M essenger Gets Down, Uber’s Nightmare and Instagram Apes Pinterest
Here’s the news we’re talking about around the Zbra Studios water cooler. We’ve provided key bullet points from each article for the speed readers out there. For those looking to dig in, click on the links for the full story.
With Its F8 Announcements, Facebook Messenger Is Getting Down To Business
By HARRY MCCRACKEN from Fast Company
- “Facebook Messenger has reached that lofty milestone, according to an announcement last week. And at Facebook’s F8 conference in San Jose, Calif., it’s announcing that a major part of what’s next involves connecting all those people with businesses.”
- “Facebook is starting off by providing this service to restaurants in the U.S.; eventually, it plans to roll it out to other sorts of businesses and in more countries.”
- “If all goes well, it will give Facebook the opportunity to start monetizing Messenger by charging companies to get a higher profile within the app. Which is why Marcus explains the strategy as turning a service that people now treat as a digital White Pages into the equivalent of the Yellow Pages, too.”
Uber’s PR Nightmare, a Field Guide
By ADRIENNE LAFRANCE from The Atlantic
- “Uber has messed up—deeply and repeatedly—for years now. Even for a company that’s infamously scandalous, 2017 has been a banner year. Which means that, these days, every new revelation seems like more bad news for Uber—even when it’s maybe not so straightforward.”
- “The controversies have been coming at such a regular clip this year that it’s almost comical—to some observers,”
Instagram’s saved posts can now be organized into Pinterest-like collections
by Chris Welch from The Verge
- “…starting today, you can organize saved posts into individual collections You just tap and hold on a saved post to add it to an existing collection or start a new one.”
- “ Instagram’s collections remain private and are only visible to you. So you can’t publicly share your assortment of carefully curated stuff with other users unless you want to just individually share a bunch of separate photos.”
- “Instagram says that 46 percent of users have saved posts so far; hopefully most of those weren’t unintentional like mine. Collections are part of the latest Instagram mobile app update that’s now rolling out to Android and iPhone.”
Nick Cotton is a project manager based out of Los Angeles, California. He’s got a background in the entertainment industry, and uses his talent at online messaging to extol the virtues of content marketing, interactive fiction and sentences measuring 280 characters or less.
FOLLOW