Friday 5 — 11.27.2015

By Friday Five

new wordpress admin interfaceIt’s been an odd, three-day work week on the interwebs. We had the #SlackDown maelstrom with an impressive social media save, fake Don DeLillo joined Twitter to announce a fake death, and then a real Jeff Bezos joined Twitter to announce a real disposable rocket launch. Go figure. In more substantive news:

  1. WordPress has disrupted itself, according to founder Matt Mullenweg. The WordPress.com product has been revamped to be faster, slicker, and open source — and to adopt some of the follow and recommend features of platisher Medium.
  2. A report on searching for work in the digital era reveals trends consistent with overall mobile and social behaviors. 53% of young adults have used a smartphone as part of the search, and 13% of social media users say information that they have posted on social media has helped them get a job.
  3. Messaging apps continue to surge, and according to Stephanie Newman, the real growth has only just begun. This article includes some helpful context setting, and a mindblowing average revenue per user number for WeChat.
  4. The tag #longread gets thrown around a lot, but it should definitely be applied to this monograph on the selfie. It’s a worthwhile deep dive into the history and culture of self portraits.
  5. Still thankful? It’s not too late to give to #ThanksgivingforSyria. This web app provides a clean interface to calculate the cost of your meal, and to donate half of that amount to a charity helping refugees.

Weekend fun: Enjoy the exploits of one of the internet’s most prolific trolls. Or let this Google Easter Egg take you back a long time ago to a galaxy far far away.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.

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