Stories and other stories in the Programmable Edition #90
When you and I think about hot potatoes between tech giants, we think patents, markets, talents or audience. The huge war over UX concepts is less obvious at first.
Though, recent UX changes on popular digital platforms show that the battle on UX is one of the most violent ones. The most notorious example is the massive convergence around the “Stories” format. Launched by Snapchat in 2013, shamelessly copied by Instagram and Messenger in 2016, by Facebook one week ago… Even Medium adopted the format with its freshly launched new product Series. You get to see them everywhere, to the point some say it might be the new newsfeed: adapted to vertical formats, massively leveraging video (the “new keyboard”), in short, fully fitted to the evolution of usage. Some other ones, less seriously, predict that even Excel could soon adopt the feature.
Anyway, the point is: UX strongly matters. Contrary to patents, markets, talents, etc. the first mover advantage is smaller in UX: only counts the format, how you take it to a network and put your own spin on it.
Have a good day,
Thomas
Twitch now sells games
Twitch, the world’s leading video platform and community for gamers, launches its game store to sell games via its streaming service. Twitch also established a smart rewarding strategy to encourage viewers to use the new store.
Psychology as the art of business management
Uber is deploying highly creative psychological strategies to keep drivers on the road, based on elaborated gamification approaches. Showing drivers how close they are from achieving their goals seems to be a wining strategy.
Amazon, the quiet leader of the (US) DSP world
Oddly enough, Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP) has strengthened its position and appears as the most used DSP by agencies and brands in the US, surpassing big guys such as Google, DoubleClick Bid Manager (DBM) and Appnexus.
Machines are taking a central place in the investment world
BlackRock made a big step towards artificial intelligence now massively relying on algorithms to manage stock funds.
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