Quick Bytes – Feb 23rd: Referral Traffic From Search Trumps Social Shares
A look at the most interesting startup and business-related news stories of the week.
Referrals: Search vs social
Quick Byte
Referral traffic from search now trumps social shares for the first time since 2013. The advice is not to change your strategy from social to search but to invest in both as the graph is set to shift and change, being very affected by how Google and Facebook change their business models (noticeably the move to more ‘friend’ content and less publisher content on Facebook.)
The Full Story
Google passed Facebook as the top referral traffic driver in 2017 as the search giant doubled down on mobile and the social giant cleaned up its News Feed. That move resulted in an even bigger change last year: Search overtook social in 2017, after the two first swapped spots in 2013. The chart above shows this best, detailing the quarterly share of visits for six search engines and the top 13 social networks. Read the Full Article Here
Mitigating the AI threat
Quick Byte
A report from over two dozen global experts outlines the risks of AI as a negative global force. Far from being simply doom and gloom, the purpose of the report is to encourage researchers, engineers, policymakers and stakeholders to take ownership and accountability of the technology they’re contributing to by adhering to a set of five high-level recommendations outlined in this article.
The Full Story
A new report authored by over two-dozen experts on the implications of emerging technologies is sounding the alarm bells on the ways artificial intelligence could enable new forms of cybercrime, physical attacks, and political disruption over the next five to ten years.
The 100-page report, titled “The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence: Forecasting, Prevention, and Mitigation,” boasts 26 experts from 14 different institutions and organizations, including Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, Cambridge University’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Elon Musk’s OpenAI, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The report builds upon a two-day workshop held at Oxford University back in February of last year. In the report, the authors detail some of the ways AI could make things generally unpleasant in the next few years, focusing on three security domains of note—the digital, physical, and political arenas—and how the malicious use of AI could upset each of these. Read the Full Article Here
The podcast era
Quick Byte
“Half of U.S. homes are now podcast fans, Nielsen has said, and 22 percent consider themselves “avid” fans.” The podcast era is upon us and apps are starting to come to the party. Anchor’s latest iteration is the standout among apps leveraging this market trend, with its interface as well as its range of creation and hosting features that the likes of Buzzfeed and Atlantic Records are set to launch on. The app launched today on iOS, Android and web.
The Full Story
Broadcasting app Anchor, which helps anyone record and share audio, is relaunching its app today with a new focus on serving the larger podcaster community. While in the past, Anchor was carving out a niche for itself in the short-form, social audio space, the new version – Anchor 3.0 – aims to be everything you need to record, edit, host, publish, and distribute a podcast of any length, as well as track how well the podcast is performing. Read the Full Article Here
Olympic hologram technology
Quick Byte
People who make it to Japan for the 2020 Olympics, but not quite to the stadium, will be able to gather around hologram technology that captures real-time camera angles of athletes and converts them to 3D hologram images in different locations. Given the choice, we’d probably go for a diving hologram of an Olympic athlete over the real deal, but that’s why we’re in the startup tech industry, not the sports industry.
The Full Story
In 2013, Tokyo was chosen to host the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The preparations for the games have already begun, but the official sponsor of the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, the Japanese telecommunications company NTT, is hoping to bring an added dimension to the competition, quite literally.
The NTT is working on a new system called “Kirari! For Arena,” Reuters reported today. The aim is to have the system up and running until the 2020 Summer Games. The NTT’s current technology requires sensors to be attached to an athlete’s body, but “Kirari! For Arena” will work on an entirely different principle. Read the Full Article Here
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