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Assignment 6: Google+

I received a reminder in my Gmail last week that my Google+ account was being shut down on April 2:

My first thought was: “I have a Google+ account?”

This might seem laughable, but I can guess that I’m not the only one who didn’t realize this. I don’t think I’ve opened the Google+ webpage a single time in my life. I have a Gmail account and prefer the Chrome web browser, but Google+ hasn’t offered enough for me to even upload a profile photo to my account.

So I decided to dive into the mysterious platform myself to take a look around.

The first thing I noticed is that it has a similar look and feel to Pinterest; with scrolling boards pinned to my homepage in which users can share, leave comments, like (or in Google’s case, “+1”), and upload. It also has a customizable profile that can be made as private and public as desired, and with particular groups of interest (ie. You can choose to share a post with only family members, or only members of a particular community).

The interface is easy to use and surprisingly simple and plain. On the left taskbar, one can toggle between the homepage, Discover, Communities (ie. “Gaming, “Pokemon,” “Marvel”), Profile, People (a list of your friends), and Notifications.

So why did Google+ fail so miserably? For one, it’s not that different than the other social media platforms already out there. The market was already saturated, so nobody got on board. Case in point: In 2014, The New York Times reported that Plus had 540 million monthly active users, but nearly half didn’t even visit the site. I see on my homepage that I have three followers: My family. Yikes.

The Verge wrote that Google vice president of engineering Ben Smith stated: “the consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement: 90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.”

What’s more,  Mashable details that Google announced the end of Google+ in the wake of two separate security breaches last year: The first of which a bug in Google+ exposed the personal data of nearly 500,000 people, and Google chose not to disclose it out of fears of regulatory pressure. Another yikes. I expected more from Google, especially because they hold the key to most of my information via my Gmail account.

So then, if I’m not using it, who is?

The communities who do use the platform are quite niche. One major group is photographers, who latched onto the network early in its history as a place to share photos and swap tips.

The Landscape Photography Community, more than a million members strong, remains one of the most engaged communities on Google+. And, over on Street Photographers, 400K members share boatloads of photos a day.

There are other wildly specific communities that are really active on Google+. Together, The Art of Bread (for bread makers and lovers), Board Games (for board game enthusiasts) and Toy Photographers (primarily close-up shots of Lego men and other tiny toys) make up some of the most engaged communities, according to this article.

Those who use the platform, while few, are vehemently against its imminent shutdown. A few users have started Change.org petitions; one has even received more than 22,800 signatures. The woman who started the petition wrote that she created it in order not to lose the friends she met on Plus. “I spend most of my time on Google Plus and I don’t know what I would do without it,” she said.

As for brands using the platform: Here are 10 brands with outstanding Google+ pages. Red Bull, Cadbury, and Ford are a few standouts for their catchy posts and bold images:

I for one, however, couldn’t differentiate their G+ content and engagement strategy from all their other social platforms. There’s content upload, user comment interaction, and not much more nuance to it. If, say, brands could find a way to market to their niche communities via Google+, that may have painted a different outlook picture for the company. 

While I am not sad that we’ll be losing Google+, I know that some small communities will. It will be interesting to see where they migrate to once the shutdown is complete.

Until next week!

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Assignment 5: Vero

This week, I’m covering the social media platform Vero. Never heard of it? Neither had I.

Vero markets itself as a social network free from advertisements, data mining and algorithms. Here it is part of its lengthy company manifesto:

Back in February 2018, it made a digital splash by hitting #1 on Apple’s App Store downloads.

Strange, because in December 2015, just six months after its initial launch, the App ranked #45 in the App Store, but quickly fell. Over two years later, during February 2018, it climbed from #566 to #1 in a matter of days. It’s not totally clear why Vero (which means “true” in Latin) went viral.

What does make it stand out, however, is that while it mostly resembles Instagram in terms of look and feel, it allows its users to share six categories of content:

Places — Users can explore destinations around the world through photo posts.

Photos and videos — Users can share photos and videos on the platform as well as mini photo albums. Editing tools and filters are also available.

Links — Users can link to their favorite content, including articles, videos, and websites.

Music — Users can listen to a song preview directly through their friends’ posts. They can also listen to entire song using Apple Music, without leaving the Vero app.

Movies — Users can share their favorite movies with friends by including trailers within posts.

Books — Users can share the books they’re currently reading as well as their all-time favorite books with friends.

Vero also touts its ability for users to fully control what they share (in four designations: close friends, friends, acquaintances, or anyone) with the ability to turn followers on or off, as pictured here:

What’s more, the App presents all posts in the feed in chronological order. It also sets itself apart by removing all presence of push notifications, and it is the first and only social media platform to include usage info on a dashboard (which means you can quickly see how much time you’ve spent on the App each day, and each hour of that day), which encourages users to set personal limits on usage.

Another set-apart for Vero is that its founders claimed that it would only be free for life to its first one million users. However, due to high demand, the company suspended that offer to all new users until further notice. According to its founder, Saudi-born billionaire Ayman Hariri, fees are now the equivalent of “a couple of cups of coffee a year.”

Now I am by no means a heavy social media user, but I am familiar with Instagram, Vero’s counterpart. I found it a definite value-add that Vero works to do generally what Instagram does, with the addition of customizing who sees your posts. It uses this setting to position itself as part of a “privacy revolution.” It might come as little surprise, then, that Vero has increased popularity spikes as a Google search term around the time the Facebook data breach became breaking news:

Source:  Neil Patel Blog.

This makes a strong case for user-preferences when it comes to digital privacy. With that in mind, don’t expect to find you grandmother on Vero. According to  this Business Insider article, half of Vero's users are between the ages of 21 and 40. In broad terms, that buzzword we have all been hearing: Millennials.

From a very young age, Millennials’ lives have revolved around technology and they have become hyper-aware of the data they share with companies online. They are accustomed to adapting to the latest digital trend or platform, and always looking for the next popular App. Millennials, more than any other age group, can be found accessing digital content from their smartphones. What’s more, this demographic is 2.5 times more likely than other generations to be early adopters of technology and 56 percent of Millennials report that they are usually one of the first of their social group to try and buy new technologies, according to  this article. This trendsetting user community is looking to associate themselves with companies of purpose and value. Vero Leadership took these values and ran with them, which may account for their surge in popularity amongst this group.

Currently, Vero does not allow brands or organizations to use their platform for ads. That said, their website is not 100% free from marketing content. See this Prince ad up now on their homepage:

Its position on marketing, then, seemed a bit two-faced to me. Recent press releases show that the company has begun teaming up with other brands to host giveaway contents. This article details Vero’s Great Guitar Giveaway campaign in January. The contest will be a year-long series of giveaways to Vero users in conjunction with donations to charities chosen by musical artists. The program “extends Vero’s commitment to supporting the arts and creative communities worldwide.”

All said and done, it appears that Vero is experimenting with its user payment model as well as marketing content. Does this mean that soon it will integrate with, say, Amazon prime, to deliver one-click book recommendations; or iTunes to share and purchase music? Time will tell. Until then, I’ll offer my two cents: Vero needs to stop flip-flopping on its firm company manifesto if it ever wants to take the digital world by storm.

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Assignment 4: Pinterest

This week, I’m covering Pinterest, which Wiki defines as “a social media web and mobile application company that operates a software system designed to discover information on the World Wide Web, mainly using images and, on a smaller scale, GIFs and videos.” In human speak, it’s a website that hosts a stream of photos and GIFs (much like Google Images) upon which you can search, save (“pin”), categorize into groups (“boards”), share, and like/comment.

Spoiler alert: The platform isn’t just for sorority girls anymore.

Full disclosure: I am a retired sorority girl.

I have experience using Pinterest, albeit roughly five years ago (am I dating myself?). In college, I had an account I used for finding sorority recruitment inspiration, Big-Little gift ideas, clothing, recipes, and travel inspiration boards. These days, I simply don’t log on. The sorority inspiration is no longer a necessity; for clothing ideas I look to magazines; for food I read Blogs; and for travel inspiration I watch Netflix documentaries or browse Instagram.

Here’s a peek at some of my old boards:

Side note: Take a moment to appreciate the beautiful design of the platform. Its user interface is simple, elegant, and tailored for easy sharing. Interestingly, Pinterest notes that 80 percent of its users access their platform through a mobile device. Like Instagram, you can browse thousands of images with the scroll of a thumb. It offers one-click sharing, liking, and messaging. Overall, 5-star UX review, Pinterest!

All jokes aside, Pinterest users aren’t completely limited to my own demographic. It boasts 250 million monthly active users and 3 billion boards, according to  Omnicore Agency data. Roughly 30 percent of all US social media users are Pinterest users; and 50 percent are from the US. Of all social platforms, it is fourth in popularity:

The community, however, is indeed incredibly siloed:

While 81 percent of users are female, 40 percent of new account signups are male.

The median age of a Pinterest user is 40, however, the majority of active Pinners are below 40.

Half of Pinterest users earn $50K or greater per year, with 10 percent of Pinteresting households making greater than $125K.

In summary: Women under 40 who earn an average salary overwhelmingly prefer the platform. Maybe I am the target demographic?! It’s unsurprising that us “digital natives” are all about Pinterest. For adults aged 18–34, half use Pinterest at least once a month according to  this report. The report details that millennials use Pinterest “to take charge and create a purpose-driven life” and that the platform helps them transform vague ideas into reality, from everyday activities like finding recipes, to planning for a new baby. This visualization tells all:

I think this “inspirational” niche is a great sentiment for the brand to leverage, as it makes it a powerful platform for a brand’s digital communications strategy. In fact, two-thirds of pins represent brands or products. These statistics, sourced from  Omnicore Agency, detail the selling power it has:

87 percent of Pinners have purchased a product because of Pinterest.

72 percent of Pinners use Pinterest to decide what to buy offline.

93 percent of active Pinners said they use Pinterest to plan for purchases and 87 percent said they’ve purchased something because of Pinterest.

50 percent have made a purchase after seeing a promoted pin. (Promoted pins are similar to sponsored Google Ads: They’re simply sponsored content from a brand).

As a brief case study of a brand that has used Pinterest to its own benefit, SproutSocial details that Bank of America uses Pinterest to create an online resource for people to be more financially literate. It has nearly one million monthly users. Their boards address life milestones from wedding planning to having a new baby. The pins are tagged with their branded #BetterMoneyHabits hashtag and lead to educational content on their website. It’s a great way to deliver fresh content to a willing audience. Some of its top boards are titled: “Small Business Basics,” “Travel for Less,” “Frugal Living,” and “Money Management.” Content is largely delivered in catchy list-style articles in which viewers must click into to access content via their home website:

That said, I am slightly worried that the platform may become too saturated with quasi-promotional content. My fears were quelled when I read that a recent study detailed that unlike other platforms, 78 percent of Pinterest users welcome brand content, as they use the site to research and plan purchases – which makes it appropriate to market content as such.

To close, Pinterest is a unicorn social platform as evidenced by its extreme popularity, as well as its extreme demographic (cough…gender…) and purchase power. I am intrigued as to how the brand plans to expand and diversify its consumer reach, while staying true to its sleek design and simple concept.

Until next week!

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Assignment 3: FaceTime

This week, thanks to a (likely targeted) news story on my LinkedIn feed, I selected Apple’s FaceTime as my app of study. According to numerous articles, the app experienced a bug just days ago that allows the FaceTime caller to hear the audio of the person they are calling…even before they pick up (or, more likely in my case, deny) the call. How does the bug work, you ask?

Start a FaceTime video call.

While it's still ringing, swipe up from the bottom of the screen and click "Add Person."

Add your own phone number to the call. You'll now be able to hear the microphone from the other device, even if the owner is nowhere nearby.

Not the best news for Apple. The internet agrees:

I’m not new to FaceTime, but I’m definitely not intimately familiar with the app. I love my Apple products just like any other urban Millennial (Full disclosure: This post was written on a Mac), but FaceTime just isn’t an app that gets a lot of use for me. If I want to connect, I’ll send a text or a make a call. I’ve always found the video calling phenomenon a bit odd. Does anyone remember Omegle, the wildly popular service that randomly pairs users in one-on-one chat sessions where they chat anonymously using the names "You" and "Stranger”? (Knockoffs included Chatroulette, Tinychat, Stickam, etc.). Maybe my skepticism of video calling comes from my (weird) experiences with these chat services, in which it is highly likely that some government, company, or bored kid in his mom’s basement was watching.

Digital and data privacy is a hot topic lately, for obvious reasons (cough…Cambridge Analytica). As digital consumers, we’re being watched, analyzed, mined, re-marketed, re-targeted, and now listened to without our consent. It’s a data-driven world, and we’re just living in it. Small kudos to Apple CEO Tim Cook for this “heartfelt” tweet on the touchy privacy subject yesterday:

I may be jaded, but this tweet looks like a too-little-too-late PR crisis comms situation to me.

That said, some states and local governments are pushing for digital privacy reform.  Just in from Salt Lake City: A Utah state lawmaker introduced legislation that would offer more protection for emails, IMs, and other online data which would make it so any “individual who transmits electronic information or data is the presumed owner of the electronic information or data,” and would require “issuance of a search warrant to obtain certain electronic information or data.”

It’s about time, especially because earlier this week, Facebook landed in hot water for developing an app that gave users a payment of $20/month + referral fees for their phone and web activity. Apple said in a statement that Facebook's app violated its policies by using its membership in Apple's Enterprise Developer Program "to distribute a data-collecting app to consumers, which is a clear breach of their agreement with Apple” according to  this CNet article. And their target audience? Kids as young as 13! Yikes!

I should be less shocked, as know well that that the kids I grew up babysitting are Apple’s target demographic. This Business Insider article proves my suspicions correct: Teens still love the iPhone, with 82 percent of US teens confirming they owned one of Apple's phones. Only 10 percent said they planned to buy an Android phone next. Wow. There’s really no competition there. I wonder if the FaceTime privacy breach will at all affect these numbers? I’ll look back on Q1 ’19 earnings in a few months.

That said, Android currently has the largest global platform share, with a prominence in lower income areas and developing nations. Comparatively, iOS users typically have higher income, higher education levels, more engagement, and spend more per app:

Graph source: Forbes.

And here’s a bit of demographic data to make you laugh: According to  this study, Android users are less extroverted than iPhone users, and they are perceived to have greater levels of honesty and humility.

Is this data shocking to me? No. (With the exception of the honesty statistic and the liquor datapoint. Random.). Apple markets its phone’s sleek interface, quality camera, high price point, and overall “cool factor” to a community of people that aren’t much different that those who call Silicon Valley home: The rich and educated. I’m not even going to dive into race here in the essence of brevity, but we can all probably make a guess at what that demographic looks like.

My current company blessed me with a Mac. It is not unusual for companies with a Digital and Design focus to adopt Apple products, but I will now question how this might change post-FaceTime. If a government contractor with a TS clearance uses an iPhone for work, might this pose an issue? (My guess: A resounding yes.)

But for now, I’d like to give a big shoutout to the surprising Black Knight of the FaceTime bug: The vulnerability was first discovered by a 14-year-old in Arizona, who found that he could eavesdrop on his friends when setting up a chat for a round of Fortnite. The surprises never end. 

Until next week! 

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Assignment 2: Slack

For my second assignment I selected Slack, the team collaboration app and desktop tool. Comparable to Skype or AIM, it allows instant messaging, file and screen sharing, as well as voice calls between members of an internal team/company. Slack’s motto is: “Make work life simpler, more pleasant and more productive (Slack, 2018). They aim to connect teams, unify systems, and drive business forward.

I chose Slack because I had never used it prior to joining my current firm three months ago. Its utility and features are entirely new to me, which lends a fresh take on the platform. Typically, I had been accustomed to using Skype/the Microsoft Office Suite, WebEx, and Gmail to send instant messages, emails, share files, as well as make video and conference calls. I typically used Outlook for emails and file sharing, and Skype for instant messages with those within my internal team. I had never even heard the work “Slack.” So, when I was told to set up a Slack account on my first day at my new job, I truly started from ground zero.

Slack’s website boasts that they have eight million daily active users within 500,000 organizations. Apparently, 65 of the Fortune 100 have paid Slack workspaces as well (Slack, 2018). Its customers include Liberty Mutual, HelloFresh, ZipCar, Fox, California Institute of Technology, IBM, SurveyMonkey, Benefit Cosmetics, and many more. Businesses ranging from government, to private, to non-profit all use Slack.

On its customer stories page, Slack features quotes from loyal customers. One in particular stood out to me:

“As you grow, you get more processes and more people in the value chain. Things start to slow down naturally. Part of trying to keep that startup mentality is remaining fast with communication and delivery, and I think Slack's really, really helped.”

-Lee Jones, Trivago

I liked this quote because in my mind it represented the culture of one powerful micro-community Slack services: fast-paced, break-neck Start Ups. To keep up the pace with this demographic, it takes a huge amount of innovation. To me, this community customer base speaks volumes about Slack’s performance and strength to stand out in a competitive market.

For a company that launched only five or six years ago, its community coverage is quite incredible. The graph below shows that the company truly shows no sign of stopping:

(Graph source: McCarthy, 2018).

What’s more, the wide community of users have claimed that the platform has increased their productivity. A survey showed that approximately 32 percent of respondents said that their team has increased in productivity by 20 to 40 percent since adopting Slack (Statista, 2015). These are impressive numbers for a platform that doesn’t offer much more than its competitors in terms of truly unique services.

While it’s obvious that Slack is popular with companies of all shapes and sizes, I did notice within my own company that individuals tend to use Slack for separate purposes. The company will send formal messages from leadership to targeted “channels,” but I have observed that smaller teams will build their own channels to share a mix of funny gifs, serious workstream commentary, private messages, and personal replies with animated emojis. The tone feels far more informal when used on an individual scale.

The desktop media format of Slack is quite unique. Its interface features a list of “channels” (groups) of which you are a member. Below this list is another for direct messages between colleagues. One can see if a colleague is online based on their direct message color. Within the message stream itself, users may share text, image, and documents as well as reply to a particular message. A fun feature is the “Add reaction” button that allows you to react to a post with a slough of emojis. Channels may be set to private and invite-only, or public.n There is also a “notebook” style option for you to draft reminders and test out messages. Here’s what my Slack notebook looks like (it’s empty for now!):

What I found particularly interesting about Slack is it’s decision to recently (as in, last week!) update its logo. Here’s a before-and-after take at its logo:

The Slack Blog (Slack Team, 2019), states that:

“Our first logo was created before the company launched. It was distinctive, and playful, and the octothorpe (or pound sign, or hash, or whatever name by which you know it) resembled the same character that you see in front of channels in our product.

It was also extremely easy to get wrong. It was 11 different colors—and if placed on any color other than white, or at the wrong angle (instead of the precisely prescribed 18 degree rotation), or with the colors tweaked wrong, it looked terrible.”

Strangely, I couldn’t find any details on the meaning of the logo itself. What does the “#” mean to Slack beyond the obvious millennial attraction? I plan to dive deeper to find the truth!

Overall, I am satisfied with my brief introductory experience with Slack. I can see how it is a popular tool with companies both large and small. I love the intimacy of being able to send a colleague a private message while also having the option of joining a larger community forum where news and updates can be shared as quickly as wildfire. I’ll check in after a year of Slack use to see if my opinion changes. Until then, message me on Slack!

References:

McCarthy, Niall. (2018, August 9). Slack's Growth Shows No Signs of Slacking. Statista. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/chart/6643/slack-hits-4-million-active-users/.

Slack Team. (2019, January 16). Say hello, new logo. Slack. Retrieved from https://slackhq.com/say-hello-new-logo/.

Slack. (2018). About Slack. Slack Homepage. Retrieved from https://slack.com/about.

Statista. (2015). After adopting Slack, how much more productive is your team? Statista. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/520856/percentage-increase-of-team-productivity-after-adoption-of-slack/.

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Assignment 1: WhatsApp

Note: All statistics in the following post are sourced from Statista.

For my first assignment, I selected the free messaging app WhatsApp. The app uses your phone’s internet to send text, voice, video, and photo messages plus documents up to 100MB as well as make voice calls all without SMS fees. It is available for iPhone and Android, as well as via your Desktop when synced to your smartphone. The app is rated as the third most popular social network worldwide as of October 2018, by number of active users (in millions):

Interestingly, I was once quite familiar with WhatsApp. When I lived abroad in Chile for nine months in 2016, WhatsApp was my messaging app of choice; I used it more than iMessage and Facebook Messenger to keep in touch with my family and friends both in the country and abroad. Because I didn’t want to pay for expensive international minute and data rates, I turned to WhatsApp as an alternative to my usual form of phone communication: iMessage. Since returning to the US, I have regressed to using iMessage thanks to a cheap data plan and lack of need for Wifi to sent texts and photos to my loved ones. I have not since used WhatsApp.

I quickly picked up on the WhatsApp community nuances as soon as I downloaded the app. Firstly, you can only connect with someone who has also downloaded the app, which makes it an exclusive group of users to begin with. What’s more, unlike iMessage, you have a “profile” and must upload an image and set a status. This means that if a stranger messages you through the app, you can see their profile image as well as if they are currently online. With iMessage, none of these features exist. For this reason, the community of users treats the app as a bit more of a public-facing social network than a simple text messaging platform. I noticed that those who used WhatsApp changed their profile image frequently (akin to the aunts and uncles we are all friends with on Facebook…). I also noticed – in South America in particular – users preferred to use the voice message feature over text. That got me to thinking: Is this platform popular in other countries? It turns out, it is. This graph illustrates the share of population in selected countries who are active WhatsApp users in 2017:

I was surprised to find that its swath of users are spread across the Middle East, Western Europe, South America, and even Asia. I was not surprised to see the US missing from the graph.

Demographically, I noticed by simple observation in Chile that both young and old use WhatsApp in South America. I did a little digging, however, and it turns out that across the board, Statista research shows that the age group 25-34 is most active, followed by those aged 18-24. In terms of gender, there are slightly more men using the app. Unsurprisingly, urban users are more prevalent than rural. While the total sum of this data shows that WhatsApp certainly doesn’t cater to a very niche audience, it is clearly favored by millennial urbanites in developing countries. It is hard to determine if the app attracts a demographic with clear passions, as its features are limited to basic one-on-one sharing (as well as group chains). It is a simple functionality that focuses on basic communication needs.

For this reason, I found the media format of the app very intuitive and easy to navigate. Its home page is a list of your chats (just as an iMessage list appears), a one click button to start a new text, and a bottom static toolbar. The toolbar contains a status button, call button, camera button, as well as settings gear. The simplicity of the design lends itself well to the nature and purpose of the app itself: Easy and free messaging that anyone can use. When one clicks on an individual chat chain, one can send a one-click voice message, photo, emoji, text, document, location, or share a contact. When one clicks on a text that has been sent to the chat stream, one can “star,” reply, forward, copy, or delete the particular text; lending itself an additional nuance that has been overlooked by iMessage and Facebook Messenger. 

WhatsApp’s popularity has not gone unnoticed by brands. They have begun using the platform as a “chatbot” of sorts, as well as sending text alerts to consumers when there is a sale. I did a bit of Twitter crawling and also found that the media is utilizing WhatsApp to tell stories in a unique way. This screenshot shows a promo for the BBC series “Young and Connected,” which is BBC Africa's first WhatsApp series that brings the story of the rise of youth groups who are challenging their leaders who want to stay in power or who are not accountable:

I find this fresh take on a messaging platform extremely bold and refreshing.

In summary, I found this exercise insightful in analyzing WhatsApp’s small yet unique differences that allow it to stand out from other messaging platforms. It is easy to see why it ranks among the top digital messaging platforms today, among powerhouses Facebook and Instagram. In a world flooded with digital communications choices, WhatsApp stands out by offering a simple, functional, and free service that a wide demographic can enjoy.