This week FigDigEst gets philosophical about Twitter, discovers its virtual hands and puts a pizza box cinema to the test
Biz Stone: ‘If you want to succeed spectacularly, be willing to fail spectacularly’
This week FigDigEst made its way to Wembley Stadium for Teradata’s Connect 2015 event – two days of marketing insight from the likes of Puma, Forrester Research, Facebook and more. There we witnessed a thoughtful Q&A between TV’s Christian Howes and Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter. In a conversation that took in Star Trek, Stone’s vision for humanity 1,000 years from now and his thoughts on why any important communication platform must also support fart jokes (fun is what fuels interactivity), Stone discussed his new project, Super.
Described by Mashable as “one part Secret, one part meme generator” Super prompts users to share thoughts and images with prefixes like ‘The best…’, ‘The sexiest…’, ‘We should…’ or ‘I’m thinking…’ Like Twitter, the format is inherently mobile. Unlike Twitter, Super is designed to find room for greater emotional nuance. “There’s value in vulnerability,” Stone told delegates.
As a serial entrepreneur, Stone also shared his thoughts on getting new projects off the ground. It took 10 years and six failed attempts for Twitter to become an overnight success. “If you want to succeed spectacularly,” he said, “be willing to fail spectacularly. People think ideas are the be all and end all, but it’s the effort that matters. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s the sweat that’ll get things done.”
On the subject of failure, Stone proved philosophical: if an idea doesn’t have legs, it could just be that you’re taking the scenic route to a better one that does. And if that sounds haphazard, Stone provided a neat little analogy illustrating how Twitter evolved. A US architect, he says, was contracted to design a new college campus. The campus was duly built, but without any paths. The strategy: let students find the most natural route between two points and then pave their tracks. (Lest we forget, retweets, replies and hashtags were all originally created by users, not Twitter.)
An optimist as well as a pioneer in the field of consumer software, technology plays a vital role in Stone’s vision of humanity’s future. Empathy begins with collaboration, he says. And collaboration is grounded in communication. “People are fundamentally good,” he told delegates. “If you give them the right tools, they’ll prove that every day.”
Virtual touch
Just as we’re getting our heads round the mind-boggling world of VR, Oculus step it up a gear. And this time, there’s touchy feely stuff. The Oculus Touch ‘Half Moon’ controllers, unveiled yesterday at the company’s Step into the Rift event, will enable users to handle virtual objects—inserting their hands into the computer-generated picture. This means that, while you’re suspended atop of a towering skyscraper, or peering out of the open door of a helicopter mid-flight (FigDigEst still has nightmares about this), you’ll at least have your hands to give you some perspective. The gadget is all part of the project to make users feel like they are actually a substantial body within the virtual world they’re seeing, as other VR technologies do: “We want to deliver ‘hand-presence’—the sense of feeling that your virtual hands are actually your real hands” says Palmer Luckey, Founder of Oculus VR. The controllers will allow the user to navigate the virtual world, interacting with objects and even experiencing some incarnation of a sense of touch.
Although the consumer version of the Oculus Rift VR headset will come to market in the first quarter of next year, the Oculus Touch is still very much a prototype.
Pizza Hut’s DIY cinema
Everyone loves a slice of pizza on a Friday night. And Pizza Hut knows that nothing compliments the delicate palette of a hot dog stuffed-crust pizza, or ‘pizza-dog’ if you will (this is actually an option on their menu), better than a film. So, in Hong Kong, they’ve helpfully released a specially-designed pizza box that will allow you to turn your smartphone into a film projector, meaning that you need go no further than lifting the lid to enjoy a bit of dinner-side entertainment. Here’s how it works: you know that little white plastic thing that comes in the centre of your pizza? (This was actually invented in 1985, by the way – it’s called a ‘pizza saver’). Well this props up your smartphone in the now-empty pizza box, and comes with a lens which you insert into the box. You then just need to choose from a choice of four films provided by the brand on a webpage, position your phone so it projects out of the lens, press play, and indulge in the blissful harmony of pizza and motion picture.
FigDigEst are a little concerned that using the box as a film projector will mean that there’s no box available for eating out of. We don’t like plates.
Facebook trials where-able tech
Facebook has started the roll-out of Place Tips, which enables businesses to send updates to local smartphone users. Visitors to beacon-operating businesses can receive a notification enabling them to accept information, including relevant updates by friends. The information can also be displayed in users’ Newsfeeds.
As yet the service is restricted to New York City and only works with Apple devices, though an Android version is in development. According to the BBC, companies are not able to use the service to advertise. But that could change. Data will not be collected from users or their phones.
If and when Place Tips is rolled out further, it’ll stand as a clear competitor to services like Yelp and Foursquare. As Business Insider notes, this could also provide a kickstart for beacon technology. “For retailers, enabling beacons through Facebook solves a major challenge around this new piece of tech … Only a small percentage of consumers actually download a retailer’s own app, and fewer still enable push notifications from these apps. Facebook, on the other hand, has a massive user base, so there’s lots of built-in potential for beacons.”
Say no more
Receiving a personal message in two or three bits has become commonplace on Twitter as, until now, users have been bound to the same 140 character limit that is in place on public Tweets. But Twitter announced yesterday that it will be extending the amount of characters users can send on Direct Message, allowing messages to contain up to 10,000. This hasn’t kicked in yet, but should be in place by next month. The update follows a series of features introduced to make Direct Messages more appealing, including the ability to send pictures and receive messages from users who don’t follow your account.
Backlinks: things we liked this week
BuzzFeed:18 Reasons Why Christopher Lee Was A Pretty Spectacular Human Being
Guardian: How art is making the data-driven city more liveable
BBC magazine: The man who can see a city and immediately draw it
Written by Jon Fortgang and Estelle Hakner.