What are chatbots? Why are they such a big opportunity? How do they work? How can I build one? How can I meet other people interested in chatbots?

thinking of videos as pieces that can stand on their own, not “the way to slightly better monetize an article page"... There’s usually no reason to watch an interview. It’s better in text or as a podcast.... the Vox team works like independent YouTubers.” For any given video, a single person is responsible for the entire production process, from …

gadget “blog,” Circuit Breaker, that will live primarily as a Facebook page, with posts appearing in the Instant Articles format... the best of old-school blogging together with a sophisticated, aggressive modern platform distribution strategy... It’s not (yet) possible to be an Instant Articles publisher if you don’t have a web source from which…

recent “bot-mania” is at the confluence of two separate trends... agent AIs steadily getting better... the US somehow still hasn’t got a dominant messaging app and Silicon Valley is trying to learn from the success of Asian messenger apps... The thesis, then, is that users will engage more frequently, deeply, and efficiently with third-party s…

your market of digital narcissists is only going to become more elusive... Micro-moments happen when a customer demonstrates intent by reaching for his or her phone to act on a need in real time. They unfold through a variety of common "I want" scenarios that help people take steps or make decisions as to what to buy, do, know, etc... The third w…

content ... will continue to become the commodity... simply too much of it... the effort it takes to make sure that content will travel far and wide makes for considerable effort. Many will do this well but more will fail... If brands cannot create culture from scratch—they can co-create it with the right partners ... to do this at scale, they mu…

it only takes few weeks before you receive a full diagnostic report providing you with new levers to accelerate the development of your organization. Your employees invest less than 10 minutes completing a user-friendly questionnaire that they can do from their work or home computer, tablet or smartphone – we will do the rest.

at #EuroComm16... “Beyond Engagement.”... how uncoupling the IC function from a focus on Employee Engagement survey scores could have a liberating effect on the function and the profession, and potentially on employees and their enterprises as well... We weren’t here to praise the Employee Engagement Survey. We were here to bury it... In giving …

The potential – or, sadly more accurately, theoretical – political power of social media is to provide an important public forum in which those of diverse opinions can freely interact, rather than living in political enclaves inhabited only by those who reinforce what everyone already believes. The truth is that those entrenched political division…

redefine the opinion poll, comments sections, and metrics around social conversations, all at once... the site presents various issues across the categories of culture, politics, entertainment, and sports that have been generating online debate and offers visitors two opposing hashtags to vote for on the site or share on Twitter for a 48-hour peri…

“In five years time, I want News U.K. — The Sun and The Times — to be as well known for its video content as for its newspapers” ... 70 percent of The Sun’s articles have some video component... a main driver for the video verticals is to appeal to advertisers and brands who want to sponsor videos... It will continue posting several Live videos a…

Digital media companies are caught in the "crap trap," mass-producing trashy clickbait so they can claim huge audiences and often higher valuations... This era is getting flushed away... A content revolution is picking up speed, promising a profitable future for companies that can lock down loyal audiences, especially those built around higher-qua…

What Twitter has always been good at is allowing people to jump into any relevant conversation they want. Users can share thoughts and funny videos, but also have others engage with it in a public environment. This cocktail party aspect is where Twitter shines. Now it looks like the “cocktail party of the internet” might also be becoming the high …

And after running a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign — which brought in $1.7 million in 30 days — and building a community of 47,000 paying members (at €60 or $65 a year), The Correspondent wanted to address the next big issue: Journalism sees little return on its successes... in addition to the online journalism platform where our journalist…

What happened when I was invited to “do a Rápido” at the IABC’s conference in Rotterdam earlier this week.

Any strategy that doesn't take the ability to execute is a lousy strategy to begin with. Strategy is not a game of chess, but depends on operational capacity... simply tacking on publishing functions to their existing operations without implementing any new processes or practices ... is a grave mistake.... The ongoing conversation with the audie…

The Personalised Medicine Conference 2016 will explore personalised medicine through a research policy lens. Europe is a leader in personalised medicine, an interdisciplinary field which will drive the health research and innovation agenda for years to come in view to improve healthcare. this shouild be really interesting

Publications are hiring a point person to coordinate with new platforms like Facebook Instant Articles and Snapchat Discover... product changes of platforms happen on a daily basis. Just to track those changes and newly emerging platforms is a full-time job in itself

Work management is a term that has emerged in recent years as task management tools were enhanced with various social communication capabilities... The primary distinction here is the degree of emphasis for task-centric versus message-centric tools.

TL;DR: because you think it’s a solution in itself, while it’s merely a framework for organizations to create them in an efficient and controlled manner.

the question is not whether the media should be subsidized. It is rather whether they should be granted a favorable legal and tax status in recognition of their contribution to democracy ... it has become imperative to think of new models for the media. The one I propose is based on crowdfunding and power-sharing... Let us call this new entity a …

 There are hundreds of playful, creative, smart people building useful and insightful and silly bots online.These are ten of them that our data and my editorial judgement suggests you should know.  These are the bot influencers most-followed by the bot community itself.

Microsoft is trying to create all kinds of bots with different personalities, which would become more realistic, and presumably less irksome, as they learned from repeated interactions with users... They’ll act as your interface with computers and smartphones, helping you book a trip or send a message to a colleague, and do that through a conversa…

bots — or “chatbots” — are an increasingly trendy model for software.This new obsession came on fast. But why? Where did these bots come from? Who is building them? What for? Is a fake conversation better than just clicking buttons? You’ll be hearing a lot more about bots soon, so here’s an overview.... bots won’t kill apps anytime soon. It’s more…

Sadly, her proposal is shocking in its naive economics — from an economist! — and in the basic business questions it fails to address... In France, by the way, journalism is a profession that “entitles the journalist to tax deductions.” I find this ethically appalling, just as I remain shocked that journalists in Germany get discounts on everythin…

But Go programs still fell far short of human players in ability. It seemed as though a strong intuitive sense of board position was essential to success.What’s new and important about AlphaGo is that its developers have figured out a way of bottling something very like that intuitive sense... .Just because neural networks can do a good job of cap…

After two years work analyzing more than 400,000 stories, the American Press Institute is beginning to find general patterns in what works to attract and hold the attention of digital readers... stories longer than 1,200 words, got 23 percent more engagement, 45 percent more social referrals and 11 percent more pageviews... photos (or audio or vid…

'The Voice’ for Conferences - a quick response post on Medium on making co-created conferences age, colour & gender blind.