As one particularly rough week shows, the video platform’s content moderation efforts have become more haphazard and inconsistent than ever.
Source: YouTube’s Content Moderation Has Become an Inconsistent Mess | WIRED
Instead of a traditional public offering, the streaming music service will pursue a direct listing of its shares, which will be traded under the ticker symbol SPOT.
Source: Spotify Files to Go Public on the New York Stock Exchange – The New York Times
Stand aside Emeril Lagasse and Rachel Ray, there’s a new line of influencer cookware that the Instagram generation is going to *heart emoji*. But’s not a tie-in with a celebrity cook. It’s by Buzzfeed. And it’s on sale exclusively at Walmart.
Readers shouldn’t be expected to constantly vet fake news. The onus is on companies to use visual indicators to help save readers from mental manipulation, writes Stephanie Nguyen, a user experience designer formerly of the U.S. Digital Service at the White House.
VRChat is a surreal virtual meeting space that lets people socialize, take classes, create art, and play games — all from the comfort of your own home.
Source: VRChat: What it’s like using the online meeting place of the 21st century – Business Insider
That depth sensor is good for more than lame animoji.
Source: A Wild UI Experiment With The iPhone X’s Front-Facing Camera
As automated advertising has matured, the structure of programmatic auctions has become more confusing. In 2018, marketers are looking to break through the clutter to understand what’s going on under the hood.
Source: Understanding Programmatic Auction Pricing Is a Major Priority for Marketers – eMarketer
Google’s new Clips camera uses artificial intelligence to find cute moments with kids and pets. Is that helpful or terrifying?
Vero has been around since 2015, but within the last week, the app has suddenly exploded as the Instagram-Facebook-Snapchat-alternative of 2018. Currently topping the iOS App Store, Vero’s servers are being crushed under the weight of new users–though it’s unclear exactly how many. Worth noting: The company’s own message of freedom and transparency might be hypocritical at best.
So what’s driving Vero’s apparent growth? For one thing, the company is brilliantly playing on the anger many people feel at social media companies by making promises aimed at many of the public’s biggest qualms with giants like Facebook. For instance, Vero says it will never have ads. It won’t sell your data to advertisers, either. And it will never reorder your timeline via an algorithm optimized for engagement. Instead, it plans to charge you a subscription–eventually. Facebook makes about $6/quarter off its users from advertising. Vero’s premise seems to be that you pay it directly, instead.
Source: Vero Is Bad Design–Except For The One Way It’s Brilliant
Amazon is staging a contest called the Alexa Prize—a mad dash toward an outlandish goal: Cook up a bot capable of small talk.
Source: Alexa Prize: Amazon’s Battle to Bring Conversational AI Into Your Home | WIRED
E-commerce videos are a precision advertising tool which could put the nail in the coffin of traditional television adverts.
Source: How e-commerce video advertising will strike yet another blow to commercial TV
“What’s all the fuss about?” Curiosity over why people are protesting the Snapchat redesign seems to have inspired a new wave of users to try the app. Snapchat downloads in the…
Source: Despite backlash to the redesign, Snapchat downloads are up | TechCrunch
No surprise: Alexa might not be the most impartial shopping tool. While this may not be the biggest problem facing brands upping their digital presence, as voice searching—and purchasing—becomes more widespread, voice-search rankings could be more of an issue.
Source: Brands’ Voices May Be Muffled on Amazon Echo | eMarketer Retail
$100 billion. That’s how much U.S. consumers will spend online for food and beverages by 2025, according to new a new report from Nielsen and the Food Marketing Institute.
Source: Inside the FMCG Industry’s $100 Billion Path to Online Maturation
Some found love; others learned valuable lessons about time stamps.
Source: Opinion | You Up? College in the Age of Tinder – The New York Times
Why Russia’s Facebook ads were less important to Trump’s victory than his own Facebook ads.
Source: How Trump Conquered Facebook Without Russian Ads | WIRED
Familiar beauty on the outside, more power and a better camera on the inside.
Source: Samsung Galaxy S9: Features, pricing, release date – Business Insider
In addition to delivering big profits to labels and publishers, playlists are helping new and unknown artists succeed in some profound ways. From popular independent playlists curated in dorm rooms to Spotify’s insanely successful Discover Weekly feature, playlists are becoming a major way for listeners to learn about new music. The music industry has a lot to gain from this new trend, but is there a downside to our ever-increasing penchant for playlists?
Source: The Music Industry’s Playlist Culture And Our Attention Spans | ReverbNation Blog
The internet has sparked a new kind of economy, as creators find new ways to directly reach their audiences and customers. Services like Etsy, WordPress, and Amazon’s Twitch don’t have a lot in common, except for the fact that they give creative people ways to make a living doing what they love.
Source: How much people make from YouTube, Etsy, Instagram: CHARTS – Business Insider
Visits to websites that originated on Facebook took a nosedive in the second half of 2017.
Source: Facebook’s newsfeed change hurts publishers: CHARTS – Business Insider
