AI Trends to Watch — Q4 2023
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SWMS agency subscribers increasingly ask us about tech news sites that look legit at a glance, yet there’s something fishy about them.
The B2B tech world has a new experience to explore — Constellation Insights from Constellation Research. Its newly hired EIC is Larry Dignan, best known as ZDNet’s former EIC, though he spent the past 17 months overseeing content at Celonis.
Readers have been asking, “What are publications doing with AI? Will AI start to impact my job [in tech PR]?” Based on our research, the answers are (a) they’re not sure yet and (b) not for a very long time.
Search platform TechNews last month introduced features that let users spot trends deep within tech editorial. Launched as IT Database in 2007, TechNews is widely used within tech PR to learn who is writing what.
“We sure miss Protocol,” enterprise tech PR pros often say. What they mean is, “We sure miss what Tom Krazit brought to the party.” They no longer have to, because last week the former Protocol enterprise editor founded Runtime.
We’ve decided to go ahead and publish selected slides from a presentation we made to a subscriber several weeks ago. We hesitated because some of the slides leaned toward “preachy”; subscribers typically like it when SWMS stays in its lane, delivering cheat sheets and tech media analysis.
What’s trending in cybersecurity? It’s a good time to know, with the 32nd annual RSA Conference just around the corner. According to newly revamped TechNews, in terms of volume, whats’s trending is the same old damn thing: cyberattacks described in multiple, similar terms.
Here’s a toolkit designed to help SWMS readers monitor the unfolding Silicon Valley Bank situation from a tech media point of view.
Most PR pros categorize targets by beat, then by publication. There’s another way — by experience. The rookies are happy to be where they are. And quite often they are friendly toward PR, especially when you appear to know a little bit about them.
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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.
At this time last year, Eric Newcomer and his two podcast co-hosts — Max Child and James Wilsterman — each formed an “AI startup fantasy team” and picked five AI startups to seed their rosters. We’re now in year 2 and it’s time to draft again. The podcasters wonder… which startups do they dump? Which do they add? The player whose startups accumulate the most total value by Nov. 1, 2028 is the winner, so there’s plenty of time to make adjustments. Here’s a link to the AI fantasy team podcast — you may need a password. Not sure.