Altijd interessant hoe dingen mekaar beïnvloeden: At a time when half of all book purchases in the U.S. are made on Amazon — and many of those on mobile — the first job of a book cover, after gesturing at the content inside, is to look great in miniature. 

Techcrunch met een “critical reading” van Zuckerberg’s opiniestuk vorige week: The Facebook founder is fighting because he knows his platform is a targeted attack; On individual attention, via privacy-hostile behaviorally targeted ads (his euphemism for this is “relevant ads”); on social cohesion, via divisive algorithms that drive outrage in order to maximize platform engagement; and […]

Matthew Ball op Redef: Studies find that Fortnite’s players spend one to one and a half hours per day in the game, versus thirty minutes for active Snapchat or Instagram users. Fortnite wasn’t designed to be a Second Life-style experience, or even a digital “third place“; it became one organically. What’s more, it is drastically out-monetizing dedicated social squares […]

Farhad Manjoo: Twitter is not that carefree clubhouse for journalism anymore. Instead it is the epicenter of a nonstop information war, an almost comically undermanaged gladiatorial arena where activists and disinformation artists and politicians and marketers gather to target and influence the wider media world.

Daily Dot vond een bedrijfje dat interessant gebruik maakt van cookies aan de hand waarvan Facebook je targeted ads kan tonen. Zo kan een winkel je de uitbreidingset van Kolonisten van Catan aanbevelen als je het spel bij hen kocht. Of, zoals Spinner doet, gedragsbeïnvloeding in gang steken door mensen artikels te laten zien: Regardless […]

The New York Times: To assuage concerns, Mr. Zuckerberg called a follow-up meeting with WhatsApp employees a few days later, three of the people said. On Dec. 7, employees gathered around microphones at the WhatsApp offices to ask him why he was so invested in merging the services. Some said his answers were vague and […]