Start with the numbers, not the mythology. Pew’s latest report, Americans Social Media Use 2025, puts WhatsApp at about one third of U.S. adults, up from 23 percent in 2021. That is a serious mid-tier platform in a country where everyone assumed SMS and iMessage had permanent squatter’s rights. Drill into Pew’s earlier Americans Social … Read more
When people in the Valley say “everyone in the U.S. is on WhatsApp,” I always go back to the numbers. The truth is more interesting than the hype, and it actually makes WhatsApp look stronger in the segments that matter. Start with Pew. In 2021, about 23% of U.S. adults said they used WhatsApp, according … Read more
Three years ago, ChatGPT lit a fuse. Not just under OpenAI, but under the entire tech industry. Like the iPhone in 2007 or the launch of Skype in 2003, it wasn’t just a product drop — it was a moment. In the span of 36 months, the world moved from wondering what this chatbot thing … Read more
Back in the 80s and early 90s, word processing was where empires were built. WordStar (from MicroPro), MultiMate, WordPerfect, and FullWrite weren’t just names—they were the cornerstone of productivity before the rise of the internet. Today, that same foundational role is being played by platforms like Cursor, Replit, and Loveable. The players are new, but … Read more
You can take the “kid” out of Philly, but you can’t take Philly out of the kid. Today I joined Lou Scheinfeld in being quoted in The Philadelphia Inquirer about “The Flyers’ Loyal Order of the Unducked Puck” in Matt Breen’s great historical piece about the very exclusive society of an elite group of Philadelphia … Read more
We’ve seen our fair share of tech hype cycles over the past two decades: smartphones, the rise of VoIP, the birth of cloud computing. But generative AI isn’t just another entrant on the innovation leaderboard. It has now earned a title no other technology has: the fastest adopted general-purpose technology in U.S. history. Let that … Read more
If you’ve been watching the conversational AI space since it started, you’ve likely noticed something fascinating that’s been happening beneath the surface. While most tech headlines focus on the latest chatbot demo or which Big Tech giant is launching yet another assistant, there’s a more profound shift taking place. It’s another move that reminds me … Read more
Going back to my VoIPWatch roots, I decided to dive into the news surrounding Telkomsel partnership with OpenAI to accelerate AI adoption in Indonesia In Indonesia, AI isn’t arriving as a shiny app; it’s riding in on the back of a national carrier. Telkomsel’s partnership with OpenAI is less about another enterprise deployment and more … Read more
OpenAI’s latest “innovation” by sliding ChatGPT into our group chats feels suspiciously like déjà vu for anyone who remembers the internet before it went glossy. The pitch is shiny: up to 20 humans and one omnipresent AI coexisting in a single conversation, coordinating trips, debating ideas, maybe planning who brings what to Tahoe. But underneath … Read more
OpenAI quietly shipped a very human fix to a very nerdy problem: ChatGPT’s obsession with the em dash. What looked like a punctuation quirk became a cultural tell that something was “written by AI.” TechCrunch reports that, as of now, if you tell ChatGPT not to use em dashes in your custom instructions, it actually … Read more
