The Tech Landscape #178 🇺🇸
Virtual entertainment, digital makeup, and disappearing messages: this is issue 178 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.
A slow news week. Well, you know, slow for digital tech news. The US elections sucked up all the media air, so no company wanted to announce anything much.
I wrote a short thing: Physical+Virtual Events. It’s largely about how entertainment brands are moving into gaming, which is a thing I briefly touched on last week and one of the most interesting things to happen (in digital tech) this year. Nature abhors a vacuum, where nature in this case is represented by entertainment brands: faced with a reduction in physical spaces (e.g. cinemas, live events) this year, entertainment has moved fairly easily into digital spaces.
A further example which I didn’t include in my article is the latest Gorillaz album, which launched with an interview with the creators in a talk show hosted in Animal Crossing before an exclusive ‘live’ performance (also the video for this song was ‘filmed’ in GTA V).
Everything
Identity L’Oreal launched its first digital-only makeup line, Signature Faces, a range which exists only in Instagram, Snapchat, and Snap Camera. Previous digital cosmetics effects were try-ons of physical products, whereas Signature Faces are animated with subtle movements.
refinery29.com/en-gb/loreal-paris-signature-faces-makeup-filter
Payments People in India can now send and receive money through WhatsApp, through an integration with the country’s new Unified Payment Interface. WhatsApp launched payments in Brazil earlier this year before being almost instantly banned; but as Brazil rolls out its own national payment service, Pix, there’s a chance for WhatsApp to make a return there.
about.fb.com/news/2020/11/send-payments-in-india-with-whatsapp/
Messaging WhatsApp now offers the option for messages to disappear after 7 days.
about.fb.com/news/2020/11/introducing-disappearing-messages-on-whatsapp/
Privacy Apple announced that all apps should start recording the data they capture and whether it’s used for tracking, as it becomes mandatory for App Store distribution from 8th December.
developer.apple.com/news/?id=vlj9jty9&1604607481
Gaming Fashion retailer Net-A-Porter launched its own island in the game Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Visitors are able to customise their avatars with an exclusive collection by designer Isabel Marant.
wallpaper.com/fashion/net-a-porter-nintendo-animal-crossing
Stats of the Week
Voice assistant use on smartphones grew 11% between 2018 and 2020, with daily use up by 23% in the same period, according to the latest survey of users in the US by Voicebot. Siri is the most-used, with Google Assistant in second place.
voicebot.ai/2020/11/05/voice-assistant-use-on-smartphones-rise-siri-maintains-top-spot-for-total-users-in-the-u-s/
Pokémon GO has generated $1 billion of revenue in the year to date, its most successful year so far—no small feat considering it’s a game about moving around, in a year about not moving around.
sensortower.com/blog/pokemon-go-one-billion-revenue-2020
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