Dark social + more news

3 minutes estimated reading time

How to Use Brand Jedi to Harness ‘Dark Social’ | DigitalNext – AdAge – so basically this is being attributed to influencer engagement and as the driver of ‘unattributable’ site traffic / conversions aka dark social (paywall)

Apps to watch at SXSW 2016 — Medium – nothing really stood out to me from this list. Tribe and Roger reminded me of TalkBox, or the message function in iMessage and WeChat – generating more dark social opportunities. Chalk is a bit like State or Reddit

WeWork Raises Funds at $16 Billion Valuation for Asia Expansion – Bloomberg Business – rather optimistic that western startups will rise the fund raising bust and expand into Asia…

Google to sign up telcom operators to provide internet to remote parts of the country – timesofindia-economictimes – it will be interesting to see if their efforts will be more successful than Facebook has been with Indian mobile operators

Really scary stuff that the media makes worse, charted | Quartz – great data on the pervasive (largely media generated) fear that seems to paralyse rational thought in developed societes

Building Towards Value with Atlas | Atlas Solutions – interesting focus on native and video. Also powerful calling of ‘bullshit’ on many ad networks

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Best practices for bloggers reviewing free products they receive from companies – no real surprises

Rocky times for startups: Mutual funds devalue and VCs turn off money hose • The Register – quelle surprise

Crap IT means stats crew don’t really know how UK economy’s doing • The Register – and people make accusations about Chinese economic data…

The contagion effect of Shanghai Disney Resort – Campaign Asia – interesting how Disney is also an education brand in China. The resort also sets the benchmark for how brands tell their stories with passion

Categorically Open – Brands Still Fail to Take Categories Seriously in China  – Branding in Asia Magazine – diacotmy of viewing China as a developing or developed market. It isn’t homogeneous, so you need tiered strategies based on level of development running east to west

WeChat to add Office Version – LinkedIn watch out! – SocialBrandWatch – its more like Slack than LinkedIn

The kingdom of ‘Wei’: WeChat and Weibo’s coexistence in China – Campaign Asia – (paywall) – wei means mini. WeChat’s Chinese name is Weixin…

Announcing SQL Server on Linux – The Official Microsoft Blog – ’embrace, extend and extinguish’ or a new reality?

Oracle to reveal details about Android – Business Insider – this is should be interesting

Microsoft’s Windows 10 Store No Longer Accepting Bitcoin – Microsoft has silently removed support for Bitcoin in the Windows 10 Store, despite the fact that the company adopted the digital currency in late 2014 with much fanfare

Go On… — Life Tips — Medium – good review of the Google Alpha Go game

Chinese consumers look for high-end smartphones | Marketing Interactive – all three China’s home-grown brands have seen obvious market share increase , with Huawei jumping to 2.13% from 0.34%, OPPO rising to 2.48% from 1.37%, and vivo climbing to 1.64% from 1.21%

Microsoft: We Store Disk Encryption Keys, But We’ve Never Given Them to Cops | Motherboard – expect DoJ to prompt further movement away from US services, Microsoft are shitting themselves

Amazon Echo, home alone with NPR on, got confused and hijacked a thermostat – Quartz – apparently random TV programmes do it too

NSA Data Will Soon Routinely Be Used for Domestic Policing That Has Nothing to Do With Terrorism – as John Gruber said ‘This is literally the pot of Spectre’ (the James Bond film)

Bangladesh Central Bank Found $100 Million Missing After a Weekend Break – WSJ – apparently they were going after $1 billion (paywall)

SMARTPHONES: Huawei Challenges Apple, Samsung in Payments | Young’s China Business – would you trust Huawei with your credit card? I can understand them succeeding in China, internationally it will be a long game

trendwatching.com | PEER ARMIES – guestimation on how the sharing economy will adapt to deal with current criticism

Here’s How Corporate Growth Is Killing The Economy – Douglas Rushkoff’s version of The State We’re In by Will Sutton