Year: 2018

Prepare for the invasion of the unskippables. If the Stories social media slideshow format is the future of mobile TV, it’s going to end up with commercials. Users won’t love them. And done wrong they could pester people away from spending so much time watching what friends do day-to-day. But there’s no way Facebook and its family of apps will keep letting us fast-forward past Stories ads just a split-second after they appear on our screens.

We’re on the cusp of the shift to Stories. Facebook estimates that across social media apps, sharing to Stories will surpass sharing through feeds some time in 2019. One big reason is they don’t take a ton of thought to create. Hold up your phone, shoot a photo or short video, and you’ve instantly got immersive, eye-catching, full-screen content. And you never had to think.

Unlike text, which requires pre-meditated reflection that can be daunting to some, Stories are point and shoot. They don’t even require a caption. Sure, if you’re witty or artistic you can embellish them with all sorts of commentary and creativity. They can be a way to project your inner monologue over the outside world. But the base level of effort necessary to make a Story is arguably less than sharing a status update. That’s helped Stories rocket to over 1.3 billion daily users across Facebook’s apps and Snapchat.

The problem, at least for Facebook, is that monetizing the News Feed with status-style ads was a lot more straightforward. Those ada, which have fueled Facebook’s ascent to earning $13 billion in revenue and $5 billion in profit per quarter, were ostensibly old-school banners. Text, tiny photo, and a link. Advertisers have grown accustomed to them over 20 years of practice. Even small businesses on a tight budget could make these ads. And it at least took users a second to scroll past them — just long enough to make them occasionally effective at implanting a brand or tempting a click.

Stories, and Story ads, are fundamentally different. They require big, tantalizing photos at a minimum, or preferably stylish video that lasts five to fifteen seconds. That’s a huge upward creative leap for advertisers to make, particularly small business who’ll have trouble shooting that polished content themselves. Rather than displaying a splayed out preview of a link, users typically have to swipe up or tap a smaller section of a Story ad to click through.

And Stories are inherently skippable. Users have learned to rapidly tap to progress slide by slide through friends’ Stories, especially when racing through those with too many posts or that come from more distant acquaintances. People are quick with the trigger finger the moment they’re bored, especially if it’s with an ad.

A new type of ad blindness has emerged. Instead of our eyes glazing over as we scroll past, we stare intensely searching for the slightest hint that something isn’t worth our time and should be skipped. A brand name, “Sponsored” label, stilted product shot, or anything that looks asocial leads us to instantly tap past.

This is why Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg scared the hell out of investors on the brutal earnings call when she admitted about Stories that “The question is, will this monetize at the same rate as News Feed? And we honestly don’t know.” It’s a radically new format advertisers will need time to adopt and perfect. Facebook had spent the past year warning that revenue growth would decelerate as it ran out of News Feed ad inventory, but it’d never stressed the danger as what is was: Stories. That contributed to its record-breaking $120 billion share price drop.

The shift from News Feed ads to Stories ads will be a bigger transition than desktop ads to mobile ads for Facebook. Feed ads looked and worked identically, it was just the screen around them changing. Stories ads are an entirely new beast.

Stories Ads Are A Bigger Shift Than Web To Mobile

There is one familiar format Stories ads are reminiscent of: television commercials. Before the age of TiVo and DVRs, you had to sit through the commercials to get your next hit of content. I believe the same will eventually be true for Stories, to the tune of billions in revenue for Facebook.

Snapchat is cornered by Facebook’s competition and desperate to avoid missing revenue estimates again. So this week, it rolled out unskippable vertical video ads it actually calls “Commercials” to 100 more advertisers, and they’ll soon be self-serve for buyers. Snap first debuted them in May, though the six-second promos are still only inserted into its longer-form multi-minute premium Shows, not user generated Stories. A Snap spokesperson said they couldn’t comment on future plans. But I’d expect its stance will inevitably change. Friends’ Stories are interesting enough to compel people to watch through entire ads, so the platforms could make us.

Snapchat is desperate, and that’s why it’s already working on unskippable ads. If Facebook’s apps like Instagram and WhatsApp were locked in heated battle with Snapchat, I think we’d see more brinkmanship here. Each would hope the other would show unskippable ads first so it could try to steal their pissed off users.

But Facebook has largely vanquished Snapchat, which has seen user growth sink significantly. Snapchat has 191 million daily users, but Facebook Stories has 150 million, Messenger Stories has 70 million, Instagram Stories has 400 million, and WhatsApp Stories (called Status) leads with 450 million. Most people’s friends around the world aren’t posting to Snapchat Stories, so Facebook doesn’t risk pushing users there with overly aggressive ads except perhaps amongst US teens.

That’s why I expect we’ll quickly see Facebook start to test unskippable Stories ads. They’ll likely be heavily capped at first, to maybe one to three per day per user. Facebook took a similar approach to slowly rolling out auto-play video News Feed ads back in 2014. And Facebook’s apps will probably only show them after a friend’s story before your next pal’s, in between rather than as dreaded pre-rolls. Instagram already offers carousel Stories ads with up to three slides instead of one, so users have to tap three times to blow past them.

An Instagram spokesperson told me they had “no plans to share right now” about unskippable ads, and a Facebook spokesperson said “We don’t have any plans to test unskippable stories ads on Facebook or Instagram.” But plans can change. A Snap spokesperson noted that unlike a full thirty-second TV spot, Snapchat’s Commercials are up to six seconds, which matches an emerging industry trend for mobile video ads. Budweiser recently made some six second online ads that it also ran on TV, showing the format’s reuseability that could speed up adoption. For brand advertisers not seeking an on-the-spot purchase, they need time to leave an impression.

By making some Stories ads unskippable, Facebook’s apps could charge more while making them more impactful for advertisers. It would also reduce the creative pressure on businesses because they won’t be forced to make that first split-second so flashy so people don’t fast-forward.

If Facebook makes the Stories ad format work, it has a bright future that contrasts with the doomsday vibes conjured by its share price plummet. Facebook has over 5X more (duplicated) Stories users across its apps than its nearest competitor Snapchat. The social giant sees libraries full of Stories created each day waiting to be monetized.

A Democratic senator seeking reelection this fall appears to be the first identifiable target of Russian hacking in the 2018 midterm race. In a new story on the Daily Beast, Andrew Desiderio and Kevin Poulsen reported that Democratic Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill was targeted in a campaign-related phishing attack. That clears up one unspecified target from last week’s statement by Microsoft’s Tom Burt that three midterm election candidates had been targeted by Russian phishing campaigns.

The report cites its own forensic research in determining the attacker is likely Fancy Bear, a hacking group believed to be affiliated with Russian military intelligence.

“We did discover that a fake Microsoft domain had been established as the landing page for phishing attacks, and we saw metadata that suggested those phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all standing for elections in the midterm elections,” Burt said during the Aspen Security Forum forum. Microsoft removed the domain and noted that the attack was unsuccessful.

Sen. McCaskill confirmed that she was targeted by the attack, which appears to have taken place in August 2017, in a press release:

“Russia continues to engage in cyber warfare against our democracy. I will continue to speak out and press to hold them accountable. While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. I will not be intimidated. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Putin is a thug and a bully.”

TechCrunch has reached out to Sen. McCaskill’s office for additional details on the incident. McCaskill, a vocal Russia critic, will likely face Republican frontrunner and Trump pick Josh Hawley this fall.

A Democratic senator seeking reelection this fall appears to be the first identifiable target of Russian hacking in the 2018 midterm race. In a new story on the Daily Beast, Andrew Desiderio and Kevin Poulsen reported that Democratic Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill was targeted in a campaign-related phishing attack. That clears up one unspecified target from last week’s statement by Microsoft’s Tom Burt that three midterm election candidates had been targeted by Russian phishing campaigns.

The report cites its own forensic research in determining the attacker is likely Fancy Bear, a hacking group believed to be affiliated with Russian military intelligence.

“We did discover that a fake Microsoft domain had been established as the landing page for phishing attacks, and we saw metadata that suggested those phishing attacks were being directed at three candidates who are all standing for elections in the midterm elections,” Burt said during the Aspen Security Forum forum. Microsoft removed the domain and noted that the attack was unsuccessful.

Sen. McCaskill confirmed that she was targeted by the attack, which appears to have taken place in August 2017, in a press release:

“Russia continues to engage in cyber warfare against our democracy. I will continue to speak out and press to hold them accountable. While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. I will not be intimidated. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Putin is a thug and a bully.”

TechCrunch has reached out to Sen. McCaskill’s office for additional details on the incident. McCaskill, a vocal Russia critic, will likely face Republican frontrunner and Trump pick Josh Hawley this fall.

Amazon may soon be adding a feature consumers have wanted for years: collaborative wish lists. A number of people using Amazon.com and its mobile app recently spotted the option to “invite others” to their wish lists. This offers a URL that can be shared via text messages, email, social apps and more. Once clicked, the invitees can then both add and remove wish list items, alongside the wish list’s original owner.

The feature, while relatively minor, is something Amazon shoppers have been clamoring for. Parents want to be able to co-manage wish lists for their kids, while others – like friends, couples, party planners, family and friends – have also wanted to team up on lists of gift ideas for special occasions, such as birthdays, holidays, and various celebrations.

But there’s been some confusion over whether the feature was something Amazon was only testing, or if it was in the early stages of a rollout to all users.

Amazon declined to comment on its plans specifically, but did tell us this is a test with a “small number of customers.”

As one report from MacRumors noted, there are some Wish List features not everyone has, even if they’ve been opted in to the new collaborative lists test. For instance, some people will also see a conversation icon on the right side of the list’s page that allows list members to discuss items on the list with one another. Another ellipsis icon lets the original list creator manage the list’s membership.

So far, the feature has been spotted on the Amazon.com desktop and mobile website, and on iOS but not Android. It’s common for Amazon to launch new features on iOS first, however. That’s the case with the recent debut of Part Finder, which has launched publicly, but only on iOS to start.

Image credit: MacRumors

Amazon may soon be adding a feature consumers have wanted for years: collaborative wish lists. A number of people using Amazon.com and its mobile app recently spotted the option to “invite others” to their wish lists. This offers a URL that can be shared via text messages, email, social apps and more. Once clicked, the invitees can then both add and remove wish list items, alongside the wish list’s original owner.

The feature, while relatively minor, is something Amazon shoppers have been clamoring for. Parents want to be able to co-manage wish lists for their kids, while others – like friends, couples, party planners, family and friends – have also wanted to team up on lists of gift ideas for special occasions, such as birthdays, holidays, and various celebrations.

But there’s been some confusion over whether the feature was something Amazon was only testing, or if it was in the early stages of a rollout to all users.

Amazon declined to comment on its plans specifically, but did tell us this is a test with a “small number of customers.”

As one report from MacRumors noted, there are some Wish List features not everyone has, even if they’ve been opted in to the new collaborative lists test. For instance, some people will also see a conversation icon on the right side of the list’s page that allows list members to discuss items on the list with one another. Another ellipsis icon lets the original list creator manage the list’s membership.

So far, the feature has been spotted on the Amazon.com desktop and mobile website, and on iOS but not Android. It’s common for Amazon to launch new features on iOS first, however. That’s the case with the recent debut of Part Finder, which has launched publicly, but only on iOS to start.

Image credit: MacRumors

Magic Leap just updated its developer documentation with a host of new details and imagery, sharing more specifics on how the company’s Lumin OS will look like on their upcoming Magic Leap One device.

It’s mostly a large heaping of nitty-gritty details, but we also get a more prescient view into how Magic Leap sees interactions with their product looking and the directions that developers are being encouraged to move in. Worth noting off the bat that these gifs/images appear to be mock-ups or screenshots rather than images shot directly through Magic Leap tech.

Alright, first, this is what the Magic Leap One home screen will apparently look like, it’s worth noting that it appears that Magic Leap will have some of its own stock apps on the device, which was completely expected but they haven’t discussed much about.

Also worth noting is that Magic Leap’s operating system by and large looks like most other operating systems, they seem to be well aware that flat interfaces are way easier to navigate so you’re not going to be engaging with 3D assets just for the sake of doing so.

Here’s a look at a media gallery app on Magic Leap One.

Here’s a look at an avatar system.

The company seems to be distinguishing between two basic app types for developers: immersive apps and landscape apps. Landscape apps like what you see in the image above, appear to be Magic Leap’s version of 2D where interfaces are mostly flat but have some depth and live inside a box called a prism that fits spatially into your environment. It seems that you’ll be able to have several of these running simultaneously.

Immersive apps, on the other hand, like this game title, Dr. Grordbort— which Magic Leap has been teasing for years — respond to the geometry of the space that you are in and is thus called an immersive app.

Here’s a video of an immersive experience in action.

Moving beyond apps, the company also had a good deal to share about how you interact with what’s happening in the headset.

We got a look at some hand controls and what that may look like.

When it comes to text input, an area where AR/VR systems have had some struggles, it looks like you’ll have an appropriate amount of options. Magic Leap will have a companion smartphone app that you can type into, you can connect a bluetooth keyboard and there will also be an onscreen keyboard with dictation capabilities.

One of the big highlights of Magic Leap tech is that you’ll be able to share perspectives of these apps in a multi-player experience which we now know is called “casting,” apps that utilize these feature will just have a button that you can press to share an experience with a contact. No details on what the setup process for this looks like beyond that though.

Those are probably the most interesting insights, although there’s plenty of other stuff in the Creator Portal, but also here are a few other images to keep you going.

[gallery ids="1681679,1681678,1681680,1681705"]

It really seems like the startup is finally getting ready to showcase something. The company says that its device will begin shipping this summer and is already in developer hands. Based on what Magic Leap has shown here, the interface looks like it’ll feel very familiar as opposed to some other AR interfaces that have adopted a pretty heavy-handed futuristic look.

Magic Leap just updated its developer documentation with a host of new details and imagery, sharing more specifics on how the company’s Lumin OS will look like on their upcoming Magic Leap One device.

It’s mostly a large heaping of nitty-gritty details, but we also get a more prescient view into how Magic Leap sees interactions with their product looking and the directions that developers are being encouraged to move in. Worth noting off the bat that these gifs/images appear to be mock-ups or screenshots rather than images shot directly through Magic Leap tech.

Alright, first, this is what the Magic Leap One home screen will apparently look like, it’s worth noting that it appears that Magic Leap will have some of its own stock apps on the device, which was completely expected but they haven’t discussed much about.

Also worth noting is that Magic Leap’s operating system by and large looks like most other operating systems, they seem to be well aware that flat interfaces are way easier to navigate so you’re not going to be engaging with 3D assets just for the sake of doing so.

Here’s a look at a media gallery app on Magic Leap One.

Here’s a look at an avatar system.

The company seems to be distinguishing between two basic app types for developers: immersive apps and landscape apps. Landscape apps like what you see in the image above, appear to be Magic Leap’s version of 2D where interfaces are mostly flat but have some depth and live inside a box called a prism that fits spatially into your environment. It seems that you’ll be able to have several of these running simultaneously.

Immersive apps, on the other hand, like this game title, Dr. Grordbort— which Magic Leap has been teasing for years — respond to the geometry of the space that you are in and is thus called an immersive app.

Here’s a video of an immersive experience in action.

Moving beyond apps, the company also had a good deal to share about how you interact with what’s happening in the headset.

We got a look at some hand controls and what that may look like.

When it comes to text input, an area where AR/VR systems have had some struggles, it looks like you’ll have an appropriate amount of options. Magic Leap will have a companion smartphone app that you can type into, you can connect a bluetooth keyboard and there will also be an onscreen keyboard with dictation capabilities.

One of the big highlights of Magic Leap tech is that you’ll be able to share perspectives of these apps in a multi-player experience which we now know is called “casting,” apps that utilize these feature will just have a button that you can press to share an experience with a contact. No details on what the setup process for this looks like beyond that though.

Those are probably the most interesting insights, although there’s plenty of other stuff in the Creator Portal, but also here are a few other images to keep you going.

[gallery ids="1681679,1681678,1681680,1681705"]

It really seems like the startup is finally getting ready to showcase something. The company says that its device will begin shipping this summer and is already in developer hands. Based on what Magic Leap has shown here, the interface looks like it’ll feel very familiar as opposed to some other AR interfaces that have adopted a pretty heavy-handed futuristic look.

One of the best things about podcasting is the low barrier of entry. Anyone with a computer, internet connection and a little know-how can launch one. It’s a wonderfully democratized medium. The downside, of course, is that most of them sound terrible. Just really, really awful. Apps are overrun with tinny, Skype recordings.

Anchor, the New York based start up behind the podcast editing app of the same name, is helping change that, one small show at a time. The company is opening up its Manhattan-based studio to a handful of podcasters later this summer through an online form. The startup says it originally developed the studio for in-house shows, but “After recording a few episodes and hearing the results, we realized that this space might be useful for others, too. So we decided to open the space up to members of the local podcasting community, too, and the Anchor Podcast Lab was born.”

Hosts will get access to a small studio with three mics and an iPad. Once finished, recorded files will be uploaded to their Anchor account for editing. Anchor is offering that all up for free, and it seems that users will still own their content. For now, at least, it appears to mostly be a clever little promotional tool for the company’s app.

Anchor says it’s also looking to expand into more cities at some point. Before they do, however, someone can probably make a pretty penny offering up a WeWork-style studio to podcasters looking to step up their game. Strike while the podcasting iron is hot. 

You can sign up to use the studio here.