Facebook files patent for technology that will know what you're about to do

Last week I wrote about the ways in which your smartphone can identify your voice and determine if you're anxious, lying or depressed. This week Facebook is taking all of that to its likeliest next step of trying to figure out what you're going to do next based on your behaviours. https://www.inc.com/betsy-mikel/facebook-just-filed-for-creepy-patent-this-might-be-reason-enough-to-delete-its-app.html

Key Takeaway

Two here:

1. Regulators need to get a better handle on what apps like Facebook and Gmail are doing with data, and how they're selling it.
2. Marketers need to start thinking very carefully about how to use this data for good... And with ethics spoken for - they'll need to think differently about how to target audiences. It won't be enough to target people based on things they've done, but on things they're going to do. This will fundamentally change the way we think about targeting if this becomes the way of the near future.

MindGeek, the biggest porn network in the world, collects more data and uses more data than Netflix and Hulu combined

MindGeek might not be a brand you've ever heard of, but they own the biggest collection of pornographic websites in the world. This also means they own the data belonging to millions of short videos with many data points attached to them, such as when people fast forward, repeat and stop watching.

This has allowed them to create highly scripted content against algorithms they've developed based on these analytics.

https://qz.com/1407235/porn-sites-collect-more-user-data-than-netflix-or-hulu-this-is-what-they-do-with-it/?utm_source=jonlitwack.com

Key Takeaway

Businesses that rely on knowing their customers (intimately in this case) are not only investing heavily in analytics, but have become so user-centric that all business operations are now wrapped entirely around data-driven behavioural insights.

It's important to remember going into 2019 that analytics are not just a function of figuring out how many people you're talking to, but what they're doing, what they want, and what you need to offer them.

ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) are dying out, with STOs (Security Token Offerings) taking their place

After a year of drops in value, and many questionable ICOs going out in market, there's been a rise in STOs due to their linkage to real world financial instruments. In more human terms -

Over the last few years, many startups were funded through Initial Coin Offerings. Essentially, ICOs are Coins that investors buy through cryptocurrency like BitCoin. The Coins are similar to shares. The issue over the last few years of ICOs is that there has been too much fraud. Investors would get scammed with ICOs that would disappear overnight.

STOs have become a more popular financial instrument as they can be tied to real-world variables, like a company's actual financial performance.

Here's the best write-up I've found to date on what STOs are: https://ethereumworldnews.com/five-reasons-why-security-tokens-are-taking-over-the-cryptocurrency-space/

Key Takeaway

Despite the last year of hiccups in the value of BitCoin and the Blockchain in general - the movement from fraud riddled tools to ones that are more connected to the real world are yet another sign of the maturity of Blockchain based currencies.