1. Facebook Announces News Reader App ‘Paper’ – spelling the end of the Facebook app?
Launching today in the US, is a standalone news curation app by Facebook, which some commenters believe could make the original Facebook app redundant.
Paper – which is Flipboard-like in design and content, pulls in stories, photos, videos and links from the user’s Facebook feed, which sit alongside stories from partner publications. Becoming a one-stop shop for all your news: the stories affecting your private life and those affecting the world.
Paper shares many of the Facebook app features. Users are able to like, comment and share individual stories; customise the stories they see based on preference; change the cover photo, as well as the name of sections and the layout; plus – crucially – post straight to Facebook from the Paper app.
Currently, availability will be limited to iPhones in the US. Interestingly it will run without ads or sponsored stories until Facebook understands how users engage. But it’s definitely a Facebook service to watch.
View more details via this film.
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2. Obama uses Google Hangout to answer the public’s questions
Last Friday, Obama answered questions submitted by the American public following his State of the Union address. Providing a chance for Americans to have their questions answered on specific policies, users were asked to upload short films to YouTube or Google+ using hashtag #AskObama2014.
Google chose the questions that made the final cut in the 40 minute hangout (view here), explicitly stating that neither the President nor his staff had seen them in advance.
The result was a very slickly produced piece of visual content – which, as a cynical Brit, makes it hard to believe that there was no pre-briefing. But still, the Hangout was a great way to use social media to address political issues. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a feature in our own 2015 elections.
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3. Facebook to share user data to inform how people use the site – and steps on twitter’s toes
For the first time, Facebook is to publish data about its 1.23 billion active users through a new programme which promises to protect privacy – Chatter.
Chatter has been developed in partnership with SecondSync, a social TV analytics specialist, with the promise that all data released will be aggregated and anonymised.
The data is set to inform how people use Facebook to talk about a variety of topics. The first will be TV, with a Watching with Friends white paper produced based on TV shows viewed in US, UK and Australia.
The move will have a crucial effect on twitter, creating competition in a space that the microblogging site has previously dominated. In fact at its IPO it disclosed that it made $47.5m from selling data to firms like Neilson. The sheer scale of Facebook’s data threatens to dwarf the niche offering twitter previously dominated.
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4. Retailers ‘crowdsourcing’ customers’ images to add valuable content to product pages
Retailers in the US are crowdsourcing shots of their products from social media platforms to add to their product galleries.
Increasingly amateur images are being shown on brands’ product pages, next to professionally styled images, to ensure content is refreshed on a daily basis.
Brands like L’Oreal say that customers are happy to do so, flattered by the “social clout” offered in return.
But it’s not just about content. Authenticity is key to brands. Coach, for example, has created a site that collects images from women wearing its shoes all over the world, showing the product as it appears in real-life, rather than in a multi-million pound advertising shoot. And, increasingly, this is what consumers trust.
Furthermore retailers are using the resulting engagement to direct sales.
Coach, for example, might decide to make more of a particular shoe in red if photos of that colour appear more often and get more positive feedback. While this practice isn’t new, it’s popularity is spreading with the University of Wisconsin unveiling an algorithm that promises to help retailers select the best photos to drive sales.
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5. Apple hints at fingerprint scanner mobile payment
At a conference this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook conceded that Apple was ‘intrigued’ by the concept of fingerprint-enabled payment through the phone’s Touch ID sensor. He suggested it was an area they were exploring.
Fingerprint payment would allow customers to pay for purchases through the iTunes or App Store simply by swiping their iPhone’s fingerprint sensor, instead of entering credit card details.
If Apple could launch a mobile payment option like this, it would put them in competition with Google and PayPal.
With nearly 600 millions card accounts for iTunes and App Store customers, there is huge potential. Plus its tech savvy customer base are likely to embrace any platforms that make secure payments quicker.
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