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On October 16th, hearing aids for folks with low to moderate hearing loss will now be sold over the counter, no longer requiring testing, visits to the audiologists or a prescription. The influx of major brands like Apple, Bose and probably Amazon (hey Alexa, what did they say?) on the low end portend a major shift in how many of these devices are purchased. Local audiologists, many of whom run local businesses predicated on the high margin hardware & training model, will likely shutter their doors. Will privacy compromises become an issue with this burgeoning market?

Local news journalism is disappearing with massive layoffs and cutbacks. Will automation and ai come to the rescue of local news? How pervasive will this be for a local news creation strategy? Is it just an excuse for the many PE owned news organizations to layoff staff? How will all of this interact with Google Human Content Update that prohibits ai generated news stories. 

Neighborhoods, Facebook’s clone of NextDoor, was recently nuked. Its origins as a clone of NextDoor as a minimum viable product might work sometimes but when you have the installed user base as large as Facebook’s a level of corporate support would have created a strong and successful product. This reflects an on-going pattern at Facebook of a failure to understand and leverage the local opportunity.

The Near Memo is a weekly conversation about Search, Social, and Commerce: What happened, why it matters, and the implications for local businesses and national brands.
Near Memo Ep 81

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