Perry

Hewitt

Tag: news

Friday 5 — 9.12.2014
1. When Spotify bought music intelligence platform Echo Nest, they gained access to a trove of data, and a smart team of people who could optimize curation. A new Spotify Insights blog focuses on telling scientifically-driven stories about music. This first post takes a look at how music migrates, and the varying musical influence of cities around the world.
2. The options for publishing your content online are myriad. When should you post to your “owned” properties, and when should you syndicate to communities like Medium or Rebelmouse? Ths KISSmetrics post has some useful rubrics for how to overcome the content distribution hurdle to help your content find its audience.
3. Digital disruption may have moved from buzzword to cliché, but the advent of agile marketing is a great example of this phenomenon. As technology has become both ubiquitous (so many options!) and pervasive (throughout the funnel), marketers must learn to manage for uncertainty and change. Make time for this terrific slide deck on Managing Marketing in High Gear by Scott Brinker.
4. I once read that algorithms are people’s opinions, mathematically expressed — and nowhere is that more evident than digital journalism. As news becomes more mobile, the experience of news consumption can be more tailored — and potentially more monitored. A new study sheds light on how engineers and designers think about their role in news delivery.
5. Twitter cards offer a way to create more visual tweets to drive engagement and spur specific actions. Here’s a comprehensive guide to types of Twitter cards and how to use them.
Weekend fun: Ever wonder what your favorite characters in videogames do when you wander away from the controller? Find out here — GIFS included.

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 to get a weekly email.
September 12, 2014
Friday 5 — 9.5.2014
1. Wondering why your iPhone app was rejected from the app store? Apple has revealed the top 10 reasons that submitted apps don’t make the cut. Placeholder copy is among the offenders, which provides good fodder for longtime foes of Lorem Ipsum.
2. A common first step toward finding out what your website users value is to dive deep into existing quantitative and qualitative data. Why not also build your redesign in an open process alongside your users? The Guardian’s release of the beta version of its site, and its process of open and iterative change, has allowed them to engage its user base in the redesign process.
3. Thinking of signing up for Twitter, but feeling daunted? At long last Twitter has improved its onboarding process, and made first steps for Twitter users easier. Now the process features compelling, visual tweet content, and points you to other users whom you might actually know.
4. Apparently, men use the phrase “my zipper,” while women refer to “my yoga.” Language tells like these are among the ways that a Twitter algorithm determines your gender.
5. With hacked celebrity photos in the news, it pays to brush up on basic ways to keep your accounts and files safe. TL;DR: enable two-factor authentication everywhere.
Weekend fun: As I type this, some 80 million of my fellow Americans are sleeping. This clever visualization based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides an interactive and sortable view of what other Americans are doing.

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 to get a weekly email.
September 5, 2014
Friday 5 — 8.15.2014
1. Lots of buzz about the U.S. Government’s launch of a new SWAT-team digital service, and its digital services playbook. The tenets above are clear and proscriptive, and, true to the complexity of digital transformation, allude to the tremendous change management effort required. It’s not trivial to enable institutional culture shifts like “Address the whole experience from start to finish” and “Default to open.” Read about the launch, and check out the full playbook.
2. Email is both our dopamine-producing fix and a time sink that’s the bane of our existence. This list of gmail productivity plugins can help ease the pain. We’ve covered unroll.me before — Boomerang can delay email sends to conceal the shameful fact that you were looking at spreadsheets until 2:30 am.
3. But maybe we can help kill email off, instead? Collaboration tool Slack is doing a pretty reputable job of it for a number of startups out there.
4. Is Buzzfeed a media company or a technology company? Andreessen Horowitz invested $50 million in Buzzfeed this week, with the view that a tech-first media company with rising traffic and robust native advertising might be the one to crack the future of news code.
5. Long before Uber became a verb, directionally-challenged folks like me were avidly using the app to avoid getting lost in cities designed by sadists, like Boston. Uber’s new cruise control provides drivers and passengers alike turn-by-turn directions to make finding one’s way even easier.
Weekend fun: If you used any form of social media this week, you’ve no doubt seen the ice bucket challenge to raise awareness and cash for ALS. Notable participants have included Mark Zuckerberg, Martha Stewart, the New England Patriots, and Jimmy Fallon and the Roots. Questlove is not amused.

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 to get a weekly email.
August 15, 2014
Friday 5 — 7.25.2014
1. The New Yorker has updated its web presence to take advantage of the internet’s love affair with quality, longform reads. The mobile design gets it right, with smooth interactive elements like a fly-in hamburger menu. This Guardian review credits the re-design for avoiding looking “like a middle-aged man dropping the ends of his words in an attempt to be down with the kids.” One quibble: given that their goal was to increase readership, I’m surprised they buried their email signup at the bottom of the page. But the best news of all? The archives since 2007 are free for three months, so dig in.
2. The most important product design work is usually the ugliest, according to this Intercom post on The Dribblisation of Design that kicked up a kerfuffle online a while ago. It’s still a good summary of why the most interesting part of design is not the PSD, but the problem-solving.
3. Remember back when Facebook was going to die because they were too old and uncool to get mobile? Yeah, me neither. Now they’re making money, handheld over fist.
4. Reddit launched a new Live feature for unfolding news to better serve and reflect the high activity on the site when news breaks. The updated format makes the story easier to follow, and allows users to add content without starting a new thread and fragmenting the conversation.
5. Should you buy an Amazon Fire phone? Unless you’re an Amazon-loving, domestic-only-traveling, early-adopter type who adores AT&T, Engadget suggests you hold off.
Weekend fun: Emoji karaoke is a thing, and the folks who came up with the one below are undisputed masters. Read more via Nate Matias, and try it yourself.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
July 25, 2014
Friday 5 — 3.28.2014
1. This week, Facebook acquired virtual reality purveyor Oculus Rift for $2B in cash and stock. This purchase gives the social networking company, which was only two years ago struggling to get its arms around mobile, a leg up in virtual reality hardware. What will they use it for? Gaming’s an obvious first use case, but there’s a big vision opportunity. Semil Shah penned a terrific, if pun-laden piece on Facebook’s strategy and direction.
2. In an effort to boost Google Wallet, Google enables friction-free money transfer for Gmail users. The simple user interface — as easy as adding an attachment — is sure to attract entice more people into signing up for Google Wallet.
3. What’s content marketing, again? This piece breaks down this generic term, and explains why companies like NewsCred and Percolate are closing significant financing rounds.
4. From the Something Useful Now department, the Starbucks app has added a couple of handy features. The app now enables shake-to-pay, which uses your mobile’s native accelerometer to pull up the scannable barcode, and a feature than enables tipping for up to two hours after your visit.
5. Nieman Lab runs an extensive review of NY Times Now, a mobile product launching in the app stores on April 2. The launch is a step forward into current digital news best practices (mobile-first approach, briefs, curation of third party content). But will it lure more subscribers with this new app, or introduce product confusion with too many similar offerings?
Weekend fun: Are you still immersed in March Madness this weekend? Then check out @NailbiterBot, which will tweet to you when games are close in the second half. Follow the account now, so you can quietly excuse yourself from your in-laws and tune in.

IOWAST (3) v. UNC (6) is 74-76 with 2:59 left. Watch on CBS. http://t.co/zwra5bpZ3T

— Nailbiter Bot (@NailbiterBot) March 23, 2014

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
March 28, 2014
Friday 5 — 3.14.2014
1. Comscore data show that users coming directly to a news site stay longer and view more pages than those coming from search and social. Users arriving via search and social drive up views, but are more difficult to convert into loyal readers. Two caveats to the study: mobile traffic is not included, and email is often improperly tagged, which causes some users to be improperly counted as “direct.”
2. Tony Haile, CEO of realtime analytics product Chartbeat, will convince you: what you think you know about the web is wrong. Saddled with a web measured by the click, we’re now trying to better understand user behavior while interacting with a site. Among the more compelling observations: if a site can hold visitors’ attention for three minutes, they are twice as likely to return than if you hold them for only one minute.
3. The Web turned 25 this week, kicking off a flurry of pieces reflecting on the internet era. Here’s a brief timeline from Fast Company. Fun fact: When web creator Tim Berners-Lee was asked to name one thing he never envisioned the web being used for, his reply was “kittens.”
4. It’s astonishing to think that a gigabyte of hard drive would have cost you about $190,000 dollars back in 1980. In a move designed to compete with rival Dropbox, Google Drive is now offering 100GB storage for only $1.99/month.
5. Sadly, the money you just saved on storage will now be spent on Amazon Prime membership, which just rose from $79 to $99/year. Prime was a genius feature — the ultimate gateway drug for online impulse buying. I guess those drones aren’t going to pay for themselves.
Weekend fun: According to a recent report on millennials, 55% of them say they’ve shot and shared a selfie, versus 24% of Gen X, and of 9% of boomers. Bucking the trend, this former Secretary of State beats Ellen’s product placement hands down.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
March 14, 2014
Friday 5 — 3.7.2014
1. Getty Images made 35 million images available for free in a move that should send shockwaves through the stock photo business. In an era of rampant copyright infringement, this move seems to imply that defending the photos was a bit like, well, tilting at windmills. Nieman Lab offers some thoughtful insights about the canny brand, data, and advertising rationale behind the move.
2. Kickstarter has raised a billion dollars to date to crowdfund creative projects. Worth noting that it’s a really long tail: the dollars reflect only a few massive hits and many, many small projects.
3. What if newspaper front pages were populated by the stories their readers share the most? Newswhip, a tech company that specializes in measuring realtime content for newsrooms, found out and illustrated the results. Fun fact: readers of the Daily Mail and The Guardian would choose the same front-page story.
4. Yahoo is continuing its spending spree with its acquisition of Vizify, a platform that pulls together a person’s social media posts in an engaging, visual format. Vizify can bring graphics and visual elements to enhance other acquisitions, like Tumblr.
5. Online quizzes have been around for ages, with the occasional new implementation that captures people’s attention. BuzzFeed has managed to reinvigorate the genre with a highly visual treatment and a simple backend interface for the editors creating the quizzes. A good reminder that the best editorial idea can die on the vine without frictionless technology to support it.
Weekend fun: It’s March already — which means SXSW, springtime, and less than a month until Game of Thrones is back on the air. And now you can experience the show’s goriest demises through the magic of eight-bit. (with thanks to Katie Hammer and Becky Wickel for feeding my #GoT addiction)

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
March 7, 2014
Visualizing Crimea interest online

Lots of thoughtful coverage of today’s significant events in Crimea at major outlets like The Guardian, CNN, and Politico, as well as through crowdsourced efforts to amplify local opinion, like Global Voices. Two quick snapshots of escalating web interest below.

Google searches for Crimea over the past year:

Twitter mentions of Crimea and Sochi over the past month:

March 1, 2014
5 lessons from Buzzfeed @ Harvard
Today, BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith spoke to fellows, students, and a few curious onlookers at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center (Storify recap). Listen to the full audio above; below are my top five takeaways from the discussion:
1. Headlines definitely matter — and if you’re writing headlines for catchy listicles, be sure to lead with the number. Headlines at BuzzFeed are a collaborative effort among writers and editors, and employ rigorous A/B testing alongside a custom analytics platform and Google Analytics to measure performance. Also, headlines sure look a lot like tweets these days.
2. With the right headlines, clicks can be easy to elicit. For optimal social growth, publishers must entice users to share their content. With 75% of traffic referrers from social media, and the bulk of that from Facebook, BuzzFeed has succeeded in creating content compelling enough to drive social sharing.
3. BuzzFeed’s partnership with duolingo helps address the challenge of publishing in multiple languages. Duolingo, which recently secured another $20M in series C, gives BuzzFeed a smart algorithm + human equation to scale and boost international growth.
4. The viral web can be put to work for serious news as well as cat memes. Smith wrote a compelling piece to this effect in Foreign Policy back in April 2013. Today, Smith cited a recent interview with Shimon Peres and a gimlet-eyed profile of Donald Trump as evidence of serious journalism residing comfortably in the same viral wrapper as lighter fare.
5. 99% of success is hiring and retaining amazing people. One example: video innovator and rockstar Ze Frank who built and staffed the BuzzFeed studio in Los Angeles. Great reporters are always hard to find, and competition for the best is getting tougher as both traditional and newly-monetized internet media compete for top talent.
February 25, 2014
Friday 5 — 2.14.2014
1. Does it seem like you’re spending more time on your smartphone than you used to? If you’re anything like the U.S. digital consumers in this Nielsen survey, you’re spending 9 hours and 52 minutes more each month. Smartphone time spent on social media rose rapidly, with 37% year-over-year growth in use of social media apps. Download the report for useful updates on mobile, social, and streaming behaviors, as well as observations about Hispanic populations on the forefront of the digital curve.
2. Facebook is a strong driver of outbound clicks to news sites, and today drives 3.5 times more traffic to Buzzfeed than Google does. But what kind of news stories do Facebook users favor? The Atlantic took a close look, and concluded Facebook users are more likely to click on stories that are more geared toward entertainment, while Twitter or search users seek out breaking news.
3. If you create content in any form — words, graphics, photos, multimedia — where do you put it online? Is it your own blog, a social network, a semi-curated platform like Medium, or a full-on edited media site like Slate? As these outlets proliferate and the lines get blurry, it’s worth considering the broad continuum from open platform to publisher.
4. You’ve likely heard of bitcoin, an alternative currency created online (“mined” through complex algorithms) now being used as payment for goods and services at places as mainstream as Overstock.com. It got hacked yesterday, to the tune of several million dollars.
5. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Pew this week released a report on couples, the internet, and social media. 45% of younger couples acknowledge the internet’s impact on their relationship — good and bad. Something I never would have guessed: 27% of internet users in a marriage or committed relationship have an email account shared with their partner.
Weekend fun: Are you battling the cold this weekend? Then you might appreciate seeing the Durham Academy head of school announcing a closure with an equal parts painful and adorable cover of Ice, Ice, Baby.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
February 14, 2014