Monthly Archives: September 2016Blog

Snapchat Specs

Spectacles from Snapchat is new, wearable tech that looks cool, takes video, and may well stick. It may also inspire Google to do something with their shelved (for now) Glass product — an over-ambitious project that wasn’t well-received last year. But I hope not …

If the Spectacles unveiling was pure L.A. cool, it contrasted starkly with the Google Glass debut four years ago, which was pure Silicon Valley geek … Where Glass wanted to be important, Spectacle claims it just wants to have fun.

Details: https://spectacles.com

Article: http://nyti.ms/2ddhZxM

More: http://bit.ly/2dsf6NY

IBM Embraces Design, Puts Customers First

IBM has embraced design as a core value to the extent that they’re retraining the entire company to “think design” — an interesting transformation of corporate philosophy that puts customers first to create more value.

“Designers bring [an] intuitive sense … and understand the power of delivering a great experience and how to treat a user as if they were guests in their own home,” says Phil Gilbert, chief design evangelist. The design program allows the $143 billion company to be more strategic and shift away from the engineering-driven “features-first” ethos toward a more “user first” mentality. “It allows us to solve real problems for real people …”

It’s a massive effort that involves retraining the entire company and hiring reams of design talent to lead the “design first” initiative. But if you believe that companies that provide the best experience for customers will win, committing to a strategy like this could well pay off.

Read full article: http://bit.ly/2cinCfw

Facebook’s Newsfeed

Businesses have gone to great lengths to set up Facebook ‘pages’ and get ‘Likes’ to expose prospects and customers to their goods and services. Such is what marketing is all about. But understanding how to use these devices to get consistent results can be daunting. In this new realm of marketing, we have little control, or so it seems. The following article from TechCrunch illuminates the workings of Facebook’s Newsfeed — the stream of posts users see when they’re on the service.

Understanding how the Facebook algorithm handles content helps us produce more valuable posts, which will then be shown to the people we want to reach. The article also references a section that will be updated whenever they change the algorithm. The last few paragraphs provide simple guidelines for creating content that performs well and gains greater reach to help achieve business goals.

The best tactics for appearing prominently in the News Feed end up being quite straight-forward: share things that are interesting, authentic, and resonate with your audience. That typically means visually compelling media, funny or emotional content, and important news that’s fascinating to a wide audience … [People] just want to be stimulated. Do that, and Facebook will share what you have to say.

Read full article: http://tcrn.ch/2cfw5B3