Good news, fake news: The mediars fight for encryption – and against misinformation

According to reports, senior figures in the Trump administration held a meeting last month to consider whether to pursue legislation outlawing end-to-end encryption on US-made messaging apps.

While the ultimate outcome of the meeting is yet to be seen, it brings to light a serious question that we all - governments, consumers and businesses - need to ask ourselves: what do we lose when private messaging is truly private?

On the one hand, end-to-end encryption means that private...

15 August 2019 | Attribution

Is Facebook’s privacy pivot all about business messaging?

In a landmark blog post last month, Mark Zuckerberg outlined a new, “privacy-focused” vision for Facebook. The announcement signaled a fundamental shift in strategy for the embattled company in the midst of growing public mistrust and plummeting usage of its core social network.

It was also a shot across the bow of Facebook’s Big Tech rivals in the ongoing battle over the future of business messaging.

Welcome to the living room

Zuckerberg rightly...

10 April 2019 | Advertising

The power and potential of emotional chatbots

Like the web, mobile apps and vinyl records, chatbots have been declared dead countless times only to prove very much alive — in that artificial way.

Some have blamed a lack of AI for the abundance of disappointing chatbots, while others have singled out the “hype cycle” itself for inflating our expectations.

Yet almost every week another global bank or airline or insurance company rolls out a new chatbot, reviving speculation that maybe, just maybe 2018...

19 October 2018 | Customer Experience

The $70bn WhatsApp business story nobody’s talking about

 When WhatsApp unveiled its new Business API last week, most tech reporters determined Facebook was getting serious about monetising the chat app it purchased for $19bn in 2014.

They’re probably right about the money, but wrong about where it’s most likely to come from.

The business model question 

4 September 2018 | Advertising Technology