Diversity In Silicon Valley, Facebook Goes After TV And More On This Week's CTRL ALT Delete Segment On CHOM 97.7 FM
Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 5 to 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly on iHeart Radio, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering away about what’s going on in the digital world. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry DiMonte morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.
This week we discussed:
Facebook launched Watch, and many see this as their direct assault on TV and YouTube advertising budgets. This could be Facebook’s big video platform. With 2 billion people on the social network, Facebook is soft-launching a “Watch” tab on Facebook in the US to better organize and engage users with video content. If Facebook can organize videos, bring in original content (which it will be doing) and give users a lot of interesting functionality (think about seeing funny videos organized by how your friends think, etc…), this could be something truly transformative.
You would think that Silicon Valley is the one place where diversity thrives. Now, Google is under the microscope. Last Friday, a 3300-word memo penned by Google engineer James Damore went viral among employees. The document speaks to gender stereotypes about women in the workplace. Damore was fired by Google last Monday, but that only made the situation more tense. Google (and many other Silicon Valley companies) are now (once again) grappling with the ongoing debate over the limits of free speech and equality. Uber (and others) have similar issues (still, mostly unresolved), and there has been countless exposes recently about the true struggle of women in tech. Sadly.