Mobile apps versus native web is a false dichotomy, per Luke Wroblewski. Brands need both: the former offers rich experiences, while the latter provides greater reach (including in-app browser views). We have a longstanding, love-hate relationship with email, where gratifying immediacy for the sender often means notification hell for the recipient. The Atlantic explains how we got here, why email …
Friday 5 — 8.28.2015
Why do some videos go viral while others seemingly underperform? HBR looks at how psychological response and social motivation drive video sharing. Apparently it doesn’t hurt to reach the “supersharers,” who are responsible for 82.4% of total video shares. Slack’s integrations — from GitHub to Giphy — make the team collaboration app delightfully sticky. This week Slack announced a …
Friday 5 — 5.1.2015
Facebook is up to 4 billion daily video viewers, and some think it may unseat YouTube as the go-to video destination. Not much of a present for YouTube’s 10th birthday. Instead of bucketing content referrals by each social network, BuzzFeed launched a new technology to track content shares across social networks. Dubbed Process for Optimizing and Understanding Network Diffusion …
Friday 5 — 1.30.2015
Snapchat aims to become a force in mobile news with this week’s launch of Snapchat Discover. Here are some tips on how to use it. If you’re like 82% of people, you have forgotten a password for a website. Luke Wroblewski has a thoughtful piece on password masking, security, and our one-touch future. Because we’re …
Friday 5 — 8.8.2014
Snapchat and WhatsApp are emerging as dominant photo sharing platforms. Interesting that a main modality for this sharing is private messaging (quasi-ephemeral in the case of Snapchat) versus Facebook’s one-to-many concept of posting to your profile page. Social networking skeptics often decry the use of “friend” as an organizing principle for everyone from your sister …
Friday 5 — 5.2.14
For a few years now, Foursquare has felt like a location data layer in search of a business model. The company just announced a move toward a more explicit user value proposition by revising its core app and splitting off a new Swarm app — a social heat map that doesn’t require an explicit check-in. How …
Friday 5 — 12.13.2013
Instagram Direct lets you send your photos, videos, and messages to select recipients. While comparisons to Snapchat feature prominently in the media coverage, this feels more like a catch-up feature like its video announcement back in June. One new ephemeral capability: you can delete your photos from recipients’ phones. In another Snapchat-response move, Twitter announced you …
Friday 5 — 11.15.2013
So, lots of talk this week about Snapchat turning down a 3B acquisition offer from Facebook. Was this a shrewd move, or an example of millennial entitlement run amok? Facebook’s 2012 purchase of Instagram for 1B is starting to look like it was a pretty good deal for a company concerned about its waning teen …
Friday 5 — 10.04.2013
Have fun playing with bitly’s new Real Time Media Map, which visualizes how content from different media outlets is being consumed across the U.S. As you can see from the drilldown above, we read a lot of The Onion here in Massachusetts. Next week Google Analytics opens its free, online Analytics Academy. Another example of …
Friday 5 – 06.14.2013
Every Friday, find five quick links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas. Source: the internet. Twitter quietly opened its analytics platform for general use. Now even small publishers can view and track follows, unfollows, and clicks to gauge performance of an account, and even download a CSV. Facebook embraced the hashtag. This development has been greeted by many as …