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Friday 5 — 11.01.2013
1. Has a Chinese language photo app become the first one to achieve global popularity? This app allows you to snap a selfie and then modify as a cartoon character. Its meteoric rise has prompted some skepticism — can an app with instructions only in Chinese be so popular in Australia, US, and Canada, or are the numbers somehow being gamed?
2. Healthcare.gov remained in the news this week, with more fingerpointing and testy hearings. This article argues for the US government’s developing a “digital core” of in-house expertise with more direct control over resources and deliverables.
3. Pew reports that both image creators and curators are on the rise, at 54% and 47% of internet users respectively. 18% of cell phone owners have Instagram, and 9% have Snapchat — the latter speaking to this hunger for just-in-time but oh-God-not-forever content.
4. More on this visual web: Pinterest late last week signed a deal with Getty. Pinterest licenses the images, and Getty hands over the metadata. Seems like a smart win for both, and not the last deal we’ll see where clean, searchable metadata about visual assets is core to the value.
5. Many would kill to have a review from Michiko Kakutani that concludes the author “tells this story of disruptive innovation with authority and verve, and lots of well-informed reporting.” If you’re interested in entrepreneurship, leadership, and the internet, run don’t walk to, well, the device in your hand an order it. Amazon is the most innovative and algorithmically-optimized internet company that people rarely talk about, and The Everything Store is about to change that.
Weekend fun: Recovering from the World Series and Halloween, and just a few things left before you get to the weekend? Perhaps you can relate to this mouse’s struggles …

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
November 1, 2013
Friday 5 — 10.25.2013
1. For a number of years instinct and analytics have been telling us that photos are effective in social posts. That hypothesis seems validated by this week’s confirmation of Facebook and Pinterest domination of web referrals, with the former putting heavy emphasis on images in the newsfeed and the latter a nexus for image curation.
2. In an entirely related vote of confidence for the visual web, Pinterest has raised another $225 million. Pinterest is developing a global strategy, with more than a dozen country managers slated to be hired this year.
3. LinkedIn is going long on the mobile use case, rolling out a new iPad app and the compelling LinkedIn intro email feature. LinkedIn intro aims to provide color and context to your mobile email by surfacing relevant LinkedIn info about the sender.
4. Facebook is home to the accidental news consumer — most users come for other reasons, but many end up seeing the news. An important finding is that younger people who are far less intentional about going to news outlets are consuming news via the social network.
5. Wikipedia remains an invaluable news source — but how is it developing and replenishing its stable of editors? Unlike the rest of the web, which has become more global and female content creators, Wikipedia’s skew toward technical, Western, and male-dominated subject matter has persisted. Does this limited pool ensure Wikipedia’s decline?
Weekend fun: Eight million people have already watched this toddler in his Halloween costume, but in case you’d like some inspiration for your own …

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
October 25, 2013
Friday 5 — 10.18.2013
1. Google 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.
October 18, 2013
Friday 5 — 10.11.2013
1. How do the words we use segment us by personality, gender, and age? An open vocabulary study of over 700 million Facebook posts by 75,000 volunteers provides a range of insights into attributes associated with language use. As the word cloud shows, men use profanity and talk about xbox far more than women on the social network.
2. Direct messaging, long the neglected stepchild of the Twitter user experience, are about to get a lift with experimental new feature @eventparrot. Follow the account and it will direct message you with personalized breaking news, defined as news items noticed by the people you pay attention to.
3. GigaOm posits why app-based tablet magazines are a failure, despite a few notable exceptions. Paid individual magazines titles continue to draw only a very small market. The desire to create the bespoke apps seems to stem, as one commenter put it, from an obsessive need for control of font and layout rather than a more sensible embrace of the messy, social open web.
4. Perhaps the other end of the continuum of perfection and permanence is analog and ephemeral, like the live performances of Pop Up Magazine. As many of us relentlessly record and document, a new niche emerges for a live 100-minute show, where nothing goes online or is recorded.
5. 91% of US adults own a cell phone today, and 41% of them use it to watch video. Pew’s latest report on online video shows continued growth not only in consumption, where comedy and education videos lead the pack, but an increase in adults posting video online to 31% from 14% in 2009. A full 35% of those video posters harbor hopes of their video going viral.
Weekend fun: fancy a little telekinetic rage with your coffee?

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective links about compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally.
October 11, 2013
Friday 5 — 10.04.2013
1. 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.
2. Next week Google Analytics opens its free, online Analytics Academy. Another example of MOOCs as the new marketing — and a great opportunity for anyone in digital looking to develop skills in a fast-growing segment.
3. Snapchat shifts focus from the fleeting to a full 24-hour window with its move into Snapchat Stories. Users can now construct chains of moments into stories which expire after a day.
4. Group messaging service What’sApp is being billed as another great threat to Facebook. Like WeChat, the service has strongholds in multiple markets outside the U.S.
5. Twitter disclosed its IPO plans to raise $1 billion revealing both lower than anticipated revenue, and 218 million active users/month. Most significantly, 65% of advertising revenue is now from mobile.
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.
October 4, 2013
Friday 5 — 9.27.2013
1. Kudos to the Boston GlobeLab team on the beta launch of 61 Fresh, which features the most popular local stories shared on Twitter. Great to see the Harvard Gazette make the top-tweeted, and I’m buying a drink for the genius who added the “mute sports” feature.
2. Maintaining a website requires constantly updating rapidly deprecating software, keeping up with new end-user hardware, and managing expiring links in the content. Law libraries have come together to create Perma.cc to mitigate link rot in academic scholarship.
3. Why do 15% of American adults report that they don’t use the internet or email? 32% of them cite reasons tied to their sense that the internet is not very easy to use. Non-users expressed both usability and security concerns.
4. WeChat is the multi-featured messaging app quietly taking over the world while U.S. based media outlets cover Snapchat. Recent enhancement include celebrity wake-up calls and vending machines, the latter being a quiet step toward a financial services offering.
5. Gaming company Valve has announced Steam OS and Steam Machines, and a third announcement is slated for today. Valve has been a case study in disruptive innovation as a lower-priced entrant that cleverly crept into the console market.
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.
September 27, 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.
September 20, 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.
September 13, 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.
September 6, 2013
Friday 5 — 08.30.2013
1. The New York Times put up an interactive feature on startups to watch. It’s an interesting list of new ideas (Myo) and mass eyeballs (WhatsApp), and a clean way to get reader feedback close to the content, like annotations. Nitpick: the design seems a little unnecessarily spare, and I’d like to be able to share each item rather than the whole story.
2. Web analytics startup Parse.ly finds that Feedly is the big winner in the feed reader market post Google Reader, and that the Outbrain content discovery platform is driving more than 50M page views. More coverage here.
3. More internets = more spam, but these algorithms are killing Twitter spammers even before they start. This methodology could be applicable to other social media services. Based on several metrics including content analysis, the system in one model identified and deleted 95% of problematic accounts registered across 27 services.
4. This week marks ten years of Skype — now, “to skype” is even a verb. Here’s a terrific timeline of internet telephony.
5. In the U.S. it’s Labor Day weekend. Here’s a great video reminder: it’s time to put down your smartphone and eke out the last moments of summer.
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.
August 30, 2013