Stephen O'Donnell

Media, tech, marketing & creative things. Views my own, unless you share them 😉

[Keir Starmer @Keir_Starmer]

Football should bring people together, not shut them out.

For the first time since the competition began, fans won’t be able to watch the Champions League final for free. That’s not right.

This is bigger than wanting to watch Arsenal in this historic final. It’s bigger than one club.

Hardworking people shouldn’t have to fork out for a subscription to watch this match.

I urge TNT Sports to reconsider and make the final next Saturday free to watch.

[Stephen O'Donnell @StephenOD]

Sounds like a brand marketing catastrophe waiting to happen.

[Gaurav @gauravsbuilding]

Today we're introducing Claude Code for Marketing.

In one prompt, Fastlane deploys social media accounts, generates viral content, and posts everything for you automatically.

This is beyond insanity.

[Stephen O'Donnell @StephenOD]

@henrywinter Must be one of, if not the oldest player in the tournament…?

[Scotland National Team @ScotlandNT]

Our Scotland. You’re an easy country to love…

#FIFAWorldCup | @FIFAWorldCup

[Stephen O'Donnell @StephenOD]

@ManUtd O’DONNELL 7

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke explains Goodhart’s law and why he doesn’t like KPIs or OKRs

“Goodhart’s law is real. The moment a metric becomes a goal, it’s no longer a useful metric… No metric by itself is a complete heuristic for a complex business. There’s a million different tensions in a company, and you can’t keep all of them in harmony by optimizing for one thing.”

For this reason, Shopify doesn’t use KPIs or OKRs. But as Tobi explains, this doesn’t mean they don’t value data and metrics.

“We are extremely data informed. We have invested enormous amounts of money and time into systems that give us basically everything at our fingertips… But what Shopify attempts to do is just not over-fit for what’s quantifiable.”

People love optimizing for highly-quantifiable things because there’s immediate gratification that comes from seeing a number go up. But Tobi thinks that the most important aspects of a product are rarely quantifiable:

“The overlap of the most valuable things you can do with a product and the things that happen to be fully quantifiable are like maybe 20%. Which leaves 80% of a value space unaddressable by the people who only look at quantifiable things.”

He continues:

“Shopify is comfortable with unquantifiable things like taste, quality, passion, love, hate… The sort of deep satisfaction that a craftsperson feels when they’ve done a job well is actually a better proxy if you allow it to be.”

They then have robust analytics systems that tell the company if something’s wrong or a new rollout breaks something.

“We think about it as a cockpit for a pilot. The decisions are still made by pilots, and we think this leads to better results… I think there needs to be more acceptance in business of unquantifiable things… And then metrics take a support function.”

Source: @lennysan (Feb 2025)

[Tim Rocktäschel @_rockt]

Excited to co-found Recursive (@recursive_si) with an exceptional team in London and SF to create AI that experiments on how to safely improve itself, turning compute into knowledge that accumulates in an open-ended process of endless, automated scientific discoveries.

[The Touchline | 𝐓 @TouchlineX]

🚨 𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚: Arsene's Wenger new offside rule has been APPROVED and will be used in the Canadian Premier League!

A player will ONLY be offside if he has FULLY passed the last defender, so it won't be decided based on a body part anymore.

If succesful, the offside rule could change across the entire world from the 2027/28 season on.

[Scotland National Team @ScotlandNT]

History hitting the wall 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

🤝 @adidasUK

[Deadline @DEADLINE]

Stellan Skarsgård explains to Bryan Cranston at a Q&A in London for ‘Sentimental Value,’ how he didn’t need to read the script by Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt before agreeing to do it,nor would he need to read those penned by Lars von Trier or Martin Scorsese because “great” filmmakers are “rare”

[Stephen O'Donnell @StephenOD]

Goodness. Looking forward to hearing this sung at Old Trafford Sunday 🤣

[The 1958 @The__1958]

As announced we protest against this dysfunctional co-ownership before Fulham.

But you have got to watch this! 😂

Full press statement tomorrow.

The 1958🇾🇪

[ScreenSkills @UKScreenSkills]

ScreenSkills has launched a major national survey to map current & emerging #skillsgaps across the #screenindustries. We’re calling on all those involved in crewing-up/hiring to share their insights and directly inform how we support & train the workforce: https://t.co/Ol2aEabOER

[Stephen O'Donnell @StephenOD]

#ScreenSkills has launched an industry wide survey on shortages and gaps in the screen industries. If you’re involved in hiring or crewing-up, your insight is invaluable to strengthen and upskill the talent pipeline vital to your projects. Take part here: https://t.co/5Fw1LLW4O7

[Stephen O'Donnell @StephenOD]

@ammandev Exciting times 🤣

[The Writers' Guild @TheWritersGuild]

As the PM prepares to meet President Trump during the state visit, WGGB has joined over 70 of the UK’s leading creators + creative orgs in signing an open letter demanding the Gov explains its failure to protect the rights of UK copyright holders

https://t.co/MEzZIyzoYs

[Stephen O'Donnell @StephenOD]

‘Something has to change and you don’t change 22 player’… Sounds like he’s resigning in international window.

[ITV Football @itvfootball]

"I think the players spoke really loudly about what they want today."

"I just want to apologise to our fans."

"Something has to change and you're not going to change 22 players again."

Ruben Amorim speaks with @gabrielclarke05 after defeat to Grimsby

#MUFC | #CarabaoCup

[Stephen O'Donnell @StephenOD]

Revealing. Šeško wears 30 at RB Leipzig

[(fan) Frank 🧠🇾🇪 @FrankEra_]

🚨 | OFFICIAL:

Diego Leon will wear the number #30 for Manchester United! 🇵🇾🙌

[Stephen O'Donnell @StephenOD]

@EwenDCameron Well done 👏 Ewen

[Royal Television Society @RTS_media]

In 2005, YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded the platform’s first ever video. 20 years and 20 billion views later, @Caspar_Lee and Evan Shapiro explain how it became a force to be reckoned with

https://t.co/FbeW6MNpnz