Machine Learning; Live Events; & AR
YouTube new use of artificial intelligence→
If you haven’t noticed, YouTube has a new look, but what you may not know is that most of the improvements are actually under the hood. By using artificial intelligence to decipher better recommendations to users, they’ve increased watch time by 20x in three years. Our expectations are changing to have the answer presented to us, instead of searching for it. Services have a great opportunity to follow YouTube’s lead, and examine how to best serve their customers with their own recommendation engines. Read more about how YouTube perfected the feed on The Verge.
Live sports are disrupting season ticket businesses→
The Ringer intern and ex-CEO of Ticketmaster Nathan Hubbard writes about how on-demand has killed the season ticket business for sports teams. Today, unless you’re a basketball fan in San Francisco or Cleveland, you’re likely going to buy on a secondary market. Unfortunately, this leads to a missed opportunity for sports teams, who currently miss cultivating a direct connection to their customers. It also raises a red flag to other industries to stay on top of how to adopt business models to new technological realities that lead to alternative markets and buying habits. Live sports are not going away, but the way we access, experience and consume them is evolving.
Snapchat provides a new live event experience→
Keeping with the disruption of live events, Snapchat has introduced video stitching technology that can turn a series of crowd snaps into a smooth continuous stream. We’re already watching events unfold on Facebook and Instagram Live, but this new stitching technology allows for a new way to experience live events that savvy event promoters can use to grow viewership.
Apple & Google’s augmented reality experiences →
With the iPhone 8 launch event scheduled for this upcoming Tuesday, we believe that some of the most exciting demos and apps will come from ARKit — a new framework in iOS 11 to create augmented reality experiences. If you haven’t already, it’s best to start thinking about what rich AR could mean for your service by reading up on Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore.
AR may drive a resurgence in QR Codes →
With AR positioned to naturalize us all to pointing our phone cameras at everything (as if we don’t already), we think that opens the door for a resurgence in QR Codes. Yes, we know about the stigma of QR codes still haunting the hallways of every North American ad agency, but in some places they’ve actually become widely adopted. To prepare you for our incoming QR Code renaissance, here are 16 Ways QR Codes are being used in China through Connie Chan at Andreessen Horowitz.
