Summary: The new year began with an ominous forecast: 12,000 U.S. retail stores are expected to close in 2018, a 33-percent increase from 2017. Hosts Phil Libin, Jessica Collier, and Blaise Zerega examine what this means for jobs, shopping, and the proverbial Main Street full of mom-and-pop stores. They manage to agree that online advertising has never been more annoying and pervasive, and debate whether AI will improve things anytime soon. Listener questions include hyper-personalization and differences between Japanese and American entrepreneurs. Show notes 12,000 retail stores predicted to close in 2018 (00:57) A tsunami of store closings is about to hit the US — and it's expected to eclipse the retail carnage of 2017 (Business Insider) Fellow pour-over kettle (Image credit: Fellow) Why Kurt Vonnegut used a typewriter (Descriptedlines) Intrusive, online advertising (16:58) The Attention Deficit (The Baffler), a review of The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu How privacy will change internet advertising in 2018 (Boomtown) Adblock Plus: “Surf the web without annoying ads!” What is post-purchase marketing? (Iconic Digital) Predictions for 2018 (25:03) Panera Bread (Image credit: Mike Mozart Flickr/Creative Commons) Pantera, the band (Image credit: Pantera/Facebook) Pantera, an Italian sports car (Image credit: Car Photography Tutorials) Listener questions (33:02) YouTube as an example of successful hyper-personalization as discussed in Episode 5 (33:25) Testing Russian Military MRE (YouTube) How are entrepreneurs in Japan different from entrepreneurs in the U.S.? (38:20) We want to hear from you Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and questions for future episodes: Email: hello@all-turtles.com Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website. Thanks for listening
