Only Built 4 Weekend Linx...
The tale of Lawyer Cat, Medium/MEL layoffs + more - The Neal Ungerleider Newsletter #88
Time for weekend links. And for everyone like me who’s hitting that pandemic wall real damn hard and missing human interaction that’s not on a screen real bad, this one’s for you.
And stay tuned for some big changes to this newsletter next week too. More to come in a few days but you know it’s good.
New Futures:
The lingering effects of COVID in some NBA players.
Best Buy’s starting home COVID tests for their employees.
One big problem in the search for COVID’s origins: Noone can quite figure out how the disease jumped from animal to humans.
Politico’s Bryan Bender on why the US military and intelligence agencies keep interfering in UFO investigations.
Rob Henderson on human nature and our brain’s reward centers.
Nathan J. Robinson reads billionaires’ biographies to see how the world’s richest people view themselves:
Peter Thiel confessed to business students that innovators do not actually tend to get rich. The people who get rich are monopolists: those who see an opportunity to control something that very large numbers of other people need, and who can eliminate competition. In fact, while Langone presents himself as the “co-founder of Home Depot,” which gives people a sense that he created something real from which they benefit, elsewhere in the book he reveals that one way he made a giant pile of money was simply by finding a way to gain control over an important patent for a widely-used laser component. The man who actually invented the component was unable to enforce his patent, so Langone set him up with a lawyer—in exchange for a piece of the rewards, which turned out to be substantial.
Advertising/Marketing/PR:
Neil deGrasse Tyson explains why “science needs better marketing—refined and persistent—so that no one will ever again take its discoveries for granted.“
Singapore’s tourism board is giving Americans virtual taxi tours of the city-state inside Twitch.
Quebec’s provincial government is going all-in on senior citizens on TikTok.
Pedigree’s bringing dogs on Clubhouse.
Adweek’s Jess Zaffaris on the best brands doing TikTok marketing.
Kroger just released the data on a pilot to reward loyal customers with company stock and it’s pretty impressive.
WPP is investing $200 million+ in a new data operation under GroupM. (Obligatory disclosure: I’ve worked with both WPP and GroupM in the past because, y’know, advertising.)
YouTube’s testing tech that will automatically detect products featured in videos, and will then suggest content based on the product placement.
7-11 is experimenting with a taco chain spin-off.
UK regulators arguing that “Facebook’s completed purchase of Giphy raises competition concerns in relation to digital advertising and the supply of GIFs.” I’m no rah-rah Facebook booster but I’m having real trouble wrapping my head around that argument…
A little late to the tax season party on this, but the IRS has a surprisingly good Instagram presence.
Media:
Chrissy Teigen deleted her Twitter account and quit the service, and tech journalist Kurt Wagner explains why this is a bad sign. Then you see how the comments on his tweet are filled with trolls and you… understand why Teigen gave the hell up on a platform that hugely boosted her career 10,000%?
Elizabeth Spiers on how Alexi McCammond was fired because Conde Nast can’t fire Anna Wintour.
Everything’s digital and this is how the New York Times A/B tests its headlines.
Kevin Drum on the decline in blog audiences in the 2010s and how blogs were collateral damage in the war against RSS.
After a unionization drive failed by one vote, Medium CEO Ev Williams announced voluntary buyouts for their editorial team and sent out what Motherboard’s Edward Ongweso Jr calls “an email to the entire Medium staff announcing that the company would like employees charged with doing journalism to feel free to quit and that the company would in fact be shifting away from professional journalism altogether.” As always, Casey Newton’s a must-read on this.
Say it ain’t so: Dollar Shave Club is cutting ties with MEL Magazine and MEL is shutting down operations until they find “The right new owner.” To be fair, over-owners Unilever were subsidizing a high-quality publication with almost no visible ties to their Dollar Shave Club brand for… a really long time?
Fast Company’s KC Ifeyani on the mainstreaming of sex work and the mainstreaming of OnlyFans.
What happens when Nextdoor replaces the small town newspaper.
News Corp is acquiring IBD for $275 million. There’s money in specialty publications with audiences who are at professional disadvantages if they don’t subscribe!
We’re still not back to movie theater life yet: Disney’s releasing Black Widow in theaters and streaming in July.
Tech:
NYU and Facebook facing off over data scraping of political ads for academic research.
DocuSign and Adobe’s behind the scenes war over the future of esignatures.
Facebook exec Andrew Bosworth on the company’s research into AR assistants for home and work life.
Zoom’s releasing a video SDK for outside developers to integrate Zoom into their products.
Fun:
ContraPoints’ Natalie Wynn understands the worst terms on Twitter.
Adventures in cool merch: Kacey Musgraves selling branded tarot cards. (Thx Rick Webb!)
Zooming Pt. 1: Zoom Escaper is a tool to self-sabotage your audio stream and get out of the worst meetings.
Zooming Pt. 2: Stanford’s Jeremy Bailenson on why Zoom fatigue is real.
Zooming Pt. 3: Kristina Budelis and Leandro Badalotti’s New Yorker video on what went down with the Zoom Lawyer-Cat.
Things I’ve Enjoyed Lately:
This article about why the FBI’s investigating a failed food influencer.
Reading about how freelancers can prioritize their mental health.
Learning about Joel Johnson of Wirecutter and Consumerist fame’s new personal finance/shopping project, which he’s looking for paying writers to join him on.
Anyway, that’s it for this week. I’m Jewish (very light emphasis on the religion, heavy emphasis on the culture) so we’re making an epic Passover feast this year for the team. On the menu: Boneless rib roast, braised and glazed brussel sprouts, green beans and tomatoes, onion kugel, matzoh ball soup, charoset and honey-vanilla almond cake. Going in on all the food—let’s see how this goes.
Love and coffee,
Neal
About This Newsletter: Neal Ungerleider is a strategic communications consultant who works with individuals, brands and agencies. He writes this weekly newsletter about the media communications industrial complex and hopes you find it useful. Check out his bio, his portfolio, and current projects.
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