Lord Zuckerberg, Tom Wolfe's How to Identify Content and Origin

As of today, we have officially decided to shut down the “Content Updates” series. But fear not — you'll still be able to edit cute animal pictures and smart one-kitties. Every Friday, we'll instead round up the best (relevant) articles we've read that week, with a quick recap of why we feel compelled to. share them.

Since we typically don't cover TCS news, a lot of our story ideas come from understanding how the worlds of content marketing, media, advertising, journalism, and pop culture fit together like how. We constantly share links in our team's Slack channel, links that spark debates, impact what we write on TCS, and shape the way we think about content marketing. Generally speaking.

Below, you'll find articles covering everything from the new movie by Steve Jobs to Tom Wolfe's weird career path to (three!) Facebook articles. We hope you will get as much benefit from them as we did.

Chosen by Sam Slaughter, VP of Content

It's exciting and inspiring to see how one of my favorite journalists got started. I love how he was completely directionless and didn't know what he wanted to do until his early 30s, and then his career basically took off after an evening of writer panic.

It's a good lesson to work hard, but also to know when to recognize and accept luck. Make sure you read the anecdote at the end about how he was invited to the Black Panther party at Leonard Bernstein's, which kicked off his career. And if nothing else, Wolfe is the best example of how great white clothes are all the time.

Chosen by Jordan Teicher, senior editor

Although Apple seems to hate the idea of an upcoming movie by Steve Jobs , the movie is essentially a piece of branded content. Apple played no role in the production of the film, but judging by the trailers and early reviews, it will still appeal to consumers on behalf of the company. Think of it as high-quality promotion of genius culture. And it turns out that the plot about starting production could be even more dramatic than the movie itself.

This article deals with the intense struggle the film's creators had to go through just to finish it, not the kind of work that would be nominated for a National Magazine Award, but I think it is. is a critical look at how coil brands regret safe choices. It's not just Apple that creates unnecessary distance with Steve Jobs which Sony regretfully abandoned the project in the end because it's about cost, ego, and talent.

Let it be a cautionary tale for marketers and decision makers everywhere.

Chosen by Dillon Baker, editorial collaborator

This section tackles one of the biggest questions that have been plaguing my brain since I started working at Contently a year ago, which is: What the hell is this whole content marketing thing?

That seems like an odd question to me, but I believe few (if any!) can answer it definitively. And if they have an answer, that in itself is questionable. Because after more than 5 years of content marketing officially becoming “a thing”, people still seem to define it in their own way. Is it an advertisement? Does it publish trademarks? Is it just anything like editorials but really marketing? What type of content marketing is not advertising? These are surprisingly difficult questions to answer.

All I know, despite the confusion, is that the term “content marketing” is going nowhere.

Chosen by Joe Lazauskas, editorial director

If you're interested in what media, technology, or just the Internet will look like in five years, then profile Wired This on Facebook Messenger is a must-read.

As I explained on TV earlier this week (SHAMELESS PLUG), chat apps are everything outside of the Western world: they're how people communicate, use media, shop, order food, bank, etc. a super nifty way to structure the web. Chat applications are still underdeveloped in the West, but that is rapidly changing.

This piece does a great job revealing Facebook's plans for the future and how the Messenger platform can replace mobile operating systems and app ecosystems as we know it. Get ready for Emperor Zuckerberg.

Chosen by Shane Snow, CCO and Co-Founder

Tom Junod writes the best profiles of any magazine writer out there. File his about Elon Musk a few years ago it was great. This time, he completely deconstructed Mark Zuckerberg from his conversations on Facebook. It's a clever way of writing, but also a fascinating analysis of one of the most powerful — and, it turns out, boring — people in modern media.

Chosen by Jessica Black, Marketing Manager

It turns out that everything on the web is ephemeral. That's good news when it comes to high school prom photos, but bad news if you're a journalist who has spent months researching a Pulitzer Prize-winning story only to watch it evaporate from space. and time. Trigger warning: Don't read if the idea of your life's work disappearing from existence frustrates you.

Chosen by Esme Cribb, Editorial Trainee

Facebook's human-supervised and supported virtual personal assistant M is part of the Messenger "ecosystem". It's not just trying to change the way you use the Internet — it's trying to make the transition between interaction and instruction seamless.

Also, this tweet is embedded in an almost Turing'd me paragraph.