One week, five stories #4

Facebook is marking its territory

It’s common knowledge that both Instagram and WhatsApp are owned by Facebook, but up until now, we could quite easily forget this fact due to each platform having its very own identity. However, Facebook has made the bold decision to add its name to both platforms in order to affirm its ownership. Doing so, Facebook makes sure it is providing more transparency to its users. But as we know, over the last few years, Facebook has slowly lost its grip of the younger audience – will this decision serve these platforms well? Or will they forever be tainted by association with this ‘declining’ platform?

In-house marketing might not be the best solution

Bringing your marketing teams and services in-house can seem like an appealing solution as it is said to reduce costs, improve productivity and foster brand consistency. However, in-housing has often shown that it’s falling short of companies’ expectations and requirements. Recent research has confirmed this with among other things. In-housing falling short of expectations, often leads to difficulty in generating new ideas and innovation, can make it harder to stick to deadlines and generally can have a negative effect on creativity. Even if in-housing can help a company save money, businesses need to see the bigger picture and understand the potential negative outcomes of making poor marketing decisions in-house. Is it time to roll in the experts?

Get ready for Facebook to become your new morning newspaper

Let’s be honest, many of us still scroll on Facebook purposelessly, simply out of habit. But this might change very soon as Facebook is reported to be preparing to launch its very own news section. Already an increasing number of people get their news on social media, so this news section is the next logical step for the social media platform. Social media channels have already proven to be polyvalent with a little bit of something for everyone, and for Facebook, this news section might also be a way to attract a fresh audience while tackling their fake news issue.

Everyone likes a good podcast and Google is fully aware of that

In recent years, podcasts have gained unprecedented popularity as their unique format fits perfectly into our busy and fast-paced lives. Google is aiming to make the search for podcasts easier by integrating them directly into the search results when users are looking for specific podcasts. Google is planning to polish and improve this feature over time as podcasts will soon be able to appear on the search page, like any other content, when a specific subject is searched. Podcasters will also receive more data to analyse their audience and the performance of their content. So, you’ll soon be able to spend less time looking and more time listening!

Who wants to be a millionaire?

Let the bug hunt begin! Apple is offering $1 million to researchers who can find vulnerabilities in the iOS core, with no click made from the iPhone’s owner. Apple has organised ‘bug bounty programs’ in the past, but this is the biggest reward offered to date. The company fully understands how important it is to ensure its devices are safe and secure as hackers are growing increasingly competent in exploiting their potential vulnerabilities. These bug bounties are often a real success – and with this level of reward, it’s no surprise that many researchers are motivated to ‘hack the kernel of iOS’!