Drunk tweets, hidden musical identity, reality shows and more in The Programmable Edition #52
One of the ways to understand and measure the impact of machine learning is to keep track of the companies at the forefront of innovation with the potential to disrupt entire industries.
In an ever-changing world where myriads of companies fight for a spot in the sunlight, knowing which ones matter for each industry is no small feat. Thankfully, Shivon Zilis came up with a great visual, the Machine Intelligence Landscape, to help us build a detailed mental picture of the revolution we are living.
The second version of the Landscape, published at the end of 2015, is very different from the first one published a year earlier and reflects how quickly change operates in this field. Ultimately, the companies that will revolutionize their industry tomorrow are the ones aiming today to solve problems worth solving, and committed to bring actual business value through learning algorithms.
Have a nice day,
Simon
Studio Plus: an app for native, premium, mobile content
Vivendi Content announced Studio Plus: a production label for mobile-first series. The service will roll out in 20+ countries in Europe and will deliver short 10 minutes episodes to subscribers on a weekly basis. In doing so, Vivendi is tapping into the booming consumption of short video formats, just like Facebook does, with the apparition of a new ‘Video Discovery Hub’ on its mobile app. Below, the video of our dear Dominique Delport depicting the entertainment market landscape during his keynote speech at the MIPTV.
Discover your hidden musical identity with Spotify
After the $100 million acquisition of music data company The Echo Nest, Spotify is now testing Nestify, a music recommandation engine prototype capable of understanding the context in which songs are listened to. Ultimately, Nestify could turn into ‘an app that plays exactly what you want to listen to when you want to listen to it’.
Amazon’s huge move on web payments
As a clear response to Apple’s intention to roll out Apple pay on mobile websites, Amazon is about to offer its 285 million account holders the ability to purchase products on third-party websites using their Amazon credentials. For merchants, the move is an opportunity to increase conversions and boost sales on their e-commerce websites.
What’s left of Facebook’s $500 million LiveRail acquisition?
2 years after the acquisition, LiveRail’s staff has been relocated to Facebook’s London offices, losing a significant part of its original team. More importantly, facing a raise in ad-fraud, the business took a U-turn towards private marketplaces with fewer but higher quality inventory.
AI-centric interfaces are not quite there yet
As a next step to the web and native apps, AI chat bots offer an even more frictionless way to reach and engage users. But for them to go mainstream, new discovery and interaction frameworks still have to emerge, sooner or later.
Demystifying algorithmic news feeds
If algorithmically-determined news feeds are said to enhance the user experience, they actually serve another business purpose: advertising. By controlling the amount of organic content shown to users, platforms force brands to spend more in order to promote their content.
An introduction to acoustic fingerprinting and watermarking
Although audio cues raise important privacy concerns, their capabilities are interesting not only to get better audience measurement, but also to automatically detect copyrighted material or even create innovative marketing experiences.
Snapchat is the new MTV
MTV in the late 90’s had a huge and rapid success partly thanks to a new and highly qualitative form of content: reality TV. The new MTV for the 2010-ish kids will definitely be Snapchat, Stories being the new Big Brother, and Kendall Jenner stealing Hulk Hogan’s fame.
Identifying drunk tweets
A team at University of Rochester trained a machine-learning algorithm to spot people drinking alcohol while tweeting. To do so, the team first collected geotagged tweets, then filtered those mentioning alcohol-related words to finally generate heat maps of alcohol use. Tweeting-while-drinking is definitely a thing!
Brainstorming against ad blockers
Heavy ads and slow-loading web pages are responsible for ad blockers’ expansion. In response, the advertising industry is getting increasingly creative: ideas range from basic performance optimization to more challenging and ambitious universal tracking software development.
Tesla’s much anticipated Model 3 will be a hit
Elon Musk claimed on Twitter that pre-sale orders for the new $35,000 Tesla Model 3 went over 276k during the weekend. The figures are huge and promising: $10 billion worth of orders in 36 hours would make the Model 3 one of the best-selling car in America when released in 2017.
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