I Ain’t Afraid of No (Augmented Reality) Ghosts: A short demo of the game Ghostbusters World was showcased at Mobile World Congress this week, showing attendees a preview of the new game built on Google’s new ARCore platform. The Pokemon Go augmented reality treasure hunt phenomenon will soon be tested with some new games like Ghostbusters coming in 2018. We’re most excited for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. It’s going to be a fun summer. (LINK)
Facebook Messenger Broadcast: Companies can now send a Facebook message to anyone who has begun a conversation with them, thanks to a new product from Facebook for small businesses who don’t have the resources to build a more robust bot platform. Most users won’t like feeling spammed by any page they’ve ever DM’d, so Facebook is capping the number of messages businesses can broadcast to deter spam. But look for more of these Messenger-first tools to come to the marketing toolkit in 2018. (LINK)
So You Say You Would Give Up Social Media? This week the Pew Research Center dropped new 2018 research on social media usage, and it’s pretty expected. Facebook continues to be the most widely used social media platform (68% of U.S. adults), and other than YouTube no other network measured in this survey is used by more than 40% of Americans. Pinterest remains more popular with women. LinkedIn remains popular among college graduates and high earners. And WhatsApp’s popularity is extending to more Latinos in the United States – 49% of Hispanics report that they are WhatsApp users. But here’s the shocker: 59% of social media users think it would not be hard to give up social media, with 29% indicating it would not be hard at all. Yeah, right. (LINK)
Uber Driver has a Spotify Playlist For Every Kind of Passenger: Nobody wants to ride in the back of a stranger’s car in silence. And one Uber driver is making waves this week by sharing the series of Spotify playlists he made for the stereotypes of people he picks up, including: white dudes who look like they like rap, quiet people, f*cking hipsters, basic 20-30s, 30+, and heady bros. The driver, who also studies sociology and video production at college, has only been driving a few weeks but he’s already seeing thousands of followers added to his Spotify Playlists. (LINK)
Here’s “White Dudes Who Look Like They Like Rap”
Wow: This week hundreds of Australians gathered to say ‘wow’ like Owen Wilson. And the internet loved it. “Wow.”
GREG SWAN 