📡 Feeling lonely? But you're not alone.
Welcome to this week’s Pulse!
This week, I got fooled by the great Mancunian weather and caught a cold! 🤒 So this is a special issue as I prepared it while dealing with sore throat, coughs and headaches. Hope you enjoy it - this issue, not the cold - as much as I suffered creating it. 😂 *cough*
- Ben from Perspective IX
📰 News
Having 30,000 followers makes you a celebrity, UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) rules [Verge], and this is important because celebrities aren’t allowed to endorse medication under the UK law.
Samsung charged with misleading Galaxy phone owners by promoting water-resistant Galaxy smartphones as suitable to use in swimming pools and the surf, Australian consumer watchdog claims - and sues Samsung [Reuters].
Amazon has admitted that it doesn’t always delete the stored data that it obtains through voice interactions with the company’s Alexa and Echo devices — even after a user chooses to wipe the audio files from their account [Verge].
In addition to Amazon’s privacy issue, a US appeals court ruled that the mega-retailer can be held accountable for faulty third-party sales. Considering nearly half of the items sold through Amazon are handled by third-party sellers, which accounted for around $11 billion in Amazon’s revenue for the previous quarter, this can be a massive blow to Amazon should the ruling uphold [TechCrunch].
An electrical engineer is facing up to 219 years in federal prison after being found guilty of exporting military-grade semiconductor chips to China [TNW].
🧠 Insights
Loneliness - Credit: Matthew Henry on Unsplash
The loneliness epidemic
In an uncharacteristic display of concern, my brother had called to tell me to be safe.
I assured him that I’d only move through public spaces, that my whereabouts would be well-documented, and that I would text him when it was over.
My brother was worried about what seemed to me an ideal Saturday afternoon: My friend and I were taking in a movie, walking through some of New York City’s loveliest neighborhoods, and enjoying cactus tacos at a food hall. It was a perfectly pleasant series of events that I’d calculated to last 180 minutes, because my friend was a stranger I found online and I was paying for the company by the hour.
Is this a cure for the loneliness epidemic? Read more the full story on the Highlight by Vox.
📊 Statistics
Worldwide Gross App Revenue 1H19 - Credit: SensorTower
Worldwide Mobile App Revenue
Global app revenue reached $39 billion in the first half of 2019, that means an increase of 15% compared to the same period of 2018.
Consumers spent an estimated $25.5 billion globally on Apple’s App Store during the first half, an increase of 13.2% YoY from $22.6 billion in Q1 and Q2 of 2018. The amount generated by Apple’s platform was approximately 80% greater than Google Play’s estimated gross revenue of $14.2 billion for the half. That was up 19.6% YoY from first half 2018’s total of $11.8 billion.
via SensorTower.
Worldwide Mobile App Downloads - Credit: SensorTower
Worldwide Mobile App Downloads
First-time app installs was a total of 56.7 billion for the half with the App Store accounting for 14.8 billion of those, a decrease of 1.4% from 1H18.
The 1Q19 was the first quarter where iOS downloads fell YoY overall, due to a downturn in China 🇨🇳. App Store installs bounced back in Q2, growing nearly 3 percent YoY to about 7.4 billion worldwide, but the decline in Q1 was enough to drag the entire first half into negative territory.
Google Play installs grew 16.4% YoY for the half to 41.9 billion, up from 36 billion in 1H18. This was about 2.8x greater than the volume of first-time downloads on iOS for the first two quarters of this year. Still, Apple’s platform continued to generate nearly 1.8x more revenue than Google’s on only about a third as many installs.
via SensorTower.
Americans that mostly go online using smartphones - Credit: Pew Research Center
Mobile Technology and Home Broadband 2019
As the share of Americans who say they own a smartphone has increased dramatically over the past decade – from 35% in 2011 to 81% in 2019 – a new Pew Research Center survey finds that the way many people choose to go online is markedly different than in previous years.
Today, 37% of U.S. adults say they mostly use a smartphone when accessing the internet. This share has nearly doubled since 2013, when the Center last asked this question. At that point, 19% of Americans named their smartphone as their primary device for going online.
Read more on Pew Research Center.
Turns out majority of industries on Facebook are getting more positive comments on posts than they are negative! 🎉
Internet trolls 👺may have won the battle, but they didn't win the war. https://t.co/NZAE8iBsbP
📱 Tools & Apps
Learning Synths: Get started making sounds. (This is one of the coolest things ever!)
A complete guide to iconography: Definitely worth reading if you’re a design enthusiast or a designer.
308 Free Resources for Marketing: All the free marketing resources and templates you need in one place.
Best times to post on social media: a useful guide by Sprout Social.
🎧 Audio Stimulation
The Diary Of A CEO by Steven Bartlett - Julian Hearn: Huel - £45 Million In 4 Years
Julian Hearn is the founder and CMO of Huel, a nutrition company responsible for the increasingly popular, powdered meal replacement drink. Huel is basically a meal in a bottle designed for time-poor people, enabling you to get all your nutritional requirements whilst maintaining a busy lifestyle. Since is creation 4 years, Huel has seen consistent growth, and is one of the fastest growing businesses in the UK. The company is on track to reach £45 million in revenue this year, and its entrance into the US market in 2017 has already seen it reach sales of $10 million.
🐦 Tweets of the Week
*composes email*
*proofreads*
*hovers mouse over send button*
*proofreads again*
*is about to send*
*proofreads a third time*
*gets glass of water*
*proofreads once more*
*finally sends email*
*re-reads email just for good measure*
OH NO I SAID HITLER INSTEAD OF HELLO
Exclusive: In scathing email, Apple CEO Tim Cook tells me the @WSJ report about Jony Ive’s departure — and his frustration with Cook’s alleged lack of interest in design — is “absurd.” Says reporting and conclusions "don’t match with reality.”
Full story coming soon @NBCNews … https://t.co/QX9L4MvjFs
🎮 Fun Stuff
See What the Fuck Ya'll Done Did! - Credit: Reddit/u/Sirrus_VG
Saturday Mood - Credit: Reddit/u/carmenfillol
This is not goodbye...
This is though. 👋
By the way, don’t tell anyone about Pulse. It’s getting too big.