The Tech Landscape #137 ⚛️
This is issue 137 of The Tech Landscape, a weekly collection of news about consumer digital technology. Stories are selected by me, Peter Gasston, with a little insight and opinion where appropriate.
The fine-structure consonant—written α (alpha)—is one of the fundamental numbers in physics, determining “how stars burn, how chemistry happens and even whether atoms exist at all”. It’s value is 137.
This was a very quiet week. To be honest, you could skip this edition and come back for the next one.
Social
The co-creator of Vine has launched Byte, the long-awaited(?) successor to the popular app. My suspicion is the market has moved on, with TikTok notably the main choice for short video now, but we’ll see.
theverge.com/2020/1/24/21081002/byte-vine-successor-available-now-launch-dom-hofmann-ios-android
Twitter is beefing up direct messaging with emoji reactions, like in iMessage and Slack. I warned you this wasn’t a vintage week for news.
twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1220124106634321921
WeChat is testing a major update which includes short video and images, in an attempt to stave off competition from other services—especially Douyin.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-21/tencent-strikes-back-at-bytedance-with-wechat-short-video-trial
Bytedance has signed a global licensing agreement with Merlin, a group that represents many independent record labels. This makes songs available in TikTok and Resso, the music streaming app being tested in India and Indonesia.
merlinnetwork.org/news/post/merlin-and-tiktok-agree-to-a-landmark-global-music-licensing-partnership
Games
Google and Activision Blizzard have entered into a partnership in which the games company will use Google Cloud for its game hosting and YouTube will be the exclusive streaming channel for its massive eSports titles.
prnewswire.com/news-releases/activision-blizzard-and-google-enter-into-multi-year-strategic-relationship-to-power-new-player-experiences-300993016.html?tc=eml_cleartime
US network Verizon is offering free Google Stadia Premiere packages with its fibre broadband. This follows a similar deal with BT in the UK last week.
verizon.com/about/news/verizon-google-offer
Everything Else
Google is making it easier to rediscover things you’ve previously searched by suggesting collections of similar searches. If you activate a collection, more relevant searches will be proactively added to it. It’s a bit like Pinterest, but hidden away.
blog.google/products/search/fresh-way-revisit-your-online-finds-google-search/
Personal audio (‘hearables’) will be the fastest growing smart device category over the next few years, according to a new report from Canalys. Digital assistants moving from the home to the body.
canalys.com/newsroom/canalys-worldwide-smart-device-shipments-2023