Perry

Hewitt

Tag: research

Friday 5 — 12.12.2014
1. Facebook is surging ahead on mobile revenue as well as mobile market share. Facebook now accounts for about one-fifth of all data used on mobile phones, and owns four out of the top ten apps in the Apple iOS store and Google Play. More over at Quartz.
2. Dark social is a term introduced by Alexis Madrigal two years ago to define the kinds of social sharing (email, instant messaging, texting, etc.) that were not clearly attributed in analytics. Here he updates his hypothesis of dark social with the discovery that a good deal of this traffic is now trackable and attributable to Facebook sharing on mobile devices — which may be so prevalent now that it is eroding other ways of sharing.
3. Does the internet help you learn new things? 87% of Americans believe that it does. Also interesting: 72% say that the internet allows them to share their ideas and creations with others, a significant rise since 2006. This increase aligns with the mass adoption of social networking tools, and the ease of instantaneous publishing of text, images, and video through these platforms.
4. Whether you are paralyzed by choice in music discovery, or merely lazy enough to outsource all your listening habits to cooler friends, Spotify has got you covered. Try out “Top Tracks in Your Network” for a personalized, updated playlist based on what friends you follow are listening to.
5. Machine intelligence, defined here as what becomes possible as computers develop and scale abilities previously limited to humans, is poised to transform industries and create entirely new ones. Here’s a great chart of the landscape, and enumeration of relevant trends and opportunities.
Weekend fun: Deadspin may call my favorite team a “Godless Abomination,” but all basketball fans will enjoy Buckets, a quantitative approach to viewing shooting across all NBA teams and players.

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.
December 12, 2014
Friday 5 — 11.28.2014
1. Technology surrounds us, but what do most internet users understand about it? A Pew survey on web and digital technology found that only 23% of adult users are aware that “the Internet” and “the World Wide Web” are not the same thing. And while 83% of those surveyed could correctly identify Bill Gates, fewer than half knew that Facebook started at Harvard. Take the quiz for yourself before you read the report.
2. I enjoyed this post reframing strategy as less of a blueprint, which was better suited to a predictable analog world, but more of an algorithm (rule) that helps you manage for exceptions. As digital marketers operate in an ever-changing mix of channels, tools, and audiences, it’s essential to rely less on a plan and more on an agile approach that enables flexible, distributed decision-making.
3. Twitter is launching a new feature called “app graph,” which tracks all of the apps a user has installed on their mobile device. The goal is to serve users more applicable suggestions for accounts to follow, and add relevant content (including better-targeted ads) to their feeds. Here’s how to disable it.
4. Alex Breuer gave a thoughtful interview on responsive design at the Guardian. The interview provides insights on ways mobile can influence editorial, the evolution of prototyping, and why speed is considered an integral component of design.
5. WhatsApp is emerging in some contexts as a major traffic driver for news sites — and the rise of messaging apps in the West ensures this trend will continue to grow. Site owners should start gathering data on messaging referrals, and evaluate when it’s time to add a button for WhatsApp sharing.
Weekend fun: Here are Richard Scarry’s Busy Town inhabitants cleverly re-imagined with modern-day professions, like “content aggregator” and “tech start up executive.” Beware the pathos casting of Lowly Worm.

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.
November 28, 2014
Friday 5 — 10.24.2014
1. Analytics firm Chartbeat has opened up its measurement methodology, limitations and all. By exposing their thinking and technology, they give the service’s users better insight into their reports — and simultaneously ramp up the pressure on the competition to go transparent.
2. Now that we’ve all given up on comments, annotation is on the rise. The Genius platform continues its quest to annotate everything through social reading. Spend a little time with Tech Genius to see how people dissect and discuss noteworthy texts.
3. Pew released a sobering report on the state of online harassment. Younger adults are more likely to have experienced some kind of harassment, from name calling to physically threats. Young women experience particular, severe forms of harassment, with a full 26% reporting that they have been stalked online. See also: #GamerGate.
4. Before you respond to that email, pause. This HBR post explains how to improve your communications by being a little less quick on the draw with the send button.
5. It’s the end of apps as we know them. The mobile experience will be less about sifting through app icons spanning multiple screens, and more about apps sitting in the background, serving up relevant content as needed.
Weekend fun: How many times has your heart beat? How has the planet changed around you during your lifetime, from animal extinctions to solar eclipses? Check out this clever, interactive visualization from the BBC.

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.
October 24, 2014
Friday 5 — 5.16.2014
1. Foursquare begets Swarm, a mobile app that enables users to keep up and meet up with their connected friends. The check-in experience is largely the same, but new passive tracking allows for Neighborhood Sharing — which you can enable or disable with a swipe. Techcrunch describes the larger trend represented by Swarm and other invisible apps, as they move from a battle for the real estate on your home screen to just-in-time surfacing of contextual offers. Fun detail: your friends are defined as “right here” (500 feet), “a short walk away” (1.0 miles), in the area (20 miles), or “far, far away.”
2. Do you have people you like to follow on Twitter, but whose streams become insufferable during Bruins playoffs, Game of Thrones finales, or SXSW? Or people you feel professionally obliged to follow? Now you can mute them, because Twitter really, really wants to retain its user base. Here’s how.
3. Digital thinkers opine on the internet of things. Most agree on the inevitability of a “global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment …in a world-spanning information fabric known as the Internet of Things.” Opinions vary more on the benefit of ubiquitous data collection versus the associated risk of surveillance and tracking.
4. In case you missed it, Jonathan Zittrain wrote a compelling editorial on this week’s ruling that Europeans have a limited “right to be forgotten” by search engines like Google. Bottom line: it’s a bad solution to a real problem.
5. Pinterest begins its “tasteful” and “transparent” rollout of Promoted Pins, aka ads. With over 750 million boards and 30 billion pins, even a slow rollout represents a huge revenue opportunity for Pinterest (as investors behind its brand-new $200M round would agree).
Weekend fun: Watch P.J. O’Rourke offer his hilarious, skeptical view on the “dark, Satanic mills” that exemplify our current state of technology.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
May 16, 2014
Friday 5 — 4.4.2014
1. A Pew report on older adults and technology use finds that more seniors are online. Today, 59% of 65+ adults are connected, compared with 53% in 2012 and only 35% back in 2008. And they’re more social: more than half of women 65+ use social networking sites, validating my theory that grandchildren photos are a critical driver for Facebook adoption. Seniors still lag notably in smartphone adoption, with only 18% penetration compared to 55% of the general population.
2. On-demand car service Lyft raised 250 M, putting them in a fundraising league with Uber as the two compete for marketshare. How big will these “collaborative economy” or sharing services grow as a generation less invested in owning enters its prime earning years?
3. Hard to believe that Gmail is already 10 years old. The service launched on April 1, 2004, via a mere 1,000 initial invitations. Gmail changed the way we think about searchable email, and turned up the pressure for ease-of-use and storage for IT departments struggling to keep up with heightened employee expectations. Fun fact: Gmail was a skunkworks project, and launched in beta on 300 old Pentium III computers nobody else at Google wanted.
4. Amazon, Google, and now Microsoft are engaging in price wars over their cloud offerings. Thankfully, gone are the days when the first thing you did when you build a website was, “First, write a million dollar check to Sun for some servers…”
5. Lots of people have great ideas for social products and services — but many of those products depends on critical mass of users. How do you grow enough to get the metrics to understand where to improve and scale? Andrew Chen lists some solid approaches to solving for the dreaded cold start problem.
Weekend fun: Lots of people are already sick of watching this video of an ecstatic two-legged puppy romping on the beach. I am not one of those people.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
April 4, 2014
Friday 5 — 2.28.2014
1. Pew released a report on the Web at 25 — and how Americans have adopted and are affected by the internet usage. A full 87% of us now use the internet, 90% have cell phones, and 58% have smartphones. And as you can see from the chart above, many report it would be very hard to give some of these behaviors up. Interesting to see that while 71% of Americans online report using Facebook, and 40% do so several times a day, only 11% reported social media would be hard to give up. Hmmm.
2. Here’s an unscientific yet thoroughly enjoyable analysis of what people have on their homescreens, as self-reported on Twitter. Lots of texting, news, and social apps win top spots on homescreens, compared to gaming and payment apps.
3. Self-confessed map geeks might enjoy browsing Google Maps’ new gallery. Google partners like National Geographic have provided maps and geospatial information which the gallery aims to make more visible and usable. Google sorts them into handy categories, like Historical and Infrastructure and Space.
4. Many who shake their heads at Google+ have a soft spot for Hangouts. Today Google released a redesign of Hangouts for iOS, with the ability to attach a map, add animated stickers, and record a short clip. It makes sense that Google would invest more in the product given Facebook’s aggressive move into social messaging with WhatsApp purchase.
5. If you think people smile a lots less in Moscow than Sao Paulo, you’d be right — at least according to their selfies. Selfiecity analyzed over 120,000 images from Instagram and found that only about 3-5% of pictures posted were selfies, and that women take far more than men. See the site for more interesting findings, and visualizations by city.
Weekend fun: Getting ready for your Oscar party on Sunday? Challenge your guests to identify every single Best Picture winner from these gorgeous and clever icons designed by Beutler Ink.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
February 28, 2014
Alone together, or shared space?

Pew Internet reports that 25% of married or partnered adults who text have texted their partner when they were both home together.

Is this a good or a bad development? The answer may well depend on the circumstance.

Social behaviors vary dramatically by age cohort. danah boyd’s new book focuses on social media behaviors of teens — and how they may differ from their parents’ habits and understanding. In one instance described here in the FT, parents are far more immersed (and isolated) by their use of mobile devices in a crowd. In stark contrast, teens are using their smartphones to locate others, share images, and connect.

So 25% of couples texting each other at home is a big number, but what it means depends on who is doing it, and how.

February 24, 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
On death and online culture

As Facebook knows, a digital world raises new problems. To be sure, Facebook made a mistake not considering enough the mortality of those who would use their product. But to be fair, when have inventors or designers ever had to before? Think of other classic American brands—Ford or Coca-Cola, for example—whose products are not so intimately linked with their customers’ fates. Cokes and cars are disposable or easily transferable after death. But Facebook, whose product is your own identity, deals in an individualized item that’s nontransferable after death.

— Alexander Landfair in the Missouri Review, discussing the emerging and problematic ways we acknowledge death through social media

February 13, 2014
Friday 5 — 1.10.2014
1. If you’re not shivering right now, perhaps you were at CES in Vegas this week. Among the loveliest of launches is Yahoo’s News Digest app, the fruit of its Summly acquisition a year ago. With this sleek app, Marissa Mayer is making good on her commitment to prioritize beautiful product. Yahoo is cleverly delivering not only well-designed mobile news, but the far more valuable editorial filtering via morning and evening digest editions (complete with a countdown clock to the next edition).
2. Is it OK to admit we’re all getting overwhelmed by the endless stream of information? This article makes the case for more filters and bridges, and summarizes recent attempts to staunch the flow like nuking your Twitter feed.
3. There’s been a saying for a while now — and Jonathan Zittrain takes a stab at its provenance here — that when something online is free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. In a similar vein, this article asks if we will come to regret the myriad small decisions we make each day — opting into free products like social networks, email provider, file and photo storage in the cloud — where we don’t pay with money, but with our private data.
4. Here’s a compelling argument for building online systems with empathy and not disdain in civic tech. It’s a great example of how digital strategy and communications are inextricable. The best digital platforms with stellar experience design, flawless cross-device rendering, and optimal performance become useless when impeded by content and communications that obfuscate rather then enable.
5. How do African Americans have access to or use technology differently? Pew’s recent report finds that there’s a 12 percentage point gap in broadband adoption, but that African Americans are represented in roughly similar mobile numbers for cell phone and smartphone ownership. And the phenomenon referred to as “Black Twitter” may be backed up by these numbers: 22% of online African Americans use Twitter versus 16% of online whites.
Weekend fun: If you enjoy black humor, you may already have played Cards Against Humanity. If you’re concerned about the future of news and painful linkbait headlines, why not go play Headlines Against Humanity?

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
January 10, 2014