Okay, you know how you feel, what you need, what you want...
This next thing you're going to do or say: Does it help you get closer to that?
Microsoft under CEO Satya Nadella has refocussed to double down on enterprise, artificial intelligence and cloud services, and today the company took the wraps a new project for advertising giant Publicis that shows how it is leveraging all three to expand its business. At an event in Paris, the CEOs of the two companies unveiled Marcel, a new platform comprised of multiple apps using AI, social networking mechanics, voice recognition, predictive analytics and more aimed at getting Publicis’ 80,000 employees to be more productive and work together better.
The first three apps on Marcel — named after Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, the founder of Publicis who had an interesting second career as a fighter in the French Resistance — will be Daily Six, Expert Match and Open Brief, with plans to add more apps over time, CEO and chairman Arthur Sadoun said in an interview this week. They’ve been trialled so far with 100 employees and will be rolling out more widely from today, with an aim of having its whole staff connected in 18 months.
The move is an interesting turn for Publicis, currently the world’s third-largest advertising agency, to defragment and improve how its organization works.
In keeping with the norm in the ad world, Publicis has been built up by way of acquisitions, and operates essentially as a holding company for all of them to largely continue working in their silos. While that might have been a useful model when the organization was smaller, at 80,000 employees it runs the risk of being inefficient, and could easily lead to many missed business opportunities for Publicis.
Now the aim will be to try to disrupt that model with technology. “We are committing to learn more, to share more, and create more,” Sadoun said.
Or as Microsoft’s Nadella put it today at the Marcel event in more — err — flowery words, “Our job is to find rose petals in a field of shit,” he said, describing how he talks about motivating teams at Microsoft to think in a more forward way. “Our job is to find, in a constrained world, ways to make things happen. That’s what this is all about.”
For Microsoft, working on Marcel is something of a home run for the company, in that it hits all three key bases — AI, enterprise and cloud — that Microsoft has been hoping will help propel the company into the future and away from being relegated to a role as a has-been in the software world best known for Windows and Office.
Playing on the concept of ‘consumerization of IT,’ where apps and mechanics that have proven popular are used in enterprise services to get employees more engaged in them, each app in Marcel has echoes of services that you might have seen and used in the consumer world.
Daily Six presents six pieces of content to the user that is tailored to him or her. They might include key updates from a current account, suggestions for creative activities, and reading recommendations — selections that are based on what a specific employee is already working on, and what he or she might want to do next.
Expert Match, meanwhile, is a very LinkedIn-style service that is actually built using some of the mechanics of LinkedIn (another plus for Microsoft and indication of how it will target enterprises and repurpose the assets it has for that end). It helps connect employees who are looking for answers or advice on specific questions, or mentorship, with those who are willing to help out.
Lastly, Open Brief will be a way for outside clients to put out requests for input or work to the wider group, and for a small selection of people who might have skills relevant to those requests to put in offers to work on them. Both this app and Expert Match use voice and video, and are powered by Cortana to pick up cues from the requests to power the recommendations that are made.
All three are opt-in — that is, employees, in keeping with GDPR data protection principles, will have to consent to using them and having their data be a part of the Marcel mix.
Sadoun would not go into too much detail about who else might have put in requests to build Marcel — which it first said it wanted to work on a year ago, and announced in January that Microsoft had clinched the deal to build it — and nor would he be drawn out about the business model behind it. (He did concede that Google, with its extensive ad business, remains a “frenemy”, so while Publicis and Google do work together, this that might have kept it out of the running, and Amazon also had talked to Publicis. “Microsoft represents zero competition for us,” he added.)
He also added that Nadella personally got involved with the pitch and lured Sadoun and his team over to Seattle to help seal the deal.
“One day I received a call from Satya saying Microsoft wanted to be a part of this,” Sadoun said. “We had a great time in Seattle. I understodod his vision of Microsoft, and saw that it was close to our vision of Marcel. That’s how we started this partnership.”
While there is not detail about the financial terms of Marcel, it’s likely that there will be several elements at play: the building the apps; moving data in and out of Azure; licensing technology to run the apps; and so on.
And as Publicis and Microsoft bring more of Microsoft’s AI smarts into the mix to help Publicis work better, it’s worth pointing out that — at least for now — the AI has a limit. I asked, and was told in no uncertain terms by Sadoun that there are no intentions of building AI products that might actually create the ads themselves.
“I think that AI will never replace emotional intelligence,” Sadoun said. “It will help us to leverage the talent in the room, tapping people who deserve to do and grow more.” He also said that this not a move to “optimize headcount” but about trying to surface more of its talent from across its global footprint, in a diversity play.
Microsoft is celebrating the one-year anniversary of its game streaming service and Twitch competitor, Mixer, with a host of new features, including a refresh of the user experience and the launch of an expanded developer toolkit called MixPlay. The new streamer tools will roll out along with the revamped version of Mixer.com across desktop and mobile web, and will initially be available to Mixer Pro subscribers.
The company claims the service saw more than 10 million monthly active users in December 2017 – a figure, we should point out, may be higher because of holiday sales and the accompanying bump in game downloads and playtime seen across platforms.
However, Microsoft also says that the Mixer viewing audience has grown over four times since its launch, and the number of watched streams has grown more than five times. These are still not hard numbers, but third-party reports have put Mixer well behind Twitch’s sizable and still-growing lead in terms of both concurrent streamers and viewers. (Those reports aren’t 100% accurate either, though, because they can’t track Xbox viewership.)
Microsoft says the updated Mixer.com rolls out beginning today, with a focus on making it easier for viewers to find the games and streamers they want to watch, as well as those broadcasting in creative communities.
While Pro subscribers will gain access first, they’ll have to opt-in by visiting their Account Settings and turning the new look on manually. (To do so, select the “Site Version” dialog, then the “Feature/UI Refresh” option, Microsoft says.)
The full refresh will arrive to all Mixer users later this summer.
As part of the new experience, the company is also rolling out more tools for developers with the launch of MixPlay.
As Microsoft explains, instead of just adding buttons below a stream, MixPlay lets developers build experiences on top of streams, in panels on the sides of the video, as widgets around the video, or as free-floating overlays – all of which can be designed to mimic the look-and-feel of the streamed content. Basically, this means the entire window is now a canvas, not just a portion of the stream itself.
One example of what MixPlay can enable can be seen in April’s launch of Mixer’s “Share Controller” feature, which created a virtual Xbox controller that could be shared by anyone broadcasting from their Xbox One.
This allowed gamers and viewers to play along in real-time from the web.
In addition, MixPlay will enable other games that are only playable on Mixer where controls blend into the stream – like Mini Golf, which launched this month and now has 300,000 views, or Truck Stars, for example.
Three new MixPlay-enabled games are launching today, as well, including Earthfall, which lets viewers interact with streamers or even change the game; Next Up Hero, where viewers can help a streamer by taking control or freeze the streamer at the worst possible moment, depending on their mood; and Late Shift, a choose-your-own-adventure crime thriller you control.
These sorts of MixPlay experiences shift the idea of Mixer being just another game streaming service to one where viewers can actively participate by playing themselves, or at least guiding the action. That could also serve as a differentiator for Mixer as it tries to carve out a niche for itself in the battle with Twitch and YouTube Gaming.
But MixPlay isn’t just for interactive experiences, Microsoft notes. It can also help developers build experiences that simply enhance streams with additional content, too, like a stats dashboard.
Another update involves the Mixer Create app, which offers mobile support to streamers. Now, streamers can kick of a co-stream by clicking the co-stream button on their Mixer Create profile, then send out invites, among other things.
This is live on Android in beta today, and will launch soon on iOS beta, with a full rollout in early June.
In terms of perks, Microsoft is running an “anniversary” promotion offering $5 of Microsoft Store credit along with any Direct Purchase of $9.99 or more. A second promotion is giving away a free, 1-month channel subscription and up to 90 days of Mixer Pro to anyone who reaches Level 10 on their account between May 24th, 2018 at 12:00AM UST and May 28th, 2018 at 11:59PM PDT.
The company additionally announced a new partnership with ESL on esports, which will bring over 15,000 hours of programming from top competitive games to Mixer, including Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, and Dota 2. These tournaments will take advantage of Mixer’s FTL technology for “sub-second latency,” the company says.
Other announcements around games and esports are mentioned in the Mixer blog post, too.
In September, Amazon announced it was adding support for Alexa voice control to its Amazon Music app for iOS and Android. However, it was implemented as a tap-to-talk function – something that didn’t quite mesh with the hands-free voice control experience Alexa is known for. Today, Amazon is addressing that problem by rolling out hands-free listening to the Amazon Music app instead, as a result of user feedback.
That means customers can command Alexa to do things like play or pause music, move back and forth between songs, and create playlists by asking, as well as take advantage of Alexa’s more innovative features around playing music by mood, activity, genre, lyrics, artist or song title.
For example, you can ask Alexa to do things like “play the song that goes ‘I’m lovin’ I’m livin’ I’m picking it up” and she’ll play Ariana Grande’s latest single, “No Tears Left to Cry,” notes Amazon. Or you can say things like “Alexa, play that Drake playlist I was listening to last week.”
The update to hands-free voice control could help better establish Amazon’s Music service as a viable competitor to Apple Music, which includes Siri voice control, and Spotify, which began testing its own voice search functionality this March.
Amazon Music is still seen as an underdog in the streaming music battle, compared with these two market leaders, but it may not be as far behind as people though.
Last month, for instance, Billboard reported the number of people subscribing to Amazon Music had doubled over the last six months, and Amazon was claiming “tens of millions” of paid customers. (Apple Music had 40 million paid members as of April and Spotify had 70 million.) An earlier report had also found that Amazon’s service had grown to become the third largest music subscription service worldwide.
Voice control – and specifically the hands-free experience offered by Echo speakers – has been a huge contributor to Amazon Music’s growth, as has been its inclusion with the Amazon Prime membership program.
It makes sense, then, that Amazon would want to offer a similar hands-free experience across devices – especially as voice assistants like Google’s and Apple’s Siri have the advantage of being built-in. (And Google has also just launched its own YouTube Music service, which could be a disruptor to this space.)
Amazon says hands-free Alexa is rolling out starting today on the iOS and Android versions of the Amazon Music mobile app for both Amazon Music Unlimited and Prime Music listeners. The feature can be turned off in the settings if you don’t want to use it.
It's tempting to decide to make a profit first, then invest in training, people, facilities, promotion, customer service and most of all, doing important work.
In general, though, it goes the other way.
Software projects work better with small teams.
On the other hand, it makes sense to have multiple teams of workers if you're paving a patch of highly trafficked highway.
Three reasons:
Coordination
Learning
Ramp up time
As we learned from the Mythical Man Month more than fifty years ago, software projects rely on coordination of work. As you add programmers, the work doesn't go faster, it gets slower. Ramp up time is expensive. And if the project involves learning as you go, then big teams waste far more time at the beginning while you're figuring things out.
On the other hand, it doesn't make any sense at all to have a single crew working on a paving project. If you need to close the road for two weeks as they work from one end to the other, you've cost the users of the road a fortune. Ramp up time for trained professionals is trivial, and there's no learning and not much coordination. Better to have five crews working on different sections and open the road after just one or two days.
Often, we default to a small crew because we don't believe we can afford a bigger one. But if the work is worth doing, it might be worth doing more quickly. It's easier than ever to find ways to scale project labor now.
And sometimes, we mistakenly choose to use a big crew, thinking that nine women, working very carefully in coordination, can have a baby in one month. Wishful thinking that ends up in disappointment.
If you want to see a project in trouble, look for how crew size was decided.
Reese Witherspoon’s media empire, Hello Sunshine, has teamed up with Audible to work on an audiobook project. The collaboration will initially see the launch of a showcase of Audible audiobooks as selected by Reese’s Book Club, which focus on strong but complex female characters. However, the two companies said that further down the line Hello Sunshine Witherspoon and Amazon-owned Audible will work together on original audio productions, details of which will be announced later in the year.
You may already have heard of the Hello Sunshine brand in passing.
Witherspoon’s company is producing a range of content including feature films, TV shows, social series, and more, including the upcoming Hulu original series starring Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, “Little Fires Everywhere,” based on Celeste Ng’s 2017 bestseller. It’s also producing a number of series for Apple’s forthcoming streaming service, including a comedy series with Kristen Wiig, a true crime thriller with Octavia Spencer, and a two-season drama series with Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston. Amazon, meanwhile, has yet to tap into the Hello Sunshine brand until now, by way of its Audible subsidiary.
“When I started Reese’s Book Club, I wanted to highlight the voices of female storytellers and I am so excited to work with Audible to literally deliver on our mission!” read a statement by Witherspoon about the new project. “It can be hard to find time to read a highly recommended book, and love that with this partnership we are providing a way to experience these beautiful stories in audio form.”
The deal makes sense in terms of growing Hello Sunshine and anointing books as “must-reads” that are later turned into video projects, as is often the case today.
For example, the Apple/Kristen Wiig drama is based on Curtis Sittenfeld’s short story collection, “You Think It, I’ll Say It;” a film for Fox 2000 by Hello Sunshine is based on Catherine Steadman’s novel “Something in the Water;” and Hello Sunshine’s psychological thriller for TriStar Pictures “A White Lie” is based on Karin Tanabe’s novle “The Gilded Years.”
And for Amazon, a collaboration between its audiobook business, Audible, and Hello Sunshine, could give it insight (and potentially leverage) in the negotiations for upcoming Hello Sunshine video projects.
The new audiobook collection will kick off in June, the companies said.
