Google is giving its business customers a new way to reach their customers. The company is today starting the rollout of a revamped Google My Business mobile application for iOS and Android that will offer new tools for viewing customer info – including followers, reviews and messages – as well as a way to quickly […]
Source: Google My Business app revamp challenges Facebook Pages | TechCrunch
Facebook continues its Myspace-esque quest of injecting social media with video and music, this time with a TikTok imitator.
Source: Facebook’s Lasso App Tries To Win Teens Back With Music and Video – Rolling Stone
Influencers are so 2014. And microinfluencers are so last week. Now advertisers see value in people with as few as 1,000 followers: the nanoinfluencers.
Source: The Instagrammers Next Door, Plugging Brands for Peanuts (or Shampoo) – The New York Times
The streaming service’s latest original film, the historical epic ‘Outlaw King,’ looks and sounds like a classic awards-friendly drama. Is it meant to be a jewel in the crown of the fastest-growing empire in entertainment or simply a hood ornament?
Source: Now Netflix Wants to Conquer Prestige Movies—and the Oscars. Why? – The Ringer
Graph shows the year-over-year change in user engagement, Daily Active Users/Monthly Active Users (DAU/MAU).
Facebook is dying. At the moment, it’s a slow death, but at some point, it will accelerate. That’s what social networks do. They grow engagement, until they don’t. Interestingly, Facebook blames the drop on engagement on the fact that they are trying to stop people from being able to do the thing people like to do most on Facebook . . . read fake news.
The MacBook Air looks like a great computer. But it’s not what a great computer will look like in the future.
Source: Apple’s iPads Are Officially More Interesting Than Its MacBooks | WIRED
This year, 84.8 million people in the US—or roughly a quarter of the population—will use Snapchat, a 7.1% increase from 2017, according to eMarketer estimates.
Source: How Many People in the US Use Snapchat – eMarketer Trends, Forecasts & Statistics
Game livestreaming has entered into popular culture in a big way. Twitch, a platform that boasts having millions of broadcasters producing programs for tens of millions of visitors each day, offers up all kinds of live content 24/7 to viewers around the world. The site hosts a range of shows, from “variety” streamers who broadcast different types of games to massive esports tournaments that pull in hundreds of thousands of viewers over the course of a weekend. You can also find live broadcasts of people making cosplay outfits, cooking, or just streaming everyday life. Livestreaming has become not just a part of game culture, but of our everyday media worlds more broadly. And while a tremendous amount of creative production is happening on the site, big issues remain regarding the governance, regulation, and monetization of user-generated content. While playing games for an enthusiastic audience may seem like a dream job, it can be incredibly hard work that requires a tremendous amount of self-training, skill-up, and hustle. Livestreamers are not only changing the face of gaming and giving us a glimpse into the future of media production, their one-person production studios—and businesses—operated out of their homes sync up all too well with broader trends around labor, online platforms, and the future of work.
Source: Watch Me Play excerpt: What a workday is like for a professional Twitch streamer.
African American and Asian job applicants who mask their race on resumes seem to have better success getting job interviews, according to research by Katherine DeCelles and colleagues.
Source: Minorities Who ‘Whiten’ Job Resumes Get More Interviews
Game streaming is a long-held dream, but with Project xCloud, Xbox is harnessing the power of Microsoft to make it happen—for real this time.
Source: With Project xCloud, Xbox Wants to Bring Gaming Anywhere You Are | WIRED
JARON LANIER IS ONE of the leading philosophers of the digital age, as well as a computer scientist and avant-garde composer. His previous books include Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality, Who Owns the Future?, and the seminal You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. His latest book bears a self-explanatory title: Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.
Source: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier – Los Angeles Review of Books
Radio streaming service Pandora and popular photo sharing platform Snapchat recently unveiled an exciting new partnership where users of both platforms will be able to share their Pandora listening habits over Snapchat, all in hopes of increasing engagement.
Spotify turns 10 years old this Sunday October 7th. On that day, T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” was the #1 song, Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” the #1 album and a Scandinavian startup had just launched a service that would change music and the music industry forever.
‘Influencing’ online has something to do with money, power, and popularity, with brand identities and likes. But when you get down to it, the influencer is pretty hard to picture.
Netflix alone takes up about 15% of all downstream traffic worldwide.
Source: Video Streaming Now Makes Up 58% Of Internet Usage Worldwide – Digg
Skinny bundles of TV channels have emerged in the last few years as a cheap, streamlined alternative to the bloated and expensive cable packages of old. But those bundles have started to put on a few pounds lately.
Source: At what point is a skinny bundle no longer skinny? – CNN
Tim Berners-Lee has a new venture.
Source: Tim Berners-Lee’s Solid and Inrupt let people control their own data — Quartz
The shares of U.S. adults who say they use the internet, use social media, own a smartphone or own a tablet computer are all nearly identical to the shares who said so in 2016.
Source: Use of internet, social media, digital devices plateaus in US | Pew Research Center
With the photo app’s founders gone, Facebook is likely to change it significantly.
Source: Opinion | Instagram Is Too Big Not to Mess With – The New York Times
Marketers say that users’ fragmented media consumption is disrupting their TV advertising approach.
Source: Are Second Screens Distracting TV Viewers? – eMarketer Trends, Forecasts & Statistics
