No UI is the new UI

23 Nov 2015 | Vlad Mehakovic

1. No UI is the new UI

Trends

From checking your bank account, scheduling a meeting, making a reservation at the best restaurant to being your travel assistant, a new set of apps all have one thing in common: they place messaging, not a user interface at the center stage.

2. Mixpanel launches predict

Data informed

Imagine predicting that a website visitor is likely to buy a product based on their behaviour and auto-emailing them an offer for the product. We're working on predictive analytics for a client currently with one of Mixpanel's competitors and it's not straight-forward. This is a killer feature.

3. How Disney is making sure you’ll never be able to escape Star Wars

Strategy

See the cross-promotion kings in action. This is grade-A, ninja marketing.

4. The ad blocking kingpin reshaping the web as he prefers it

Trends

Online advertising is a $140 billion industry that fuels the abundance of free services on the Internet. Wladimir Palant, founder of Adblock Plus, goes into the (profitable) war against unacceptable ads.

5. The advertising bubble

Trends

How the swamp of ad companies (several thousand at this point) with a complicated set of interlocking business relationships is set to fail.

6. Inside Mark Zuckerberg's bold plan for the future of Facebook

Channels

Facebook is firing on all cylinders. Now Mark Zuckerberg is looking to the decade ahead, from AI to VR to drones. In the article Zuck quotes the company's latest numbers; "a billion and a half people use the main, core Facebook service, and that’s growing. But 900 million people use WhatsApp, and that’s an important part of the whole ecosystem now. Four hundred million people use Instagram, 700 million people use Messenger, and 700 million people use Groups."

7. Email is the best way to reach millennials

Channels

With $200 billion in annual buying power by 2017, Millennials have become every brand’s coveted customer. But what’s the best way to reach them? The answer is email.

8. LTV / CPI vs. cashflow

Growth

A great primer on using Lifetime Value (LTV) and Cost Per Install (CPI) to drive mobile marketing.

9. 25 calculated metrics for Google Analytics

Data informed

Calculated metrics in Google Analytics are derived metrics from standard and/or custom metrics. Standard metrics are metrics that Google provides for you like Users, Sessions, and Pageviews. Custom Metrics are any other non-standard metric you create like Logins, Signups, or Video PlayTime.

10. How the internet talks

Tool of the week

FiveThirtyEight's free tool that's like Google Trends but for Reddit. Great for research.