The Tech Landscape #164 🥚
This is issue 164 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.
164 of the 220 squares on a Scrabble board are blank. The highest possible word score in the game is 1,782 points, for Oxyphenbutazone.
I recorded a short audio thing about QR codes making a comeback, then I edited it into a blog post to make a bit more sense.
Assistants & Voice
The Alexa app has been redesigned with more focus on core capabilities and less on third-party Skills and games. Following last week’s batch of new feature announcements for Skill developers, it must be a little galling to see third-party Skill discovery reduced even further.
theverge.com/2020/7/28/21344777/amazon-alexa-app-redesign-ios-android-fire-os-skills-routines-weather-reminders
Google announced a batch of visual games for its Nest Hub smart displays. This, plus the Netflix announcement last week, shows a significant shift away from the Nest Hub’s original positioning as ambient and quietly helpful and towards being a second TV/entertainment device.
blog.google/products/assistant/hey-google-lets-play-a-game-on-your-smart-display/
XR
TikTok announced a new creative format, the Gamified Branded Effect, which is (as it sounds) AR game templates which can be branded. TikTok is trying to play down its Chinese connection at the moment, but this exact format has been in the Chinese version, Douyin, since early this year.
facebook.com/292240361726748/posts/612021496415298
TikTok will host a live AR experience featuring an avatar of The Weeknd. Obviously intended to rival Fortnite’s Travis Scott moment, it will be interesting to see if TikTok is still available in the US by the planned date.
newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/the-weeknd-experience-on-tiktok-live
Games
Roblox says it has 150m monthly active users, up from 115m pre-lockdown. It also reported that it’s on target to pay out $250m to developers this year. As I mentioned last week, Roblox’ young audience means it gets overshadowed by Fortnite and other games, but it’s slowly growing an audience and building a community of makers. Keep an eye out.
techcrunch.com/2020/07/28/roblox-jumps-to-over-150m-monthly-users-will-pay-out-250m-to-developers-in-2020/
Google is testing two new features for Stadia: live streaming, and Crowd Play, where viewers of the stream can be invited in to play. Both were touted at the Stadia launch, this is the first time we’re seeing them; but both are things that Stadia and cloud-gaming in general should excel at.
9to5google.com/2020/07/30/google-stadia-begins-limited-test-of-youtube-live-streaming-crowd-play/
Social
Facebook’s New Product Experimentation team launched e.gg, a social network inspired by ‘the creativity of the early internet’—that is, Geocities. But you can only create the pages in an iOS app owned by Facebook, which doesn’t exactly scream ‘spirit of the early internet’.
twitter.com/jasontoff/status/1288159238854864897
Facebook publicly launched Business Extension, a tool to make it easier for developers of retail and hosting platforms (like Square and WooCommerce) to offer their customers integration with Facebook for shopping, tracking, and booking appointments.
developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2020/07/31/creating-better-shopping-booking-experiences-facebook-business-extension/
Stat of the Week
Pinterest says it has 400m monthly active users, with notable growth especially from men, and people aged 25 and under.
newsroom.pinterest.com/en/post/pinterest-tops-400-million-monthly-active-users-with-gen-z-men-and-millennials-driving-growth
Maps
Google Maps fully launched its program which lets people follow Local Guides and receive updates of reviews and recommendations from them. Maps as a social network.
blog.google/products/maps/better-local-recommendations-google-maps/
Registered businesses on Google (in the US) can now flag themselves as Black-owned, which will be shown in their profile on Maps and Search. This sounds very well-meaning, but I wonder if/how it could be abused.
blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/supporting-black-business-owners/
Advertising Transparency
Google is updating its Consent Management Platform, Funding Choices, to make it easier for sites to request user consent for data that’s compliant with both the EU’s GDPR and California’s CCPA. User choices will automatically be respected by Google’s ad servers.
blog.google/products/admanager/helping-publishers-manage-consent-funding-choices/
Google ads will start to show more information about who paid for them, in a move aimed to increase transparency.
blog.google/products/ads-commerce/improving-user-privacy-in-digital-advertising/
TikTok promised to launch a Transparency Centre which will open up its algorithm, moderation policies, and data flows to regulators. This is obviously to head off the talks about a ban in the US; at the time of writing, its uncertain whether it will be successful.
newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/fair-competition-and-transparency-benefits-us-all
Entertainment
Spotify upgraded its Group Session social listening function so that groups of up to five friends(with Premium) can interact with the same playlist regardless of location (it was previously local-only). The reason I include this is because social ‘watch/listen parties’ are a COVID-accelerated trend that’s quietly bubbling and it’s interesting to see where it goes.
newsroom.spotify.com/2020-07-28/your-squad-can-now-stream-simultaneously-using-spotifys-group-session-beta/
Facebook will now show music videos on official artist pages (in the US). YouTube has been the default home of music videos until now, but Facebook’s extra fan engagement opportunities across its social platforms could be a big winner.
about.fb.com/news/2020/07/music-videos-on-facebook/
Everything Else
Google opened its .new domain shortcuts to third-parties, so you can type (for example) podcast.new to create a new podcast episode with Anchor, or create.new to start a new Adobe Spark project. I’m guessing they auctioned off these domains, and I’m also guessing they weren’t cheap. Useful, though; I use slides.new a lot.
blog.google/outreach-initiatives/small-business/do-something-new-whatsnew/
Oppo launched its first smart watch, the Oppo Watch. It runs Wear OS and looks more than a little similar to the Apple Watch. I can’t help feel its overpriced, though; IMO Wear OS is decent but not up to the standard of Apple’s WatchOS, and if you want to get it mass market you need to get the price down to £150 or less.
theverge.com/2020/7/31/21349246/oppo-watch-global-release-wear-os-india-uk-price-date