Friday 5 — 1.22.2016

By Friday Five

Facebook Messenger

  1. Messaging is the next big platform, and Facebook gets it. With 800 million Messenger users, Facebook is looking at the rise of messaging globally, and doubling down with new features.
  2. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is Google’s solution to slow-loading web pages on mobile devices. AMP goes live in a few weeks, and this post explains how publishers are coming on board with complex ad and paywall support. Google has consistently rewarded speed on search engine result pages (SERPs) and will soon preference sites that are faster on mobile.
  3. Pascal Briod recommends 11 digital tools he uses every week as Head of Product at a startup. His choices range from user research to design, and would be a useful toolkit in nearly every digital shop.
  4. This week World Economic Forum released The Impact of Digital Content: Opportunities and Risks of Creating and Sharing Information Online. It’s a dense read focused on the impact to global society, and includes exploration of business models and the privacy implications of social media’s “active and passive (over) production of data”.
  5. Last Friday Wikipedia turned 15. Wired examined its evolution over the years, including struggles to ensure entries’ accuracy, and to increase and diversity the population of Wikipedians. Don’t miss these 15 amazing things that happened since Wikipedia launched. My favorite: an early entry on the Standard Poodle that read, “A dog by which all others are measured.”

Weekend fun: If you are mourning the news that the Star Wars VIII release has just been delayed, cheer up with this 8-bit recap of all the Star Wars deaths to date. Another fun Star Wars fact: “starwars” and “Solo” appeared on this year’s worst passwords list, behind perennial #1 favorite, “123456”.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.

Comments are closed.

No comments yet.

× Close