🏆 Alexa's use case; Parrots ordering food

I used to create five must reads a week on Linkedin and they were popular (don’t worry the usual long curated list is below) so here is my curated list of five random reads you might not have read this week:

🗣Parrot (almost) orders himself watermelons and strawberries via Alexa - Link

🦈Baby Shark was no fluke, it was a mix of science, art and marketing magic - Link

🤔23andme revealed a married couple were actually related (Facebook goes crazy) - Link

🚖Uber is going to become an ads company, with its network being the powerful connector - Link

🚂Amazon has gone into toy production, Toys R ….. - Link

🗣 Marketing 🗣

• Social media has now overtaken print as a news source for Americans (TV still winning) - Link

• How brands like Casper are leveraging the anti shopping therapy - Link

• Alexa read my emails - the things marketing teams need to know - Link

• Scooter hoarding issues - Link

• Seth of the week, Respect difficult problems - Link

• Seems radio and podcasts are now fighting it out to control the commute - Link

• YouTube are struggling to police their influences, their biggest problem their power & being able to make YouTube’s year in review the most disliked video ever - Link

👍 Social Media 👍

• Instagram has doubled down in the influencer space with specific features - Link

• Instagram is going to tell brands which products have been bookmarked - LinkInstagram also released their end of year wrap up (Link) The ❤️was used over 14 billion times, with Disneyland in Tokyo being the location with most 😊’s

• With all that said Facebook also thinks you’ll buy your TV content through them - Link I’m not convinced watch parties will be something they will crack without amazing content. Watch just doesn’t have it yet despite their numbers launched this week - Link

• Are you worried about Facebook dying, millions aren’t but what if it turns into MySpace? - Link

• Snapchat has been working hard to get advertisers back on board but it’s not working - Link

• With Facebook’s latest hack, here is a good tweetstorm on it

Another good tweetstorm on Facebook’s struggles in the crypto space -

🎧 Podcast Of The Week 🎧

I was invited on the innovation sofa podcast discussing what it really takes to roll out transformation across an organisation and how you integrate innovation and growth into a business - Link

▶️Video Break ▶️

📈 Business 📈

• Medium looked at buying New York Magazine and aspires to acquire traditional news outlets - Link

• Google CEO Sundar Pichai had to explain why a Google image search for “idiot” turned up pictures of Donald Trump - Link In the same questioning, Google struggled to explain the complexity around policing YouTube - Link

• Google’s algorithm has changed billions of lives and impact multi millions every minute, here is a take on how the algorithm isn’t bias, most likely just not human - Link

• Netflix and chill is changing….by changing what you watch (with subtle science) - Link

• Netflix famously said sleep is their competitor, well it’s now YouTube - Link

• Apple has removed it’s only USP with apple music by killing its social element - Link

• Here is a look at how restaurant apps use your location data - Link

• Customer centric is going to die as a talking point in 2019 - Link

• CMO’s tenure is short, only 43 months (but positively are 42% female vs other c-suite titles) - Link

• A great resource on Google docs from Kevin Morrill (his and his wife’s Danielle newsletter is great) if you are recruiting - Link

• Taylor Swift is no stranger to tech and stalkers, her wider team used facial recognition system to keep her safe from stalkers - Link

💯Campaign of the week 💯

Resources of the week:

Here are three resources I have been collating and sharing this year that might help you in your work and normal life

Matrixes - Templates to help organise your work, tasks and feedback

Social Media Tools - This is a list of the must use social media tools

GROW framework - This is a simple framework to keep on top of what you and the team are working on and their progress

Another hack I have shared on Twitter but might come in handy…If you are a user of google drive / g-suite you can use this shortcut to quickly create a doc, sheet or slide, type into a browser: docs.new will automatically create a doc, slides.new will do the same etc 👏

📊Newsletter stats: Last week we had 52% open rate with the average number of articles read person was 5, the social media image resizer and YouTube’s year in review were most popular 📊

🎄As it is Christmas next week this is likely the last newsletter before the festive period, thanks for reading the must reads of the week and have a great break, you know you have deserved it 🎄

Fire me an email [email protected] or tweet me @dannydenhard with your suggestions or your must reads of the week