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Blake Shaw

Senior Director of Engineering, Reddit · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

scientistengineerexecutive@metablake ↗metablake.com ↗

Blake Shaw is Senior Director of Engineering at Reddit and former Head of Data Science at Foursquare. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University specializing in machine learning and network models.

10statements → 5claims → 0claims resolved → 4.4/5average certainty → 1.3/5average debate potential → 3said about them ↓

1 not yet assessed 4 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 assertions · 1 insight · 4 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 4 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Blake argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: speaking style how? →

275 words/min while actually speaking · 31.6 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Blake Shaw: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,485 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Blake Shaw said on the MAD Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Not checkable as stated
Foursquare data reveals 73% of venue visits are to previously visited places
“We've seen that 73% of the time a person is going to a place that they've already been to, or 62% of the time they're going to a place that someone in their social network has been to before.”
Blake Shaw Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 9:19 Blake Shaw, Foursquare // Data Driven NYC 20 // Nov 2013
Insight
Effective location machine learning requires mapping raw coordinates to contextual venues
“You can't do machine learning with lat-longs.”
Blake Shaw Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 10:14 Blake Shaw, Foursquare // Data Driven NYC 20 // Nov 2013
Disclosure
Foursquare commits to not sharing raw user location data with third parties
“We're not going to share your data with anybody without, you know we're just not going to share your data.”
Blake Shaw Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 15:08 Blake Shaw, Foursquare // Data Driven NYC 20 // Nov 2013
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Faking Foursquare accounts with verified GPS trails and social graphs remains difficult
“It's really hard to fake a user with a, like, verified GPS trail going to a business, like, and having these real friends on a social network. You know, like, that's just, it's a very hard thing to fake at the moment, although I, I'm upset to say that, because…”
Blake Shaw Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 19:52 Blake Shaw, Foursquare // Data Driven NYC 20 // Nov 2013
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Foursquare reports 40 million registered users and 4.5 billion total check-ins
“We're, we have over forty million registered users. We're aware of fifty-five million places all over the world. We've collected 4.5 billion check-ins. And we get about six million check-ins per day.”
Blake Shaw Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 1:12 Blake Shaw, Foursquare // Data Driven NYC 20 // Nov 2013
Disclosure
Foursquare launches automated location recommendations that require no manual check-ins
“The idea, right, is you walk into a venue, and without having to do anything, you get a notification like this on your phone.”
Blake Shaw Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 5:00 Blake Shaw, Foursquare // Data Driven NYC 20 // Nov 2013
Disclosure
Foursquare triggers automated notifications only when users enter unfamiliar territory
“You know, walk into a neighborhood or a place, and we make sure that you don't miss the most important information about the place that you're at, but only if you're in unfamiliar territory.”
Blake Shaw Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 5:43 Blake Shaw, Foursquare // Data Driven NYC 20 // Nov 2013
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Foursquare claims its background contextual notifications use under 1% battery hourly
“Less than one percent per hour is the, is what it does.”
Blake Shaw Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 6:44 Blake Shaw, Foursquare // Data Driven NYC 20 // Nov 2013
Assertion Not checkable as stated
18% of users shown a Foursquare Explore recommendation check in within days
“With our recommendation product, Explore, 18% of people who see a result in Explore check in there within the first three days.”
Blake Shaw Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 13:21 Blake Shaw, Foursquare // Data Driven NYC 20 // Nov 2013
Disclosure
Foursquare built NLP models to extract venue recommendations and sentiment from tips
“We've built, you know, sort of NLP models that can read You know, text and extract these key recommendations and figure out their sentiment.”
Blake Shaw Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 11:48 Blake Shaw, Foursquare // Data Driven NYC 20 // Nov 2013

The other half of the tape: Blake Shaw's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 3 episodes on the MAD Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Matt Turck 2Adam Laiacano 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011222013201420152016episodesmentions
0122013201420152016episodes it came up in
000.51122013201420152016episodesmentions per episode
2016 1 mention in 1 episode
2013 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Blake Shaw, Foursquare // Data Driven NYC 20 // Nov 2013 Dec 5, 2013 15m
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