Author Archives: Frédéric Filloux

Apple’s Antitrust Problem

November 13, 2011 – 5:58 pm

Tweet(First in a series) Will Apple face the type of antitrust issues Microsoft had to contend with in the 90′s? Possibly, but not with the same magnitude. Apple is by no means locking up its market the way Microsoft controlled the personal computer field with Windows. Still, the question arises for the iTunes Store, the [...]

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The Discreet Shift to Twitter

November 6, 2011 – 9:14 pm

TweetYou hear things about Facebook. You see things. As its audience matures, a subtle shift might be underway. Of course, numbers remains staggering. Facebook is heading toward the 800 million users mark, mostly by conquering new markets. The growth is distributed as follows : Middle-East Africa, Asia-Pacific and Latin America grow by around 60% per [...]

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Proof by Mask

October 30, 2011 – 9:19 pm

TweetWeb design is in bad shape. In the applications boom, news-related web sites end up as collateral damage. For graphic designers, the graphics tools and the computer languages used to design apps for tablets and smartphones have unleashed a great deal of creativity. The transformation took longer than expected, but great designs begin to appear [...]

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Apple’s Newsstand: Wait for 2.0

October 24, 2011 – 3:30 am

TweetCan Apple crack the digital news market the way it did with music? The comparison might not be relevant. Here is why: – Today, in the new business, imperfect as it is, the transition from print to digital is much more advanced than the music industry’s similar transformation was when, in 2001, Apple launched the [...]

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You Cheat. We Cut Prices

October 16, 2011 – 11:27 pm

TweetSurprise: To boost its circulation, Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal Europe engaged in massive channel stuffing. No kidding. It sounds like everyone discovers, all of a sudden, how medias (old and new) actually work. Granted, when it comes to cheating, News Corp is in a class all by itself. The phone hacking scandal pushed the [...]

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The Teacher

October 9, 2011 – 7:51 pm

TweetSteve Jobs taught us so many things… To us whose professional life strides tech, ads and media, his way of fostering innovation, of creating an obsessive culture of perfection remains both inspirational and enigmatic. For those who like design and engineering, there isn’t a single field Apple hasn’t entered — or at least influenced. When [...]

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Dreaming at the Kindle Potential

October 2, 2011 – 10:01 pm

TweetWith each introduction of a new reading device publishers around the world are overcome with the same recurring same fantasy: What if it worked, this time around? Could a reliable business model emerge for news publishing companies? Last week’s launch of new Kindles is no exception to the cyclic fantasy. For those who where on [...]

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The Capsule’s Price

September 25, 2011 – 9:12 pm

TweetDo encapsulated digital editions make sense? Is the notion of having a “news container”, similar to a newspaper or magazine, a relic of the past or is it still associated with quality journalism? In an era of instant information, is it worth proposing a self-contained, stop-motion shot of the news cycle? For some, the reflexive [...]

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The (Overly Personal) Litmus Test

September 18, 2011 – 7:44 pm

TweetOver the past three weeks, I’ve been followed. By advertising. Like many, week after week, I land on dozens of sites. Some visits originate from my set of bookmarks, others from the usual click hopping that defines internet serendipity. In numerous instances, I get the same ad in different formats. The advertiser is called Litmus. [...]

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The Blogosphere’s Soft Corruption

September 11, 2011 – 7:18 pm

TweetThe TechCrunch / Arrington saga is the perfect illustration for the stealthy corruption plaguing digital information. Skip this paragraph if you know the story. In a nutshell: on September 1st,  Michael Arrington, founder of the site TechCrunch, announced the launch of a venture fund (Fortune broke the story). Rather small token by Silicon Valley standards: [...]

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