📡 Don't believe everything you see on Instagram
Pulse #142 — or at least take it with a grain of salt!
Hi friends 👋
Quick update: hopefully, we’ll reach the second Intersection this week.
Other than that, let’s jump straight into today’s Pulse.
Last Week in the News
Dutch court rejects Facebook’s bid to have privacy lawsuit in the Netherlands dismissed [link]
Elon Musk’s Boring Company pitches underground transit loop to Fort Lauderdale [link]
Police ticket driver for sticking Starlink terminal on car’s hood [link]
Facebook is testing a Twitter-like ‘threads’ feature on some public figures’ pages [link]
Robinhood’s going public, Facebook goes after extremism, and Pinterest against weight loss ads [link]
Instagram’s evolving, Twitter’s dropping NFTs, and Robinhood’s getting fined [link]
Facebook’s newsletter platform, Shopify’s app store cut, and a Twitter bug [link]
Facebook’s good day, Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming, and some crypto news [link]
Binance banned in the UK, Qualcomm’s latest chip, and larger iPads [link]
⏰ a gift for you.
Worth Your Attention
The Fall of the Billionaire Gucci Master by Evan Ratliff on Bloomberg
this is another great piece that reminds me of the intersection #1 — and how things on social media might not be true or might not be “as true as they seem,” or in case of Ramon Abbas, aka Hushpuppi, result of an elaborate scam…
What’s A Bubble? by Jacob Goldstein & Robert Smith on Planet Money
it’s not a new episode, but it’s a really relevant episode, especially if you’ve been following cryptocurrency prices during the past few months… are bubbles even real?!
in this episode, Jacob and Robert talk to two Nobel laureates:
Shiller and Fama — and they are a bit of an odd couple. Robert Shiller is probably the most famous analyst of bubbles; Eugene Fama is probably the most famous skeptic of bubbles.
How Memory Makes Us and Breaks Truth by Maria Popova on BrainPickings.
“It is already disorienting enough to accept that our attention only absorbs a fraction of the events and phenomena unfolding within and around us at any given moment. Now consider that our memory only retains a fraction of what we have attended to in moments past. In the act of recollection, we take these fragments of fragments and try to reconstruct from them a totality of a remembered reality…”
Chart of the Week
Almost $65 Billion of In-App Purchases in the First Half of 2021
Worldwide consumer spending in mobile apps reached $64.9 billion across the App Store and Google Play in the first half of 2021, according to preliminary Sensor Tower Store Intelligence estimates and projections through June 30.
This was 24.8% more than the $52 billion generated by both stores in the same period in 2020.
Read more on SensorTower.
& more stats
Reuters Institute global news consumption report for 2021 [link]
The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has a survey on consumer awareness and ownership of cryptocurrencies. 4.4% of adults own some, with a median holding of £300, and less than half of those holders think they understand it [link]
Top downloaded digital-first banking apps in the US for H1 2021 [link]
Sensor Tower's 2021 State of Lifestyle Apps Report Reveals U.S. Installs Hit a Record 151 Million in Q1 2021
Tools & Apps
Smart Text Editor: The text editor that requires only a browser and a keyboard
open-source free web app… what else do you want?
Pixelhunter: Free AI image resizing tool for social media
you’ll love it if you share images on social media!
Glide 2.0: Create gorgeous, powerful apps for mobile & web without code
one of the best no-code platforms — ever!
Quick Tips
If you reached the limit on a website that limits the number of free articles you can read on it, use incognito [Private browsing on Brave Browser with your shield for cookies on] so you can read more articles for free.
Spotted
Twitter is working on collecting FLoC from users [link]
Twitter is working on Super Follows-exclusive tweet banners [link]
Twitter is working on the “Connected accounts” section [link]
Snapchat continues to work on the Chat Reply option [link]
Snapchat keeps working on the Poll sticker [link]
Instagram continues to work on Collectibles [link]
Instagram is working on contacts suggestions in the iOS share sheet [link]
Instagram is working on a shortcut to quickly call a contact in chat [link]
Instagram is working on a privacy option for Reels Remixes [link]
Instagram is working on the ability to share media in Live [link]
Instagram keeps working on the end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) chats [link]
Instagram is working on a redesigned UI for the Threads app [link]
Spotify is working on various HiFi-related UIs, including the settings [link]
Figma is working on a “Request to Edit” button [link]
TikTok is rolling out the ability to create longer 3-minute videos to ALL users [link]
🐦 Tweets of the Week
Fun Stuff
and now we’re done for this week
see you next week (hopefully on thursday at the second Intersection)