Five things on Friday #109

Things of note for the week ending Friday January 30th, 2015.

Things of note for the week ending Friday January 30th, 2015.

BIG UP THE 80s

According to my Mailchimp statistics, whenever the Five Things newsletter goes out late I always lose one subscriber. So if that’s you this week, I didn’t like you much anyway.

Shall we?

Five things on Friday constantly evolves. When it first started out it was just a photograph of some notes in a Moleskine but these days it’s a fully-blown weekly task with a newsletter plugged into it with several hundred subscribers. The latest thing I’m trying out is putting my favourite story of the week at the top. In a desperate attempt to convince you to keep reading, I’m leading with my best moves. We’ll see if it pays off…

On that note, OH MY GOD THIS IS SO EXCITING (for me):

1. SPOTIFY + PLAYSTATION
This is quite frankly, stellar news.

SPOTIFY AND PLAYSTATION IN YOUR FACE YOU MOTHER

Coming this Spring (and in tandem with PlayStation killing its ‘Music Unlimited’ service) Spotify is FINALLY launching on Sony PlayStation (and Xperia Smartphones) – YES!

As a massive gamer and Spotify user, this is MUSIC TO MY EARS (fnaw) and it’s going to be brilliant. Look!

“You can also use Spotify while playing games on PS4, enabling you to soundtrack your gaming sessions with your favorite songs in the background. Want something heavy and rocking for an intense Destiny Raid? How about some old school hip hop while taking the field in Madden NFL? With more than 30 million songs and 1.5 billion playlists, Spotify on PlayStation Music has it covered. As we get closer to launch we look forward to telling you about some of the other great features that will be available exclusively through Spotify on PlayStation Music.”

The Sony blog has the details.

[source]

2. TWITTER LAUNCHES GROUP DMS AND VIDEO
First off, and in line with the prediction made last year (see ‘Video Royale’ in this document), Twitter has rolled out its own native video upload service.

You should all be able to do this right now (update your app if not) and WIRED has published a good write up of why it works so well. I’ve tried it and it works OK I guess.


More on those fish later.

Second, on the new Whatsapp Group Direct Message feature front, this seems to be a little rushed. The eminent Mr Mat Morrison ran a little test earlier this week (my Pebble didn’t like it much) and here are the results:

W_W

So, I’ve tested Group Messaging on Twitter. Too early to say, but it’s already over for some.

This is what I think we’ve learned:

  • Can only initiate from iOS Twitter mobile client, not from Web (although can participate on Web)
  • Does not appear on iPad or Tweetbot; does appear on TweetDeck – but this is Web TweetDeck; doesn’t appear on my desktop app.
  • Only 20 people in a chat
  • 3rd party cannot delete messages in stream, author can?
  • Adding protected accounts to a chat means that their tweets can be seen in chat. This Confuses the hell out of TweetDeck.
  • No integration with Lists
  • Everyone gets bored of notifications really fast
  • Morse code does not work

^ Good facts ^

Nice one, Mat.

3. I LOVE THIS SPACE JAM TRIBUTE

SPACE JAM, BITCHES

That is all.

[source]

4. PULSATING EARPHONES OF LIGHT
Not a sentence I thought I’d write today but whatever; these are cool.

3 6

These Kickstarter (what else?) headphones are pretty darn awesome.

They self-illuminate, they help you get spotted by traffic, they can pulse to your actual heart beat (as well as to the beat of your music), and to top it all off, they’re actually going to get made.

Hurrah!

5. LIFE’S A PITCH
I’ve been reading a lot of Dave Trott recently and this post ‘Life’s a Pitch‘ spoke to me. It’s the tale of how the idea for ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ was pitched and eventually sold in (it’s a 2min read – do it now). I’ve heard of similar stories before (ever heard the one about using a real lion to pitch the idea of Disney’s Animal Kingdom? Look it up, it’s a doozy) but for some reason, I felt compelled to write about this one. Well, not this one. But what it evokes.

At my last agency, 1000heads, we spent a lot of time making the superfans of our clients feel really, really special. From lending them sportscars to flying them to far away places, our job was to ensure that they felt appreciated by the brand that they loved so much.

Like Dave’s story above, we always tried to make our clients feel a part of the story too. They would never understand surprise and delight (and therefore would not pay us to surprise and delight their fans) if they didn’t experience it themselves.

So here’s a challenge: what can you make real for someone next week? What is it that do make, do, or sell that you can turn on the person you’re selling to and give them the experience that you want to create.

Something to think on this weekend.

Oh, and buy Dave’s book.

Whatley out.

______________________

Wait, you want more?

FINE.

Bonuses this week are:

  • Got a big TV with either Chromecast or YouTube? Then you’ll be wanting this 18hrs of massive ocean aquarium footage. Mine’s on right now and it’s excellent.
  • Not a new feature but many people don’t actually know about Google Now’s Shazam-like skills at identifying songs. Here’s how to use it.

Happy now?

Keep Swiping

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Author: James Whatley

Chief Strategy Officer in adland. I got ❤️ for writing, gaming, and figuring stuff out. I'm @whatleydude pretty much everywhere that matters. Nice to meet you x