If only there was a crystal ball

There’s an argument going around that if blockchain existed in 2008, Lehman Brothers would still be around today. It goes something like this: the Lehman bankruptcy came from an inability to foresee unusual trends in market trading and divergences from the norm, and the data mining made available with blockchain tech would have given Lehman the ability to see trends as they happened and therefore plan ahead. No effin’ way, says this Forbes opinion piece.

Peace! What is it good for?

Global consensus on peace may never come, but throw some money at a problem and suddenly, there’s agreement. The Financial Stability Board gathered around a fire in Tokyo on Thursday and quickly came to terms on categorizing fintech and assessing its risks. Several soundbites came from major players in that board, including one saying the tipping point for disruption for banks had already come in China and isn’t far off in Europe and the United States.

Kicking off your content

In a world of seven billion people, it’s pretty hard to get your content to stand out among the rest. It’s even more difficult to retain someone’s attention once you’ve captured it. But one article reassures by suggesting that there’s no perfect recipe for success, using Roberto Carlos’ legendary free kick against France in 1997 as a launchpad. You think Carlos knew what he was doing? Yes, he did. But did he know something the others didn’t? No, probably not. He just managed to hit that magnificent strike, and with practice and knowledge, you can too.

Technology without a face

Following that last point, a new report estimates that some $40 billion will be spent on content marketing in the United States by the time 2016 is up. That’s one quarter of the estimated $161 billion being spent on U.S. marketing and advertising, and a significant chunk of that on digital. But with these new opportunities come fresh challenges which vary by industry: trying to track KPIs, adblock technology and perhaps most telling, a decrease in face-to-face contact in conjunction with over-digitization.

SEO going mainstream

For the first time in four years, SEO jobs are on the decline – both in quantity and salary. Several reasons have been pitched to explain the downward trend, which is actually just a 7% drop from 2015 to 2016 in the United States’ top 20 cities. Reason number one? Perhaps existing employees are already becoming well-versed so SEO specialists are no longer needed. But fret not, dear SEO specialists: your primary skill set is still very much in vogue.

Until next week, find another way to predict the future…