Trends & forecasts for Web apps in the mobile age

Post by Daniel Dixon

Over the past several years, Web development has gone from creating a simple single static page of plain text to powering complex Web-based Internet applications for a wide range of businesses, nonprofits, government agencies and individuals.

Web apps now underpin broad swaths of customer experiences and propel back-office functions for major brands, making it easier for customers to buy goods and for employees and contractors to deliver efficient customer service.

So what’s ahead for Web apps in 2019? Here are five predictions.

Progressive Web apps will continue to displace native apps

1Since the start of the mobile revolution, users and companies have been limited to two platforms for mobile apps, Android and iOS. For a long time, native mobile app development was a worthwhile investment — until the mobile app marketplace became saturated, with users firing up an average of four to six mobile apps per day, according to Statista.

Progressive Web apps are essentially mobile websites that look and act like native mobile applications. They provide similar benefits of a mobile application: They’re fast, reliable, work offline, increase conversions and enhance loyalty. But they do all that without the hassle and cost of development and maintenance that a mobile app needs.

Progressive Web apps can be built with Web development languages that developers are already familiar with such as AngularJs, JavaScript, CSS and HTML.

More sites will design & build for mobile first

2Historically, any Web design company and their clients have tackled the desktop side of any Web app first before they embark on the mobile side, but this will change as mobile usage has already overtaken desktop usage. About two-thirds of Web traffic now comes via mobile devices.

Employees, too, have long used desktop versions of applications to get tasks done, with field representatives having to load up workplace applications on smart devices, slowing down their productivity in the process.

With an increased emphasis on mobile-first development, Web developers will be able to start with the most important functions and content for the user while working their way up to a larger screen to improve the overall user experience across devices. (Usually, they have to design a large-screen desktop website and remove features and content as they make it smaller to fit each device.)

In addition, Google has rolled out a mobile-first approach to index the mobile version of any website first to determine rankings since more users access Google on mobile devices. This, in turn, will force marketers and Web designers to place the emphasis on mobile devices.

More businesses will build their own APIs

3Not to get too techie, but keep an eye on APIs. APIs, or application program interfaces, are sets of protocols that provide instructions on how software components should interact with each other. For example, you can sign into any of thousands of websites using your Facebook log-in (though you probably shouldn’t take this shortcut!).

APIs are revolutionizing entire industries like financial services with open banking, allowing for more innovation across the sector. In a modern enterprise and in our more connected business world, APIs allow data to be shared easily across companies, systems and departments, allowing for more innovation and saving on future integration costs. And a smart, agile company creates its own APIs, giving customers more pathways to participate in its online experience.

Just as you spend the time to design your user interface and experience for users, Web developers should invest time to design your API: what it exposes and what it does as well as documentation to appeal to developers who will leverage it to create to create value for their own clients.

Your company can tap into free external research and development by opening up an API that exposes certain functionalities, allowing other developers across the globe to build their own products that could help your customers and expand your brother further (see this Forbes article on open innovation).

You can also use APIs to connect different departments to share data points and performance metrics to help each department perform better. A basic example is a sales team having an application that automatically updates them of the current inventory in real time during their customer engagements.

We’ll see a rise in chatbots as a customer service tool

4Chatbots are essentially humanlike customer assistants that intelligently help users with predictable inquiries, repetitive tasks, or frequently asked questions. What’s nice is they can use machine learning to improve their performance while learning from past results.

In the previous years, chatbots were frowned upon, as they were not only terrible to use but users did not like the idea of talking to a robot and preferred to have actual human conversations.

But times are changing and the chatbot market has grown, with Grand View Research predicting it will be worth $1.2 billion by 2025 and that 45 percent of end users prefer using them as a primary mode of communication in customer service.

Machine learning & personalization will continue to grow

5In 2019, one-size-fits-all Web experiences won’t cut it anymore as customers and employees expect a personalized experience when using a Web application.

Technology giants such as Amazon, Facebook and Netflix once used personalization as a competitive differentiator, but users have since then been conditioned to expect it whenever they venture online. Hence, businesses have to develop their Web apps with real-time personalization in mind — and this can be achieved with machine learning.

Personalization at scale can lead to up to 30 times more conversions when users visit (according to Gartner). It also leads to increased productivity with your employees if applications are tailored to service their needs.

Overall, I’m looking forward to what 2019 will bring. We really are in for an exciting year in Web development.

The post 5 predictions for Web development in 2019 appeared first on Inside Social Media.

While the use of Natural Language Processing technology is invaluable, social media giants may still have some fine-tuning to do

As Bill Gates famously said, “context is king.” This saying is now more relevant than ever before since we live in such a global world that is predominantly connected through social media. We can now connect with people in some of the world’s most remote locations in real time, and understand the languages they speak by tapping the power of social media.

These days, even the concept of six degrees of separation has changed — as we now live in a world with only four degrees of separation, a direct result of social media’s growing presence in every part of the world.

However, is language still a barrier we must overcome? Are we living in a world that is only semi-globalized because we cannot truly connect with someone who speaks another language? The answer is no.

Even if you don’t speak the same language as your social followers, some social media sites have introduced users to Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology in order to enable users to read posts in other languages. This contributes to creating a more global and connected marketplace of ideas, and both Facebook and Instagram now offer NLP translations for posts written in languages previously identified as ones users do not understand.

Here’s the catch:

While the intention is good, the technology itself doesn’t always provide the most accurate translations for words and phrases with double meanings, or words that just don’t translate well into other languages. You can see from this real-life example that translations vary in understandability:

Translated from Portuguese

While the context of this post is mostly there, the overall accuracy of the translation and words left untranslated sticks out like sore thumb.

Don’t worry, there’s a solution

This is where translation and language learning apps like Reverso Context come in handy. Reverso takes commonly misunderstood words and phrases and translates them by providing context through famous movies, television shows and official documents (full disclosure: Reverso is a Blonde 2.0 client).

For social media managers or those working in the field of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), apps like Reverso Context can be invaluable, as its many applications are endless. Disgruntled customers complaining on Facebook, or even connecting with core audiences on a more personal level in their native language, are just two ways to implement a more context-driven technology.

Facebook, Instagram and other notable sites have made valiant efforts in adapting to globalization. The companies have done this through adding technology that allows users to gain insight from some of the world’s greatest thinkers and world leaders. However, since social media communication is instantaneous, we must place heavy value on accuracy and context over merely assuming what someone wanted to say.

In the end, effective communication is the key to a healthy (social media) relationship. Effective communication could also mean the difference between opening up Pandora’s Box, leading to a major disagreement, or fully understanding the context of what was said and lead to a productive, insightful conversation via social media.

The post Context is king: Overcoming the language barrier appeared first on Inside Social Media.

Target audience: Web publishers, businesses, digital marketers, advertising agencies, SEO specialists, entrepreneurs, educators, journalists.

Google has maintained its austere minimalism, mostly unchanged since 1997, because speed is king. Google is built for speed. Google wants to pass off every search baton to the fastest site available. You need to be that runner, you need to make sure your site is spry and fleet of foot!

So, while you might very well be obsessed with duplicate pages, many sites on a single IP, and localization, if your sites aren’t wicked fast, wicked quick, and wicked durable (don’t crash!), then you’re rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic — you’re putting your time, attention, and resources into the wrong thing, mate. What you should be doing instead of plucking your eyebrows, moisturizing your skin, and doing your hair, you should drop a 100 pounds and get prepared for the handoff.

So, that’s where the Content Delivery Network (CDN) comes in. According to Incapsula, websites using a CDN have a 50 percent faster load rate and consume roughly 40-70 percent less bandwidth. This is possible thanks to dynamic profiling, traffic analysis and maximizing cachable content. According to Wikipedia, “The goal of a CDN is to serve content to end-users with high availability and high performance,” which can automatically take most of the load off of your home server, your home host.

Cut down on response time, get rewarded by Google

As long as you’re doing your job and making sure you’ve properly set up your WordPress, Drupal, or whatever install, have only installed and activated the plug-ins that are essential, and make sure your site is only semi-dynamic, then retaining and implementing a CDN service will do the equivalent of being a digital fulfillment house. (For the record: Socialmedia.biz uses the free CloudFlare WordPress Plugin.)

So, instead of a visitor requesting your website, sitting on a server in California, from their browser in London, needing to wait for that data to ping from MAE-West to MAE-East, across the Apollo North OALC-4 SPDA undersea cable, and then to West End, an exact cached copy of your entire site could be sitting in Telehouse West, London, just miles and milliseconds away from where that search originated. Brilliant!

The latency of such a journey could be too frustrating for not only the Brit but also for Google, were said Brit searching for a product or service like yours, if your site’s not taking the hand-off as fast and as locally as the other competitors for those keywords and search strings, then you’ll lose. You’ll lose by not being number one, you might even fail by not coming in in the top-5.

You really need to be number one; and, you really need to be in the top five, if not No. 1. And you need to stop rearranging all those deck chairs when you really need to get to the helm and steer the ship!

Here are some Content Deliver Networks to look into:

• BootstrapCDN
• CloudFlare
• Coral Content Distribution Network
• Incapsula

Plus, these traditional commercial CDNs.

Go forth and get fast!

The post Is your website on a Content Delivery Network? appeared first on Inside Social Media.

The future of work begins with an AI handling scheduling & calendaring

I‘d like to tell you about Amy Ingram, my robot assistant. I’m pretty excited to have a robot assistant — actually a bouncing baby AI. Since this is a work in progress, I wanted to tell you about both the ups and downs of working with an artificial intelligence, all of which would be completely acceptable were Amy a human person with hours, a bedtime, a personal life, and a family.

Oddly enough, I feel that my Amy currently has all those things because she’s in training and is probably not being allowed to work autonomously yet. Ironically, because she is being guided and moderated, working with Amy is a little frustrating for me since I am not much of a 9-5 guy. My hours and my needs are 24/7, and so working with a robot AI — my Amy Ingram — who has human overseers who have hours, bedtimes, personal lives, and families, can be a little frustrating.

How Amy adds value to my workday

I often get to work at 5 am Eastern and shoot off a dozen requests for Amy to ask for her to help me schedule lots of physical and virtual meetings, phone calls, and the like. Then, if I need to move things around, I’ll make that request early, fire and forget. And then nothing happens until after 9 am, maybe 10, after the fallible human minders straggle in to work in their Manhattan offices with their Starbucks and stories of trains running late or traffic or missed busses — exactly the same reason why I think humans are well past obsolete!

Some may call me antisocial, but I’m not, I am just not interested in dealing with other people as flawed and insufficient as I am on a daily basis. I spend hundreds of dollars a month on tools and gizmos and services that paper over all of my structural weak points. And my lovely calendaring AI, Amy Ingram, aka [email protected], is supposed to fix at least the scheduling and calendaring part of that, thanks to the gang X.AI.

But, alas, she’s not yet a proper personal assistant, now is she? She currently is a brilliant and lovely semi-automatic scheduler with limitations that I am willing to overlook for now because of the promises she holds and what she will very quickly, hopefully, evolve into. For example, while Amy has access to my Google Apps Calendar, she doesn’t have access to my in-box or my contacts, which is something that a proper assistant would have access to.

In a perfect future, Amy would have full access to all my emails, to my cell phone, to the contact info I use to call them or meet them. To historical meetings and meeting places. To the history of my calls, to the history of the conversations and relationship I have with each person, maybe even access to my Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts so that each meeting can come with a briefing.

Amy needs to know me better than I do

In a perfect world, Amy would know that I want her to send a reminder email to everyone I am scheduled to meet before our calls and our meetings, just for confirmation. In a perfect world, I would love to me able to map Amy to [email protected] (for a premium, or course) so that my brand is seamless. I would love Amy to understand global time zones and be able to work seamlessly with everyone’s local time in relationship to mine. I would love Amy to lurk in my in-box and make sure I don’t miss meetings, birthdays, and so forth — I would love a morning briefing (sort of like EasilyDo with an Amy Ingram interface).

I would love to integrate Amy and Alexa on my Amazon Echo so that I can schedule calls and meetings via voice while I’m on my treadmill (“Alexa, please ask Amy to schedule a call with Bob Fine tomorrow to discuss the SOCi blogger outreach campaign”). I am mainly writing this so that I can share it with Dennis Mortensen so that when I interview him and members of the X.AI posse, they’ll know how willing and excited I will actually be to offer Amy Ingram and the x.ai community full access to as much of my personal and corporate information as humanely possible as long as it makes my life easy.

For example, a garden-variety personal assistant or executive assistant has access to my credit card info so that I can send presents to my imaginary wife for our imaginary 10-year anniversary or a bottle of rare birth-year Scotch to my best client on his birthday. And, if Alexa and Amy could get lady-married, then I could order, reorder, and gift, and then schedule it up in one place.  When my former business partner was trying to stymie my sweet Amy, he said, “hello Amy, I would love to catch up with Chris. Please have him call me on my cell, the mobile number that he has for me, in his contacts,” which she couldn’t do because she doesn’t (yet) have that sort of access (yet).

I am pretty excited about what Amy and x.ai have to offer. One thing that Amy gets right, though, is that I can say things like, “Amy, I can’t meet anyone after 3 on Friday,” or “please block the weekend for meetings but not calls” or “cancel all my meetings for Thursday and reschedule them.”

And, I am told by the x.ai team that every time you engage with Amy, she learns. She learns from both doing and experience with me but she also can learn from just email chatting with her and telling her what I want. If I need to stop working on Friday at noon to head to the beach, I can tell her in real language, in natural, written language.

In fact, there are no limitations to the sort of normal human language you can use in order to engage and communicate with Amy, though I have yet to know how much is Amy and how much is the assistance of the Amy’s QA and education team. The next time I discuss Amy Ingram, my robot AI assistant, is after I interview and chat it out with Dennis and his team.

Until then, you should go check it out and sign up for the beta. It took me a million years to get my beta, thanks to getting on the list early thanks to super-duper early-adopter Stever Robbin, but maybe it won’t be too long any longer. Sign up at x.ai.

The post My personal assistant is a robot appeared first on Inside Social Media.

And the major disappointment that is Disqus

This is part three of a new series on “Rise of a startup: Cruiseable.” Today’s installment looks at how we’re using Glip and Disqus. Also see:

• Part 1: Great tech startups begin with a great development team
• Part 2: Followerwonk: A powerful tool to up your Twitter game

Target audience: Entrepreneurs, startup teams, angel investors, venture capitalists, developers, businesses, innovators, educators, students, journalists, travel analysts.

For months, we’ve been hacking our way through the launch of the Cruiseable website and mobile app by relying on a frankly random collection of collaboration tools, including Dropbox, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Sites, Google Groups, Google Hangouts, Skype, Basecamp, Asana and Trello.

It’s a small miracle we managed to launch with a beautiful-looking site despite the mishmosh of tools that resembles a five-car pileup on I-80.

But now we’ve hit upon an integrated tool that brings order to the chaos: Glip.

It’s the coolest project management tool that you’ve never heard of. And we’re a startup, so we don’t have a big budget for this stuff. We’re paying $5 per team member per month for 10 staffers, which isn’t nothing — but it’s well worth the investment.

A screenshot of Cruiseable’s Glip account.

Glip is one part communications platform, one part task management tool and one part resource clearinghouse. Up until a month ago we still had team members and contractors emailing each other on their personal accounts (and I’d wince at every hotmail and aol email address) and we’d wonder why our correspondence would get lost or go unanswered.

Now, Glip tracks every written communication you’ve had with each colleague, either one one one, or as part of a Team (Cruiseable General, Growth hacking, Marcom, Business Development) or an ad hoc group that you set up with specific individuals. It’s like an archived Skype chat, only friendlier and more versatile.

You can set tasks for people to carry out (or to ignore — but at least there’s a record!). You can create a resource database by adding relevant Notes. You can add other documents in other formats to a nearly bottomless directory of Files.

Business video chat at an affordable price

The coolest feature, though, is the one that still needs some work: video chats. We switched from Skype (which kept crashing with six or more participants) to Google Hangouts (which has always had shitty resolution and maxed us out at 10) to Glip and were stunned at the fidelity of the video. WOW! The videocam images really pop, at least for those of us with modern laptops.

You can invite outsiders into your circle, which we’ve done, to good effect. And you can share your screen. (Goodbye, overpriced GoToMeeting and fussy JoinMe.)

On the downside, Glip still needs some work. Its video chat feature appears powered by a third party, Zoom.us, and every time I start a video chat, it prompts me to download the zoom.us app. [Note: Glip has now partnered with RingCentral.] And Glip’s Twitter presence is pretty much nonexistent.

Glip has integrations with Dropbox, Box, Evernote, Google Drive and Hangouts, which we have yet to explore. All in all, it’s genius. For an agile startup like Cruiseable, this is just what we needed. Thank you, Glipsters!

Disqus: We’re using it, but we’re not happy about it

Our mantra at Cruiseable is, build where we need to and borrow where it’s good enough.

Any modern startup has to offer customers and users a voice on your site or platform. So we needed a conversation solution that wasn’t a bulletin board.

I’ve long been disappointed by the dismal state of comment plug-ins. Intense Debate wasn’t an option; we built our own CMS instead of using WordPress. We’ve heard good and bad things (but mostly bad) about Livefyre. Facebook Comments was tempting, but it lacked the ability to integrate with our users’ avatars/icons. There are others out there, but none seemed particularly robust.

So we went with dull and serviceable but reliable Disqus.

What we didn’t realize is how utterly unconfigurable it is.

Want to increase the tiny font size, which was clearly engineered by 20somethings and not for an audience of 40- to 70-year-olds? You can’t.

Want to add color to the bland gray color scheme? Want to link to the user’s profile page on your site instead of to her previous comments on Disqus? Want to say ADD IMAGE instead of relying on the teeny tiny hidden-away image icon? Want to add a Flag link at the bottom of a comments on your site? Can’t, can’t, can’t, can’t.

Disappointing would be an understatement for a product from a company founded in 2007.

The discussion industry, such as it is, needs a serious kick in the ass.

The post Glip: A dazzling new project management tool appeared first on Inside Social Media.

This is the second of a two-part series on the Traction conference. Also see:
• Part 1: Traction: How to spur growth for your startup

Target audience: Startup teams, entrepreneurs, small businesses, marketing professionals, SEO specialists, PR pros, brand managers, nonprofits, educators, Web publishers, journalists.

Yesterday I highlighted some takeaways from the cool new Traction conference that debuted last Wednesday and Thursday in Vancouver. The event drew roughly 800 entrepreneurs, startup team members, marketers and angel investors.

One of the inspiring keynotes of the event came from Lynda Weinman, founder of Lynda.com, which LinkedIn purchased for $1.5 billion in April. (She mentioned that she’ll be leaving LinkedIn soon to pursue another entrepreneurial opportunity.)

Lynda recounted her journey from running in-person computer training courses to the dotcom crash of 2000-2001, which forced the company to pivot to online tutorials. That early mover advantage gave Lynda.com the ability to set the pace for all the e-learning sites that followed.

A journey that started with humble beginnings

In one telling slide, Weinman traced the journey from tiny startup to a $1.5 billion exit. Her story was not only impressive but instructive: To become a successful business, you need a singular driving purpose and someone who’s relentless at the helm.

Here’s her “What I did” slide in full:

• Believed in myself
• Stuck my neck out
• Proved that I had marketability
• Tried and iterated
• Didn’t take no for an answer
• Followed my heart and passion
• Thought a lot about my audience
• Seized the opportunity
• Listened to others and to myself

It’s as good a recipe for success as any I’ve seen.

The post The recipe for success that earned Lynda.com a $1.5 billion payday appeared first on Inside Social Media.

This is the first of a two-part series on the Traction conference.

Target audience: Startup teams, entrepreneurs, small businesses, marketing professionals, SEO specialists, PR pros, brand managers, nonprofits, educators, Web publishers, journalists.

I‘m just back from one of the best inaugural tech events on the West Coast: the two-day Traction conference, which drew some 800 entrepreneurs, startup team members, marketers and angels to Vancouver last week.

Speakers included marketing superstar Neil Patel, Lynda Weinman (whose Lynda.com was purchased by LinkedIn for $1.5 billion), Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez, SurveyMonkey president Selina Tobaccowala, Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, and a host of others.

Here’s my Flickr album of 23 photos taken at the conference.

Highlights of the Traction conference

I’ve been on Twitter for eight years, but I’m a bit old-fashioned in that I think a blog post summary will offer more long-term value than thousands of uncontextualized tweets, so here are some of the highlights I gleaned while attending the conference as both an entrepreneur and journalist:

• “In a world where 1,200 startups are launching every year, the hard thing is no longer, Can you build a product as a startup? The hard part is, Can you get traction? … Traction trumps everything.” — Justin Mares, co-author, “Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers.”

• Mares on Marc Andreessen and his famed venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz: “The No. 1 reason they pass on entrepreneurs they’d otherwise back is because the founders focus on product to the exclusion of everything else.”

• Great insights from Aliisa Hodges, growth manager at Mixpanel: “If you’re not using A-B testing, you’re not serious about growth.” And: “Pick just one metric of success and focus on that.” And: “Focus not just on user acquisition but on user retention.”

• Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite: “One of the pieces of advice I have for anybody is just look for the big waves. If you can find a big, economic seismic shift in the market and get in front of that, you are going to (do well).”

• Aatif Awan, head of growth at LinkedIn, agreed. “Your one metric shouldn’t be your sign-up number, it should be something like your weekly users and looking at what are they doing for you.”

• “Revenue per customer is the ultimate metric, even more important than conversion rate,” said Ben Yoskovitz, co-author of “Lean Analytics.”

• Nate Moch, VP of growth at Zillow: “Build urgency into your product. Include messaging like, ’50 other people are looking at this right now!’” … “When you send emails to your customers, you should be sending them content, not marketing.”

• Robert Cezar Matei, head of growth at Quora, offered this secret of success: “It’s about dozens of small or medium-size wins.”

• Ivan Kirign, CEO of YesGraph, offered this tip on getting things done: “Some people on the Airbnb growth team learned Android just so they could make changes to the code base directly.”

• Brian Balfour, VP of growth at HubSpot: “The most powerful word in metrics is ‘Why?'”

• “It’s significantly harder to get traction for apps than for the Web,” observed one speaker.

• “Hitting the gas pedal on growth prematurely can spell disaster,” said another.

• Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio: “A/B testing, followed through to its logical conclusion, would lead every site to become a porn site.”

The post Traction: How to spur growth for your startup appeared first on Inside Social Media.

How Snapchat, Medium and LIFE IN HI-FI are emerging as key social marketing platforms

With the current emphasis on content, marketers are faced with pressure to create engaging content that is shareable and discoverable. For years, Facebook has been viewed as the mecca for digital marketers. The network provides the tools necessary to measure campaign success while targeting specific audiences and engaging users.

However, one vital component is lacking in Facebook campaigns. With the increase of paid advertising on the network, it is harder for organic content to stand out. If organic reach is not possible on Facebook, what tools can marketers use to reach their audiences and ensure that their brand’s content is seen?

Snapchat: Brands now creating ultra-short visual stories

The first step to reaching customers is making sure the content you’re creating connects with the right audience. By providing discoverable content, marketers increase the likelihood of having their message heard. Snapchat Discover provides brands with a place to house engaging videos that are easily searchable through the Discover tab. Through Snapchat Stories, brands can create catchy content that emphasizes their message.

Traditional social media pushes messaging to viewers. Snapchat has flipped this method on its head by creating a curated source of information where users can search and select exactly what they would like to consume. If, for example, a user is looking for culinary inspiration, he can select The Food Network channel and watch relevant clips. All channels on Discover are equally visible, putting users in charge of the content they consume.

Medium: Share your message through a writing platform

The ability to easily share content determines the reach of a campaign. Medium provides content marketers with a great platform to showcase content. By creating a space where anyone can post content, Medium has leveled the playing field for web content. Instead of posting on smaller individual blogs, anyone from Secret’s CEO to a budding poet can share their message.

For a message to be heard, it essential for posts to be shared; Medium hubs Backchannel and The Message are writing collectives that share curated tech information on the platform. Using the platforms, Backchannel selects unique content, which it shares and pushes, ensuring that information is not swallowed by the mass of information on the web.

Bringing hashtags to life with LIFE IN HI-FI, the mobile lifestyle network.

LIFE IN HI-FI: A new way to find & share content

Along with sharable and accessible content, consumers must engage with the brand’s material. LIFE IN HI-FI (disclosure: LIFE IN HI-FI is a Blonde 2.0 client) is an interest-based social media network where users share content through private and public hashtags. Today it is essential to separate content into subject specific platforms, this allows users to easily consume and engage with information they are interested in. Through hashtags HI-FI separates content into focused channels. Imagine your TV only had one channel, with sci-fi shows, foreign films and sports coverage on one network. With this mix of content it would be impossible to find what you are looking for. This is what most social feeds look like. HI-FI offers a refreshing change. Through hashtags users select their interests and focus on relevant content, resulting in higher engagement.

HI-FI users can now invite friends to follow hashtags through text messages, making it easier for a brand to increase its reach. The app’s native sharing function also ensures a message can be found and spread organically. With HI-FI’s sharing function, content is shared and searched within the app, insuring the content does not drown in a news feed or within paid advertising.

At first glance it feels like it’s impossible to have your message stand out in the sea of content available on the Web. However, when using the right tools, it is possible to not only reach your audience but use their networks to reach your goals. Grassroots marketing has always held a strong weight because consumers put trust in the experiences of people they know. With a well thought-out content strategy, marketers can capitalize on social connections and have users discover and share their message.

Related articles

• Why you should hang your shingle on Medium (Socialmedia.biz)

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There were lots of remarkable moments at the eighth Launch Festival, which ended a three-day run Wednesday at Fort Mason in San Francisco: Investor legend Peter Thiel exhorting entrepreneurs to find a space and “create a monopoly.” Pundit Glenn Beck declaring, “We don’t need the media. I trust my neighbors.” Forty or so founders taking to the stage to launch interesting new startups.

But there’s only one Gary Vaynerchuk, and he made his first appearance at Launch a lively one.

Turns out garyvee is a big fan of the Taylor Swift brand of social media marketing. When Swift randomly sends gifts at Christmas or shows up to interact with ordinary fans — to their delighted screams — it all gets amplified through social.

“We adore human interaction,” he told about 2,000 attendees at Launch. “It’s real.” And it’s what the most powerful kind of social media marketing consists of — even if it’s a fleeting 14-second video message. It’s the personalization that makes it real and leaves a lasting impression.

Vaynerchuk has made his mark through such observations, and his VaynerMedia, now a thriving social marketing agency. VaynerMedia is banking on the continued retreat and fragmentation of those large corporate entities Formerly Known As The Media.

“These traditional media companies have such large overhead for something that doesn’t provide value anymore,” he told interviewer and Launch founder Jason Calacanis. “They’re holding their collective breath. The shit’s about to hit the fan, and they’ve decided to let the next CEO worry about it.”

The changes in media and technology are coming so fast, Vaynerchuk said, that “I wake up every morning trying to put myself out of business. I’d much rather put myself out of business than have somebody else do it.”

In addition to his social marketing business, Vaynerchuk also operates a sizable investment fund, and he had this tip for entrepreneurs: “We are living in such a fast-paced world where time is such an asset. The thing I want to invest in is people buying or capturing and selling back all of us time.” With the world valuing it so highly, “time is the play right now. Every piece of technology that is selling us back time has an enormous value opportunity.”

Founders, time to start getting those time-saving startups ready for Launch 2016.

Here’s my Flickr set of all three days of Launch — it’s the eighth year in a row I’ve attended.

The post Gary Vaynerchuk at Launch: Traditional media holding on for dear life appeared first on Inside Social Media.

Why people are loving Facebook Messenger, RWND & Hyperlapse

The past year has been a year of exciting revolutions in the mobile universe. New mobile messaging and sharing platforms in every conceivable medium — images, videos, texts and even two-letter words — are constantly inventing and reinventing new ways for us to communicate.

With different apps available in different mediums, communication is getting better. In the past we may have thought that the most convenient platform for messaging or socializing would be a one-stop-shop that enables communication across multiple mediums. These days, the latest trend is apps becoming ‘‘light.’’ With specialized apps becoming more popular and concise, it’s become clear that we no longer require a single outlet for our social mobile needs when different platforms can suit our specific needs perfectly and better convey a tailored experience.

With unbundling becoming a growing trend, we’re starting to see more and more specialized apps with unique advantages. Facebook’s Messenger app is a great example. When Facebook first launched the new app, users were reluctant to adopt the unbundled app. Complaints and angry op-eds were everywhere. Yet despite early resistance, Facebook Messenger was the most downloaded free app for iPhones in 2014, passing both WhatsApp and Snapchat.

Some were also skeptical about Instagram’s Hyperlapse, which has been extremely popular with users and made it onto several best of 2014 lists. Hyperlapse features built-in stabilization technology that lets you create moving, handheld time lapses that result in a cinematic feel, as the Instagram blog puts it. Yo (disclosure: Yo is a Blonde 2.0 client), which is a zero character messenger app with one feature, has garnered incredible success worldwide, emphasizing people’s desire for light, sleek and simple apps.

RWND: A focus on simplicity & fun

Another great example is RWND (disclosure: RWND is a Blonde 2.0 client). RWND is a light, simple and fun applet, with one function: an instant replay button. It lets users create an endless loop of their perfect moments; a baby’s first steps, a proposal, or your idiot brother falling on his face attempting to jump over the family cat. Any video recorded or uploaded will play back and forth on an endless loop. RWND is all about one basic thing – fun! You’d be surprised how many hours you can spend watching loops of hilarious videos, created either by friends or random strangers using the app.

The RWND team previously worked on a video sharing social network called Zarfo. They noticed that users were always skipping back to short moments in a video, uploading long videos when all they really needed is 2.5 seconds. That’s how they came up with RWND (in only 30 days). They realized their users were looking for something clean and simple, and they gave them exactly what they wanted.

Both the mobile world in general and the app universe specifically are constantly changing and evolving. At the moment everything is shifting toward unbundling and lighter, simpler apps in general. Everyone is following this trend – and with social media giants like Instagram and Facebook are already on board, many more are sure to follow in the near future.

The post Trends for 2015: Light apps, unbundled experiences appeared first on Inside Social Media.