1. Facebook has already established itself as a formidable video-serving rival to YouTube. This week, with the help of its Oculus acquisition, Facebook launched 360 degree videos — click and drag the video above to see what is now possible. This interactivity is terrific for all kinds of immersive experiences from tours to product demos, as well as myriad off-label uses.
2. Digital marketing, and then the rise of programmatic advertising, promised marketers a seeming nirvana: the ability to reach a unimaginably large volume of very specifically defined audiences. But reality is more complicated: here’s a great explanation of the murky world of bots, click fraud, and fake traffic.
3. Starbucks is known for its forward-thinking digital approaches. Their latest mobile order and pay initiative (MOP?) is designed to defeat ‘line anxiety’, which is what you experience seeing 12 other caffeine addicts between you and your morning joe.
4. Tracking how people get to your site is important — yet many organizations don’t have sophisticated analytics software in place. Buffer has released a basic guide to UTM codes to help you parse that traffic.
5. As internet access rises, many marketing departments are migrating to web-only surveys. Pew analyzes the audience you miss with a survey reaching  89% rather than 100%.

HUBweek hiatus: I’m taking a two-week break for HUBweek, which will have no shortage of amazing sessions on digital topics including the state of the podcast, ventures brewed in an Innovation Lab, and whether social media is ruining politics. Back Friday, October 16.

Weekend fun: Curious how much longer you have before being shuffled off this mortal coil? This bouncy animation uses Social Security data to calculate the likelihood you will live to see next year. If that’s too grim, enjoy the internet’s best GIFs in a music video.

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.