📡 The things you find at a bus stop in the UK 🤯

Pulse #141 — It’s classified.

Jun 27, 2021

Hi friends 👋

Thank you for all the feedback on Intersection. I really appreciate it. If you have more thoughts on either Pulse or Intersection, feel free to reply to this email — or connect with me on Instagram.

And now, I can keep this intro pretty short 😁 let’s jump in.

Last Week in the News

Classified Ministry of Defence documents found at bus stop [link]
UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) ordered cryptocurrency exchange Binance to stop undertaking any regulated activity in the country [link]
Tesla recalls more than 285,000 vehicles in China over cruise control safety concerns [link]
SolarWinds, TikTok’s user data, and a huge crypto seizure in the UK [link]
Windows 11 announcement, Virgin Galactic’s FAA approval, and Apple’s crackdown on leaks [link]
Antitrust bills for big tech, Instagram’s latest mix, and John McAfee’s suicide in a Spanish jail [link]
Apple’s case against sideloading, US blocking Iranian websites, and Amazon’s scandal [link]
Google’s antitrust issue, Bitcoin’s latest drop, and a Clubhouse surprise [link]
China’s latest crypto move, Apple’s antitrust problem in Germany, and Facebook’s Clubhouse clone goes live [link]

🤦‍♂️ a gift for you.

Worth Your Attention

Knitting a Healthy Social Fabric by Danah Boyd
a transcript of Danah Boyd’s keynote at Educause’s annual conference addressing polarization and hate through social networks
ARRAY: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay on How I Built This with Guy Raz
it’s a fantastic episode and you shouldn’t miss it. listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify

Chart of the Week

Why People Shop Online

The pandemic drove people to do more things online, including shopping. And, while consumers say they are motivated to purchase products online by convenience factors such as home delivery and ease of purchasing, a YouGov report shows that there are other reasons consumers shop online.

Almost three in every five respondents (57%) in more than 19,000 international consumers surveyed say one key motivation to buying online is that products are delivered to their home.

Although various aspects about delivery were a motivation to shop online even before the pandemic, with lock-down measures and more people working from home because of the pandemic, home delivery took on a whole new importance.

Read more on MarketingCharts.

& more stats

Open Banking adoption in Europe [link]
World's most popular websites [link]
Nike’s DTC sale grows from 15% of total revenue ($2.5b) in 2010 to 38.7% ($16.4b) in 2021 [link]
Top payment apps in Europe surpassed 30 million installs in Q1 2021 [link]
DuckDuck’s growth over the last 12 months: 50M+ app downloads, 55% search traffic increase, #2 search engine on mobile in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the Netherlands [link]

Tools & Apps

Spore: A free, all-in-one website builder for creators
this is almost too good to be true, but it is… so enjoy
Captivate 2.0: Every tool you need to start, manage & monetize your podcast
who doesn’t need monetisation, right?
Uberduck: choose a celebrity voice and then enter text for them to speak
i got eminem to read my last blog post… it was fun

Quick Tips

macOS: alt/option + shift + k in a text field 😉

Spotted

Instagram continues to work on the “Bonuses” feature for Reels [link]
Instagram continues to work on the exclusive stories for Fan clubs [link]
Instagram is working to save the story photos in the webp format instead of jpg [link]
Instagram keeps working on the camera settings for Live [link]
Instagram is working on the voice message playback timer [link]
Instagram is rolling out the ability to translate stories [link]
Instagram keeps working to natively support Rooms by adding the ability to mute participants [link]
Instagram is working on Collectibles [link]
Twitter is working on Google Sign-In integration [link]
Twitter is working on the ability to include caption file (.srt) for videos right in the Tweet Composer [link]
Twitter is working on translucent navigation bars in the iOS app [link]
Snapchat is working on a new sticker: Poll [link]
Snapchat is working on the Chat Reply option [link]
Loom is working on Dark Mode [link]
Spotify is working on rating for podcasts and shows [link]
Facebook is working on a redesigned stories tray that includes two new tabs: Reels and Rooms [link]
Facebook is working on a redesigned composer screen that includes the ability to create Instagram Reels [link]