Category: Work
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SmartNews Jobs
In case you missed it, SmartNews had a big round of funding last year which we are using to staff up positions here in the United States. While we’ve always had openings for machine learning engineers (doesn’t everyone?) we now are also staffing up in Product, Marketing, and Biz Dev. If you’re interested in learning…
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Invisible Filter Bubbles
This did not occur to me. As an algorithm gets better at recommending content that matches and reinforces what a community is looking for, the negative complaints go down which makes it harder for someone outside (such as platform moderators) the filter bubble from detecting these closed communities in the first place. The algorithm is…
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Distribution without tears
Written somewhere over Kansas on the way to WordCamp for Publishers. Please look me up if you want to chat about this post. This is a shameless pitch for a plugin to WordPress my company just published but there are also broader ideas proposed here and I would love your feedback. SmartNews is a mobile…
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Reminds me of something
A team from Vice News flew to Huawei headquarters in China at the invitation of the company. It was clearly a PR junket. Huawei has been accused of copying Apple before and after seeing the video of their company store, I can see that they have a point.
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Algorithms don’t get humor
April Fool’s Day is always a busy day at SmartNews as our news discovery algorithm get overly excited with all the cool, interesting and unique news released that day. Here’s a running log of what we’ve had to gently remind the algorithm is actually just a joke. Eurovision SHOCK as Britain will LEAVE song contest…
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Elizabeth Holmes – The Inventor
Elizabeth Holmes, a reading list
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SXSW 2019 Highlights
It’s been twelve years since I last was at SXSW – time flies – I wrote about it then so for continuity’s sake I might as well share some highlights from this year. What I learned Following the success of the New York Times’ The Daily podcast, the Grey Lady will dip its toe into…
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Kevin Kelly on Mirrorworld
Digitizing all the things.
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Personalized Discovery
When asked what we’re trying to build at SmartNews, I sometimes explain it with a department store metaphor. When algorithms are applied to online shopping, they are optimized to show you exactly what you are looking for. Amazon and Netflix are famous for perfecting the “others-that-bought-what-you-bought-also-bought-this” algorithm to great effect. If you’re looking for a…