What’s happened this week:
- Facebook announced the launch of Paper, a social newspaper app to rival Flipboard
- Google sold mobile hardware firm Motorola to Lenovo for $2.9bn, less than two years after buying it for $12.1m
- Yahoo continued its mobile acquisition drive by purchasing Incredible Labs, the makers of Donna, a mobile personal assistant app
What we have learned:
- Super Bowl XLVIII broke last year’s record with 24.9 million tweets, despite the one sided game and the lack of a blackout. Seattle’s Legion of Boom/ #LOB defence created a lot of chatter along with a Bruno Mars x Red Hot Chilli Peppers half-time show, while adland looked to memes in their hunt for a conversational moment. There’s more here and a wrap-up of a notable successes and failures, both TV commercials and tweets.
- Facebook’s mobile growth continues, ending 2013 with 945m active users globally, and mobile accounting 53% of total advertising revenues
- Half of all interactions with apps will come from wearables by 2017 according to Gartner
Cool stuff:
- Lego and Google have teamed up Chrome’s latest experiment allows you to build Lego digitally in Google Maps, across web, mobile and tablet
- First glimpse of the iCar – this video reveals what the voice-controlled iOS car display could look like
- MIT have created the world’s first “sensory fiction” book, that uses wearable tech to make the reader feel the protagonist’s pain
Where to find more:
- Could microchips modelled on the human brain hold the key to advancements in computing technology?
- Mobile privacy in the age of iBeacon – will consumers understand the risks as well as the benefits of sharing their mobile data?
- And speaking of privacy, the IAB have produced a whitepaper on the future of the cookie