The Tech Landscape #151 🤑
This is issue 151 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.
There were 151 billionaires in Britain in 2019, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. There were 54 in 2017.
Lots of news about buying and payments this week; useful as the economy teeters on the edge of collapse. Sorry, that wasn’t a very positive start to the email, I left it late this week and I’m tired and grumpy.
XR
Sketchfab, the 3D model repository, launched a new feature where any model on the web can be viewed in AR on mobile devices, using the operating systems’ own viewer. It’s for Enterprise customers only, aimed at retailers and manufacturers who want to show their products on their websites.
sketchfab.com/blogs/community/announcing-app-free-ar-for-brands/
8th Wall, the company spearheading the commercial use of AR on the web, launched Inline AR which makes it easy to launch AR experiences directly from an existing website, rather than a separate microsite. This increases the reach and ownership of branded AR experiences.
medium.com/8th-wall/introducing-inline-ar-43f8ccff09fe
Fortnite announced a new mode called ‘Party Royale’, with a no-combat map just for live events. The space launched with a live gig by Diplo. This is a very clear signal of Fortnite’s desire to be a virtual hangout space as much as a game; last week’s big Travis Scott launch was made annoying by having other players shoot you before the event started.
theverge.com/2020/5/1/21244874/fortnite-diplo-concert-jordan-fisher-party-royale
Mozilla announced Hubs Cloud, a new service which lets users run their own compatible VR spaces—an attempt to build a social Web-like infrastructure for VR. I’m still not sure that VR is going to break out beyond a few niches, but this is a noble attempt to build something out of the control of a few large gatekeepers and could lead to an independent competitor to Fortnite’s social plans.
blog.mozvr.com/announcing-hubs-cloud/
Mark Zuckerberg announced some new XR features coming to Facebook’s Spark platform in the near future, including 360° video backgrounds in video calls and dynamic mood lighting. This came in a video which replaced Facebook’s F8 keynote this year, and was weirdly rambling and lacking details.
arpost.co/2020/04/28/upcoming-ar-experiences-first-f8-livestream/
Assistants & Voice
Google’s 2nd-gen Pixel Buds launched in the US. Hearables are important for making an assistant more available to a user, in their ears as opposed to in their hand.
blog.google/products/pixel-buds/pixel-buds-now-available/
45% of US households have a smart speaker in their bedroom, making it the most common room in which to have one, according to the latest Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report. It’s likely because more people own multiple smart speakers now, with the bedroom the second or third choice of location for many.
voicebot.ai/2020/04/30/yes-the-bedroom-is-now-the-most-popular-location-for-smart-speakers-heres-why-and-what-it-means/
Messaging
Google announced that its videoconferencing service, Meet, will be made free for everyone to use. However, individual users (unlike GSuite users) won’t be allowed to invite anyone who doesn’t have a Google account. This is obviously a response to Zoom’s popularity, but Google still needs to sort out its video calling strategy (Meet? Hangouts? Duo?)
blog.google/products/meet/bringing-google-meet-to-more-people/
WhatsApp said that there has been a 70% reduction in ‘highly forwarded messages’ globally since the restrictions on mass-forwarding were introduced earlier this month. It’s important to limit the spread of mis- and dis-information, but could also limit the spread of important information.
techcrunch.com/2020/04/27/whatsapps-new-limit-cuts-virality-of-highly-forwarded-messages-by-70/
Retail
Shopify launched Shop, an app to recommend and promote sellers and products on its platform. Shopify has helped a lot of local businesses go online during the quarantine, and if this app is a success it could help them even more.
news.shopify.com/meet-shop-your-new-personal-shopping-assistant
YouTube is testing a feature which shows shopping links for products featured in videos. This seems to be automated, based on semantic extraction of products mentioned in the videos, rather than something creators control.
9to5google.com/2020/04/29/youtube-products-in-this-video-feature-test/
Poshmark, a North American retail site with 60m users, is rolling out video stories to allow retailers to give more inspiration and context. This is following the huge trend of social commerce in Asia, and is aiming at the same market as Instagram but from the opposite direction, adding social to commerce rather than vice versa.
inputmag.com/style/poshmark-launches-posh-stories-to-give-more-life-to-clothing
Google Pay in Singapore now lets users find menus from local restaurants and order food for delivery or collection. It’s interesting to see how Pay works in different markets; it’s mostly a payments tool, but in India and now Singapore is becoming more of a shopping discovery platform too.
insideretail.asia/2020/04/28/google-in-singapore-launches-restaurants-menu-sharing-app/
Payments
TikTok introduced Donation Stickers, which users can add to their stories to invite donations to the British Red Cross and Help Musicians charities. This is obviously a welcome move, but also good for TikTok’s long-term revenue plans as it gets people used to using the platform for payments.
newsroom.tiktok.com/en-gb/introducing-tiktok-donation-stickers-with-british-red-cross-and-help-musicians
Instagram introduced ‘live fundraisers’ where live stream broadcasters can request donations to selected non-profit organisations. As with TikTok, this is good for donations but also positions them to add more revenue through live video in the future.
engadget.com/instagram-live-fundraisers-140042841.html
Video
YouTube is bringing its fact-checking information panels to the USA, after previously running it in Brazil and India, which gives you some idea of the state of US politics right now.
youtube.googleblog.com/2020/04/expanding-fact-checks-on-youtube-to-united-states.html
ByteDance released Viamaker, a standalone video editor which brings TikTok’s impressive editing tools to any videos.
pandaily.com/bytedance-launches-video-editing-app-viamaker-for-tiktok-overseas/
Stat(s) of the Week
The latest official Chinese internet survey says that 904 million people in the country are online, and 99.3% of them use mobile to access the internet.
abacusnews.com/china-tech-city/china-now-has-over-900-million-internet-users-thanks-pandemic/article/3081844