📡 A new social platform or just a feature?

Pulse #146 — First it was Stories, now it’s social audio

Aug 15, 2021

Hey Pulse fam 👋 Behrouz here. I’m back again with another Pulse to help you catch up on this week’s news, some new useful apps and tools, and some of the features that are coming to your favourite platforms and much more!

If you’re new here, please subscribe and get Pulse delivered to your inbox every Sunday.

This Week in the News

Backlash on Apple’s CSAM changes continues, Head of Twitter India gets a new role — in the US, and Disney beats expectations — again! [link]
Twitter’s new look, Samsung’s new lineup, and the crypto in Lionel Messi’s PSG contract [link]
Hacker ready to surrender, Facebook’s latest misinfo network, a $100 million fine [link]
Apple explaining itself, Twitter complying more, and Instagram going after more ads [link]

😼 a gift for you.

Worth Your Attention

Intersection #2 — food, information, and diet: optimising your input 👇
Pulse
You are what you eat
Welcome to the 3 new Pulse members who have joined us since Sunday. Join the 326 others who are receiving Pulse & Intersection. Pulse: a weekly newsletter that saves you time by bringing you what matters from the tech/media world. Intersection: a less frequent long-form post on an intersection of technology, new media, and business — and its impact on cu…
Read more
4 years ago · 3 likes · Behrouz Jafarnezhad
A really good analysis of Pegasus Spyware by Kim Zetter 👇
Zero Day
Pegasus Spyware: How It Works and What It Collects
Screenshot from a leaked NSO Group marketing brochure showing how the Pegasus control panel looks on a customer’s desktop computer as they view data siphoned from a target’s mobile phone. Revelations about Pegasus surveillance software continue to come a week after a consortium of 17 media outlets began publishing stories about the spy tool…
Read more
4 years ago · 10 likes · 1 comment · Kim Zetter
This is a great 🧵 by Alex Lieberman, the co-founder of Morning Brew 👇
Alex Lieberman ☕️ @businessbarista
Introducing Ethereum 101 • The backstory • The vision • Terms you must know • Use cases Let's dive in 🧵
3:17 PM ∙ Aug 11, 2021
4,208Likes734Retweets
Damien Hirst and Mark Carney (former Governor of the Bank of England) discuss Hirst's NFT art project 👇
if you’re into NFTs, here’s a project i’m a small part of: Catonized
hint: why so serious?

Chart of the Week

Social Platforms: they all look the same now

The fact that all these platforms are starting to look the same points at the idea of some platforms are just features unless they evolve.

For example, Snapchat had to evolve from being a platform for ‘Stories’ to a camera/AR platform, otherwise, it had no chance against Facebook/Instagram Stories attack.

Now, Clubhouse has the same problem. It has turned into a feature that other platforms are just adding to their products — yes, you can call it copying too.

& more stats

Stack Overflow’s 2021 developer survey [link]
CSAM data reports by company in 2020 [link]
The major labels growing streaming revenue by 33% in Q2 2021 while Spotify was up by just 23% [link]
Brands’ investment in influencer marketing is expected to grow by 33.6% this year [link]

Tools & Apps

Blob Opera: An Arts & Culture Experiment by Google
it’s fun :D
GrowthKit: 200+ tools and resources to start, build, and grow your biz!
you can find some really cools stuff in here
Notion Web Designer Hub: All-in-one hub for managing your web design projects
it’s a Notion template…
Reddit List: Discover Subreddits for different topics
this is quite useful!

Spotted

Instagram is working on the “undo” option for the story editor [link]
Instagram is working on a new sticker: “Get Quote” [link]
Instagram is working on Lists [link]
Instagram keeps working on the exclusive stories for fan clubs [link]
Instagram is working on adding a parallax effect to Direct’s chat themes using the phone’s gyroscope [link]
Instagram is working on new chat themes: J Balvin, Cottagecore
Snapchat is working on linking the ‘friends list’ to the phone’s contacts book [link]
Twitter is working on the possibility of pinning conversations [link]
Twitter is working on the possibility of adding a scheduled Twitter Space in the Google or Apple calendar [link]
Twitter is working on the ability to mute or report [link] or remove a follower [link] directly from the ‘followers list’
YikYak v2 coming on August 16th [link]