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The second Good Life 2030 report highlights that what’s missing in our age of comfort and convenience is connection.
People are yearning to be more connected to themselves
People are dreaming of being more connected to others, too. They want to strengthen and protect family relationships, build more nurturing support systems, and share routines and rituals with others.
people are dreaming of being more deeply connected to nature.
The people want community.
Some interesting findings from a study comparing Google Search to chatbot traffic (caveat: chatbot volume is much smaller)
AI chatbot referrals stay more than a minute longer than Google traffic.
And visit more pages
The data indicates that homepages are more important in the “AI future” and that AI chatbots qualify users better before sending them out.
and
AI seems to go counter to the age-old study of “every second a page loads faster, it converts more people.”
Instead, it pre-qualifies users before they visit a site, which leads to those users being happy to spend more time.
Drew Hanlen is an NBA trainer for some of the world’s most elite players, his approach to writing his new book is a template for (long form) content of any kind.
- Simple
Very short sections so that you can pick it up, put it down, pick it up, put it down
- Direct
Trimming the fat and making it shorter and shorter out of respect to the reader’s time
- Actionable
Prompts that you’re doing and filling out as you go. Identify the changes you want to make and build out the blueprint to make those things a reality
Nested in 3 is to make it relatable.
Content bricks that build a story.
Boring is the default—fight it
What ideas are not boring and worth trying?
Ones that scare you to do. You should be worried about creating and releasing it, either because you think it’ll bomb or you’re worried about people’s reactions.
Stand out.
Be weird.
via the DemandCurve newsletter
Building on this post, I like the point made at the end of the episode.
The experiences are different because Sam’s Club zagged to Costco’s zig.
It makes sense to not replicate what your chief competitor is doing but offer something different and distinct because you’ll appeal to a different segment of consumers.
Find value for your consumers that’s not just being the cheapest product available, because you’re never going to win that race
Give consumers are compelling reason to shop at your store and trust your brand
Sam’s Club has overtaken cult favorite Costco. At least when it comes to happy customers.
It’s done this by focusing on the customer experience.
Technology + convenience + value
Through the tech they’ve created a retail media network that blends seamlessly with the in-store experience.
we didn’t ban noisy aircraft we banned supersonic aircraft
Incentives matter and words matter.
Here, poor word choice disincentivized an entire industry.
Clarity of messaging helps align incentives.
via Alex Tabarrok
TV is now the primary device for YouTube viewing in the US.
and according to Nielsen, YouTube has been #1 in streaming watch time in the U.S. for two years
And Mr. Beast has more subscribers than Netflix.
YouTube is mass media via niche media.
via YouTube
As Seth said:
Discovery doesn’t just happen in the online store’s search box.
I would go further and say true discovery never happens in the search box.
Awareness and exposure—the precursors to intent—happen elsewhere. In the rhythms and routines of life separate from shopping.
Anthropic released the Anthropic Economic Index
The Anthropic Economic Index aims to understand AI’s effects on the labor market and broader economy over time. The Index provides the clearest picture yet of how AI is being incorporated into real-world tasks across the modern economy.
Trends are based on anonymized usage data for their Claude model.
Seems like a useful indicator to add to the monitoring mix.
All advertising is unwanted, so if you’re going to crash the party, bring some champagne.
-Bob Thacker
Is this the dawn of cheap AI?
DeepSeek was just the beginning 🤖
AI researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington were able to train an AI “reasoning” model for under $50 in cloud compute credits
Training methods appear to be proliferating with the number of models available:
The s1 paper suggests that reasoning models can be distilled with a relatively small dataset using a process called supervised fine-tuning (SFT), in which an AI model is explicitly instructed to mimic certain behaviors in a dataset.
A race to the bottom we can actually benefit from:
After training s1, which took less than 30 minutes using 16 Nvidia H100 GPUs, s1 achieved strong performance on certain AI benchmarks
& a lesson we can all learn from:
The researchers used a nifty trick to get s1 to double-check its work and extend its “thinking” time: They told it to wait. Adding the word “wait” during s1’s reasoning helped the model arrive at slightly more accurate answers
via TechCrunch
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
Or, as Nudie says:
Not all change is progress
Amazon is ramping up to release its gen-AI powered Alexa (unless it gets delayed again).
Pricing model is up in the air at this point, but $5 to $10 month sounds pretty locked in.
This is the make or break moment for voice assistants.
You get personalities out of the shop and all that’s left is the retail experience.
You need the crust of the human.
Scale necessitates the removal of personality.
Which means personality becomes a differentiator.
How long until we’re asked to measure return on attention and return on personality? And how will we do it?
via the Weird Studies podcast
Life gets better as you replace transactions with relationships.
-Kevin Kelly
So do brands and customer experiences.
Everything is customer service.
Here is my summary of a 1-Minute summary of a massive social media trends study for 2025.
- Instagram is more than stories & Reels, posts are making a comeback
- LinkedIn is (still) having a moment
- Pinterest is not for videos
- Facebook Reels aren’t dead yet
How much of the resilient consumer spending trend is due to buying before Trump’s Trade War increases prices?
Buying before the promised / threatened tariffs hit.
If a meaningful %, purchase pull forward + lower purchasing power from higher prices could mean a rough year (or more) ahead.
This ad read (not ad, just read) is great.
You can hear the bit of a laugh after the reality TV line and tell the actor had fun with that part, or at least gives us the impression of enjoyment.
It’s filled with personality in a way that doesn’t overshadow the messaging, but makes it memorable.