1. Can’t find the right words for your tweet? GIF search is rolling out to Twitter users for both tweets and direct messages. Giphy’s new $55M funding round seems to confirm that GIFs are taking over the world.
2. In mid-April, Facebook will open up Instant Articles, a format that loads articles within the app more quickly than traditional links, to all publishers. Poynter notes the opportunity that a “distributed content model” creates for publishers, but the analytics implications are daunting.
3. Avid Slack-er? Here are some ways to make the real-time communication tool even more useful with bots. I tried Meekan (h/t Mike Petroff) but it wasn’t as practical for calendars vulnerable to frequent meeting shuffling.
4. Usability principles remain relevant as we move into a world of voice interaction systems. This overview covers the most important design principles of voice UX, and sadly also reveals that Alexa is not the brightest bulb in the box.
5. Dao Nguyen, publisher of Buzzfeed, dispenses a lot of wisdom on the intersection of data, intuition, and creativity. This interview is worth the read for anyone in digital publishing charged with balancing competencies and cultures on the business and editorial sides.

Weekend fun: Retro fans, delight! You can now recreate 1977 by watching Star Wars as restored from 35mm prints, thanks to Team Negative 1.  Alternatively, celebrate Star Trek’s upcoming 50th anniversary by flying your USS Enterprise drone.

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.