Perry

Hewitt

Links

Friday 5 — 3.21.2014
1. Medium has released its first mobile app, bringing its elegant, curated reading experience to your iPhone. Login requires Twitter, and they made the somewhat curious decision not to “bog users down” with a homepage. Still to come: more robust search and a mobile writing experience.
2. The internet of things garnered a lot of attention in January when Google shelled out $3.2 billion for Nest, its patents, and its people. Is the next step for IoT consumers an app store for hardware? NEX band is making an early foray, counting on the viral sharing behaviors of youth to attract developers and ideas.
3. If you manage a Facebook page for a brand, you might want to double-check those reach numbers. With an upcoming algorithm change, the organic reach for a brand page may fall to as little as 1-2% of the fan base. Facebook is looking to migrate organizations to a paid acquisition and retention model.
4. Why do people edit Wikipedia? Here’s a quick explanation — part of a useful short series on the who, why, and how of Wikipedia editors.
5. Is Twitter ditching @ replies and hashtags? Sounds as though they will keep the functionality, but lose some of this “visible scaffolding” around user behaviors. Expect to see ongoing evolution of the user experience as Twitter seeks the user growth needed to buoy its newly-public stock.
Weekend fun: Ever wish you could go back and erase or edit your early online ramblings? For better or worse, Twitter is breathing new life into them by featuring “my first tweet” for its eighth birthday. Here’s how you can look up your own very first tweet.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
March 21, 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
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
Friday 5 — 2.21.2014
1. Facebook forked over $19 billion for WhatsApp, and the internet is full of articles explaining why. Among the most compelling is Buzzfeed’s take that WhatsApp posed a significant threat. WhatsApp is growing fast globally, consumes a great deal of young users’ smartphone time, and fills that critical “staying in touch” niche that Facebook would like to own.
2. The visual social network Instagram, another Facebook purchase, is looking like it might be living up to its relatively modest $1 billion price tag. Explosive growth and high engagement mean that Instagram is increasingly attractive to brands. It has exceptionally high engagement with affluent, young women — a demographic particularly attractive for retail.
3. If you’re an online publisher — and pretty much all brands are these days — you might be interested in Echobox. This analytics package offers data-driven insights about your content’s performance both on site and as shared across social channels. The end result is fewer charts and numbers, and more specific recommendations for your content.
4. LinkedIn this week entered the realm of “platisher” — the dreadful coinage for part platform and part publisher — as it opened up its content marketing Influencers program to everyone. Like Medium, LinkedIn will cultivate brand names and high-quality submissions, but sees value in building a broad-based content empire.
5. Just where will we wear the internet of things? We’re easing in with wristbands and the stunningly awkward Google Glass, but there’s more to come. Quartz provides a list of body parts likely to be adorned with tech in the near future.
Weekend fun: Jimmy Fallon took over The Tonight Show this week with a celebrity-studded vengeance, but the #hashtag2 performance sealed the deal.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
February 21, 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
Friday 5 — 2.7.2014
1. Is your app addictive enough to make money? Eric Reiss lists eighteen elements to consider when gauging your app’s ability to engage and retain users.
2. If you’re trying to see what an addictive app looks like, you could do a lot worse than Flappy Bird. This difficult game manages somehow to infuriate and retain users, raking in $50K in revenue per day in the process.
3. QuizUp, the delightfully addictive and competitive quiz app, has launched an iPad edition. The additional real estate will be used to surface more navigational elements, particularly those that drive social engagement.
4. Maybe we’ll play games like QuizUp on our iPads, but have we by and large moved on from the tablet? This article posits that the pace of technology innovation is leaving tablets in the dust as phones become larger and, well, “phabulous.”
5. Internet audio still seems like an incredibly undervalued medium. Maybe PRX’s launch of Radiotopia, a new site that aggregates the best story-driven shows on the planet, will get more people tuned in and turned on to the possibilities.
Weekend fun: Is it binge-watching or bingewatching? Should Bitcoin be capitalized as a concept and lowercased as a currency, or vice versa? Can duckface truly be one word? If these kinds of questions keep you up at night, Buzzfeed’s excruciatingly correct style guide to the words we use today is well worth reading.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
February 7, 2014
Friday 5 — 1.31.2014
1. 新年快乐 — or, Happy New Year! Tencent’s WeChat has greeted the year of the horse by allowing users to send lucky money via mobile. This smart marketing move is aimed to inspire transaction among WeChat’s nearly 300 million global active users, and perhaps lure new users drawn by the feature.
2. In another nod to the increasingly visual nature of social engagement, Twitter has released new mobile photo sharing capabilities this week. It’s a move to keep people in the app, and drive engagement by issuing a reminder to @ mention others when you upload a photo containing people.
3. Facebook takes a crack at a “distraction-free” newsreading experience with the launch of Paper. It’s a definite upgrade from its Android Home experience and more like Flipboard — but will it offer too much competition with its own app?
4. Blogging is dead — long live collaborative publishing. Medium, the originally invitation-only content platform has announced a $25M round of investment. Medium pays some of its writers to attract quality content, and provides a lovely admin user experience for all. There are still some questions about Medium’s overall direction — how much is it a curated magazine versus a place for all storytellers?
5. How do you make sense of all the social media noise to inform the news? CNN and Twitter announced a partnership with a new tool aimed at journalists. Dataminr, a firm better known for financial services products, is shifting to help CNN use algorithms to identify accurate, breaking news stories from Twitter.
Weekend fun: Before all those SuperBowl ads go live on YouTube, amuse yourselves with this penguin dance-off. (h/t The Dodo, my new go-to source for all things animal-related).

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
January 31, 2014
Friday 5 — 1.24.2014
1. Google knowledge graph, which seeks to represent “real world things and their connections,” surfaces the relevant content you see on Google search results pages, like movie times. This week Google added to their results a short description of websites that are “widely recognized as notable online, when there is enough information to show.” There’s a lot of content creep from destination pages into search results, presumably to keep people on site for ad impressions on the Google domain.
2. There’s a lot of credit for brands moving fast in social media — here’s a terrific insight on the value of social media restraint for brands. Now that news travels with us everywhere on our mobile devices, there’s a feeding frenzy quality to breaking news. Brands dive in to add context to the news — whether it’s an earthquake or a Bieber peccadillo. This article points out the value in recognizing that just because you can find an angle for your brand, it doesn’t mean you should.
3. On February 4, a whole bunch of new generic top level domains (.gTLDs) will go live on the internet. Some feel this is just a clever way to part marketers from their money, with a hefty 185K price tag for each top level domain. Let the land grab begin.
4. Every exec who’s ordered an agency team to deliver a viral video should check out this New Yorker piece of research that finds six elements of avidly shared content. They include emotion and an element of social currency that translates into the insider handshake. Miraculously, quality storytelling makes the list: apparently some cat videos are more equal than others.
5. What do the Facebook news feed changes mean for brands? The updated algorithms will downplay text posts from brands in favor of more organic visual shares. This shift marks another way the visual web is raising the bar for content creators.
Weekend fun: At the risk of becoming a character in this New Yorker cartoon, I still have to recommend you waste three minutes over the weekend watching this 8-bit version of The Big Lebowski.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
January 24, 2014
Friday 5 — 1.17.2014
1. There are now 3.2 billion compelling reasons to get excited about the internet of things: this week, Google acquired connected home device maker Nest for a whopping $3.2 billion in cash. In return, Google gets a jumpstart in hardware and an ace design team. Privacy concerns abound, of course.
2. Trying to make sense of this week’s ruling on net neutrality? Read this, and start to use preferenced as a verb. It’s an abstract concept for most people to grok, and a tough issue to get the general public get excited about — until it drives up the price of Netflix.
3. Here’s a succinct piece on content principles for brands on social media. We try at Harvard to reinforce the principle of sticking to your guns on value and not falling prey to the endless RT ask.
4. This HBR blog takes a stab at defining the endgame for social media in the enterprise. The third wave of individual use is here, and the onus is on the enterprise on finding ways to facilitate and empower connection.
5. On a wider scale than social, how do organizations measure their progress in adopting digital practices? This MIT Sloan report (sign in for limited free access) looks at nine elements of digital transformation that distinguishes the organizations doing it best — and dubs them the Digerati.
Weekend fun: Miss the Golden Globes last Sunday? No worries — relive it through the magic of animated GIFs.

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

Photo credit: James Britton
January 17, 2014