Weekly Roundup – December 3rd, 2024

"In 2024, podcasts are about as mainstream as media gets. Sure, their audiences are hugely fragmented and largely invisible to one another — the monoculture remains dead and rotting. But the medium is, on the whole, very popular, and individual hosts have become major celebrities with serious cultural and political influence. What started as a loose group of DIY online broadcasters has long since become a full-fledged industry with its own trends, booms, and busts."

"Will OpenAI combine advertising with its artificial intelligence (AI) offerings?
It’s something the company is considering as it searches for new revenue streams, Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told the Financial Times (FT) in an interview published Monday (Dec. 2).
Friar said the tech startup is considering an advertising model, adding that its goal for ads was to be “thoughtful about when and where we implement them.”
The company, which was valued at $150 billion following a $6.6 billion funding round in October, has been hiring advertising experts from the likes of Google and Meta, the report said, citing sources familiar with the matter and the FT’s analysis of LinkedIn accounts. Friar, a veteran of firms such as Square and Salesforce, said the company has a wealth of advertising experience between herself and Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s chief product officer. Weil oversaw the creation of ad-supported products at tech platforms such as Instagram and X."

"With 20 million users and counting, Bluesky is undeniably gaining traction. The presidential election appears to have accelerated this growth, attracting users disillusioned with Elon Musk’s oversight of X...
Marketers, ever drawn to shifting attention, are circling. But slow growth for much of the year and no significant revenue streams make it more curiosity than contender for ad dollars right now."

"Five Canadian news media companies filed a legal action on Friday against ChatGPT owner OpenAI, accusing the artificial-intelligence company of regularly breaching copyright and online terms of use.
The case is part of a wave of lawsuits against OpenAI and other tech companies by authors, visual artists, music publishers and other copyright owners over data used to train generative AI systems. Microsoft is OpenAI's major backer."

"...We can all find reasons we and others avoid knowing particular things, and many of those reasons are perfectly rational. A trapeze artist about to climb the pole would be unwise to consult the actuarial table for those in her line of work. Even the question “Do you love me?” should pass through several mental checkpoints before being uttered.
But each of us also has a basic disposition toward knowing, a way of carrying ourselves in the world as experiences come our way. Some people just are naturally curious about how things got to be the way they are. They like puzzles, they like to search things out, they enjoy learning why. Others are indifferent to learning and see no particular advantage to asking questions that seem unnecessary for just carrying on."

"Comparing YouTube views to Nielsen-tracked TV tune-in numbers is a fool’s errand. But, taken with a healthy grain of salt, it will have to do in this case.
On Thursday, the Dallas Cowboys scored the most-watched NFL telecast this regular season, garnering 41.3 million simultaneous U.S. viewers at the game’s peak. On Saturday, MrBeast (AKA Jimmy Donaldson) dropped his latest video—a series of sports competitions pitting amateurs against Tom Brady, Noah Lyles, Bryce Harper, Bryson DeChambeau and Cristiano Ronaldo. Over the course of 24 hours, the 22-minute spectacle drew more than 48 million views worldwide.
Again, it’s not a fair comparison. Using any actually equal eyeball tracking metric would undoubtedly give the Cowboys a massive W. The attention-grabbing dominance of Big D on Thanksgiving is basically unmatched. But at least among young, online viewers, MrBeast might eventually get close. And it’s becoming difficult to find true points of juxtaposition for the YouTube superstar."