Amy Klobuchar is temperamentally unfit to be president, former staffers claim

Rob Williams

Con:

Amy Klobuchar, latest presidential candidate, faces questions about temperament, treatment of staff

Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s Mistreatment Of Staff Scared Off Candidates To Manage Her Presidential Bid

Staffers, Documents Show Amy Klobuchar’s Wrath Toward Her Aides

The ‘Worst Bosses’ in Congress?

Amy Klobuchar’s presidential campaign is doomed

Pro:

The Hidden Sexism Behind the Amy Klobuchar Reports

Klobuchar May Be a Bad Boss. That Shouldn’t Disqualify Her From the Presidency.

The Girlboss Ethos of Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar may be best equipped to send president packing

Online dating market factoids for Valentine’s Day

Rob Williams
  • 124 million singles in the United States, according to MarketResearch.com.
  • The dating services industry is forecast to grow to $3.2 billion by 2020 from $2.5 billion in 2015.
  • IAC’s publicly traded Match Group is the market leader in online dating with $1.73 billion in yearly revenue, followed by eHarmony and Spark Networks.
  • Match Group’s  revenue grew 21 percent in 4Q 2018 to $457.3 million from a year earlier. The company’s brands include Tinder, Match, Meetic, OKCupid and Pairs. It acquired rival Plenty of Fish for $575 million, and also bought Meetic, OK Cupid, Yahoo Personals, Our Time and Tinder.
  • Match Group increased subscribership 17 percent to 8.2 million in 4Q 2018 from a year earlier. Tinder boosted subscribers 39% to 4.3 million in 4Q 2018 from a year earlier.
  • The first Sunday after New Year’s – dubbed “Dating Sunday” or “Singles Sunday” – is key because of the combination of potentially lonely holidays, recovering from a break-up, peer and family pressure, personal goals and the upcoming Valentine’s Day. Online dating search can go up 75 percent that day, USA Today reported.
  • On Singles Sunday, online daters are 17 percent more likely to get a match and 16 percent more likely to actually chat with that match, according to CNET.
  • Match Group predicted there will be a 69 percent jump in new singles coming to the app on Dating Sunday, according to Market Watch.
  • Tinder told Bustle that one Dating Sunday led to 44 million Tinder matches being made.  Dating Sunday is one of Bumble’s busiest days of the year, according to a statement from dating app Bumble to Global News.
  • Coffee Meets Bagel said the first week of January is the most popular time of year to sign up for an online dating service, and 11:30 p.m. is the peak hour for new member sign-ups.
  • More than 40 percent of online singles globally have used online dating apps or sites within the past month; around two-thirds of them are men, according to consumer research company GlobalWebIndex.
  • 3 in 4 online daters are under the age of 30.
  • Online daters describe themselves as risk-takers and they want to be seen as adventurous by others. These traits are more visible in younger online daters. The majority of online daters also agree that the internet makes them feel closer to people.
  • Online daters ages 18 to 30 are more likely to keep up with the latest fashion trends and visit movie theaters at least twice a month.

Smart-speaker installed base almost doubles to 66 million in U.S.

Rob Williams

The U.S. installed base of smart-speaker devices nearly doubled to 66 million units in December from a year earlier, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. The installed base was 53 million units in September 2018 and 36 million in December 2017.

Amazon Echo has 70 percent of the installed base, followed by Google Home at 24 percent and Apple HomePod at 6 percent.

The percentage of smart-speaker owners who have more than device grew to 35 percent in December from 18 percent a year earlier.

CIRP surveyed 500 U.S. owners of Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple HomePod devices from Jan. 1 -11, 2019.

Source: CIRP

Silicon Valley, politics and the media

Rob Williams

Google and Facebook Worsen Media Bias

Google and Facebook have gained editorial influence over the press with content guidelines for participation in advertising services, writes Mark Esptein in the Wall Street Journal.

The Stark Political Divide Between Tech CEOs and Their Employees

Media outlets have failed to differentiate the people who own the industry from the people who work in it is causing the media to misread the rising wave of rank-and-file rebellion, write Moira Weigel and Ben Tarnoff in the New Republic.

Jeff Bezos Protests the Invasion of His Privacy, as Amazon Builds a Sprawling Surveillance State for Everyone Else

Amazon’s extensive relationship with the NSA, FBI, Pentagon and other surveillance agencies in the west is multi-faceted, highly lucrative and rapidly growing, writes Glenn Greenwald in the Intercept.

UK Cairncross Report

Online news sites need ‘code of conduct’, says UK media review

Technology groups should be forced by a new regulator to ensure their platforms distribute quality news, according to a U.K. government report. “As long as tech giants continue to completely dominate the market it’s difficult to see how a sustainable financial footing for journalism can be achieved,” Tom Watson, Labour’s shadow culture secretary, said.

Public funds should be used to rescue local journalism, says report

Dame Frances Cairncross’s report on ways to support high-quality journalism in Britain concluded there should be a public investigation into the dominance of Facebook and Google in the advertising marketplace.

Deloitte: Consumer cellular survey

Rob Williams

The percentage of cellular subscribers who have unlimited data plans rose to 37 percent in 2018 from 25 percent in 2017, according to a Deloitte survey of mobile subscribers.

60 percent of respondents said 5G is now “important” to them, according to Deloitte.

80 percent of respondents who use their smartphones to watch video content weekly said 5G is important to them.

73 percent of U.S. consumers said they were concerned about sharing their personal data online and the potential for identify [sic] theft, according to Deloitte.

69 percent said they believe companies aren’t doing everything they can to protect consumers’ personal data.

73 percent said they would be more comfortable sharing their data if they had some visibility and control.

About two-thirds of respondents use a voice assistant on their smartphones—a 20 percent increase from a year earlier.

Smart speakers are the most prominent platform for digital assistants: 69 percent of respondents use them weekly and 47 percent daily.