Napster to Neural Networks: A Guide to Not Becoming Obsolete

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In the mid-90 I was a bowl-cut haired Queens/Long Island kid hunched over a beige Compaq that sounded like a jet engine. The screen would flicker to life and I wasn't just a kid in a bedroom anymore - I could be a big city mayor (SimCity), I could relive the Ides of March (Encarta), or even travel the world (Carmen Sandiego).

Fast forward to today. I'm sitting in my office, CEO written on the door, watching AI generate product photography and pull trending short form video hooks. That would've blown my SimCity-playing mind. How did we get here?

Headlines

OpenAI finally opens up testing for SearchGPT (OpenAI)

• OpenAI is gunning for Google, and for the first time in 20 years a real competitor to Google's monopoly emerges.

• For years Google products have been getting worse, and people have noticed. Now, AI search is nearly here. OpenAI has partnered with dozens of media partners, from The Atlantic to Reuters, to ensure they have a fresh pipeline of data.

• Start planning for how AI search will can enhance your brand's visibility, discoverability, and engagement. Here's a hint, AI models love crawling content.

Google won't eliminate third-party cookies. (Google)

• In a huge reversal, Google says it won't get rid of third-party cookies. They've been talking about it for years, but never proposed a plan that could have reasonably worked (this move would have forced more marketing spend to Google ads because you better believe they weren't messing with their own data capabilities, but that's another story).

• There are still plenty of ways for tech-savvy users to block cookies, and Google/Apple and others will/are offering opt-out tools for users. While cookieless tracking is convoluted, painful, and annoying, it's still important for brands looking to get a fuller picture of data. Can we bring back Universal Analytics and kill off GA4 please?

You Can Try Apple Intelligence With iOS 18.1 Beta (Engadget)

• Apple Intelligence is here. I'm using it to write this very sentence on my iPad. Apple Intelligence doesn't do too much yet (it does look very pretty), but it's going to be huge. Soon Apple devices will have smart on-device models, and access to private server and other models (OpenAI, likely Google/Anthropic on the way) baked into the operating system. All with context and personalized info.

• I wrote about Apple Intelligence at length earlier this month. No matter your industry there will be seismic shifts on how your brand will interact with customers (RCS, email, Siri in-app actions) and how you and your team interact with employees (instant access to company data, reports, and more).

Google’s Web Crawler Enhances JavaScript Rendering for Better Indexing (SEJ)

• Google has updated their crawler to better understand heavy JavaScript sites. This helps them understand your site more intelligently and index it better.

• Having worked on SEO for many sites with JavaScript rendering issues, this news offers some relief. However, I still recommend using tools like Screaming Frog to verify how pages are rendering via Googlebot.

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Wild Wild West, Jim West Digital Desperado

Remember Netscape? That blue 'N' was my gateway drug to the internet. While my buddies were trading Beanie Babies, I was surfing the web, downloading MIDI files for FL Studio, and riding the waves of Napster.

The late '90s were electric. You could feel the entrepreneurial energy crackling in the air. By spring 1999, one in twelve Americans had caught gold rush fever, claiming they were in some stage of founding a business. Silicon Valley, Dallas, New York—they were all drunk on the possibilities.

But not everyone was sipping the digital Kool-Aid. For every wide-eyed optimist, there was a skeptic warning that this was all just a mirage in the desert. And boy, did they have their reasons:

• "It's not safe!" they cried, clutching their credit cards close to their chests.

• "We don't need it," others scoffed, happy with their landlines and newspaper subscriptions.

• "It's a cesspool of misinformation," the intellectuals warned, foreshadowing debates we're still having today.

Even Nobel laureate Paul Krugman threw his hat in the ring of doubt, famously declaring, "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's." (Spoiler alert: He was just a bit off the mark.)

Then the bubble burst. The towers fell. The days of blind optimism came crashing down, and many thought the internet dream was dead and buried.

The Social Revolution: Meet The Facebook

Cut to my freshman year of college. There's buzz about this new site called "The Facebook." It's 2005, and suddenly, connecting with classmates doesn't require small talk at the campus coffee shop. A poke, a wall post, and boom—you're in.

But Facebook wasn't just changing how we made friends; it was creating a roadmap for the new rules of human interaction:

1. Identity went digital: Your life was no longer just what people saw in person—it was what you curated online.

2. Information spread at light speed: News, gossip, trends—they all moved faster than ever before.

3. Marketing got personal: Suddenly, brands could target you based on your likes, your friends, your entire digital footprint.

As Facebook exploded, it became clear: social media wasn't just a fad. It was a fundamental shift in how we communicate, consume information, and make decisions.

For many years, my agency pitch always included a bit on why brands should invest in social, why brands should go digital. We would spend hundreds of hours debating the value of social marketing -- why it was more valuable than billboards.

These conversations, in hindsight, seem ridiculous but change was slow. For those brands willing to make the jump, they saw huge rewards. We had several brands with first-mover advantage. We were some of biggest social brands in the world in our clients industry categories, beating out major multi-national conglomerates. They were too slow to jump into social. We had nothing to lose.

The Mobile & Video Revolution: The World in Your Pocket

Just when we thought we had this internet thing figured out, smartphones changed everything. Again.

Suddenly, everyone was carrying a high-def camera and a global audience in their pocket. The rules weren't just changing—they were being completely rewritten.

Consider this:

• Mr. Beast drops a video, and it gets more eyeballs than the Super Bowl.

• LegalEagle turns dense legal jargon into viral content with a single upload. He generates thousands of legal clients with a sponsor spot (his own firm).

• Emma Chamberlain and Ryan Trahan are bigger to Gen-Z than most movie stars, both of whom now run consumer goods brands.

The shift to mobile and video wasn't just about technology—it was about attention. Suddenly, you weren't competing with other businesses in your industry; you were competing with every form of entertainment, education, and distraction in your customer's pocket.

From Dot-Com Bubble to AI Bubble: History's Rhyme

Fast forward to today. The internet isn't just alive; it's the backbone of our society. That "fad" turned out to be the most pivotal technological shift in human history—and we lived through it.

Now, here we are again. The buzz around AI is deafening, reminiscent of those heady dot-com days. Sequoia Capital's David Cahn is waving a red flag, pointing out a $600 billion gap between AI investments and revenue. It's déjà vu all over again, with warnings of overinvestment echoing through Silicon Valley.

But hold your horses before you dismiss this as Bubble 2.0. Even Zuck, while drawing parallels to the dot-com era, is betting big on AI's future. In a candid chat with Bloomberg, Zuck highlighted a crucial difference: unlike many dot-com pipe dreams, today's AI is already flexing its muscles in the real world.

Zuckerberg's strategy? Build the roads before you sell the cars. "We build out the inventory first, then we monetize it," he says, planning to pour a cool $40 billion into AI infrastructure.

The AI Paradigm Shift: Not Just a Revolution, But an Evolution

This isn't just another tech bubble. It's a restructuring of how value is created and captured in the global economy. And if you're not prepared, you might find yourself on the wrong side of history.

Let's break it down:

1. Unprecedented Adoption Speed: We're seeing Gen AI adoption in enterprises at a pace that makes the internet revolution look like a slow walk in the park. This isn't just hype - it's businesses recognizing a tool that aligns powerfully with their goals and growth potential.

2. The Infrastructure Play: Remember how Amazon built AWS and ended up dominating cloud computing? The same thing is happening with AI. The companies building the infrastructure today are laying the foundation for dominance tomorrow.

3. Value Beyond Revenue: Here's where many are missing the point. The current "gap" between AI investments and revenue isn't a problem - it's a natural lag between infrastructure build-out and commercial application. The real value of AI extends far beyond direct revenue:

   • In manufacturing, AI-powered predictive maintenance is slashing downtime and extending equipment life.

   • In finance, AI algorithms are enhancing fraud detection, potentially saving billions in prevented losses.

   • In healthcare, AI is accelerating drug discovery and improving patient outcomes in ways we're only beginning to understand.

4. The Democratization of Expertise: AI is putting world-class expertise at everyone's fingertips. Whether you're a startup founder in Silicon Valley or a small business owner in the Midwest, you'll have access to AI advisors that can provide expert-level insights in any field.

Takeaways From the Digital Evolution

So what can we learn from this nostalgia tour of the digital age?

1. Skepticism is natural, but don't let it blind you: Remember the naysayers during the early internet days? The ones who dismissed social media as a fad? The executives who thought smartphones were just a toy? There will always be skeptics. Listen to them, but don't let them hold you back.

2. Adoption curves are getting steeper: It took decades for the internet to become ubiquitous. Social media did it in years. Mobile video? Months. AI? We're seeing adoption at unprecedented speeds. The lesson? You can't afford to wait and see anymore.

3. Infrastructure is key: Amazon didn't just build an online store; they built the infrastructure for e-commerce (and then cloud computing with AWS). Facebook didn't just create a social network; they built the infrastructure for digital identity and social interactions. The big winners in the AI age will be those who build the fundamental infrastructure everyone else relies on.

   1. Example: Consider how Nvidia has positioned itself not just as a graphics card manufacturer, but as the backbone of AI computing. By developing both hardware (GPUs) and software (CUDA), they've become indispensable to the AI ecosystem. What infrastructure could you build in your industry that others might rely on?

4. User behavior changes everything: Each wave of digital evolution has fundamentally changed how people behave—how they shop, how they communicate, how they consume information. The businesses that thrive are the ones that don't just adapt to these changes but anticipate and shape them.

5. The next big thing often looks like a toy: Facebook seemed like a college fad. Smartphones were dismissed as expensive toys. Even AI, not too long ago, was seen as just a novelty. The lesson? Don't dismiss new technologies because they seem frivolous. Ask yourself: "If this takes off, how would it change everything?"

Here's the million-dollar question: Will you be the Amazon of the AI age, or will you be Borders? Will you build the infrastructure and reshape your industry, or will you be left wondering what happened?

Are you ready to catch that wave? Because trust me, it's going to be one hell of a ride.

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