Wired To Launch Awards Program
September 29, 2024
8:28 am
Adweek’s Mark Stenberg reports that Wired is getting into the awards business. The Wired 101 Awards will debut in October. Be on the lookout for
>> Notes
BI’s AI-based Paywall Increased Conversions by 75 Percent
September 25, 2024
6:29 am
BI’s publishing software knows what you’ve clicked on before and where you came from. Through Google Analytics, BI also knows how all readers react to
Prepare for Axel Springer to Acquire Publications
September 22, 2024
5:20 am
Now that it has sold off its classifieds business, the owner of Politico and Business Insider will go shopping for more titles. Don’t be surprised
Follow Anthropic’s Steve Mnich For Guidance on Claude
September 9, 2024
10:01 am
Steve is a longtime friend of SWMS and worked at subscriber LaunchSquad before moving on to IBM, Salesforce and now Anthropic. Steve knows exactly how
27 B2B Newsletters, All In One Place
July 23, 2024
6:04 am
The UK-based newsletter company called Trending Now uses AI to scrape what’s trending across 27 areas of B2B. Press Gazette has additional detail. The company
Semafor Goes AI Crazy
May 23, 2024
3:33 pm
Fourteen of 19 tech stories in the Semafor technology section are about AI. Two of the five outliers were about TikTok’s potential sale. Semafor sells
Refinery29 Buys An Event Company
May 8, 2024
8:41 am
Another scoop from Sara Fischer at Axios: Refinery29 is “taking over” B2C event brand Beautycon, among the most successful F2F events in the beauty space.
Microsoft Now Powering Semafor With AI
March 5, 2024
9:36 am
Visit Semafor and you’ll see lots of headlines with blue stars next to them. Semafor reporters write these articles, which then are extended by ChatGPT
The Economist, On Its Own Writing Style
October 6, 2023
9:11 am
The Economist this week held a 60-minute webinar on the topic of its own writing style. Three editors emphasized the power of simplicity: “old, short
An All-Purpose Gen AI Prompt
August 8, 2023
2:35 pm
The Rundown AI Newsletter this week suggests this powerful, all-purpose prompt when in ChatGPT or Bard: “Break down [topic] into smaller, easier-to-understand parts. Use analogies
YOUR ACCOUNT
FRIDGE NOTES
When Publishers Ditch Readers Altogether…
June 15, 2025
Media analyst Brian Morrissey predicts that many smaller trade publishers and consumer publishers may one day just ditch readers altogether and simply publish to LLMs under contract and make their money that way. It’s a lot simpler than trying to sell ads to a dwindling reader base.
Axios is Hiring…
June 7, 2025
Axios is hiring a senior tech reporter to cover AI. How long will it take for the “laid-off” to land on their feet? It is already happening.
Next Big Thing: BrainTech
June 5, 2025
From Crunchbase News:
Neuralink’s recent $650 million raise is by far the largest for a neural interface startup on record, but comes as funding to neuroscience startups overall is set to rise sharply this year. All told, funding to the broader category of neuroscience startups totaled $896 million last year and is on track to reach $1.4 billion in 2025.
The Era of ‘Camera-less’ Video
June 4, 2025
From the excellent The Rundown AI newsletter: The future of video content creation is increasingly looking camera-less — with this latest round of upgrades taking avatars from more robotic talking heads to full-fledged actors with more granular control over motion and expressiveness.
Time to get a grip on Veo.
Business Insider Lays Off 20% of Staff
May 30, 2025
The BI culture over the years has been aloof to vendors and definitely PR. Now that many of those affected could use a friend or two, here’s hoping they get the lift they need. Here is the message from BI CEO Barbara Peng.