As a new medium becomes popular its signal-to-noise ratio will fall to a level that renders the medium useless.

In some recent client work, an emerging theme is that consumer tech. / media start-ups no longer control the most important bits of their UI. Today, if you’re a consumer technology or digital media company, nearly all of your customers will first encounter you through a channel like Facebook, Instagram, twitter, an app store or an email application. In each case: You, as the app developer or content owner have minimal control over how your application or content looks and works in these platforms.

As you read the breathless reviews of Facebook’s Q2 2014 results, remember that the entire App economy depends on a tiny group of whales who spend hundreds of dollars a month on in-App purchases. This is terrifying. Facebook’s stock price is the second derivative of in-app purchase revenue. Things are highly geared, and incredibly risky. Which isn’t to say that you can’t keep making money on $FB; just know the risks you’re running.

Silicon Valley, despite being at the center of the digital world, is a hopelessly insular and actually rather hermetic place. Even its famous immigrant culture emphasizes joining the SV way. For all its talk of innovation, it resists almost anyone who is not part of its mainstream. Michael Wolff, How Russian Tycoon Yuri Milner Bought His Way Into Silicon Valley

The nerds were right.

Dear Facebook: You are either evil or dumb. You broke our deal. I could accept you pushing me to make things public, and share my information with developers. Why? Because I could control what you said to whom. My Facebook profile was still my own. I could pick my friends, group them, and determine who saw what. It was a decent bargain: you gave me a friction-free way to keep in touch with my friends and I gave you some data that you could use to target me discreetly.

Nicholas Carson explains the Social Gaming Industry in 13 words. Brilliant.

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at local, mobile applications and how they fit into gaming and local commerce. Michael Arrington biopsied the social gaming economy and found it to be quite ill. Marginal advertisers (and I use even that term loosely) are filling these companies’ coffers with cash from shady lead-gen deals. In other news Facebook announced an updated advertising policy which, amongst other things, will allow them to target users based on the geotags of content that they post.