail pages” where viewers can find associated content, like the ingredient list and instructions for a recipe, or a list of how-to instructions for a craft project.

Now, explains Pinterest, creators will be able to tag products in their Pins, as well. That means fans viewing the Pin content can now go from inspiration to purchase from the Pinterest app. However, the path isn’t as straightforward as it is on Instagram, where a tap on a tag leads you to a page where you can then add an item to a shopping cart. Instead, Pinterest’s product tags tend to take you to another Pinterest page for the product in question, and from there you have to click again to visit the retailer’s website to complete your order.

The company has been testing the feature before today with creators including Olive + Brown, Fall for DIY and UnconventionalSouthernBelle who have already made some of their content shoppable.

The new Idea Pins product tagging tool will roll out to all business accounts in the U.S. and U.K. and will then continue to roll out access over the coming months to international creators.

Image Credits: Pinterest

Other new monetization features rolling out now include support for affiliate programs and brand sponsorships.

Creators will now be able to integrate their affiliate programs for Rakuten and ShopStyle to generate additional revenue from their recommendations. Meanwhile, creators who come to the platform with brand partnerships will be able to use a new tool, still in beta, that will let them disclose those partnerships to their followers.

When they then produce branded content on Pinterest and add the brands to their Idea Pins, the brand will then be able to approve the tag, and the Idea Pin will feature a label that reads “Paid Partnership.”

This paid partnerships tool is now live for select Creators in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, France, Spain, Italy Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Peru.

Image Credits: Pinterest

Most of Pinterest’s new monetization tools are not necessarily all that innovative or unique.

Instead, they represent a company that’s playing catch up to larger social platforms — like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, an d YouTube — which have been better catering to creators in recent years by allowing them to build their own businesses on their respective platforms and expand their reach. Instagram, in particular, has moved in on Pinterest’s territory to such an extent that many users today start their shopping inspiration searches on its app first.

And Instagram has catered to this growing group of online shoppers by turning its platform into an online shop of sorts, compete with a dedicated Shop button, built-in checkout features, alerts about product drops, and numerous ways for creators to generate profits from their work.

Now that influencer shopping is the norm, the race is on among large platforms and startups alike to bring a similar set of shopping tools to live streamed video.

Given the significant competition, Pinterest’s pitch to the creator community is that its user base is already primed to shop.

By the end of 2020, the company says it saw a 20x increase in product searches on its platform. It also notes that Pinterest users are 89% more likely to exhibit shopping intent on products tagged in creators’ Idea Pins than on its standalone Pins. Plus, the company says that its focus will be more on inspirational content, rather than “influence and entertainment” — a seeming knock at social media and its influencer stars.

“Pinterest is the place where creators with inspiring and actionable ideas get discovered. With this latest update, we’re empowering Creators to reach millions of shoppers on the platform and monetize their work,” said Pinterest Head of Content and Creator Partnerships, Aya Kanai. “Creators deserve to be rewarded for the inspiration they deliver to their followers, and the sales they drive for brands. Creators are central to our mission to bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love, and we’ll continue working with them to build their businesses and find success on Pinterest,” she added.

VOCHI, a Belarus-based startup behind a clever computer vision-based video editing app used by online creators, has raised an additional $2.4 million in a “late-seed” round that follows the company’s initial $1.5 million round led by Ukraine-based Genesis Investments last year. The new funds follow a period of significant growth for the mobile tool, which is now used by over 500,000 people per month and has achieved a $4 million-plus annual run rate in a year’s time.

Investors in the most recent round include TA Ventures, Angelsdeck, A.Partners, Startup Wise Guys, Kolos VC, and angels from other Belarus-based companies like Verv and Bolt. Along with the fundraise, VOCHI is elevating the company’s first employee, Anna Bulgakova, who began as head of marketing, to the position of co-founder and Chief Product Officer.

According to VOCHI co-founder and CEO lya Lesun, the company’s idea was to provide an easy way for people to create professional edits that could help them produce unique and trendy content for social media that could help them stand out and become more popular. To do so, VOCHI leverages a proprietary computer-vision-based video segmentation algorithm that applies various effects to specific moving objects in a video or to images in static photos.

“To get this result, there are two trained [convolutional neural networks] to perform semi-supervised Video Object Segmentation and Instance Segmentation,” explains Lesun, of VOCHI’s technology. “Our team also developed a custom rendering engine for video effects that enables instant application in 4K on mobile devices. And it works perfectly without quality loss,” he adds. It works pretty fast, too — effects are applied in just seconds.

The company used the initial seed funding to invest in marketing and product development, growing its catalog to over 80 unique effects and more than 30 filters.

Image Credits: VOCHI

Today, the app offers a number of tools that let you give a video a particular aesthetic (like a dreamy vibe, artistic feel, or 8-bit look, for example). It can also highlight the moving content with glowing lines, add blurs or motion, apply different filters, insert 3D objects into the video, add glitter or sparkles, and much more.

In addition to editing their content directly, users can swipe through a vertical home feed in the app where they can view the video edits others have applied to their own content for inspiration. When they see something they like, they can then tap a button to use the same effect on their own video. The finished results can then be shared out to other platforms, like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.

Though based in Belarus, most of VOCHI’s users are young adults from the U.S. Others hail from Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and parts of Europe, Lesun says.

Unlike some of its video editor rivals, VOCHI offers a robust free experience where around 60% of the effects and filters are available without having to pay, along with other basic editing tools and content. More advanced features, like effect settings, unique presents and various special effects require a subscription. This subscription, however, isn’t cheap — it’s either $7.99 per week or $39.99 for 12 weeks. This seemingly aims the subscription more at professional content creators rather than a casual user just looking to have fun with their videos from time to time. (A one-time purchase of $150 is also available, if you prefer.)

To date, around 20,000 of VOCHI’s 500,000 monthly active users have committed to a paid subscription, and that number is growing at a rate of 20% month-over-month, the company says.

Image Credits: VOCHI

The numbers VOCHI has delivered, however, aren’t as important as what the startup has been through to get there.

The company has been growing its business at a time when a dictatorial regime has been cracking down on opposition, leading to arrests and violence in the country. Last year, employees from U.S.-headquartered enterprise startup PandaDoc were arrested in Minsk by the Belarus police, in an act of state-led retaliation for their protests against President Alexander Lukashenko. In April, Imaguru, the country’s main startup hub, event and co-working space in Minsk — and birthplace of a number of startups, including MSQRD, which was acquired by Facebook — was also shut down by the Lukashenko regime.

Meanwhile, VOCHI was being featured as App of the Day in the App Store across 126 countries worldwide, and growing revenues to around $300,000 per month.

“Personal videos take an increasingly important place in our lives and for many has become a method of self-expression. VOCHI helps to follow the path of inspiration, education and provides tools for creativity through video,” said Andrei Avsievich, General Partner at Bulba Ventures, where VOCHI was incubated. “I am happy that users and investors love VOCHI, which is reflected both in the revenue and the oversubscribed round.”

The additional funds will put VOCHI on the path to a Series A as it continues to work to attract more creators, improve user engagement, and add more tools to the app, says Lesun.

YouTube will begin pilot testing a new feature that will allow viewers to shop for products directly from livestream videos. The feature will initially launch with just a handful of creators and brands, the company says, and is an expansion of the integrated shopping experience YouTube began beta testing earlier this year.

That feature was designed only for on-demand videos, and allowed viewers to tap into the “credibility and knowledge” of trusted creators in order to make informed purchases, the company explained at the time. It said it would roll out to more creators over the course of 2021.

More recently, YouTube tested livestreamed shopping with a one-day shopping event focused on small businesses.

YouTube’s video platform, for years, has been a powerful tool for product discovery, as its over 2 billion logged-in users per month turn to the service to watch product reviews, demos, unboxings, shopping hauls, and other content that could inspire future purchases. But creators who wanted to sell from their YouTube videos would often have to promote affiliate links to online stores through the video’s description or in-video elements, like cards or end screens.

In more recent years, YouTube also introduced a merch shelf that would allow viewers to shop a set of specific products the creator selected.

The integrated shopping experience, meanwhile, allows viewers to shop the products shown in the video itself by tapping on a “view products” button, which brings up a list of the items being featured.

Image Credits: YouTube

This feature allows YouTube to better compete with the growing number of video shopping experiences becoming available from both startups and competitors, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok Pinterest, Amazon, and Snapchat. Many of those include support for livestream videos, too.

Over the past year, for example, startups like Bambuser, Popshop Live, Talkshoplive, Whatnot, and others have raised multi-million dollar rounds to invest in their own live video shopping businesses. Meanwhile, Facebook recently launched Live Shopping Fridays to test live shopping within the beauty, fashion and skincare space. And Walmart partnered with TikTok on livestream shopping events on multiple occasions.

YouTube’s own interest in this space has been heating up, as well, as just this week the company announced it was acquiring Indian video shopping app Simsim — an indication of Google’s interest in further integrating video shopping experiences into its own platform. Google also integrated video shopping into its Shopping search business, which included one effort from Shoploop, a video shopping product that graduated from Google’s in-house incubator, Area 120.

The expansion of YouTube’s integrated video shopping experience was announced today alongside other new Google Shopping features, including the addition of new section that organizes deals and sales on Google’s Shopping tab, which will be free for merchants who want to list.

As the pandemic dwindled enough to get in our car with dogs, SiriusXM, and our children in the rear view mirror, we drove to South Carolina. Tina had endured the last year and almost another half while her mother languished with aging pets, her husband in a facility, and eventually his death. As the miles melted away, we alternated between MSNBC, the Beatles channel, and a mixtape of soul, Steely Dan, and Bill Withers.

For years, we’d dreamed of a way to live from anywhere, and now the pandemic had made our reality a shared one. We’ll see how much this sticks as companies try to find a way to mix this digital acceleration with some semblance of business life as we knew it. But as we reached the driveway in Charleston, we were tired enough to not care much how the captains of industry would work things out.

We’d calculated the journey to leave on a Monday and arrive on a Thursday, three 16 hour days and then a day to rest before recording the next Gang session. Instead we left on Tuesday and arrived the night before the session. Surprisingly, the combination. of a three hour time zone shift and the ease of recording on Zoom, two M1 Macs, and enough WiFi to get away with it added up to a relaxed session. I’ve been using blur mode on Zoom for some months now, so everything felt just about normal. I even got to joke with a few of the guys who could not quite tell which coast we were on.

The dogs locked in to their summer digs with alacrity, roaming the fenced in back yard for a quick check and then settling into strategic spots surrounding us on our bed. Our daughters heated up the Facetime video link with tales of boyfriends and babies (our oldest is in her six month) and extended life seemed possible. When reality intruded, it somehow arrived with a gentleness we hope to get used to. Dinner with our youngest’s godparents was careful — no masks but no hugs either— as we ease our way into the new next.

Our first show here was followed by a train wreck of dueling agendas and uncomfortable management parries. The show started in a jocular fashion as Brent Leary tried to apologize (sort of) for his comments on one of his shows about the Gillmor Gang. It seems, he joked, that our show was rudderless and frequently a good opportunity to nap on air.

But then Brent said he hoped neither Tina nor I was watching this unspooling in realtime, which of course I was. Now I was both pissed off and actually more amused. Brent’s instincts fall somewhere between Harpo Marx’s brilliant silence and an unerring ability to bat back a question designed to prove he wasn’t engaged with a comment that proved not only that he was but that he chose not to say anything. Brilliant, devastating, and kind all at once. So I seized the moment to call him and say of course I was watching.

The next Gang recording session featured Brent’s repeated attempts at an apology or at least an explanation, but I kept interrupting him. The result was a funny but diffuse beginning to the show that devolved into a debate about social media and the First Amendment that we often can’t seem to avoid. As usual, no light was shed, and the show remains unreleased.

from the Gillmor Gang Newsletter

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, June 25, 2021.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Subscribe to the new Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.

The Gang spends a lot of time these days on the streaming wars, so it seems appropriate that Congress wants to get into it. With Netflix’s success at overturning the structure of Hollywood’s broadcast television production and advertising processes, consumers are taking advantage of a Golden Age of choices. Senator Elizabeth Warren is resuscitating her plan to tax the billionaire class as a way to fund the progressive part of the infrastructure bill through the Democrat-only reconciliation process. As bait, she is using Amazon’s MGM acquisition as the carrot, suggesting the deal would be anti-competitive and dilutive of consumer choice. Coming as streaming passes broadcast as a percentage of the entire television market, it’s not clear just what consumers are going to lose with a smorgasbord of captivating programming choices.

The streaming heavyweights are in the throes of a transition from building audience to locking in paying customers. Netflix has jumped way out in front with an enormous audience fueling an equally gigantic investment in original programming. Apple TV+ has blinked earliest, moving their free trial of a year with a new Apple device purchase to 3 months, barely long enough to get halfway through the second season of their hit The Morning Show. Similar Disney+ deals with Verizon Wireless unlimited broadband upgrades are starting to time out as Disney tries to survive the pandemic’s impact on theme park revenue and steep costs of moving newly acquired properties from theaters to streaming, And then there are the rest of the old studio and network players, trying to build enough scale to compete with the leaders. Comcast consumed NBC and Universal Studios, CBS and Viacom merged to knit together broadcast, cable networks, and Paramount studios, now renamed Paramount +. And reality TV giant Discovery absorbed the remnants of WarnerMedia’s scripted studio and cable operation as AT&T backed away from content to pay for investment in 5G.

Ironically, ad-supported networks may turn out to be where the real action is. Although streaming subscribers are running up against a budget cap as they opt out of cable bundles, their antipathy for advertising is finessed by some midtier networks like Hulu and Paramount + mixing some ads with subscriptions at a reduced monthly charge. Comcast is already managing that transition with HBO Max, bundling the new streaming network with basic cable packages that include the HBO premium service. Combining HBO’s pre-pandemic windowed, or delayed from theatrical release feature films with original series programming is one thing: adding a monthly new feature simultaneously with theatrical release for all of 2021 has proven a powerful way of attracting new HBO Max subscribers in the battle for streaming. While the strategy will moderate in 2022 as theaters reopen, movie-goers are learning to appreciate the marriage of smaller titles with the convenience of subscription television.

Although big budget films like F9 are enjoying considerable success theatrically, smaller films like Parasite and other streaming releases are winning Oscars and other awards. Films have been eligible for Oscars and Golden Globes without the requirement of theatrical runs during the pandemic, and will continue for at least one more year. The HBO Max theater/digital gambit angered producers and talent with its bold move made easier during 2020’s lockdown, but WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar was apparently the loser in AT&T’s Discovery/WarnerMedia deal as Discovery’s CEO David Zaslav was picked to run the combined company. But audiences may find more affinity with popcorn at home than the distributors expect as vaccinations take root. Kilar may have bootstrapped a look at what success will mean in the New Normal similar to what companies are saving in travel and facilities costs as we incorporate the strengths of work/play-from-anywhere and the mobile transformation.

The ad streamers bring more to the party than just subscriber discounts. While Netflix has made hay with binge viewing (dumping an entire season of shows at one time) ad streamers are using a hybrid of binge production and broadcast-style staged release as a way of updating the feel of appointment television with Peak TV dynamics. Using the weekly series model a la This Is Us and Gray’s Anatomy, shows like Paramount +‘s The Good Fight are released on a weekly basis with the release night staggered across the key nights of the week. Instead of browsing the TV Guide, you get a notification that the new episode has “dropped.” In effect, the linear tv schedule so beloved by advertisers and marketers is creating a new prime time schedule across the variety of streaming networks. With constant mergers and realignment of studios, cable assets, and streaming models, we already don’t have a clue what network is screening our new shows let alone what the network is called this week, so mobile messaging becomes the point of sale for sharing digital experiences. With cable giants like Comcast deriving more and more broadband customers as cable cutting persists, and set top boxes like AppleTV and Roku smart tvs capturing more scale and competing for a combination of ad-supported and original programming, the built in microphone on their remotes leapfrogs the vanished TV guides with audio commands that require only the name of the show or even the name of the favorite star.

The creator economy is experiencing a surge of services across the social networks. Newsletters, conversational audio sites, and new notification services from Apple are promoting media to support these AI-driven user rankings of the new Hollywood streaming winners. Apple’s notification summary screens in iOS 15 effectively present a way to organize a personalized digest of show notifications, freeing you from interrupting work to track the weekly dropping of favorite shows. It won’t be long before Twitter and other newsletter tools let you broadcast those alerts to special groups you define for watercooler-like conversations about the latest spoilers. Clubhouse and other social audio rooms will invite media analysts, showrunners, and stars to interact with these newly empowered fans, and some of the more proficient will graduate to subscription newsletter recaps and transcribed interviews. Advertisers will sponsor these streams, expanding the impact of the intersection of subscription and ad-supported hybrid services.

from the Gillmor Gang Newsletter

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, June 18, 2021.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Subscribe to the new Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.

Common Sense Media has made a name for itself among parents as a useful resource for vetting entertainment and technology in terms of its age-appropriateness. Now, the organization’s for-profit affiliate, Common Sense Networks, is taking inspiration from those kid-friendly recommendations with the launch of new streaming service called Sensical. The service offers age-appropriate, entertaining, and educational videos for children ages 2 through 10.

At launch, the free, ad-supported service includes over 15,000 hand-curated videos and over 50 topic-based channels for children to explore. And unlike other platforms, like Netflix or YouTube, Sensical doesn’t use algorithms to make content recommendations. Instead, kids are encouraged to follow their own interests and passions across over 50 topic-based channels. This includes things like Adventures, Animals, Arts & Crafts, Music, Science, Sports, Video Games, and other sorts of kid-friendly topics.

Kids can star these channels, or individual videos or series, in order to keep up with their favorite content in a dedicated Favorites section within the app.

Kids will see a selection of these channels based on their age, but the company is working to expand the channel lineup so there will be even more specific categories in the future. For example, instead of just “sports,” there could be channels like “soccer” or “gymnastics.” Instead of “Arts,” there could be “drawing” or “origami.” Instead of just “science,” it could include channels like “geography” or “robotics,” and so on.

Image Credits: Common Sense Networks

The app also features a Live TV section, which is programmed throughout the day with kid-friendly content so kids don’t have to browse to find something to quickly watch.

While other streaming services on the market offer kid-friendly content — as that’s a huge selling point for subscribers — it’s not always organized in a way that makes sense. Sometimes, all the content gets lumped into a general “Kids” category where videos for little kids are mixed in with content for older children. Sensical, meanwhile, curates the content recommendations into three different experiences, including preschool (2-4), little kids (5-7), and big kids (8-10).

What the child sees is based on how parents configure their profile. Plus, parents can use the service’s ParentZone in-app dashboard to set screen time limits, extend limits as needed, and view daily reports on what the child has watched.

The service’s best feature, however, is that the content is assured to be age-appropriate — even the ads.

This is possible because the curation approach Sensical takes, which is very different from YouTube Kids. YouTube’s app for kids leans on algorithms to filter out adult content from YouTube’s broader library, but the company doesn’t manually review all the videos it includes. It warns parents that some inappropriate content could slip through. (And it has). Common Sense Networks, meanwhile, says dozens of trained child development experts view, vet, and rate “every single frame of video” that goes live on its service using its proprietary IP and patent pending process. This system involves tagging content with specific child developmental benefits, too.

Sensical also vets its advertising, which is how the service is supported, with similar direct oversight. Its experts review the sponsor’s content to ensure it’s appropriate for children — an area that’s often overlooked on other services.

Image Credits: Common Sense Networks

To fill its library, Common Sense Networks partnered with dozens of studios and distribution partners as well as digital-first creators.

Studio and distribution partners include CAKE (Poppy Cat), Cyber Group Studios (Leo The Wildlife Ranger), The Jim Henson Company (The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, Jim Henson’s Animal Show with Stinky and Jake), Mattel (Kipper, Pingu, Max Steel), Raydar Media (Five Apples’ limited series, Apple Tree House), Superights (Bo Bear, Handico), WildBrain (Teletubbies, Rev & Roll), Xilam Animation (Learn and Play with Paprika, Moka’s Fabulous Adventures), ZDF Enterprises (Lexi & Lottie, School of Roars), Zodiak Kids (Mister Maker, Tee and Mo), ABC Commercial, CBC & Radio-Canada Distribution, Jetpack Distribution, Nelvana, 9 Story Distribution International, Sesame Workshop, Serious Lunch, and Studio 100.

Digital creators, meanwhile, include ABCMouse, Aaron’s Animals, Alphabet Rockers, batteryPOP, California Academy of Sciences, GoldieBlox, The Gotham Group’s Gotham Reads, Guggenheim Museum, Howdytoons, Kids’ Black History, MEL Science + Chemistry, N*Gen, Pinkfong, Penguin Random House’s Brightly Storytime, Studio71 (Parry Gripp, Maymo, Hyper Roblox), Tankee, Ubongo Kids, Vooks, Bounce Patrol, Hevesh5, Mother Goose Club, StacyPlays, Super Simple Songs and The Whistle.

The service abides by the U.S. children’s privacy laws (COPPA), and is certified by the kidSAFE Seal Program.

Image Credits: Common Sense Networks

Having briefly toyed around with the mobile app, it appears Sensical works as described. If I had any complaints personally, it would only be that the experience could be dismissed as “baby stuff” by older kids approaching their tween years, due to the cute pictures and youthful iconography used in the app’s design. Kids in older age groups take issue with being treated as if they’re younger — and they take particular notice of anything that does so. The same complaint goes for the Live TV programming, which was clearly aimed at littler kids when we checked it out, despite testing the app as child profile whose age was set to “10.”

I also think it would be nice if there was a better way to track Favorite channels and see when they’re updated with new videos, as kids moving to Sensical from YouTube will want to “feel” like they’re still connected to new and fresh content, not a library. But Sensical isn’t YouTube. There’s a trade-off between hand-curation and timeliness, and Sensical is favoring the former.

Sensical had been first introduced this spring during a closed beta, but is now publicly available to stream across web and mobile on iOS, Android, Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV. This summer, it will expand to more distribution platforms, including VIZIO.

The Gillmor Gang recording session is nestled on Friday midday on the East Coast and midmorning out West. Streamed live on Twitter, Facebook Live, and Youtube embed, the show is then edited, sweetened with titles and music, and released on Techcrunch. It’s a kind of hybrid between podcast, Zoom collaboration meeting, and work-from-anywhere encounter group. The Gang grew out of the early days of podcasting, now undergoing rescaffolding from social, drop-in, or just plain fast following from a variety of social networks. The latest entry, Live Audio Rooms from Facebook, is “soft-launching” with verified famous people and creators in good standing up first.

Facebook typically waits just long enough to decide what features to copy, and appears ready to aggregate the strategies of the rest of the market behind a Facebook infrastructure if not firewall. This may incorporate not just social audio features like tipping and raising hands to speak but also live video streaming and perhaps screen-sharing tools like ones announced at Apple’s WWDC for Facetime. Inevitably, the context returns to Clubhouse and its parallel tech media strategy.

Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) debuted their publishing site, and the media tried its best to push back without burning any bridges to the high-flying venture firm. Even more interesting than the future.com website was a Clubhouse Launch Party where we met authors and their editors for about two hours of chat. Marc Andreessen sat in at the beginning, and A16Z partner Margit Wennmachers provided context for the launch. The strategy: project trust and insight from a venture firm and go direct from technologists to the tech and investment audience. It’s an interesting time in the wake of the Trumpian alternative facts blight, where the cable media seems tied in knots by trying to salvage ratings gold with yet another crisis-to-crisis breaking news schtick.

After that gambit begins to tire, the pitch shifts to the undermining of Democracy by the Autocrats, which although real, is not exactly compelling ratings magic. With vaccinations reaching movie popcorn immunity levels, streaming television is shifting from all out binge releases to the much more familiar weekly cliffhanger model. Working from anywhere is being negotiated based on a hybrid of the best of watching your kids grow up while getting back to a collaborative office when you’ve seen enough of them or them of you.

On the Gang this time, Keith Teare suggests Netflix may be in a bit of a tough spot, as the easing pandemic puts pressure on new shows slowed down by production lockouts. It’s true: the quality seems to be slipping almost imperceptibly, but nothing is accelerating to put pressure on the Big 4 or 5 Flixes including Disney, Amazon Prime, and maybe Hulu. DiscoBros (Frank Radice’s catchy rebrand for Discovery/WarnerMedia) can be fun, Apple TV+ should buy in to boost production, and then we need to look to the Creator Economy to hurry up and save us.

Every few days there’s another social audio pivot/acquisition/update, the most interesting besides Facebook’s if you can call it that being Spotify Greenroom with its auto record and captioning features and inevitable integration with its Anchor podcasting tools. Tip jar resistance is almost a thing, in case you’re wondering. The only thing more enervating is speculation on whether Clubhouse is jumping the shark — I don’t think so. If the Future.com suggests more copying of The Information’s events model, there’s plenty of runway ahead. And social audio gold is anything about Clubhouse on Clubhouse.

For those of us who still remember tech news, the Apple announcements almost reach orbit with the mixture of M1 magic and iOS/MacOS/WatchOS/TVOS blurring. My favorite list is of features that don’t show up on Intel machines, all the cool ones. For the first time in years, we traded up to M1’s on both our Macbooks including a Pro and Air, and in the process enabled Blur mode on Zoom on both essentially for free. The hardware is starting to feel like a subscription service (HaaS) which as Salesforce’s trajectory suggests is likely a very big deal. (Disclosure: I work for Salesforce.) For creators, moving from hardware like Newtek’s Tricaster and BlackMagic’s ATEM Mini to software-based OBS and then NDI5 over the public network is not prime time, but getting there real soon now. Keith thinks so, Brent Leary says maybe. I say, if Apple bundles Apple TV and Apple TV+ with newsletter plugins from Twitter Revue and Substack subscriptions….

from the Gillmor Gang Newsletter

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, June 11, 2021.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Subscribe to the new Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.

Instagram Reels are getting ads. The company announced today it’s launching ads in its short-form video platform and TikTok rival, Reels, to businesses and advertisers worldwide. The ads will be up to 30 seconds in length, like Reels themselves, and vertical in format, similar to ads found in Instagram Stories. Also like Reels, the new ads will loop, and people will be able to like, comment, and save them, the same as other Reels videos.

The company had previously tested Reels ads in select markets earlier this year, including India, Brazil, Germany, and Australia, then expanded those tests to Canada, France, the U.K. and the U.S. more recently. Early adopters of the new format have included brands like BMW, Nestlé (Nespresso), Louis Vuitton, Netflix, Uber, and others.

Instagram tells us the ads will appear in most places users view Reels content, including on the Reels tab, Reels in Stories, Reels in Explore, and Reels in your Instagram Feed, and will appear in between individual Reels posted by users. However, in order to be served a Reels ad, the user first needs to be in the immersive, full-screen Reels viewer.

Image Credits: Instagram

The company couldn’t say how often a user might see a Reels ad, noting that the number of ads a viewer may encounter will vary based on how they use Instagram. But the company is monitoring user sentiment around ads themselves, and the overall commercially of Reels, it says.

Like Instagram’s other advertising products, Reels ads will launch with an auction-based model. But so far, Instagram is declining to share any sort of performance metrics around how those ads are doing, based on tests. Nor is it yet offering advertisers any creator tools or templates that could help them get started with Reels ads. Instead, Instagram likey assumes advertisers already have creative assets on hand or know how to make them, because of Reels ads’ similarities to other vertical video ads found elsewhere, including on Instagram’s competitors.

While vertical video has already shown the potential for driving consumers to e-commerce shopping sites, Instagram hasn’t yet taken advantage of Reels ads to drive users to its built-in Instagram Shops, though that seems like a natural next step as it attempts to tie the different parts of its app together.

But perhaps ahead of that step, Instagram needs to make Reels a more compelling destination — something other TikTok rivals, which now include both Snap and YouTube — have done by funding creator content directly. Instagram, meanwhile, had made offers to select TikTok stars directly.

The launch of Instagram Reels ads follows news of TikTok’s climbing ad prices. Bloomberg reported this month that TikTok is now asking for more than $1.4 million for a home page takeover ad in the U.S., as of the third quarter, which will jump to $1.8 million by Q4 and more than $2 million on a holiday. Though the company is still building its ads team and advertisers haven’t yet allocated large portions of their video budget to the app, that tends to follow user growth — and TikTok now has over 100 million monthly active users in the U.S.

Both apps, Instagram and TikTok, now have over a billion monthly active users on a global basis, though Reels is only a part of the larger Instagram platform. For comparison, Instagram Stories is used by some 500 million users, which demonstrates Instagram’s ability to drive traffic to different areas of its app. Instagram declined to share how many users Reels has as of today.

The Gang or a subset did a Clubhouse, longer than a regular show by a good third. The audio only structure lacked the visual cues that distinguish between irony and bad manners, but otherwise it felt familiar if not comfortable. I can’t remember what we talked about, only that I seemed a little more emphatic about my opinions than usual. We recorded the meeting, which is close to what it was. Not really a show, more a rally of a political platform with no policies. A few friends joined in, several listeners drifted in and out. All in all, about what I expected.

The following day, I called around to get others’ reactions. Also about what I expected. That evening, someone hosted a Twitter Spaces event that apparently peaked at 22,000 listeners. The subject matter was crypto. I remember walking around below the stage at Woodstock early on the first afternoon of the festival. The fences were down; the concert was declared free, and the crowds began to build. The sense of something big filled the air, but I was more concerned with the foreboding storm clouds gathering at the top of the hill. At some point as the thunder began to roll in, I left and headed back to the safety of the town of Woodstock 40 miles away.

I grew up part time in Woodstock, the other part in the city at my father’s apartment in Greenwich Village. From as early as I remember, the conversation around the coffee table in the kitchen was all about the issues of the day, the music and media of the time, the patterns of a family marked by divorce, liberalism, and the key notion that age had little to do with one’s standing around the table. It always felt profound to me that I could be heard and listen to any subject or feeling, across the multigenerational patchwork of step and half siblings, and in both the Village and Woodstock, a steady stream of artists, musicians, and filmmakers engaged intimately in the moment of the 60’s and on and on to this day. My point is that Clubhouse and Twitter and a flattened hierarchy of intention and opinion is a constant in my life, not a new freedom or problem to be overcome. It’s the old normal, for me.

On this edition of the Gang, the subject of Amazon’s Sidewalk mesh network arises. Suffice it to say, there are security implications. What happens when a company whose scale has captured a significant percentage of the world economy in the pandemic offers an opt out service sharing its customers’ broadband internet access with other Amazon customers? The potential arrogance of providing an opt out date after which you have agreed to this plan by not saying no is, well, breathtaking. Forget that the algorithm uses a very small part of your bandwidth cap and would be unlikely to affect your access to or price of the subscription to the network. In some way, that makes the grab seem even more Machiavellian than it really is. But even more egregious is the suggestion that such a mesh network gives potential access not only to the bandwidth but what you and everybody else in the neighborhood does with it. Wherever you go, there you are indeed. Or, there goes the neighborhood.

For now, the fences are down in the new Woodstock. Washington is coming for its cut of the pie, and the new rules of post-cookie and privacy v. economy are being debated. Apple is challenging the newsletter and its rationale creator economy by breaking access to the open and click rates that drive analytics. Tracking pixels will now open en masse before the beginning of the viewing process rather than firing off as clicks are generated. Substack and Revue tools to track these indications of user preference will have to be replaced by direct appeals for information about preferences, which to me suggests a kind of horse trade in terms of subscriber cost versus user-provided data. By the way, I very much appreciate new subscribers to the Gang newsletter feed, even though we’ve moved off Substack to Revue and don’t know why people are subscribing to an empty stream. Come to think of it, the sound of silence may be worth it.

As Professor Corey used to say, “No, no, I really mean that.” What is said may not be the most important part of the transaction. Instead, how trust is established and maintained is a core value. The newsletter proposition is to cut to the chase, whether by overt messages or the avoidance of wasted time spent on concerns or attitudes that have already been understood by the nature of the subscribed relationship. As the cost of creator production approaches zero, tools are needed to evaluate the credibility and utility of all these new voices. Where magazines and publishers used to provide a screening process, now the methodology for measuring trust becomes business critical. How many are watching or reading what is still important, but who those people are and how they relate to each other in a retweet/like social culture is more so.

Something akin to this is going on with live audio, where the conversation is a representative democratic process where listeners can evaluate not just what is said but how it is absorbed by the others “on stage.” These little signals of discovery between speakers are amplified by the audience reaction and, painfully, their withdrawal from the room via Leave Quietly. You can hear the moderator(s) quickly responding to such attrition with pivots to more viable subject matter or new speakers, but in aggregate these adjustments form a roadmap for future participation by “subscribers.” In this structure, the subscription is less about the price and more about the trust the group ascribes to the producers and speakers.

At Woodstock, the downed fences, traffic jams, and general chaos of creating a half-a-million population city in a heartbeat produced a difficult management situation where the very acts promoted by the organizers were unable to reach the stage. Instead, artists like John Sebastian of the Lovin’ Spoonful (attending but not performing) were thrust into the spotlight for iconic performances that changed not only their careers but the rhythm and drama of the film that resulted. Joni Mitchell was convinced by her manager to skip the event in favor of an appearance on the Dick Cavett show, but her boyfriend of the time, Graham Nash, was there as part of CSN&Y and relayed his impressions of the event as Mitchell sat in her hotel room. The result was the song she wrote, as recorded by CSNY, became the lead single from the band’s next record Déjà Vu, and played over the end credits of the film.

“We are stardust… golden… got to get back to the garden.” Joni Mitchell’s invisible pixels sprinkled over the massive economic disaster known as the Woodstock festival captured the top of the hit parade, and with it the moment we remember in history. Altamont, assassinations, pandemics, Nixon bombing in Ohio were soon to replace the aura of the hippie trek, but we still celebrate the idea of what we call Woodstock. The cryptos may be right, and translucent pixels may be suppressed, but I’ll still take CSNY’s glowing harmonies any day on my morning Wheaties. I’ll take shows about nothing for 40, Bob.

from the Gillmor Gang Newsletter

__________________

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, June 4, 2021.

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang

Subscribe to the new Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the backchannel here on Telegram.

The Gillmor Gang on Facebook … and here’s our sister show G3 on Facebook.