1. Shopping on your mind today? Jeremaiah Owyang posted Ten Trends for the Progressive Retailer. Not sure how far “purpose beyond profits” will go, but some very interesting ideas here about how companies will use data about customers to reward behaviors, and the impact of sharing as a business model.
2. Betaworks, the tech studio that brought us useful services like Chartbeat and bloglovin as well as sinister time wasters like dots, is raising another 20 million. Betaworks has always supported great ideas and terrific design in nascent companies. This round may allow the studio to do more with its existing adolescent companies like bit.ly and Digg.
3. A new report from Ovum determines “social messaging” is big and getting bigger quickly, with over 2B users by the end of 2014. These messaging apps are acquiring users, growing time in-service through expansion into games and payments, and finding paths to monetization. This growth and user behavior change have implications for both legacy “desktop-first” social networks and SMS providers.
4. For years companies and pundits have analyzed Twitter as an input to understand public opinion and predict election results. Now the South Korean Intelligence Service is alleged to have posted more than 1.2 million tweets to sway a presidential election. Not the first instance of astroturfing, but what some are calling “a systematic and massive intervention in elections”.
5. Testing is the least sexy word in any digital development process. You’ll pack the house for a presentation of mood boards or a design review, but your audience vanishes when the conversations turns to usability, accessibility, or load time. Here’s a practical breakdown of useful testing considerations.

Weekend fun: Check out ten hilarious Twitter feeds to be thankful for. My own addition, especially in this holiday season of specious, multi-column trends pieces: The Times is On It (@NYTOnIt).

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.