I've been talking about a "meta-app" for ages. It looks like China may have found it in WeChat. We in the Western world have been monitoring the success of TenCent's WeChat with growing interest. Who would have thought that a simple chat interface could be the killer app of the future?

It would seem convenient for agency holding companies to sow some seeds of doubt about the integrity of Ebiquity, which is heavily involved in the U.S. media transparency investigations. So Ebiquity's subsidiary Firm Decisions has been summoned into court by Group M, WPP's media buying agency.

To quickly review 30 years of advertising history: Targeting was sloppy. Then, it was better. Now, maybe, it's too good?

In May, the COO of the World Bank noted that, "For the first time in history, the number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen below 10%." Surely a graph of change in incomes over time will reflect these positive trends - right?

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum, or in this case the Spin Board, last week: My column touched a nerve. Apparently people are very opinionated when it comes to salespeople. You either agreed with, or were diametrically opposed to, my piece on what makes a bad salesperson.

Last Thursday, Yahoo held its annual shareholder meeting, during which CEO Marissa Mayer dealt the company a doubled-down kiss of death. She said that the goals of the board were fully aligned with one clear priority: "delivering shareholder value to all of you." She further noted that, when dealing with the divesture of all that once was Yahoo, she's "been very heartened by the level of interest in Yahoo. It validates our business processes as well as our achievements to date." It's basically the same as the butcher saying, "This cow is no longer viable as a cow, so I'm …

In his excellent new book, "The Inevitable," Kevin Kelly describes 12 technological forces that are shaping our future and which we'd be wise to accept and align with, rather than fight. The fun starts when you cross-pollinate the different branches to see what might turn up, e.g., a Billboard chart of the top songs created by AIs (the HAL 100?), or using VR to visit an actual war zone or the surface of a comet. This is, in a sense, what good startups do, building new products from current tech in alignment with future trends. Mobile shopping seems like another …