There’s no such thing as a free lunch – not even digitally

There has been a lot of controversy lately around the fact that brands are seeing less and less engagement on Facebook, leaving them no other option than to pay for promotion to get back to the top, as Facebook is constantly tweaking the algorithms behind the News Feed. It started this time around with a so-called ‘breakup letter’ from Eat24 a company lamenting how much Facebook has changed for the worse and announcing they will be closing down their Facebook page. Many others have since then expressed opinions on the matter, from calling Facebook’s behavior outright ‘extortion’ to more balanced articles explaining that there’s a limit to the amount of information people can consume, so with more and more content, individual pages will appear less often in the news feed.

Someone even made an YouTube video about this: “The Problem With Facebook”

Financial Times: “US v China: is this the new cold war?”

Fifteenth-century Venetians used to warn, Whoever is the Lord of Malacca has his hand on the throat of Venice. Hu Jintao echoed these sentiments when he warned in a 2003 speech that “certain major powers” are bent on controlling this crucial sea lane. Until now, China’s maritime security has been guaranteed largely by the US Navy. But, like aspiring great powers before it, China has been forced to confront a central geopolitical dilemma: can it rely on a rival to protect the country’s economic lifeline? Geoff Dyer

Lately is looks like the new cold war is US vs. Russia, all over again…

Nevertheless, China’s role will be much more important this time around, so it pays to watch their strategy closely. Increased tensions between Russia and the West may well facilitate China’s ambitions to take control over the Pacific, while the US is threatened on multiple fronts. On the other hand, China has strong economic ties with both parties, with Russia as energy supplier for the growing Chinese manufactory and America its main marketplace. If it wants the economy to keep growing, China must find a way to balance these two relationships – it would probably be best to play neutral for now, let the two have their skirmishes, while China continues to grow in influence and strength.

The New Yorker: “On and Off the Road with Barack Obama”

Even as Obama travels for campaign alms and is as entangled in the funding system at least as much as any other politician, he insists that his commitment is to the middle class and the disadvantaged. Last summer, he received a letter from a single mother struggling to support herself and her daughter on a minimal income. She was drowning: I need help. I can’t imagine being out in the streets with my daughter and if I don’t get some type of relief soon, I’m afraid that’s what may happen. Copy to Senior Advisers, Obama wrote at the bottom of the letter. This is the person we are working for. David Remnick

Very interesting insight into the life of the current US president, from minor trivia about day-to-day procedures to the tedious process of gathering support for initiatives, to his personal philosophy about what it means to be a good president and his perspective on history, the so-called ‘long view’. While it does sound good in principle, a bit too idealistic maybe, I have a feeling that in the current context pragmatism and decisiveness would serve the US president better.

Overthought: “The Ultimate Guide to Solving iOS Battery Drain”

One quick thing before we start — 99.9% of the time it is not actually iOS that is causing your battery to drain quickly. I guarantee you that if you erased your phone and there were no apps or email on it, it would last for ages. But, no one uses their device like that, nor should they. Hopefully with these steps you will be living in iOS battery bliss while still using all the apps and features you love. Scotty Loveless

A great deal of sound advice here – and some counterintuitive steps, like Stop Quitting Your Apps in Multitasking, which I see people do all the time. Personally I used most of them already, for example I usually turn off cellular data when I’m at home and use only Wi-Fi; even if I have good signal this almost doubles the battery life. I also disabled location services and background app refresh on most apps, including Facebook, although for a different reason: since iOS 7, every time I start an app that uses location and I’m not connected to Wi-Fi, I get a pop-up reminding me to turn on Wi-Fi to improve location accuracy – very annoying! But it’s nice to know that this saves power too.

MacStories: “Facebook Messenger 4.1 Adds Free WiFi Calls For All Users”

Free calls in Facebook Messenger can be initiated from the chat interface by tapping on a phone icon in the upper right corner of the screen. Once started, Facebook Messenger will start “ringing” another user’s device — because Messenger can’t always run in the background like Apple’s Phone app, however, the company is using standard push notifications to inform users that a call is being received. In the Facebook Messenger app, the call interface is reminiscent of Apple’s Phone app design for iOS 7.0 and iOS 7.1 with circular buttons for speaker, mute, and hide, and standard green and red targets to answer or end a call. Federico Viticci

Cool feature, although its use will probably be limited to calling friends abroad.

On the other hand… WhatsApp is planning to add the same feature in the coming months, so the overlap between Facebook’s two messaging apps will grow. Is it a good strategic move to have two products so closely competing with each other? I would think not. It the two development teams are working separately on the same features, it would be a waste of resources at company level; it they’re working together, that goes against the promises that WhatsApp will remain independent…

TechCrunch: “Facebook bought Oculus VR to Create The Metaverse”

In one potential future, the identities we project into the metaverse will be fuzzy or even obscured. Here, our avatars will have little or nothing in common with our actual selves in the real world. They will range from pseudonymous constructions to total fantasies, like the socially-awkward straight male who plays the female dark elf seductress when he enters cyberspace.

In another potential future, the avatars we project into the metaverse will much more closely mirror our actual selves. They will look like us, move like us, reflect our personal mannerisms, and so on. When we socialize in this virtual reality, we will be among friends, just from anywhere in the world with high-speed bandwidth, at anytime we choose.

Dan Kaplan

One of the great things about online gaming – and by extension virtual reality – is precisely that it enables people to create new identities, to escape the limited ‘reality’ for virtual spaces full of possibilities, where they can be what outside they could only dream of. But is this something compatible with Facebook’s strict, unique, identity? The latter outcome looks much more likely once Oculus is integrated into Facebook’s social vision. Chatting with friends in a virtual environment, actually interacting with them as if face-to-face, would certainly be awesome and a great improvement over browsing their photo uploads and status updates; but I think this way the technology would miss its potential by far. Hence all the negative reactions to this new acquisition…

AVC: “The Search For The Next Platform”

It isn’t clear if the next thing is virtual reality, the internet of things, drones, machine learning, or something else. Larry doesn’t know. Zuck doesn’t know. I don’t know. But the race is on to figure it out. Trillions of dollars of collective market capitalizations are on the line. So a couple billion here or there is chump change. Except for the people who collect that chump change for selling them an option on the next thing. It’s real money to us.

Fred Wilson

Probably the most sensible explanation for the recent acquisition spree in the tech world and the apparent lack of direction and long-term strategy of the biggest players. In these circumstances I am strangely reminded of this quote by Steve Jobs: You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

I’m not saying Apple is the one who will come up with the next big thing; I’m just thinking that if some direction looks promising now, by the time actual products hit the market, consumers will have already moved on to other stuff. Chasing every year’s trendy technology and trying to push it to scale won’t build the next platform; for that you need a clear vision and the courage – or foolishness – to see it through.