How did the big consumer apps get their first 1,000 users? Considering every startup confronts this question at some point, I was surprised by how little has been written about it. Particularly anything actionable. So I decided to do my own digging. I spent the past month personally reaching out to founders, scouring interviews, and tapping the Twitterverse.
A university is switching off its social media channels to promote a healthier online culture.
The departure of Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger is the latest test for parent company Facebook.
Twitter today released two new ads showcasing what it’s for and how to use it. It seems as though the ubiquitous microblogging app is having some trouble onboarding new users.
The two videos, starring comedian Romesh Ranganathan as a kind of Twitter mentor, explain some of the basics of Twitter in a flippant tone that seems less tutorial and more parody in parts.
In the first one, Romesh coaxes a timid potential user named Kenny G — there’s a reference millennials are sure to get — to join. There’s no explanation as to why Kenny has a number of horror puppets in his home, unless this is what Twitter thinks non-Twitter users do with their time.
With the recent release of Fujifilm instax SQ printer, it’s safe to say that printing photos from your smartphone is very much at large and Lifeprint is all over it. Instantly print photos and Augmented Reality photos directly from your Apple or Android smartphone – that’s right, Augmented Reality photos (think of the kind of stuff you saw on Harry Potter). Using Lifeprint’s Augmented Reality HyperPhoto technology, the user can now hold the printed photo (selected frame from the video) up to their phone and view the video behind the picture. This new form of sending and retaining memories is refreshing and exciting.
You text a friend to finalize plans, anxiously awaiting their reply, only to get a message from them on Snapchat to say your latest story was hilarious. So, you move the conversation over to Snapchat, decide to meet up at 10:30, but then you close the app and can’t remember if you agreed on meeting at Hannegan’s or that poppin’ new brewery downtown. You can’t go back and look at the message since Snapchat messages have a short shelf life, so you send a text, but your friend has already proven to be an unreliable texter. You’d be lucky if they got back to you by midnight.
Snapchat has embraced sophisticated ad-targeting technology that the company’s CEO once described as “creepy”.
The firm is rolling out a tool called Snap Pixel, which lets advertisers track what you do online after viewing one of their ads, and gather information about you.
Other major platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Google, offer similar tools to advertisers, but Snapchat has previously criticised these.
Two days before real-life troll Milo Yiannopoulos would descend on UC Berkeley’s campus in September, Ash Bhat and Rohan Phadte were sizing up a railing partisan on Twitter from their college apartment.
Hovering over his laptop, Bhat explained why he suspected @PatriotJen was actually a bot, maybe even one controlled from Russia. He pointed to the kitschy patriotic header image ripe for a truck stop T-shirt: a bald eagle flying towards heavenly rays. The bio seemed a liberal’s cliche of a Trump supporter, “Deplorable mom, wife, & homeschooler,” complete with red-meat hashtags: @AmericaFirst #MAGA #LockHerUp #BuildTheWall. All her tweets were retweets: an anti-Hillary tweet from Julian Assange, sensational pro-life news, a gloating tweet (“BOOM!”) about federal immigration raids that will punish California for protecting undocumented immigrants. Moreover, @PatriotJen’s feed was filled with the toxically shrill tone replicated throughout Twitter—showing Americans to be a bratty, spiteful species, and driving people like me out of the bilious swamp. The language of bots.
An advert for a dating site offering to help students in Paris find a “sugar daddy” to fund their studies has been removed by police.
Amazon revealed in an earnings call on Thursday that the supermarket chain made around two thirds less profit in the month since the acquisition than the same period last year (part of the difference can be attributed to accounting considerations).
Snap has announced a joint venture with US media giant NBCUniversal to develop and produce shows for Snapchat.
Snapchat has introduced a way for brands to include information such as reservation information, reviews and contact details with Context Cards.
Google believes that the next big hardware breakthrough doesn’t lie in pure hardware, but in the combination of AI, software and hardware.
It’s new products pose a serious threat to premier hardware manufacturer Apple, to Amazon’s voice device lead and it has even pushed out an AR offering that should have Snapchat worried.
Comments on INSIGHT FOUND
Make a comment