Author Archives: Matt Kapko

Google+ is forcing its remaining users to say goodbye to the website design and format that many people consider to be the hallmark of the struggling social network. After Google+ was overhauled in late 2015 to focus on communities and collections, you were allowed to opt-out of the redesign and remain in classic mode. That option is no longer available beginning today.

Google+ is still in decline, by most accounts, but the company isn’t giving up on its once grandiose social networking project yet. The company is reducing white space, introducing an algorithm to hide spam from comments, and bringing back the ability to create events — a feature it killed in last year’s redesign, according to a blog post by Danielle Buckley, Google+ product manager. Google is also committed to updates, but it’s unclear how significant those might be considering how much the service has been whittled down since its June 2011 launch.

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America’s largest tech companies face a growing backlash over the potentially negative impacts of their strategic decisions and innovations. For example, companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are investing in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and product roadmaps that will replace millions of jobs during the coming years. Experts in marketing, technology and social awareness say it’s time for technology providers to assume greater responsibility for the personal pain that comes along with the collective gain.

Emerging technology is at almost perpetual odds with the status quo, but U.S. society is coming to realize that dynamic can lead to job losses, unfair treatment of social services and a stain on civic engagement. The power and influence that some tech companies command is being reevaluated in light of the myriad ways people are being disenfranchised in some way by their actions.

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America’s largest tech companies face a growing backlash over the potentially negative impacts of their strategic decisions and innovations. For example, companies like Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft are investing in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and product roadmaps that will replace millions of jobs during the coming years. Experts in marketing, technology and social awareness say it’s time for technology providers to assume greater responsibility for the personal pain that comes along with the collective gain.

Emerging technology is at almost perpetual odds with the status quo, but U.S. society is coming to realize that dynamic can lead to job losses, unfair treatment of social services and a stain on civic engagement. The power and influence that some tech companies command is being reevaluated in light of the myriad ways people are being disenfranchised in some way by their actions.

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Ralph Loura says he has been using Workplace by Facebook longer than anyone outside of the company. “I’m told that I was the first CIO, the first company to use what [Facebook] then called Facebook at Work like four years ago,” he says of his time as vice president and CIO at The Clorox Co.

Ralph Loura

Loura joined the skincare company Rodan & Fields as CTO in early 2016 and has since shifted the company’s employees from various messaging and collaboration apps to Workplace. “Everyone in the company is using the platform internally,” he says. Workplace has replaced Yammer, Slack, Skype, WhatsApp, Salesforce Chatter and many other apps, according to Loura.

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Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant was impossible to miss at CES 2017. The surprise hit service that powers Amazon’s smart home hub, Echo, is being embedded into a growing arsenal of connected products, inside and outside the home. 

In many ways, Alexa is the feature of the moment for consumer electronics such as refrigerators, vacuums, DVR boxes, robots, TVs, washers and dryers, cars, and an important product category in which Amazon has thus far failed spectacularly: smartphones. Amazon was center stage during the annual tech gathering in the desert, as dozens of companies announced plans to integrate Alexa into their upcoming products. Ford, LG, Whirlpool, GE, Lenovo, Samsung, Hyundai and Huawei are a few of the big names that joined the race to bring Alexa to the masses.

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Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant was impossible to miss at CES 2017. The surprise hit service that powers Amazon’s smart home hub, Echo, is being embedded into a growing arsenal of connected products, inside and outside the home. 

In many ways, Alexa is the feature of the moment for consumer electronics such as refrigerators, vacuums, DVR boxes, robots, TVs, washers and dryers, cars, and an important product category in which Amazon has thus far failed spectacularly: smartphones. Amazon was center stage during the annual tech gathering in the desert, as dozens of companies announced plans to integrate Alexa into their upcoming products. Ford, LG, Whirlpool, GE, Lenovo, Samsung, Hyundai and Huawei are a few of the big names that joined the race to bring Alexa to the masses.

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LAS VEGAS — Facebook has quickly become an integral part of Sony Pictures’ strategy for marketing its films, and the social network’s rich environment has led to more creative, and more effective, campaigns, according to Josh Greenstein, the movie studio’s president of worldwide marketing and distribution, who spoke at CES 2017.

Modern moviegoers are exposed to upcoming films earlier, more consistently and in an increasingly customized fashion on sites such as Facebook, the studio executive said. Sony’s film marketing budget shifted from 10 percent on digital to as much as 50 percent during the last 18 months, according to Greenstein. “The world’s changed, and for us it’s exciting,” he said. “It’s for the better.”

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LAS VEGAS — Twitter has used dozens of words, clichés and redundant phrases to describe itself during the past decade. The company’s CMO, Leslie Berland, owned up to that fact in a speech at CES 2017 that aimed to redefine Twitter and explain why 317 million people use it every month. 

Instead of abandoning the myriad ways Twitter executives have described the company during the years, Berland embraced it. “So, we were a platform, a product, a service, a water cooler, a time square, a microphone, and we are every single one of those things,” she said.

When Berland joined the company in early 2016, after more than 10 years with American Express, she set out to revamp Twitter’s marketing message and understand why some people remain confused about its purpose. “Twitter shows me what’s happening in the world,” she said. “Twitter shows me what’s up. Twitter keeps me on the pulse. Twitter keeps me informed. This is why people love Twitter.”

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LAS VEGAS — The head of Google’s commercial operations in the Western Hemisphere this week spoke with the soon-to-be largest ad spender in the United States and one of Hollywood’s biggest movie studios, to showcase how large traditional media companies are transitioning to digital marketing. On stage at CES 2017, a trio of executives from the companies also discussed the challenge of managing disparate marketing metrics and fears related to machine learning. 

AT&T and Universal Pictures currently spend 30 percent of their marketing budgets on digital media, according to Fiona Carter, chief brand officer of AT&T, and Josh Goldstine, president of worldwide marketing at Universal Pictures. Margo Georgiadis, president of Americas at Google, is enthusiastic about the increase in digital spending (especially when the dollars land in Google’s coffers) but she said it’s more difficult today for marketers to understand the value of their spend as the number of consumer touchpoints — mobile, web, app, social and video — grows. 

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