The Tech Landscape #162 🛒
This is issue 162 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.
Each team in Major League Baseball play 162 games in a regular season. Some weeks it’s a lot harder than others to find interesting number facts; this week was a hard one.
At the start of this week I thought it was going to be quiet, but mid-week saw an explosion of announcements. A fair few announcements about privacy and (national) security, and a ton of news about social ecommerce, so let’s start with that:
Social Ecommerce
Social ecommerce is, as it sounds, the merging of social networks and ecommerce. It’s been massive in China for a few years now, and something that Western platforms have been eyeing enviously. This week there has been a lot of social ecommerce news; it’s not really tech, as such, but it is a big thing that’s happening and worth paying attention to.
Snapchat introduced Brand Profiles, which will show brands’ Stories, Lenses, and a storefront with native checkout powered by Shopify. Closed Beta for now, with some 30 test partners including Unilever and L’Oreal. Shopify is having a very big year. forbusiness.snapchat.com/blog/introducing-brand-profiles
Instagram launched Shop, a new portal in Explore with curated content and product recommendations. It’s also adding Facebook Pay for in-app purchases in combination with Checkout (I’m a bit unclear on the difference between the two).
about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/instagram-shop-discover-and-buy-products-you-love-all-in-one-place/
Amazon is opening its Live shopping service to its Influencer Program in the US. Live-streamed commerce is huge in China, and well on its way here.
techcrunch.com/2020/07/15/amazon-influencer-program-opens-to-livestreamers-for-broadcasting-to-amazon-live/
Area 120, Google’s internal incubator program, launched Shoploop, a video-first shopping platform for influencers. It’s heavily influenced by both Instagram and TikTok, and offers product reviews and tips with links to buy. It’s just an experiment for now.
blog.google/technology/area-120/shoploop/
Users of Messenger Rooms, Facebook’s group video calling service, can now share their screens into the call. This isn’t exactly a new feature for video calling, but it’s interesting that Messenger explicitly calls out social shopping as a potential use case.
messengernews.fb.com/2020/07/16/messenger-expands-screen-sharing-to-ios-and-android-mobile/
China’s WeChat is testing MiniShops, a native tool for building storefronts on the platform. Businesses can already sell on WeChat, but they have to build their own tools; MiniShops removes that requirement and make it easier to launch on the platfom.
cnbc.com/2020/07/16/china-tech-giant-tencent-launches-new-online-shopping-feature-in-wechat-app.html
XR
Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 AR headset is now available to buy from the Microsoft Store. It was previously only on sale to enterprise customers, but at £3,350 it’s not ready for the mainstream yet.
twitter.com/HoloLens/status/1284201257905860609?s=20
Indian telecoms giant Reliance Jio announced Jio Glass, a new mixed reality headset. Details are sparse at the moment, but it seems to be focused on video calling and has its own voice assistant.
tech.hindustantimes.com/wearables/news/reliance-jio-launches-jio-glass-5-things-you-should-know-about-it-71594889102274.html
Social
Twitter unveiled its new API, offering new levels of access: standard, academic, and business. It’s an effort to rekindle developer interest in using its data to build interesting applications.
blog.twitter.com/developer/en_us/topics/tools/2020/introducing_new_twitter_api.html
Second Life, the precursor to Fortnite Party Royale and the metaverse, has been bought by an investment group. Hard to know what to make of this one; Second Life is seen as a bit of a joke, but virtual social spaces are becoming hot again.
otakustudy.com/video-game/2020/07/liden-labs-and-second-life-to-be-acquired-by-investment-group/
Regulation
I don’t usually write about law changes, but I think all of these are pretty important to know.
The UK has banned the purchase of new Huawei 5G equipment from 31 December this year, and all existing hardware must be removed by 2027. The decision is set to cost the UK £2bn and delay the rollout of 5G by 2-3 years.
bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53403793
The EU launched an antitrust investigation into consumer IoT, with a particular focus on how voice assistants like Alexa, Assistant, and Siri can capture too much data and reduce user choice.
ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1326
The European Court of Justice has struck down Privacy Shield, an agreement which covers the transfer of EU data to US servers. While generally a win for privacy, what this likely means for users is yet another consent box to tick.
wired.co.uk/article/privacy-shield-future
Everything Else
After making shopping free for any retailer on Search and Shopping recently, Google is adding new tools for advertisers to stand out, including using high-quality images, more creative layouts, and automated video ads. This is a strong push into ecommerce by Google, although its mostly US-only for now.
blog.google/products/ads-commerce/driving-online-sales/
Google’s second-gen Pixel Buds launched in nine new countries. I’ve got a pair, the Assistant integration is really useful.
9to5google.com/2020/07/13/google-launches-2nd-gen-pixel-buds-internationally/
Google’s Play Pass, the subscription service for Android games and apps, is now available in nine new countries including the UK, and added an annual subscription option for £30. It’s fairly well known that app sales on Play are much lower than the app store; I wonder if this will make a difference.
blog.google/products/google-play/google-play-pass-new-apps-games-plans-and-availability/
Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser, launched a new VPN app for Windows and Android. It’s a subscription service, so promises not to sell user data as free or cheap VPNs can.
blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/07/15/mozilla-puts-its-trusted-stamp-on-vpn/
Uber acquired Routematch, which supplies analytics and payment software to 500 transit agencies. It’s part of Uber’s plan to become the general ‘move things around’ company rather than pure ride-sharing, which will never make a profit by itself.
techcrunch.com/2020/07/16/uber-acquires-routematch-as-it-drives-deeper-into-public-transit-in-hunt-for-saas-revenue/