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The Internet Must Change. To Get There, Start With the Data.

This is an edited version of a series of talks I first gave in New York over the past week, outlining my work at Columbia. Many thanks to Reinvent, Pete Leyden, Cap Gemini, Columbia University, Cossette/Vision7, and the New York Times for hosting and helping me. Cross posted from Searchblog.

Prelude.

I have spent 30-plus years in the tech and media industries, mainly as a journalist, observer, and founder of companies that either make or support journalism and storytelling. When it comes to many of the things I am going to talk about here, I am not an expert. If I am expert at anything at all, it’s asking questions of technology, and of the media and marketing platforms created by technology. In that spirit I offer the questions I am currently pursuing, in the hope of sparking a dialog with this esteemed audience to further better answers.

Predictions for 2019: Data, Tech, Media, Climate, Markets and…Cannabis…

By John Battelle

If predictions are like baseball, I’m bound to have a bad year in 2019, given how well things went the last time around. And given how my own interests, work life, and physical location have changed of late, I’m not entirely sure what might spring from this particular session at the keyboard.

But as I’ve noted in previous versions of this post (all 15 of them are linked at the bottom), I do these predictions in something of a fugue state – I don’t prepare in advance. I just sit down, stare at a blank page, and start to write.

So Happy New Year, and here we go.

One Year Ago: How Our Predictions Fared

By John Battelle

Cross posted from Searchblog

Every year I write predictions for the year ahead. And at the end of that year, I grade myself on how I did. I love writing this post, and thankfully you all love reading it as well. These “How I Did” posts are usually the most popular of the year, beating even the original predictions in readership and engagement.

What’s that about, anyway? Is it the spectacle of watching a guy admit he got things wrong? Cheering when I get it right? Perhaps it’s just a chance to pull back and review the year that was, all the while marveling at how much happened in twelve short months. And 2018 does not disappoint.

Would You Go To China on Business Now?

By John Battelle

So yes, I am planning on going to China on Saturday. My first time, I’m a bit embarrassed to say. It’s not for a lack of opportunities, but rather a conviction that when I did go, I’d make a study of it, staying for at least two weeks, if not more.

But I’ve realized lately that in the past three decades of my career-related travel, I’ve never gone anywhere for more than one week. I admit, I’ve boxed China out, because I assigned it such import, such gravitas, that I needed to justify the 15-hour flight (and its attendant biome and geospatial shock) with a commitment of time I was never able to make.

So this year, I said fuggit. I’ll go when I can go, and for however long I can go. Dip a toe, go longer later. That’s my new approach. China has been looming at the edges of my self-imposed myopia for too long; plus my kids all speak Mandarin and have traveled there frequently. WTF is wrong with me?

Naked and Afraid

By John Battelle

Mark Zuckerberg is in a crisis of leadership. Will he grasp its opportunity?

It seems like an eternity, but about one year ago this Fall, Uber had kicked its iconic founding CEO to the curb, and he responded by attempting a board room coup. Meanwhile, Facebook was at least a year into crisis mode, clumsily dealing with a spreading contagion that culminated in a Yom Kippur apology from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “For those I hurt this year, I ask forgiveness and I will try to be better,” he posted. “For the ways my work was used to divide people rather than bring us together, I ask for forgiveness and I will work to do better.”

More than one year after that work reputedly began, what lesson from Facebook’s still rolling catastrophe? I think it’s pretty clear: Mark Zuckerberg needs to do a lot more than publish blog posts someone else has written for him.

Why Facebook Calls It An Arms Race

By John Battelle

It’s the business model, folks. If we’re going to “fix” anything, we have to start there.

“We weren’t expecting any of this when we created Twitter over 12 years ago, and we acknowledge the real world negative consequences of what happened and we take the full responsibility to fix it.”

That’s the most important line from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s testimony yesterday – and in many ways it’s also the most frustrating. But I agree with Ben Thompson, who this morning points out (sub required) that Dorsey’s philosophy on how to “fix it” was strikingly different from that of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (or Google, which failed to send a C-level executive to the hearings). To quote Dorsey (emphasis mine): “Today we’re committing to the people and this committee to do that work and do it openly. We’re here to contribute to a healthy public square, not compete to have the only one. We know that’s the only way our business thrives and helps us all defend against these new threats.”

Ben points out that during yesterday’s hearings, Dorsey was willing to tie the problems of public discourse on Twitter directly to the company’s core business model, that of advertising. Sandberg? She ducked the issue and failed to make the link.

Google Discovered the Highest Performing Teams Have These Two Characteristics

By debbie-madden

What makes a high-performing team? It’s not intelligence. It’s not seniority.

Google recently discovered that the highest performing teams are the ones with two characteristics:

Individuals are able to sacrifice something they want for the good of the team.
Each person feels safe to speak what’s on their mind.

Hidden underneath all of this is the foundation that makes it all possible: trust.

If a team lacks trust, everything else is impossible.

Think about your team. Think about each person on your team. Do you trust them?

When Should an Employer Ask an Employee to Quit?

By debbie-madden

Companies spend a lot of time talking about retention strategies for good reason. High turnover is extremely expensive. The total cost to the organization for each employee who leaves can quickly reach between 100 and 300 percent of an employee’s salary.

On the flip side, we talk often about how and when to fire an employee. Likewise on the employee side, we talk about when it’s time for an employee to quit.

Yet, we don’t talk about the fourth option: When should an employer ask an employee to quit?

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Mark Zuckerberg is in a crisis of leadership. Will he grasp its opportunity?

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It’s the business model, folks. If we’re going to “fix” anything, we have to start there.

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If a team lacks trust, everything else is impossible.

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The NewCo Daily: Today’s Top Stories

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