I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the 3 different parts of generative AI tools like ChatGPT: inputs, outputs, and training data. There are many new applications that will be built using 1, 2, or 3 of these parts. It's important for us to understand what is possible. The whole internet is about to change... – PC Links ChatGPT Disclaimers and Disclosures This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried have imploded, sending ripple effects through crypto and well beyond. But is this really an example of web3? Or is this just a classic case of fraud? Technically, no, this is not web3. But do the semantics matter? The damage is done.  I usually edit my rants down to 20 min but I couldn't do it this week. SBF has betrayed us. Is it possible to create a system where we are truly no longer vulnerable to these sorts of con artists? – PC  Links Bankrupt FTX's new...

There was some debate in the web3 community about whether Apple was going to apply its standard 30% fee to NFT purchases made in iOS apps. Spoiler alert: Yes, they did. Is it fair? To discuss! – PC Links App Store Review Guideline updates now available Apple has new App Store rules for NFTs and cryptocurrency Apple Allows In-App NFTs In App Store, But Slaps Its 30% Levy On Transactions My new online course web3 for Business Disclaimers and Disclosures I own Twitter and Apple stock. This...

Wait 'til I get my money right Then you can't tell me nothing, right? – Kanye West Links Kanye West to Buy Parler, Joining the Right-Wing Social Media Crowd My new online course  web3 for Business Disclaimers and Disclosures This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

The metaverse will not built in a year. But it has been one year since Facebook rebranded to Meta and stated its intention to build the next phase of the internet. Let's talk about where they are now, and why so many people keep hating on them. – PC Links Meta Connect Keynote 2022 Meta Quest Pro Tech News for MBAs: Meta - What you need to know and why it matters Hypothetically Great: Facebook bought Oculus, now Oculus owns Facebook TechCrunch: Meta announces legs NY Times:...

It turns out that creative tasks are *not* immune to the robot takeover. Meta AI researchers have created a new AI that can generate video content on the fly from a simple text prompt. Basically, you send a text of what you want, and it creates a video of that exact thing. Film students everywhere, beware.  – PC Links   Meta AI: Make-A-Video DALL-E GPT-3 DreamFusion My new online course   web3 for Business Disclaimers and Disclosures   This content is for informational and...

Welcome to Season 4! It was a big week in the world of crypto with the success of The Merge, in which Ethereum transitioned to a proof-of-stake network. As if that wasn't enough, Helium Mobile was announced– the world's first decentralized cellular network. Buckle up, web3 is upon us! – PC Links The Ethereum Foundation: The Merge Bloomberg: The Ethereum Merge Ups the Stakes—and Reshapes the Crypto Universe Helium Mobile For $5 A Month, Crypto Now Has Your Cell Plan Covered My new...

We end Season 3 in the same place we started: Meta's latest earnings report. Spoiler– it's not looking good. Why is this happening? Is it general market conditions? The maturation of social? Apple's "bullying"? All of the above?! Companion episode from a year ago: Apple and Facebook Battle for the Future H.A.G.S.! – PC Links Meta Reports First Quarter 2022 Results Meta says its metaverse biz lost another $3B, but the 2030s will be "exciting" Apple Podcasts: Apple and Facebook Battle...

"Oh hi lol" -- what Elon Musk tweeted Monday morning. Why? Because he had just bought 9% of Twitter's stock. Is this good or bad for Twitter? For its users? For society?? We shall discuss. – PC Links Elon Musk on Twitter WSJ: Elon Musk Takes Surprise 9% Stake in Twitter, Sending Shares Higher Parag Agrawal on Twitter Forbes: The World's Real-Time Billionaires Bluesky Also - my new online course! Customer Experience Strategy Disclaimers and Disclosures I hold $TWTR and...

This week I talk about two seemingly unrelated stories: a paralyzed man who is able to communicate using only his thoughts and the first ever basketball game captured through a new technology called volumetric video.  What do they have in common? Both have to do with how we perceive and communicate our reality, and both represent a way to essentially bypass our normal five senses. As I like to say, the future is gonna be weird. – PC Links Nature - Spelling interface using intracortical...

Substack announced its new iOS app that looks a lot like... every other news app. I thought this was a tool for writers to sell email newsletter subscriptions? There are a lot of great business lessons embedded in their strategy, which is perhaps the hardest kind there is: B2B2C. Also, I briefly touch on Apple's new product releases and the Biden administration's latest executive order on crypto. – PC Links Introducing the Substack app Apple unveils all-new Mac Studio and Studio...

The war in Ukraine is an atrocity, and it has been a long time since there was a military invasion in Europe. There are a lot of interesting ways that internet technology is playing an outsized role in this modern age. Live images and video on social media, propaganda campaigns, and as we will discuss in this episode– the benefits of decentralized tech are being put into practice in this conflict. Ukraine is soliciting donations in cryptocurrency, SpaceX is delivering internet connectivity...

Super Bowl LVI was chock-full of ads for cryptocurrency exchanges, reaching over 100 million people who were all wondering the same thing: "Should I be buying crypto? And also, what is crypto?" I thought this would be a good excuse to do a cryptocurrency 101 episode. What is a blockchain? What are cryptocurrencies? What is Bitcoin? What is Ethereum? Spoiler– I spend a lot of time on Ethereum. First, because it's awesome. But also, because it's a good example of how cryptocurrencies are often...

To kick off Season 3 we did our first ever live recording, in front of the classroom of my Intro to Product Management class at Columbia Business School. We just set up a mic and went for it! Now everybody can have a taste of the classroom experience.  I have to say, it was way more fun to record with a live audience of 80 students, in a big beautiful room at our new Manhattanville campus, instead of by myself, in a small office.  We talked about Meta's record stock drop, Amazon's record...

We review these last 12 insane months, drawing out a central theme: community. Again and again, we saw examples of collaboration via digital tools to accomplish things in the physical world. A lot to think about as we head into 2022... And also, thanks for listening to the first year of Tech News for MBAs! – PC Disclaimer This content is for informational and entertainment purposes only and is not financial advice.

Netflix, Venmo, and Roomba were all down for hours on Tuesday. Why? Because they all use Amazon Web Services. We are incredibly reliant on just a small handful of solutions to power our entire society. Is that a smart idea? What if the web3/decentralized crowd have a point...  + Some thoughts on Instagram's Senate hearing. – PC Links Lawmakers urge the head of Instagram to better protect children. An Amazon server outage caused problems for Alexa, Ring, Disney Plus, and...

We are going deep down the web3 rabbithole this week with a bizarre tale of anonymous strangers raising almost $50 million to buy a physical copy of the US Constitution, only to be outbid by an internet villain, and then in the end lots of people make a lot of money, completely accidentally. I'll tell you the whole story through my own experience, where in the last few weeks I made a 50x return in crypto without even knowing I was investing in the first place. 🤔💸 – PC Subscribe to my...

How the times have changed! It used to be you couldn't raise a seed round without some traction– now you can go public. Rivian, the company creating "electric adventure vehicles", just had one of the biggest public offerings in history. We will dive into how a company that doesn't even have a business yet could be valued at over $100 billion, electric vehicles generally, and the macro trends around speculative trading. – PC Links Rivian announces pricing of upsized initial public...

Oh Twitter, my beloved Twitter. User growth has almost stalled, but revenue growth is still going strong– and now, for the first time, a major social network has a SaaS subscription product available to its users. Twitter Blue is $2.99/mo and represents not only a new revenue channel for Twitter, but perhaps a new model for social products altogether. Also, we'll kick things off with a bunch of metaverse-related announcements from this week. – PC Links Introducing Twitter Blue -...

My favorite shoe brand IPOed this week to much fanfare, and its success says a lot about the state of enabling technology platforms like Shopify, which Allbirds is built upon. We also breeze through a couple of other headlines about the new laser eyed major of NYC and Airbnb's blowout quarter. And, I couldn't help myself, so I had a couple more things to say about Meta. – PC  Links: Eric Adams on Twitter Airbnb Announces Third Quarter 2021 Results Yahoo Finance: Allbirds surges 90% on...

There is no Facebook, only... Meta.  Mark Zuckerberg has laid out a longterm vision for his company in a way that most public CEOs wouldn't dare– and if he pulls it off, Meta has the potential to be much bigger and even more influential than Facebook ever was. We'll dig in on what was announced and what it means for the future of the internet. – PC Links Meta.com Connect Opening Keynote Meta: Founder’s Letter, 2021

The fall semester is in session, and we're back for Season 2!  I talk a bit about what to expect this season, what I've been up to over the summer (spoiler: a lot), and we will take a tour through the headlines from this week that set the stage thematically for where tech is going. Welcome back to Tech News for MBAs. – PC Links: CNBC:  Bitcoin jumps to new high above $66,000 after landmark U.S. ETF launch Jack Dorsey on Twitter The Verge: Facebook is planning to rebrand the company...

Hi! As we approach the fall semester, I'm just checking in with a quick mini-ep to let you know what I've been up to, why Tech News for MBAs has gone dark the past few months, and to assure you that I will be back at it soon!  Fun trivia: My band in college was called Missing In Action. PC

Tim Cook gave a rare and revealing interview on Kara Swisher's Sway podcast responding to Mark Zuckerberg's assertion that Apple is one of Facebook's biggest competitors. (Spoiler: Cook says they're not.) But what if their competition isn't set for the present, but for the future? Professor Paul Canetti goes deep on his theory about how Apple's defensive moves against Facebook are less about advertising and privacy and more about handicapping a future challenger for the next paradigm shift in...