1. Medium has expanded it focus from elegantly formatted longform content to dive headlong into the stream. Now users land on a page featuring an open, simpler editor up top, which lowers the barrier to entry and ideally attracts more users.
2. Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing are often presented as competing rather than complementary disciplines. Here’s a solid explanation of why they go together.
3. You might want to think twice before searching for medical information online. An alarming amount of that data is being tracked and shipped to third party corporations. Not all of this use is nefarious, but it speaks to the potential risk of the widespread adoption of free tools, like Google Analytics.
4. Twitter has been experimenting with individual tweet analytics on mobile, and now it’s experimenting on the desktop version. Incremental, sticky user interface improvements are aimed at increasing Twitter’s appeal to a wider range of users, and to entice new ones.
5. It’s difficult to recall life before Uber, let alone before Amazon and Google. Brian Solis offers his take on the next 14 startups that will change our everyday life.

Weekend fun: Tinder for pets? Now there’s an app for that, called “Cute Or Not” — and it’s a shrewd move by Buzzfeed.

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.