Advertising & Marketing

I have two slides at the end of most of my presentations. One is my investible theses for the upcoming year and the other is stuff that has my attention. As we head into 2023, I thought it might be fun to look at a deck from 2018 and see if I got any of it right five years ago. I'll let you be the judge. Continue Reading →

A U.S. appeals court has allowed a lawsuit to proceed that alleges that Google, YouTube, DreamWorks, and several toy manufacturers unlawfully tracked the online activity of children under 13 on YouTube. Continue Reading →

As 2022 winds down, I thought it would be fun to review the 10 most popular stories by page views on shellypalmer.com. Obviously, 2022 was a transitional year for crypto, the world of decentralized finance, Web3 and the metaverse. It was also "the" year of AI. These stories reflect those trends, although some of the topics may surprise you. Continue Reading →

I woke up this morning and noticed that Elon was still CEO of Twitter. I went back and looked at his final poll results (see below) and noticed that while @elonmusk has 122,383,027 followers, there were only 17,502,391 votes tallied (a dismal 14.3% response rate). I have to assume that a fair amount of these votes were done by bots and multi-account trolls, which raises the question: How many people saw his tweet? Continue Reading →

Is there a 60/40 chance that Elon Musk steps down as Twitter CEO today? Who's to say? ICYMI: Yesterday, @elonmusk tweeted out a yes/no poll asking, "Should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll." By the time you read this, we may have heard from Elon. Continue Reading →

If you haven't already uploaded your 10-to-20 selfies to Lensa and let it turn you into a superhero, or a rock star, or an astronaut, you should give it a try. It's fun, but it's also instructive. You'll learn about the type and quality of inputs generative AI needs in order to obtain satisfactory results, and you'll experience the workflow and process of consumer-grade generative AI. But most importantly, when the model transforms you into a mystical creature in a cosmic setting, or an anime character, or a cyborg, you will find yourself asking one question: How far can this technology go? Continue Reading →

No matter how this lawsuit turns out, it is chilling. Going forward, will hired pitch-people have to vet the companies that offer them work? How, exactly, would they do that? Continue Reading →

ChatGPT has been all over the news. Last week, I asked it to help me write a blog post about Facebook – it did a very good job. Yesterday, just for fun, my son Brent and I asked it for 250 word answers to questions about history and philosophy. ChatGPT returned college-level answers. What exactly is ChatGPT? I asked it. Here's its answer to the input "a five paragraph essay describing ChatGPT in your own words." Continue Reading →

AI is experiencing a very visible growth spurt. At the moment, only a handful of companies have the computational power to deal with large models. Is there a plateau coming? And, if so, will it advantage big tech or will AI tools evolve to democratize the industry? Continue Reading →

It seems that Elon is so mad about the Apple App Store's 30% commission that he is raising the price of Twitter Blue on iOS devices to cover the cost. Although the service is on hold right now, when it resumes, reports say it will cost $7 if you subscribe on the website and $11 if you subscribe using the Twitter iOS app. Continue Reading →