Jan 23, 2018 | networking
Snap is struggling. Snapchat may have 178 million daily users, but its growth has plateaued while its competitor Instagram continues to expand. As Snap’s stock sinks, the company is trying to address its growth problem. For instance, it has even given up the esoteric, speakeasy-style interface that millennials adored and adopted a more conventional approach to UX that would be more intuitive for anyone to use–especially people over 34, the company hopes.
Now, Snap has announced it will go even further to woo the masses: The company is going to open up the “Discover” contents of its app, even to people who don’t use Snapchat. Starting today, you will be able to share many Snapchat Stories to external social media platforms with a link. On Twitter, that means Snap videos will play natively, right inside the Twitter feed. On most other platforms, or even email and texts, snaps will appear as a link, bringing you to Snapchat’s website to watch the clip.
Source: Snap Makes Its Most Important Design Change
Jan 23, 2018 | algo, trends
Designed by Argodesign and CognitiveScale, Cortex offers a glimpse at the future of accessible AI design tools.
Source: This Is The World’s First Graphical AI Interface
Jan 22, 2018 | audio
Spotify beat back the scourge of streaming album exclusives, and now it’s ready to go public. Here’s what it says about how fans value artists and platforms.
Source: How Spotify Beat Apple to Charting the Future of Music – The Ringer
Jan 22, 2018 | audio
Spotify, which accounts for an estimated 17% of all major label revenue, has rejuvenated the music industry. But it’s own revenue future is far murkier. Spotify, like its competitors, is loosing hundreds of millions each year. And while an eminent public stock listing will replenish reserves, eventually the streamer must become profitable.
Source: Spotify Has 4 Paths To Profitability, None Are Good For Labels, Artists – hypebot
Jan 21, 2018 | algo, trends
-
Google was aggressively pushing its Assistant at CES 2018, with a marketing blitz and a party with a performance by John Legend.
-
Google announced a bunch of new, key partnerships with companies including LG, Sony, and Lenovo to integrate with the Google Assistant.
-
However, Amazon’s Alexa, and its line of Echo smart speakers, still dominate the market, with no signs of slowing down.
Source: Google Assistant versus Amazon Alexa – Business Insider
Jan 20, 2018 | networking
Sho
Shortly before markets closed yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted that the social media company’s News Feed would prioritize news from sources that are “trustworthy, informative, and local.” Facebook users themselves will be responsible for determining what those are.
Source: The New York Times’ stock jumped following Facebook’s “trustworthy” news announcement – Recode
Jan 20, 2018 | audio, networking, trends
- US Facebook users aged 45-54 are spending more time on Facebook, and represent 21% of the total time spent on the platform, more than any other age group.
- The age composition of Snapchat users in the US has become more evenly distributed over the past year, and it appears the company is doing a better job of attracting older users.
- Teens are starting to use a category of social media called “digital hangouts.” These are apps that enable users to video chat with several friends simultaneously. Over 60% of users on Houseparty, one of the most popular digital hangout apps, are under 24 years old.
- LinkedIn is popular among high-income users. Forty-five percent of US adult internet users with an income higher than $75,000 annually are on LinkedIn, making it more popular among this demographic than Instagram (31%), Pinterest (35%), or Twitter (30%).
Source: THE SOCIAL MEDIA DEMOGRAPHICS REPORT: Differences in age, gender, and income at the top platforms – Business Insider
Jan 19, 2018 | networking, trends
The Internet is now the battleground of tribal warfare, where a cacophony of voices fight to establish consensual truths.
Source: Discerning truth in the age of tribal beliefs – The Washington Post
Jan 19, 2018 | audio
Today’s labels actually sit alongside of a new wave of digital opportunity and complexity, far beyond streaming.
Source: Why Digital Music (And Not Just Streaming) Is Booming – hypebot
Jan 19, 2018 | mobile, networking, trends
A new visualization by researcher Rebecca Ricks uses PayPal EU data to demonstrate the inscrutable ways companies share user data.
Source: How Widely Do Companies Share User Data? Here’s A Chilling Glimpse
Jan 19, 2018 | networking
We want more control over our data and user experience, not less.
Source: Instagram’s Latest “Feature” Proves It’s Not Listening
Jan 18, 2018 | mobile
Apple gave us the modern smartphone. Now, it can create a new take on the device by encouraging us to use it more deliberately — and a lot less.
Source: It’s Time for Apple to Build a Less Addictive iPhone – The New York Times
Jan 18, 2018 | mobile
A small group of people have turned their phone screens to shades of gray to make them less stimulating. That’s the opposite of what tech companies want.
Source: Is the Answer to Phone Addiction a Worse Phone? – The New York Times
Jan 17, 2018 | trends
“Over the past two years, we’ve really seen a reframing of New Age practices, very much geared toward a Millennial and young Gen X quotient,” says Lucie Greene, the worldwide director of J. Walter Thompson’s innovation group, which tracks and predicts cultural trends. Callie Beusman, a senior editor at Broadly, says traffic for the site’s horoscopes “has grown really exponentially.” Stella Bugbee, the president and editor-in-chief of The Cut, says a typical horoscope post on the site got 150 percent more traffic in 2017 than the year before.
Source: Why Are Millennials So Into Astrology? – The Atlantic
Jan 16, 2018 | networking
With more than 2 billion users, Facebook’s reach now rivals that of Christianity and exceeds that of Islam. However, the network’s laser focus on profits and user growth has come at the expense of its users, according to one former Facebook manager who is now speaking out against the social platform.
“One of the things that I saw consistently as part of my job was the company just continuously prioritized user growth and making money over protecting users,” the ex-manager, Sandy Parakilas, who worked at Facebook for 16 months, starting in 2011, told NBC News. During his tenure at Facebook, Parakilas led third-party advertising, privacy and policy compliance on Facebook’s app platform.
Source: Facebook is a ‘living, breathing crime scene,’ says one former tech insider – NBC News
Jan 16, 2018 | algo, trends
Yes, it’s driven by greed — but the mania for cryptocurrency could wind up building something much more important than wealth.
Source: Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble – The New York Times
Jan 16, 2018 | audio
Streaming music has put the audience in control, letting music fans choose what, when and where they listen. One of the most dramatic changes that streaming has enabled is the expansion of music from a lean-back, linear experience into something far more engaging and interactive. Now fans lean forward to choose the songs they want, build playlists, comment and share. Lyrics are centre stage in this shift, transforming from static-print-hidden-away-inside-album-sleeve notes, to a dynamic extension of the music itself. Lyrics permeate the streaming music ecosystem, from websites, through YouTube and Vevo to the streaming services themselves.
Source: Free Report: Lyrics Take Centre Stage In Streaming Music | Music Industry Blog
Jan 14, 2018 | algo, trends
Arya Bahmanyar, 28, also know as “Coin Daddy,” at the San Francisco Bitcoin Meetup Holiday Party at the Runway Incubator in San Francisco.
The revolution will be ushered in by young guys who are also cryptocurrency millionaires. Oh wait, they may be broke already.
Source: Everyone Is Getting Hilariously Rich and You’re Not – The New York Times
Jan 14, 2018 | algo, audio
As virtual reality technology continues to grow and develop, becoming increasingly accessible to consumers, its convergence with music is creating a number of exciting opportunities in the industry.
Source: Virtual Reality And Beyond: The Future Of Music Experiences – hypebot
Jan 13, 2018 | networking
In many ways, Facebook’s planned changes to News Feed are a retreat from the online public square the company helped create. They’re a tacit admission that the company’s great news experiment — which made it one of the most successful publishers in the world — failed. And now Facebook wants to go back to an idealized safe space, free of hyperpartisan pages, misinformation, and fake news. But when you’re home to nearly 2 billion humans, no change is ever simple; Facebook moved fast, broke things, and changed the way that the world produces, consumes, and shares information. And changing course more than a decade into one of the most disruptive social experiments ever might prove more than just a little difficult.
Source: Facebook Couldn’t Handle News. Maybe It Never Wanted To.
