Least surprising news of recent times: Facebook is developing crypto for sharing money across their platforms, most likely Whatsapp - Link (Will be interesting to see if this would be taken up)

After the Facebook drama’s and privacy concerns Basecamp have gone Facebook free, it’s not something I can imagine was working very hard for them but good marketing ploy from Basecamp - Link

The makers of Malboro are going to market its newly invested vape brand (Juul) on its own packages of cigerettes - Link Here is a good article on Juul and their progress to date - Link

Here is a fun look at the best and the worst rebrand campaigns of 2018 - Link

Influencers were instrumental in making Puma and Nike becoming most mentioned brands across Instagram - LinkYou can read more JustGiving 2018 insights here from the excellent Sophie Greig (Connect with her on LinkedIn)

Charity:Water is incredibly powerful and on a true mission this is a great podcast not only in business but storytelling - Link

If you are a regular visitor or reader of my newsletter you know i’m a huge fan of Seth Godin and Simon Sinek, they did a Facebook live this week and it was awesome - Link

If you like podcasts, football and murder mysteries you will love my former colleagues (Stevie Green) latest podcast series Deadball Specialist - Link

It’s obviously Christmas season, here is how much Christmas songs can make for artists :-

“Merry Xmas Everybody” by Slade £1m (in royalties per year) // “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl £400,000 // “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey £400,000 // “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby £328,000 // “Last Christmas” by Wham! £300,000 // “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney £260,000 // “Stop the Cavalry” by Jona Lewie £120,000 // “2000 Miles” by The Pretenders £102,000 // “Mistletoe and Wine” by Cliff Richard £100,000 // “Stay Another Day” by East 17 £97,000 (source)

Swiss Beats shared some insights into streaming platforms and pretty surprising how low some businesses, Drake was Spotify’s most streamed artist with 8.2 billion streams - (Instagram Link)

How citymapper delightful experience has won super fans (I called it data delight in a recent conference talk) - Link

Discord hit 200million users earlier this month highlights how powerful a simple product and need state can be (and how you can monetise it properly) - Link

164 companies made their first millions through the App Store this year, here they are - Link

F*ck FOMO it’s all about JOMO (Joy of missing out) - Link

Into journalism or large newsrooms: 18 lessons learnt from global newsrooms - Link

Ed Sheeran sold the most concert tickets over the 12 months, $432m worth, that’s a record - Link This is how musicians now earn the majority of their money (definitely not from streaming as shown above)

How Elon Musk the king of multitasking has won - Link Here is a video with a look at the tunnel the boring company built over in LA - Link

How Facebook workplace wants to turn companies into communities (podcast) - Link

The second hand market in Nigeria has been booming and here is a good take looking at the impact it has had - Link

This is essential reading for anyone working in a marketplace or wants to understand how Uber actually makes money - Link

Here is a good #longread on how Apple could defy gravity (and the decline in the smartphone market) - Link

Casey Newton from The Verge sent out a great newsletter about what is and has happened with the Facebook data giveaway / exchange etc - Link

Good tweetstorm from Josh Constine at Techcrunch

Ben Thompson from stratechery has another great take and really dissects the issues - Link (This is paywalled content)

The former chief security officer from Facebook had his say on Twitter (well worth reading the thread) - Link