Hi friends 👋
How was your weekend? so, I’ll keep this section short ‘coz I’m working on a longer piece to share. You can help me by answering this question: is social media good or bad? what do you think?
Let me know by replying to this email. Your thoughts can get featured in the article I’m writing.
Stay tuned — also you can support me by subscribing to this newsletter.
Ps. The only constant is change.
Last Week in the News
Google’s first-ever retail store [link]
Oxford University Press has been printing books since 1586, and now it will stop [link]
Vaccine passports, picture-in-picture, and government-friendly Twitter alternative [link]
Spotify’s latest move, police raiding online gangs, and Reels ads [link]
Clubhouse rivals going live, the US vs big tech, and next-gen Windows design [link]
Amazon’s not joining the FLoC, Facebook’s EU-wide issue, and a unique NFT [link]
Gag orders, faster Apple watches, and Google’s free stuff [link]
🙊 a gift for you.
Worth Your Attention
Does Consensus Matter? from gapingvoid blog.
an interesting take on consensus and the fact that although it’s a good thing, it doesn’t necessarily means the result is the right answer.
Lucky breaks by Seth Godin.
don’t count on them, but do welcome them.
Chart of the Week
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is growing fast — even faster than Facebook ever did
Although its $34bn of revenue is some way off the $86bn that social media giant Facebook pulled in last year, it's a truly insane number when you consider that ByteDance was only founded in 2012. That makes 2020 its eighth ever full year of results.
At that age Facebook, which was famously founded in Zuckerberg's Harvard dormitory in 2004, was pulling in just over $5bn. Even accounting for some inflation, ByteDance is growing at an unbelievable rate.
Read more on Chartr.
& more stats
Ofcom’s annual ‘Online nations’ report, with a lot of interesting data about internet use — especially for children [link]
A survey by Tinuiti of 2,000 US consumers found that 8 in 10 (79%) think their phone listens in on their conversations and makes product recommendations accordingly [link]
Shazam passes 1 billion monthly songs recognised; lifetime total of 50+ billion [link]
Tools & Apps
Glyphy: simply copy special characters & symbols to your device’s clipboard & paste them to any document or app you want
thank me later
Weava: highlight, organize, and create your research in one place from your browser [Chome/Brave Extension]
started using this out of the need for highlighting on browser and it’s pretty good
Inlytics: LinkedIn analytics for personal profiles
if you’re on linkedin, this can be useful-ish
Ghost Knowledge: knowledge from the people who don’t normally write online
pretty cool idea… hope it catches on
Spotted
Twitter is working on “Reply Later” [link]
Twitter is working on Tweet Reactions picker [link]
Twitter is working on the possibility of searching for spaces in the Spaces tab [link]
Instagram keeps working on collaborative posts [link]
Instagram keeps working on the possibility of receiving authentication codes (2FA) on WhatsApp [link]
Instagram keeps working on the possibility of replying to a comment in a Reel with a video [link]
Instagram is working on “Privacy Center” [link]
Snapchat is working on the ability to share live location with friends [link]
Snapchat is working on reactions for chat messages [link]
🐦 Tweets of the Week
Fun Stuff
and now we’re done for this week
What did you think of this issue? No polls, just words. — if you felt like it. There’s a ❤️ button for you too…
I’ll leave you with this.