This week, regular Software Defined Talk listeners get a free episode of our members only podcast. If you like this, sign-up to get access to these extra episodes, about every week. We do a deep reading and analysis of various types of tech content, marketing, and other ephemera from press releases, books, presentations, and white papers. Plus, as with this episode, we just talk about tech ideas and news in general, in the course of being a critic.

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Everyone’s freaking out about tech companies. What they mean by “tech companies,” of course is the combination of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, and maybe Netflix. They (mostly) mean companies who are using tech to disrupt their industries (media, retail, entertainment) and using the business models of tech companies. The line is, to be sure, fuzzy, but these are not companies that make their money from selling hardware, software, or even IT services (like Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, Pivotal, etc.).

This week, we look at one write-up of this freaking out from The Economist. They also have a smaller version in their “Leaders” section. As always, there are much more extensive, detailed show notes available as well.

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