Tech Narratives – Page 13 – Daily Tech Commentary from Jan Dawson

Important Note

Tech Narratives was a subscription website, which offered expert commentary on the day's top tech news from Jan Dawson, along with various other features, for $10/month. As of Monday October 16, 2017, it will no longer be updated. An archive of past content will remain available for the time being. I've written more about this change in the post immediately below, and also here.

Each post below is tagged with

Company/Division names

Topics

and

Narratives

as appropriate.

★ Facebook Limits Monetization of Content Including Controversial News (Sep 13, 2017)

Facebook has announced that it’s making changes to the type of content that can be monetized on its site, introducing some serious limitations to which content ads will run against. On the one hand, this is clearly an echo of changes YouTube made earlier this year in response to the boycott and broader backlash against ads showing up next to undesirable content, and therefore a sop to advertisers. But on the other hand, it means content creators who may in some cases have built businesses out of creating content in some of the now unmonetizable categories will understandably be upset. Some of the bans on monetization are entirely common sense in nature, while others are likely to be more controversial, notably a ban on monetizing content about highly controversial issues, seemingly including news coverage of those issues. That’s one that Facebook is definitely going to want to clarify to avoid charges of censorship.

via TechCrunch

Facebook

Facebook's Power

Facebook is Testing its Houseparty Clone Bonfire in Denmark (Sep 13, 2017)

Facebook has been reported for a while to be working on a potential clone of popular video chat app Houseparty, and it has now officially launched the app in Denmark under the previously reported Bonfire name as a limited test. The features sound similar to those in the Houseparty app, which was recently reported to be achieving some impressive user metrics (though I noted some important caveats). The key to Facebook’s success here, as I also noted in that earlier piece on Houseparty, will be disconnecting this app to some extent from the Facebook social graph and allowing users to form more intimate circles of friends as they can in Instagram. That’s been a key part of the value proposition for both Snapchat and Houseparty, and it’s something that’s never come easy to Facebook, which still often seems to misunderstand its most effective competitors for users’ time.

via The Next Web

Facebook

Facebook's Power

Various Additional Details About Apple’s Announcements Dribble Out (Sep 13, 2017)

As is often the case, various details are dribbling out today about the many announcements Apple made yesterday, so here’s a quick roundup. Firstly, CNBC reports that Apple quietly hiked iPad Pro prices by $50 yesterday without making any changes to the hardware – that’s likely because flash memory prices have been rising dramatically recently, putting pressure on both smartphone and PC makers (but driving Samsung’s highest ever profits).

Secondly, MacRumors reports that the new desktop version of iTunes drops the iOS App Store entirely, meaning it’s now just for buying and consuming content that can actually be used on a Mac or PC, further untethering the iPhone from the computer. I would guess very few purchases were made this way in recent years anyway given how many people likely sync and backup to iCloud.

Thirdly, the Wall Street Journal confirms a detail I pointed to during yesterday’s keynote: Disney is a holdout from the 4K movies that will be available through the iTunes Store, likely because it wouldn’t go along with the pricing Apple wanted. In the end, there was no clean answer on the pricing question I posed in my earlier piece on the negotiations: Apple won with some studios and lost with others, notably Disney, but they may still come around eventually.

Fourth, MacRumors confirms a rumor that wasn’t confirmed on stage yesterday – the new iPhones will support fast charging if charged with MacBook rather than iPhone power adapters, charging to 50% in half an hour, which will be a nice bonus for those that own MBP chargers but won’t affect most others (I find that an iPad charger already generally does a pretty good job with faster charging).

Lastly, Business Insider reports on Apple Watch LTE battery life, which is one hour for calls or four hours for exercising using the GPS and LTE while untethered from an iPhone. That should be perfectly adequate for the most likely use cases, which are exercising without an iPhone or taking the odd call while the phone is out of range while at home, for example. The Watch with LTE certainly isn’t intended to be used all day without a phone, and battery life certainly won;’t support that use case.

via CNBC (iPad Pro), MacRumors (iTunes), WSJ (4K movies), MacRumors (fast charging), Business Insider (Apple Watch battery life)

Google Moving Away From Penalizing News Sites Who Don’t Do Free Articles (Sep 13, 2017)

This article is a bit of an oddity – the Wall Street Journal reporting on the Wall Street Journal – but the news itself is important: Google is relaxing the policy that currently penalizes sites like the Journal which no longer allow Google searchers to view an article linked from search results for free. Since the Journal instituted that change, it’s seen traffic from Google (which in turn is likely a big chunk of total traffic) drop enormously, because sites that don’t participate in Google’s “first click free” program are penalized in search results. This is yet another sign of a softening at Google towards news organizations, which have been increasingly critical of its (and Facebook’s) power over them, though Google still seems to be months if not a year behind Facebook in coming around and making serious concessions.

via WSJ

Daily Podcast Episode 55 – September 12, 2017 (Sep 12, 2017)

The daily podcast episode for September 12 is up now on SoundCloud and should be syncing shortly to iTunes, Overcast, and other podcast apps. As usual, the podcast spends about one minute on each of the items covered on the site today, and also points to a few other items in the news today which I didn’t cover but which are nonetheless interesting. You can find today’s episode on SoundCloud and all episodes on iTunes, Overcast, and so on. The additional items covered are below:

Daily Podcast