đĄ Let's think about e-mail... Was creating it a mistake? đ¤
Welcome to this weekâs Pulse!
Coming to you from â ď¸ Manchester on the last day of the Summer of 2019. Before you jump in, if you have access to Netflix, make sure to check out âthe Mind, Explainedâ series. Itâs a fantastic collaboration between Netflix and Vox in short 18-20 min episodes. You can watch the trailer on Netflixâs YouTube channel, and its first episode, âMemory, Explained,â on Voxâs YouTube channel. Then, let me know your thoughts on Twitter @PerspectiveIX.
Now, let go through this Pulse before we âFall!â
- Ben from [ perspective ix]
PS. Iâm thinking about sending more Pulses during the week to our members, and I will add a maximum of 5 subscribers to the list of Pulse members. If youâre interested, reply to this email please and let me know. Thanks.
đ° News
A quiet woman in her sixties who lived alone was found beaten to death. The neighbours didnât see anything. But her Fitbit did. [Wired]
Google Chrome is getting a visual update with better tab management, integrated translator, and new theme/colour schemes. [Google]
WhatsAppâs âDelete for Everyoneâ doesnât delete media files from iPhones. [TNW]
Instagram is restricting visibility of weight loss products and cosmetic surgery posts for teens. [Verge]
Facebook wants to make its AI better at detecting videos of mass shootings by training its content-removal AI with police camera footage. [Engadget]
Amazon changed search algorithm in ways that boost its own products. [ArsTechnica from WSJ]
đ§ Insights
E-mail - Credit: Pixabay on Pexels
Was creating e-mail a mistake?
Cal Newport wrote an excellent piece, at The New Yorker, about e-mail called, âWas E-mail a Mistake?â
The piece is a really smart look at how asynchronous messaging - and e-mail - can negatively affect a workplace.
Hereâs a small piece of the essay:
The dream of replacing the quick phone call with an even quicker e-mail message didnât come to fruition; instead, what once could have been resolved in a few minutes on the phone now takes a dozen back-and-forth messages to sort out. With larger groups of people, this increased complexity becomes even more notable. Is an unresponsive colleague just delayed, or is she completely checked out? When has consensus been reached in a group e-mail exchange? Are you, the e-mail recipient, required to respond, or can you stay silent without holding up the decision-making process? Was your point properly understood, or do you now need to clarify with a follow-up message? Office workers pondering these puzzlesâthe real-life analogues of the theory of distributed systemsânow dedicate an increasing amount of time to managing a growing number of never-ending interactions.
Read more on the New Yorker.
đ Statistics
Shopping: Bringing Digital to Physical World - Credit: Statista
How Do Shoppers Bring Digital into Physical Stores?
About four in ten shoppers report checking sales and promotions available to them on a retailerâs mobile app while shopping in-store, according to the 10th annual RIS News study.
The report found that several different online consumer behaviors bled into the physical retail experience including, checking sales and promotions, comparing prices, and researching products. Shoppers were also looking to their screens to cut out some of the tasks a salesperson would perform, such as checking inventory and scanning bar codes.
Smartphones act as a perfect shopping companion, bringing some of the convenience shoppers look for online into the physical retail space. Unlike the common perception that retail is dead, retail is transitioning into the hybrid world. Some marketers are recommending that brick-and-mortar stores offer WiFi and equip their sales associates with tablets or smartphones so that they can best serve the hybrid shopping habits of consumers.
via Statista.
Post type distribution on Instagram Business Pages - Credit: MarketingCharts
Instagram Benchmarks: Use of Video Increasing
Videos used in Instagram Stories have been found to have higher engagement rates than photos â which could be why Instagram business pages tend to be transitioning more to video posts, per a study from Quintly. As part of its report, Quintly analyzed more than 5.9 million posts during the Q1-Q2 2019 period, taken from more than 34,100 profiles that ranged in size from 0-1k followers to more than 10 million followers.
Image posts remain the most popular form of post, with more than two-thirds (68%) of posts from these various profiles pages using images. Profiles are almost 4 times as likely to post images than videos (18%) and about 5 times more likely to post images as carousel posts (14%).
Read more on MarketingCharts.
Growth of Stories Format - Credit: Socialbakers
The Real Story is Stories!
And Facebook is dominating it using the Stories feature in its acquisitions, Instagram and WhatsApp, to keep Snapchat at a pretty safe distance.
via Socialbakers.
đą Tools & Apps
CopyPalette: Copy-paste your colour palette in a blink đ¤
Resume Builder: Create and download a resume for free.
đ§ Audio Stimulation
TED Talks Daily - How craving attention makes you less creative | Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Joseph Gordon-Levitt has gotten more than his fair share of attention from his acting career. But as social media exploded over the past decade, he got addicted like the rest of us â trying to gain followers and likes only to be left feeling inadequate and less creative. In a refreshingly honest talk, he explores how the attention-driven model of big tech companies impacts our creativity â and shares a more powerful feeling than getting attention: paying attention.
đŚ Tweets of the Week
Do you see a bicycle in this picture?! Thatâs a hose and it verified when I selected it đ https://t.co/rpXUKjg4N2
Middle aged people send âkâ texts not knowing the weight it carries
on this day in 1994 the first ever episode of Friends dropped. happy 25th birthday to ross, rachel, chandler, monica, joey, phoebe and the turkey head. đ
đŽ Fun Stuff
Telegram flexin' on Twitter, ruining WhatsApp
đą what would you do?
Privacy⌠right? đ
This is not goodbye...
This is a big thanks to you - for scrolling all the way down đ
See you next week!