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Lessons from the failed chatbot revolution

“… and 5 industries where the tech is making a comeback.” This free report from CB Insights nails the story of the crazy hype and why some chatbots are succeeding. Read More

Chatbot shopping by age

This page is designed to last

Jeff Huang, in his Manifesto for Preserving Content on the Web, asks “How do we make web content that can last and be maintained for at least 10 years?”. It doesn’t sound like much of a challenge, but as someone with a 20+ year old website he didn’t need to convince me. Keeping up with varying life-cycles of web development tools, design trends, and links to sites no longer functioning, is not for everyone. And depending on platforms designed for non-developers is too risky for 10+ years. There is no simple solution but Professor Huang’s article has some suggestions for both tool developers and site managers. Read More

Open federal grant data is the default in the U.S.

Congress has quietly made an open, license-free identifier for the recipients of federal grants the default option for agencies in the United States. While truly open grant data is not mandatory, every agency must now decide whether to use non-proprietary identifiers or not. Read More

83% of marketers rip-and-replace a martech app each year

Scott Brinker highlights findings of a recent research report (link to full report included) on what martech applications are being replaced and why. While 83% will sound scary if you’re a vendor, remember how many martech apps there are. Also, about half the replacements were for custom in-house systems. (CMS vendors will be relieved to hear that only 4% of commercial CMSs were replaced, lower than most categories). Scott also notes that better integration was tied with better features and cost reduction as the top reason for replacement. Of course better integration directly affects operational costs and makes additional features possible. Read More

Also…

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. We focus on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. We do not sell or share personal data.