The Tech Landscape #180 đ
Twitterâs Fleets, Appleâs App Store, and Instagramâs updates: this is issue 180 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.
Quite a long email because there was SO MUCH NEWS this week. Lots of social media and messaging updates, just in time for winter and endless rounds of lockdown to keep us in our homes.
Top Stories
Twitter is globally rolling out Fleets, its Stories-like ephemeral messages. Reaction on Twitter has been largely negative, because of course it has, but it remains to be seen how popular theyâll turn out to be; Instagram Stories were also largely reviled at launch, but are now more popular than the Feed.
blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2020/introducing-fleets-new-way-to-join-the-conversation.html
Apple announced the App Store Small Business Program, which cuts commission to 15% for businesses earning up to $1m in revenue per year. Itâs not a bad thing, per se, in that it encourages businesses to offer more in-app revenue; but estimates say that while this will affect 98% of developers on the App Store, they accounted for only 5% of revenue last year. So Apple gets the âstrategy creditâ, while the businesses suing apple (like Epic Games and Spotify) arenât affected at all.
apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-store-small-business-program/
Everything Else
Social & Messaging Facebook launched the first batch of features for the integrated Instagram/Messenger âmessaging experienceâ including Watch Together social watch parties and Vanish Mode for automatically deleting messages. US-only, for now.
about.fb.com/news/2020/11/new-messaging-features-on-instagram-and-messenger/
Social & Messaging Instagramâs Threads, the offshoot of Instagram Direct aimed at close friendship groups, was updated with improved navigation, a Status tab, and better integration with Stories. I still canât see who this is aimed at, and whatâs the long-term strategy.
techcrunch.com/2020/11/19/instagram-revamps-its-mobile-messaging-app-threads/
Social & Messaging Instagramâs Guides, longer-form content collections, are now broadly available after launching to select creators earlier this year. Instagram is also improving its search features, allowing search by keywords, not just hashtags.
techcrunch.com/2020/11/17/instagram-expands-new-guides-feature-to-all-users/
Social & Messaging Google announced that RCS (âSMS 2.0â) messaging is now available globally to users of its Messages app. Itâs more feature-rich than SMS, but until Apple deigns to support it, itâs not a replacement for SMS.
blog.google/products/messages/helping-you-connect-around-world-messages/
Social & Messaging Snap has reportedly acquired Voisey, an app which lets users add vocals to background tracks. It comes on the heels of launching Sounds, and the acquisition of Voca.ai, so something big is brewing with regards to audio.
techcrunch.com/2020/11/20/snap-acquired-voisey-an-app-to-create-music-tracks-overlaying-your-own-vocals/
Social & Messaging Virtual influencer Lil Miquela has a 10-episode âreality showâ on Snapchat.
variety.com/2020/digital/news/miquela-snapchat-show-1234834939/
Social & Messaging Facebook NPEâs app E.gg, which lets people build simple web pages, is now broadly available to users in the US, which I guess means the limited beta was quite successful.
npe.fb.com/2020/11/18/egg-free-your-creativity/
Assistants & Voice Amazonâs Echo Frames smart glasses are now generally available, after an invite-only trial, with slightly improved hardware and software and a range of colours. The Echo Loop smart ring is being discontinued.
aboutamazon.com/news/devices/echo-frames-are-now-available-to-everyone
Assistants & Voice Google Assistant is now available on the latest Fitbit watches after a firmware update. Googleâs acquisition of Fitbit is yet to be approved, but looks like the companies are already working together.
theverge.com/2020/11/19/21574837/fitbit-sense-versa-3-google-assistant-voice-calls-text-messages-speech-spo2-monitoring-bloody-oxygen
Gaming Googleâs cloud gaming service, Stadia, celebrated its first birthday with new features including a shared games library for families, messaging, and better sharing of screenshots and clips. Stadia is impressive technology, but barely hinting at the potential of cloud gamingâit needs some first-party exclusives to really show it off.
community.stadia.com/t5/Stadia-Community-Blog/Stadia-Update-November-16-2020/ba-p/39361
Gaming Fortnite is adding in-game video chat using Houseparty, which it acquired a year or so back. It uses your phone as a video camera, but detects faces and separates them from the background so no-one can see any private details in your feed.
epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/news/houseparty-brings-video-chat-to-fortnite
Identity Epic Games acquired Hyprsense, a real-time facial animation service for avatars. Combined with Houseparty (above), this could allow the use of player avatars with realistic facial animations in Fortnite video chatâor even in the game itself.
uploadvr.com/epic-games-hyprsense/
XR Ralph Laurenâs Polo logo is now active in Snapchat; scanning the logo will activate different Lenses in the app. Itâs the latest in the two companiesâ partnership which began with a range of digital outfits in Bitmoji.
fashionunited.uk/news/fashion/ralph-lauren-teams-with-snapchat-for-ar-experience-series/2020112052099
XR Flipkart (âIndiaâs Amazonâ) bought Scapic, a startup which builds AR product previews for ecommerce. This technology is becoming table stakes for online retailers now.
medium.com/scapic/scapic-joins-flipkart-to-take-augmented-reality-to-a-billion-indians-e1bd2aaf3fce
XR Nintendoâs Animal Crossing Pocket Camp mobile app launched some AR features including an AR camera which lets players preview characters and items from the game in the physical world.
theverge.com/2020/11/20/21579378/animal-crossing-pocket-camp-augmented-reality-ar-camera-cabin
Identity Digital avatar service Genies will soon make digital apparel tradable through a blockhain partnership with Dapper Labs. Genies recently relaunched with Gucci as a partner, so this opens the door for the fashion house to sell digital exclusives.
coindesk.com/genies-avatars-dapper-labs-flow-blockchain
Payments Google announced a major update to Pay (in the US), with a focus on friends and organisations over recent transactions, and coupons and promo codes. It also says a full banking service, called Plex, coming next year.
blog.google/products/google-pay/reimagined-pay-save-manage-expenses-and-more/
Advertising Amazon released Fire TV Ads, a (beta) self-service solution for buying âsponsored tilesâ on the Fire TV home screen.
developer.amazon.com/blogs/appstore/post/9671b317-3737-4094-9dfd-7ed7a2eaca4e/introducing-self-service-amazon-fire-tv-ads
Advertising YouTube announced an audio ads (beta) service; ads will be played when videos are in the background, such as when people are listening to YouTube Music.
blog.google/products/ads-commerce/youtube-music-audio-ads/
Health Google redesigned its Fit app to better show integrations with other apps and monitors. This feels like itâs with one eye on the pending Fitbit acquisition.
blog.google/products/google-fit/healthier-more-active-life/
Content Virtual influencer Lil Miquela has a 10-episode âreality showâ on Snapchat.
variety.com/2020/digital/news/miquela-snapchat-show-1234834939/
Stat of the Week
Roblox says 33 million people viewed a virtual concert by Lil Nas X. Given the ratio of 60% unique viewers from the Fortnite Travis Scott concert, we can roughly estimate 20 million unique viewers for this, which is incredibly impressive. The show itself was (perhaps) surprisingly well executed.
theverge.com/2020/11/16/21570454/lil-nas-x-roblox-concert-33-million-views
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