The ‘Wire’ staff at Medium:

Video calling has consistently been our top requested feature. Today, we are happy to introduce video calling on Wire for iOS, Android, Mac and Windows.

That is not all. We are also fundamentally changing the way Wire works.

Wire’s voice calls have always been end-to-end encrypted. Today, we expand this to include all conversation content — text messages, video calls, photos, sketches. It is all now encrypted end-to-end, which means it is private and secure.

Nice. The Berlin based app just got a shot at becoming the go-to app for anyone who needs video call capabalities but hates Skype’s dysmal user interface and voice quality.

Think podcasters for example.

(That right there is not a very huge market; in fact, it is a very small one. But I am excited about this because I am a podcaster. Besides that, Wire now has a real shot at becoming a more central communications hub for a lot of people and even corporations. Exciting. The technology is ace. Let’s see how the rest will shake out.)

Venturebeat:

While Wire wouldn’t give specific numbers regarding its active users, a spokesperson told VentureBeat that it has “built up a loyal and very engaged audience,” and it has notched up around 150,000 to 250,000 sign-ups each month. Based on Google Play data, we know that the Android app alone has been downloaded between 500,000 and one million times, so when you factor in iOS and desktop users, Wire’s suggestion that it has garnered a few million registrations since launch seems about right.

Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, at Medium:

I realized we all had a much bigger problem: the systemic risk to bitcoin if Bitcoin Core was the only team working on bitcoin.

The core team contains some very high IQ people, but there are some things which I find very concerning about them as a team after spending some time with them last weekend.

1. Some of them show very poor communication skills or a lack of maturity — this has hurt bitcoin’s ability to bring new protocol developers into the space.
2. They prefer ‘perfect’ solutions to ‘good enough’. And if no perfect solution exists they seem ok with inaction, even if that puts bitcoin at risk.
3. They seem to have a strong belief that bitcoin will not be able to scale long term, and any block size increase is a slippery slope to a future that they are unwilling to allow. (..)

They view themselves as the central planners of the network, and protectors of the people. They seem ok with watching bitcoin fail, as long as they don’t compromise on their principles.

Being high IQ is not enough for a team to succeed. You need to make reasonable trade offs, collaborate, be welcoming, communicate, and be easy to work with. Any team that doesn’t have this will be unable to attract top talent and will struggle long term. In my opinion, perhaps the biggest risk in bitcoin right now is, ironically, one of the things that has helped it the most in the past: the bitcoin core developers.

This sounds unsurprising. (A lot of developers are like this, unfortunately.)

Fascinating organizational hurdles for this decentralized system. (Which, in fact, is struggling because it gravitated towards a centralized decision making structure.)

Stuart Dredge at Music Ally:

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek doesn’t do many interviews, but he spent a fair amount of time yesterday answering questions on Q&A site Quora in one of its “sessions” – its equivalent to Reddit’s Ask Me Anything interviews.

Among his answers: Ek talked about competition from Apple, Google and Amazon. “The big platform companies don’t generally like partnering. We do. This opens up lots of doors,” he said.

The “not invented here” desease at big companies is an opportunity for smaller players (like startups).

Kieran Healy:

Apple has historically been a company with a strong desire for control and a keen eye towards its own interests, as perceived in the light of that desire to control things. That has led them to the “Walled Garden” in the older sense. The company is a bit friendlier than before, these days, but in many ways as controlling as it ever was. Now it seems that their central business interest is leading them to actually enact the vision of strongly-encrypted, private computing devices, whose content is inaccessible even to their manufacturer—and all in the face of direct opposition from the State. That’s something that many soi disant Valley anarchists have claimed to have wanted for a long time. But most of them work for or founded companies that are in the business of collecting and selling information, not hardware. Apple is a hardware company. And that’s why they’re out in front of this.

TechCrunch:

“Although this unbundling has introduced greater efficiencies and a better cost basis for both consumers and businesses, it has also perpetuated and exacerbated the fragmentation that underpins the financial landscape,” explains Curve co-founder and CEO Shachar Bialick. “As a user, I know all too well the requirements to own and manage multiple different cards, accounts, and services to stay on top of my financial self and save money”. curve_transactionsThis might consist of a personal and business account — Curve is initially targeting entrepreneurs and freelancers — an Amex, Virgin Money or Nectar card for their respective rewards programs, something like TransferWise for sending money abroad, Nutmeg for investing, and Mint for managing your spending. The more financially savvy you are, taking advantage of all the various unbundling that is happening, the harder it is to manage and keep track of your money. It’s this cognitive overload that Bialick and his team are on a mission to reduce.

“Looking at other industries, it is clear that where technology is introduced, convergence occurs,” he says. “The smartphone is a great example of this – bringing productivity tools, social tools and more all into one place. It is probably safe to assume that in the future this financial fragmentation we currently experience will be solved by connecting all those services through one single platform/interface.”

Looks like a serious platform play.

This is absolutely true:

“We believe that smartphones have the potential to provide the infrastructure for that platform”.

Makes you wonder though what Apple and Google might plan here mid- and long-term.

Horace Dediu at Asymco:

Looking at Apple this way gives the impression that the company has a large number (nearly a billion) of repeat (subscribed to service) customers. These customers can be seen to spend a predictable recurring amount (average selling price) on Apple’s brand. The repetition of these metrics in public commentary suggests that customer acquisition and retention are among Apple’s goals.

The key question is whether this is Apple’s primary goal.

Seen this way each centralized resource allocation question can be assumed to be prefaced with “In order do create/preserve customers should we…?”

This leads to answers quite different from questions that start with “In order to sell/profit more should we…?”

For instance, offering education products, retail store experiences, healthcare products, green energy initiatives, accessories, content and services make sense even if they may have poor financial “returns”. These initiatives score highly on the customer retention and satisfaction. They may lead to engagement and repeat sales. Managers working on these initiatives would gain the respect of their peers, leading to more esteem and higher quality output. Finally, and most importantly, these efforts would be preserved regardless of cyclical downturns.

Ben Thompson at Stratechery:

Regulations are one of the most effective moats incumbents have because they already have the infrastructure and revenue streams to deal with them

Regulatory capture, in which incumbents have overdo influence on what the regulations actually say and do, is very much a real thing and inevitable the longer a regulation is on the books

Politicians and regulators respond to political pressure, which comes from mobilized constituents; this, by extension, requires an actual product providing actual consumer benefit, not a powerpoint presentation

We are living in a time when technologies like the smartphone and the Internet are fundamentally changing what is possible, what is dangerous (or not), and incumbents in industries everywhere are threatened and heavily incentivized to exercise their influence on governments struggling to keep up with the pace of change. The last thing we need is companies voluntarily tying their own hands about something that is “right” simply because it’s legally gray.

But, on the flip side, regulatory risk is a real thing, and companies operating in this area must have more judgement and better execution and only choose battles worth fighting.

Spot on.

Consumerist looks at the investment rate of ISPs after the US had passed the ‘New Internet Order’ (net neutrality):

By and large, the half-dozen companies representing the overwhelming majority of cable Internet and wireless broadband customers in the country, are continuing to invest. But is that just puffed-up chest-thumping to cheer up investors?

Those most directly impacted by broadband investment don’t seem terribly concerned. In January, Multichannel News reported that the suppliers who make the stuff that the telecoms spend their money on aren’t losing sleep about a decrease in investment.

More precisely, analysts said they expect to see about a 3% increase in spending over last year, in total, with the wired and wireless phone companies spending 2% more and the cable companies spending 1% more.

Those are small gains, granted — but they are still growth, and not in any way a negative trend. In particular, the analysts said that Comcast is expected to be one of the bigger, earlier movers in spending on network improvements thanks to the arrival (finally) of DOCSIS 3.1 systems, which use existing cable lines to deliver speeds comparable to fiberoptic broadband.

Likewise, the big lobbying group that supports the cable and telecom industries is also happy to keep touting the growth of investments made by its member companies.

If you think that the best way to measure the success of the U.S. broadband market is by the amount of money its biggest private businesses spend on the task of getting people connected, then it looks like we’re still winners, despite Title II.

How about that. Maybe the E.U. can learn from those real life numbers. Net neutrality is, in fact, not killing broadband investments.

Charles Arthur at The Overspill on Wireds ad-free website for $1 a week¹:

[Wired:] “For $1 a week, you will get complete access to our content, with no display advertising or ad tracking.”

This presumes that adblocking readers will accept that they are worth $1/week to Wired, and that Wired is worth the same amount to adblocking readers. Is that proven? Given how small the amounts earned from ads per person are, this seems to be herding people who don’t know their true value towards a funnel. Premium ad display costs $10 per CPM – that is, per thousand showings. That’s 1c per premium ad you view. Multiply by the number of ads on a page – perhaps 10, for 10c? So if adblocking readers pay up but view fewer than 10 articles per week, Wired is making a solid profit from them, minus credit card costs.

$1 per week is far too high for this kind of value proposition. But here’s the rub: Can you imagine Wired management (or Condé Nast management more like it) approving a lower figure?