[SWMS contributor Rachel Odenweller writes:] Historically, few of us have thought much about data privacy, either from a personal perspective or the perspective of clients. But in 2020 privacy came into focus with several data breaches, fears of government surveillance and the continuing saga of Big Tech regulation challenges.
[SWMS contributor Rachel Odenweller writes:] As logic would suggest, the more we rely on data, the more at risk we are for cyber attacks. In addition to the myriad struggles 2020 presented us with, it was also the most active year for cybercrime. Reports suggest that cybercrime rates during COVID-19 — from ransomware to phishing — have spiked at rates between 40 and 400 percent.
[SWMS contributor Rachel Odenweller writes:] Over the past five or so years, we’ve been seeing more tech companies in the congressional hot seat as the attention on the ethics of their business practices grows, both in terms of data privacy and market activities.
Here’s a highly scrollable look back at what we covered during Q4 2020. Check out all the cheat sheets. You’ll still need your login and password to read the articles.
Add Newsweek to the growing list of publishers launching readership communities. The Newsweek Expert Forum now offers a waitlist in advance of its formal opening later this month. Newsweek is building the Expert Forum in association with The Community Company, a virtual professional services firm that manages councils for Forbes, Rolling Stone and Bizjournals.
Bloomberg Quicktake might not change the lives of tech PR pros but it surely has changed Bloomberg. Launched in November, Quicktake is in that newborn stage, getting budget that otherwise might have gone to newsroom key clickers or to Bloomberg Television. Management is betting big on this OTT network to succeed.
Do you care enough about tech workers to read and support a publication about them? Paul Bradley Carr hopes so. Next month he launches Techworker, “an independent news site for, and about, the most powerful workforce on Earth.” You may know Paul’s name from Pando, and going back a decade, from TechCrunch TV.
All year long we’ve read about editors planting their flag in Substack. Rare is the story about someone leaving it. That’s what Jacob Donnelly is doing. Jacob believes he has outgrown Substack, explaining in a Dec. 15 post that the platform is too rigid and prevents him from growing his business.
SWMS contributor Rachel Odenweller writes: The holidays are coming up, and even in a normal year, it’s a hard time for many. While The Great British Bake Off has helped quell our feelings of despair, sometimes circumstances call for a professional mental health perspective.
Newsletter Spy is a new tool that searches Substack for newsletter authors and topics. It’s exactly what the media-curious have been waiting for, since Substack itself provides little in the way of discovery. Prepare for disappointment.
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Registration is now open for the ‘Bloomberg Tech’ F2F event, being held Jun. 4-5 in San Francisco. With the current early-bird discount, a ticket runs $1,500. There is no better way to build relationships with Bloomberg’s notoriously elusive tech reporters.
Well, for now it’s Jim Jordan… but such news illustrates the kind of world we seem to be headed for. Adweek has the details, subscription required.
No “predictions” post will appear on this site. That said, quite a number of subscribers have asked for a Zoom/MS Teams presentation on what 2025 will bring. A conversation is precisely the right tool for the job. After the election — and with AI transforming publishing and life — “2025” is best discussed among peers, not predicted. So if you’d like to have a confidential group exchange on what stands to unfold, and why, and how comms pros can come out on top in spite of it all, drop a line and we shall schedule something.
According to Adweek, Omnicom CEO John Wren and IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky were in merger talks for eleven and a half months before the transaction was announced this week. Amazing that it didn’t leak.
Should PR pros stop visiting X, with all its lies and hate? It’s only going to get worse. Or are tidbits from targets too important to walk away from? Click here to watch tech edit vet David Strom and I disagree (at high speed) about this, as one compelling visual after another pops up on your screen. In 2025, SWMS will officially launch “SWMS Sound Thinking,” designed to be “argumentative insight in six minutes or less.” Each segment will explore a timely and controversial topic of interest to tech comms pros. This prototype runs 5:25. Hope you enjoy it — feedback vital and welcome! –Sam
New EIC Jamie Heller has asked her reporters to start going on camera — for the BI TikTok channel — to explain the big, deep-divey story they just published. Other publications do this — especially archival Fortune. BI is now on that too. Game on.
