Five things worth sharing from the last week or so, brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Libby.
1. It’s #TheYearOfVoiceSearch (except #noitisnt)
I was absolutely delighted to read Juan Gonzalez’s take on Voice Search this week: If You Haven’t Optimized Your Website for Voice Search Yet, You’re OK
Turns out that magic stat about half of all searches being conducted via voice by next year has very much been purple-monkey-dishwasher’d and actually relies on data that doesn’t pertain to search whatsoever – “Ok, Google. Send Karen a text message” isn’t voice search. It’s a device action.
These are the results of a survey asking Germany, Spain, the UK, and the US which their preferred VA is:
“NONE OF THE ABOVE”
2. What the truck?
Elon Musk’s net worth plunged by $768m (£588m) on Thursday when Tesla’s new Cybertruck was forced onto our eyeballs:
Bulletproof to a 9mm handgun, but powerless against an actual ball, the launch was pretty ridiculous, but Ol’ Musky’s social media prowess meant Tesla recovered from a 6% stock drop when he claimed that the 200k deposits of just $100 (which are refundable!) were Cybertruck orders.
146k Cybertruck orders so far, with 42% choosing dual, 41% tri & 17% single motor
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 23, 2019
What a cunning stunt.
3. Black Friday/Green Christmas
In a welcome juxtaposition of the maddening consumerism usually associated with the eCommerce frenzy that is Black Friday, Oxfam sent out a little e-shot this week, inviting recipients to ‘Turn Black Friday… Into A Green Christmas’.
Their idea for Second Hand Secret Santa particularly caught my eye, as it’s a tradition we’ve practiced at Browser Media for years.
We’re given a £5 budget, draw a name out of a hat, and then go wild on Colchester’s charity-shop-filled highstreets. While unwrapping the gifts won’t, admittedly, be met with exclamations of “I love it!”, “how did you know?” and “just what I always wanted!”, there is an undeniable warm-fuzzy attached to donating to charity… and if the gift’s really bad? It can just be re-donated!
We’ll be partaking again this year – #FoundInOxfam
4. Twitter’s move toward ‘memorialisation’
After heeding the outcry from users, who expressed upset over the potential deletion of dead loved ones’ dormant Twitter accounts, the company has paused its plans for removing accounts that have remained inactive for six months or more.
While it was obviously an unwelcome oversight to simply cull inactive accounts in the first place, I’m sure many will be relieved at the social media platform’s move to follow in Facebook’s footsteps and memorialise these accounts specifically, preserving their content, and their handles.
We’ve heard your feedback about our effort to delete inactive accounts and want to respond and clarify. Here’s what’s happening:
— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) November 27, 2019
5. This is why we all have SAD
… because we’re not giving our perineum its RDA of sunlight:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B34mk7shhrH/?utm_source=ig_embed
