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
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  • Narratives
    • as appropriate.
    Facebook Launches In-Stream-Only Video Ad Options as Inventory Grows (Aug 17, 2017)

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    Google Buys AIMatter, Which Makes Photo Manipulation Tools and Apps (Aug 17, 2017)

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    ★ Alibaba and Tencent Deliver Strong Growth and Profits in Q2 (Aug 17, 2017)

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    Turner to Use UEFA Soccer Rights as Foundation for Streaming Service in 2018 (Aug 17, 2017)

    Time Warner’s Turner unit, which acquired English-language US rights to the European club soccer tournaments from UEFA earlier this year, has announced that it will be launching a new steaming service next year to carry the games. A subset of the games will also be broadcast through its linear channels, but it sounds like this service will be the only way to get the full set. This is a great example of the kind of approach big TV companies should be taking with online streaming services, where we’ve seen two broad strategies be successful: recreating a linear / pay TV offering in the digital world, or creating something entirely new (Turner here is doing the latter). This should provide a very direct way to recoup the $180 million Turner is allegedly spending on three year’s rights for the soccer tournaments, while also allowing it to experiment with streaming models for sports. It sounds like it’s interested in adding other sports over time, though not the basketball content that’s already a big deal on its linear networks, and I worry that could be a distraction or dilution for what will otherwise be a very clear value proposition.

    via WSJ


    Spotify Wants to Rival Facebook and Google in Advertising (Aug 17, 2017)

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    GM’s Maven Unit Shows Signs of Deepening Direct Investment in Ride Sharing (Aug 17, 2017)

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    Daily Podcast Episode 37 – August 16, 2017 (Aug 16, 2017)

    The daily podcast episode for August 16 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:


    Google Might Pay $3.5 Billion to Samsung and $3 Billion to Apple in 2017 (Aug 16, 2017)

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    HMD Global Launches First High-End Android, Nokia 8 (Aug 16, 2017)

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    Google Home Phone Call Function Rolls Out to Users in US and Canada (Aug 16, 2017)

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    Uber Tests Allowing Drivers to Pick Dropoff Areas, Risking Discrimination (Aug 16, 2017)

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    Fiat Chrysler Joins BMW-Intel-Mobileye Alliance for Autonomous Driving Systems (Aug 16, 2017)

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    Amazon Expands Program Paying Popular Alexa Developers (Aug 16, 2017)

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    Essential Phone Readying to Ship Within a Week, White Model Coming Later (Aug 16, 2017)

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    T-Mobile Begins Lighting up 600MHz Network, Before Devices are Available (Aug 16, 2017)

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    ★ Apple Reportedly Spending $1 Billion on Original Video Content in Next Year (Aug 16, 2017)

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    Twitter Finally Adds Curation by Topic, But It’s Flawed (Aug 16, 2017)

    Twitter has finally added curation by topic, but only as part of its Explore tab, and the implementation seems to be pretty flawed. I argued that Twitter needed to get beyond its account-centric model to enable further growth in a piece written a year ago this week, so I welcome the move in principle. But the topic-based feeds are buried behind the search button, and the actual content in the various feeds feels unfocused and often irrelevant. More to the point, this topic-based approach needs to be part of the on boarding experience for Twitter, which has remained far too account-centric and therefore overwhelming for new users, something I documented here a few months back. So this is a step in the right direction, but needs to go further.

    via BuzzFeed


    Daily Podcast Episode 36 – August 15, 2017 (Aug 15, 2017)

    The daily podcast episode for August 15 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:


    Amazon Instant Pickup Allows Users to Get Items Immediately From Lockers at Colleges (Aug 15, 2017)

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    Online Platforms Are Toughening Stances on Content Over Charlottesville Events (Aug 15, 2017)

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