FebUberary

The guys over at Uber have been quite busy releasing a whole bunch of innovative solutions. In case you’ve missed any of it; here’s a quick wrap up of what they’ve been doing.

UberEats

Across 10 cities in the US, Uber is launching its stand alone food delivery app. Simialr to the standard Uber app that lets you track where your driver is, this app lets you track your food’s progress. One can argue the food-delivery space is quite crowded- with EatNow, Menulog. However, Uber has a reputation for immediacy that gives it an incredible leg up within the market.

UberRush
Since October last year, Uber has been piloting a way shoppers can get same day delivery of local products through both Uber drivers and bike couriers. Now, its encouraging businesses such as 1800flowers to integrate the one one-hour delivery service directly into their digital products. As a retailer, you are guanteed that your products will be delivered in an hour and for Uber, this cements their position as the go to delivery service across industries.

Teaming up with Red Cross
On Sunday the 31^st Jan, Uber teamed up with the Australian Red Cross to run the most convenient clothing drive ever. Between 11am-4pm Uber drivers came to pick up your unwanted clothing. Quite an effective tactical mechanism to encourage people to donate their clothes.

Trip Experiences 
Uber’s launched a new feature that lets third party app developers deliver content to passengers while they’re travelling. Known as ‘Uber Trip Experiences’, the feature is specifically tailored to the passengers’ location and the length of their ride. Whether it’s sending a news bulletin or reviews to the restaurant you’re travelling to, Uber’s app is now serving as a content destination.

Two important Facebook updates 

Over the past few years, the decline in organic reach has become a major issue for publishers using Facebook.  Last week, they released an Audience Optimization Tool.  This basically, lets you specify the audiences most likely to engage with each Facebook page post, based on interests. This is a great step by step guide by Social Media Examiner that goes into detail how to use the tool. Their second update revolves around Facbook Reactions. Last year, they released Reactions, a new feature for Facebook’s ubiquitous Like button that allows you to respond to posts with emojis. Just this week, they’ve released 5 new icons called ‘Angry, Sad, Wow, haha, and Love’ that allows users to express their reactions to content. Now, Facebook will have a much more clearer idea of how individuals perceive content and can target their advertising accordingly. For us, this becomes an even more sophisticated paid platform to play on.
 

What tools does a Head of Product use? 

Developing a product or solution from conception to completion is no easy task. Too often, product mangers need their own toolkit that go beyond general project management software, Here’s a comprehensive list of tools that we can use to better understand our audience and translate their needs into an easy to use and highly valuable digital product.  Ranging from UserBrain -something that helps you identify and fix your website usability programs to Typeform – a tool that helps you create stand alone forms for lead generation or to redirect traffic to a custom URL there’s something for everyone. Definitely worth reading this list!
 

Celebrating #HandWRitingDay through Twitter

To celebrate National Handwriting Day (Jan 23), Moleskine executed the perfect platform appropriate campaign on Twitter by filling up newsfeeds with actual handwritten tweets.  As Tweets are never written down, it was quite an engaging concept to get people to re-live the joy of writing and remind them the feeling of writing in a brand new Moleskine notebook. This isn’t the first time Moleskine has used digital to bring their product functionality to life.  Back in 2014, they developed a digital notebook that looks exactly like a regular Moleskin however, it transfers handwritten notes to your digital device if you use a specifically designed smart pen. The pen allows you to capture audio while the pages allow you to tag people using the right icons and send your work to your computer or mobile device via Bluetooth in real time.

 
From 140 to 10,000 characters

Twitter is poised to make one of its most drastic changes yet-expanding its infamous 140 character limit. As early as March this year, Twitter’s suggesting that it will allow users to share messages with up to 10,000 characters. Until now, Twitter has been always considered as a signpost where publishers direct you to their content on other platforms. As a customer service arm, your inquires are often directed to call centers. Through expanding the character limit, issues can be resolved then and there thus improving the effectiveness of this platform. This move will also fundamentally as Twitter finally becomes a content destination. Chances are, as a user you’re likely to view excerpts of longer content in your Twitter feed and if this capture your attention, then you’ll be shown the full article or image.

Bits & pieces

• In Mexico, Google’s testing solar powered drones are striving to deliver 5G- the next wave of high speed internet
• Here are four characteristics of a digital forerunner according to a study by Bain & Co.
• With more than 400 million users on the platform, there is a lesson or two we can learn from 25 of the most followed Instagram users. While most of these are celebs, it’s interesting to see how they curate their personal brand stories and engage with their fans.
• No idea how to work the filters or text or emojis or stories on Snapchat? Well, here’s your comprehensive Snapchat playbook.
• Here are four US brands who are nailing their tone of voice quite hilariously. 
• For the superhero fans amongst us, Deadpool is finally out! From releasing a Happy Australia day greeting to the ‘Skull, Poop, L billboard‘ that went viral, the hype around this movie is absolutely hilarious.