The Teardown Show

Hosted by:

• Michael Wolf (@michaelwolf), the analyst, of NextMarket Insights
• David Spark (@dspark), the brand journalist, of Spark Media Solutions.

Trend/opportunity of the week:

• Out with the old, killed by the new - Nintendo is dying and is finally considering phones. Best Buy looks to be on the same trajectory as Circuit City.
• Net Neutrality argument is over. Proponents lose. Providers can discriminate against content. So they can charge Netflix, a huge hog of bandwidth, more than other content providers. - How will this affect journalism?

Disruptors of the week:

• The Internet of Things has given rise to pervasive connectivity. These devices have become victim to cyberattacks.
• Paramount is the first studio to stop distributing celluloid film. Eight percent of theaters, mostly small independent houses, aren’t equipped to handle digital. They’ll have to come up with $70K for a digital projector for each screen.

And the roundtable topics:

• Booth Babes Don’t Work - Our guest Spencer Chen wrote a piece for TechCrunch about how he discovered that booth babes don’t deliver any benefit. In fact, they’re a detriment to the success of your booth. Here’s a video David Spark shot at ad:tech of booth babes who didn’t have a clue what company they were representing.
• Google Goes Nuts - They purchased NEST and they’re now developing contact lenses.
• Facebook’s 2014 strategy is to unbundle the all-in-one app. How do other developers react to this?

• Check out Steve Hoffman’s Zapitalism, the game Spell Gems, and Founders Space Fusion
• Spencer Chen (and team’s) latest project with Frontback
• Download David Spark’s ebook, "58 Annoying Communications That Must End."