Perry

Hewitt

Tag: mobile

  • Friday 5 — 10.18.2013

    Friday 5 — 10.18.2013

    1. ngram social network wildcardGoogle Ngram Viewer allows you to search and plot words appearing in books from 1800-2008 — and has just rolled out some new features. The new wildcard feature allows you to find which words appear alongside others. Above, I’ve plotted which noun appears most frequently after “social network.” From about 1990 on, the answer is “analysis” as mapping social connections becomes more an established internet-era discipline.
    2. Facebook announced that teens 13-17 will have the ability to share posts publicly, as they do on platforms like Twitter. Unlike Twitter, Facebook has a real names policy that may result in more real world consequences for teens.
    3. Lots of high stakes digital project failures in the media this week, from the heavily covered healthcare.gov to the buggy first release of the college admissions Common App. These projects are complex, with data and system integration challenges, multiple stakeholders, and large, public constituencies.
    4. When do Americans use mobile apps? News app usage peaks around 7am, while entertainment and games get big at 9 pm. And it turns out we’re surprisingly heavy consumers of mobile apps throughout the weekend.
    5. As the world goes mobile, so does YouTube. Mobile on Youtube is now 40% of all video views from 25%  in 2012 and 6% in 2011. Starting in November, an upcoming YouTube mobile release will allow users to save and watch videos offline.

    Weekend fun: Conquer your acrophobia and bring Peg Man down to Earth by playing Map Dive.

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

  • Try it: News visualized with Topicly

    Try it: News visualized with Topicly

    As Flipboard collects another $50M on a $800M valuation, traditional news publishers are experimenting with more visual displays of the news. The Washington Post’s Topicly is largely algorithm-driven, full-bleed display of news stories by volume. Editors plan to incorporate more social media from the web as well as from the Post’s own journalists.

    topicly

    A few observations:

    • This is a good example of desktop user interface informed by mobile — see how the three horizontal line icon is rapidly becoming a standard meaning “expand this” on the desktop web.
    • More context and functionality in the interface (what do those numbers in the expanded menu mean?) might be helpful to understand what you’re seeing. Is it sheer volume or is there a measure of resonance? Is there any editorial hand?
    • Sites like this are tough beasts to feed with visual content: see how some of the images are pixellated when you click through.
    • This is a revenue experiment, as well as a visual one. There is a site-level sponsorship at top left in addition to interspersed native advertising. Sites looking for sustainable models will continue to experiment with sponsorship of specific features and functionality, like Citi sponsoring the launch of Quartz’s annotations.
  • Friday 5 — 9.20.2013

    Friday 5 — 9.20.2013

    1. Upworthy, a curated service providing a “steady stream of important and irresistibly shareable stuff” received another $8M. Here’s the post.
    2. Irresistible stuff of a more tangible nature remains wildly popular at Pinterest, which now claims 70M users. Unsurprisingly, Pinterest announced ads are coming in the form of promoted pins.
    3. Measurement is beginning to catch up with the way we consume media today — which is less about traditional TV time than mobile screen time. As of September 2014, Nielsen will include TV viewing on a smartphone or tablet to capture new viewing behaviors.
    4. Are we suffering from the Dribbblisation of design? Meaning, are we too focused on the superficial look and not enough on the ugly work of designing systems for the job to be done?
    5. So long, skeuomorphism: iOS 7 came out this week, ushering in an era of flat design. The update improves multitasking, access to settings, and even lets Siri be a guy. Not every iOS app is updated yet, but here’s a rundown of some apps that made the most of the relaunch.

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Please let me know what I’ve missed in the comments below.

  • Mobile mandate

    Mobile mandate

    In case the persistent drumbeat of blog posts, newsletters, and conferences underscoring the mobile mandate were not enough, here’s some compelling new data from Pew:

    pew phones online

    63% of cell owners are what Pew calls “cell internet users,” people who access the internet via phone. The number has doubled from 31% since 2009. See also that email and internet use were equal in 2009, and by 2013 internet is 13 percentage points higher. Presumably, as cell internet users move beyond email, they have higher expectations for mobile web and native app experiences.

    The report also includes recent demographic data. If your organization is focused on 18-29 year olds, take note: 85% of them use their phone to go online.

    So what are digital publishers doing about the rise of mobile internet use? Last week, Digiday asked publishers what mobile-first meant to them. Definitions varied, with emphasis on interface design or short-form content. All concurred that optimizing for mobile is a core element, not an option. Buzzfeed, for one, has seen mobile traffic rise from 20% to 40% over the last 12 months, and predicts an increase to 80% as networks improve.

    Now you’ve seen the numbers and read the anecdotes — what can you do to improve your mobile readiness today? Here’s one idea, taken from Facebook’s successful shift of emphasis to mobile by turning off the desktop version internally. The next time your agency shows you design comps, or your team shows you a prototype, ask that it be demoed only on a handheld. At the end of the meeting, during the last five minutes, have them show you the desktop version. [tweetable]It’s time to flip the focus toward mobile [/tweetable].

    The separate mobile use case is dead; the universal mobile mandate is here. Digital leaders need to work with their agencies and teams to flip the process: think, build, and ship mobile-first.

  • Friday 5 — 09.13.2013

    Friday 5 — 09.13.2013

    1. So, the iPhone 5C/5S launched and turned out to be more evolutionary than revolutionary. Is Apple more about fashion than electronics these days?
    2. Infographics are everywhere, and their stepchildren “snackables” are likely clogging your social media stream. “Get me an infographic” has replaced “Make me a viral video” as the new top-down, digital/social mandate. Here are five questions executives should answer before requesting an infographic.
    3. The best way to make compelling and shareable content has been a battle between two camps: the automated and optimized for search crew versus the heavily human editorial approach. Here’s how Techmeme is striving for the right mix by having humans power the headlines.
    4. How are adult smartphone users using location services? According to Pew 74% of them are lost like me, and use their phone to get directions or other information based on their current location. While more users report activating location as part of their mobile social posts, fewer are using explicit geosocial services like Foursquare to check in.
    5. If you were planning to tweet your way to the top, a position with a social media title may not be the right path. Turns out social media jobs have slowed because social is everyone’s job now. A savvy digital team will turn to empowering the enterprise rather than hoarding the know-how.

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Please let me know what I’ve missed in the comments below.

  • The best news email knows mobile, adds voice

    What do effective news headlines emails have in common? First of all, they’re mobile in design and content. Here’s a daily email received yesterday from the New York Times:

    mobile NYT email

    This email arrived at 4:43 a.m., when I’m still about four hours from a laptop encounter. How could this headlines email perform better for mobile? Start with the subject line — this version teases only one story, so it’s a single-shot opportunity to grab a reader who’s thumbing through all the early morning messages. Next, look at all that navigation taking up valuable screen space. The navigation narrates the static departmental structure of the institution rather than engaging the reader, and the links don’t work on mobile. And that big CUSTOMIZE? It goes to a page designed for the desktop. Finally, as the user scrolls through the ~12 screens of content, nearly every story has a thumbnail image, many of which are extraneous or tough to parse at that size.

    [tweetable hashtags=”#news”]This email feels like a missed opportunity for what’s arguably the strongest brand in news.[/tweetable] Why not optimize for mobile readers who are likely stumbling to their first cup of coffee? There’s a second, larger opportunity to add editorial voice to this message. Don’t give me a laundry list of the entire Times — I’ll get that on a tablet or laptop, later. Instead, tell me what someone smart about today’s news thinks I should be reading.

    mobile quartz emailCompare the Times message with the same day’s Quartz weekend brief. There are four teasers in the subject line so if I’m not interested in global rebalancing, then maybe women on Wall Street? And the brief is built for mobile, with a clean, readable font.

    This email projects a strong editorial voice. The New York Times leads by telling you about itself as an institution — in case you were wondering, here are all our editorial departments. Quartz engages you up from with a greeting and narrative in the second person that your high school English teacher taught you never to use. As you scroll, the links appear more naturally in the text, underscoring the idea that this was written by a human rather than a cut-and-paste of headlines. And it follows its own reporting with “Five links elsewhere that made us smarter.”

    [tweetable hashtags=”#mobile”]Email isn’t dead. If anything, millennials are more plugged into email than ever[/tweetable] via savvy services like the Skimm or PolicyMic or even Upworthy. What’s different is the content strategy — the best email newsletters engage you early, can be read easily on mobile in an elevator or a Starbucks line, and have a voice that keeps you opening them, day after day.

  • Friday 5 — 09.06.2013

    Friday 5 — 09.06.2013

    1. We know almost everything about the iPhone 5C except the most critical one: price. Mobile pro Benedict Evans breaks it down.
    2. Price point for the new iPhone is highly correlated to its global #2 performance in the face of Android’s dominance. Market share stakes are high with an estimated total of 1.8B mobile phones shipping this year, and 2.3B units predicted by 2017.
    3. Does it seem like you spend about twice as much time online as you did three years ago? Apparently, you’re right, and those smartphones and tablets are to blame.
    4. If you’ve ever sheepishly deleted your browser history, rest assured that you’re in the majority. According to Pew, 86% of internet users have taken steps online to remove or mask their digital footprints. Perhaps more surprising was the news that 21% of internet users reported an email or social networking account compromised or commandeered without permission.
    5. At last — big data comes to the women’s sport pages! Check out this awesome rapgenius analysis of the New York Times wedding section. Weddingcrunchers.com is a database of ~60K wedding announcements published in the New York Times from 1981 to 2013.

    Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Please let me know what I’ve missed in the comments below.

  • Friday 5 — 08.23.2013

    Friday 5 — 08.23.2013

    Every Friday, find five quick links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas. Source: the internet.

    1. Yahoo may be back on top: Comscore names Yahoo #1 in U.S. unique visitors, and that’s without counting Tumblr’s 133 million blogs. A little early for Marissa Mayer to proclaim, “How do you like me now?” — but I sure hope she’s thinking it.
    2. Have you checked out Whisper? This mobile app for sharing secrets is getting 2.5 billion page views a month. Some terrific UX work and an interesting network structure where users aren’t featured — each post rests on its own merits.
    3. Some good data on teens, mobile apps, and privacy from Pew and the Berkman Center. Teens may be getting savvier about their online footprint: those who seek advice about managing privacy online are more likely to disable the location feature.
    4. What’s your 14-year-old doing on the internet? In September, she could be networking on LinkedIn as it opens its doors to teens and enables University pages.
    5. From teens to seniors: Y Combinator demo day showcased a number of promising startups, but I agree with TechCrunch that TrueLink is a big idea. It’s a credit card that enables families to help their seniors stay financially independent but avoid scams — huge market opportunity there.

  • Friday 5 — 08.02.2013

    Every Friday, find five quick links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas. Source: the internet.

    1. Starbucks reported solid earnings, and pointed to the “demonstrable impact” of digital innovation. More than 10% of Starbucks transactions in the U.S. are made via mobile, and they’re installing wireless charging mats in more locations (which seems like the smartest loss leader ever).
    2. LinkedIn brought in a strong second quarter, and now boasts 238 million users worldwide. CEO attributed the results to accelerated member growth and strong engagement—and LinkedIn will likely continue to grow into new geographies and demographic profiles.
    3. WordPress continues its user-friendly march toward world domination, now powering 18.9% of the web according to Matt Mullenweg. I’ve seen how WordPress has weathered the transitions Mullenweg mentions: from pure blog to blog/CMS, to app platform. It’s remarkable how the community has retained a strong commitment to user experience rare among open source projects.
    4. Business Insider released a summary of its new paid report on video growth. Social is an explosive driver of both production and distribution, and brands want in on the action.
    5. What does it look like when a brand jumps on the viral video bandwagon effectively? Watch The Camp Gyno to find out how clever startup Hello, Flo makes it look easy.

  • Friday 5 – 06.28.2013

    Every Friday, find five quick links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas. Source: the internet.

    1. Is the 800 million dollar valuation of Snapchat the sign of the bubble poised to burst or a smart bet on the need for ephemeral content in an always-on world? Here’s an interesting read on the valuation and the parallels with Instagram, including shared focus on experience over revenue.
    2. Fragmented operating systems and the mobile-first world we live in are just two of the drivers for content management systems that encourage the right amount of structure for content. Contentful headed into beta this week, seeking to solve the problem with a publish-everywhere, API-driven approach.
    3. Enterprise is heading for mobile to reap productivity gains, and enterprise mobile is heading for the cloud, largely via backend-as a service. Here’s a take on how it’s all playing out.
    4. What’s a library these days if not card catalogs, dark wood and walls lined with  books? Lots of smart people hard at work on this problem, and Pew Internet weighed in this week with a report on Younger American’s Library Habits. Unsurprisingly, Americans ages 16-29 expressed a strong interest in apps for finding library materials within the library or accessing library services on their mobile.
    5. Since it’s the Friday before a holiday week, and everyone’s planning their barbecues and/or reading reddit, why not craft your invitation using this handy new meme generator from Imgur?