SEO
SEO and AI
In the midst of what looks to be a grand transition away from traditional search engines and toward something more generative AI-oriented (and which at the moment is an awkward hybrid of both), some people are asking why we have the web we have, today, and how it might change as the incentives and priorities of the search world change.
More specifically, SEO (search engine optimization) has in many ways determined what people write, how, and for what audiences, because optimizing one’s work to be legible and authoritative to the web-crawling bots that determine what shows up when people search for different keywords has in large part determined which companies win, which writers have their work seen, and which ads placed on which websites perform well—what does the online world look like when the concept of SEO either changes or is replaced by something else?
And while we’re on the subject: who’s to blame for all the inadequacies of today’s web? Is it Google (and other such services), or is it the people and businesses that have invested so heavily in gaming the system?
Young Chinese people are embracing “exquisite poverty”—being willing to go broke and/or skimp on necessities in order to buy luxury goods and services.
Private equity = not good reason 37 bajillion: it has made about 20% of the total market invisible to investors, the media, and regulators (paywall-free link).
2023 has been an historically incredible year for highly rated video games:
Some fairly shocking revelations in this story about Kanye, his relationship with Adidas, and what they let him get away with because his shoes were selling so well (paywall-free link).
Two US theme park giants, Six Flags and Cedar Fair, are merging into an $8 billion behemoth that owns a total of 27 theme parks, 15 water parks, 9 hotels and resorts, and a slew of other properties across North America.
After years of hopping from successful to even wilder success, Disney is struggling, and their tentpole Marvel intellectual properties are a big part of that struggle.
On how the wellness industry targets (and hobbles) women.
