While the world has been watching Pokemon Go, some have speculated on what publishers could learn from the augmented reality game. But Chris Sutcliffe writes that these ideas make “the assumption publishers have a product which audiences are not only willing to pay for, but offer access to their data and time for,” which Sutcliffe […]

The Guardian’s Mobile Innovation Lab is testing five different kinds of web notifications through Google Chrome, and sharing what it’s learned from testing each. The Guardian has found that interactive alerts, which allows the reader to direct themselves through a narrative, aren’t ideal for breaking news, but starting simple is best because interactive alerts require […]

“Augmented reality is the ‘boy who cried wolf’ of the post-Internet world,” Om Malik writes. “It’s long been promised but has rarely been delivered in a satisfying way.” Given the popularity of Pokemon Go, the game has the potential to change the landscape of augmented reality as we know it. And after playing the game […]

Clover Letter, a newsletter targeted to teenage girls, noted a somewhat unexpected challenge of email newsletters: After a strong start with 70 percent open rates, founders Casey Lewis and Liza Darwin found their open rates started to drop after they began including more GIFs and other images. But it wasn’t necessarily that fewer people were […]

Newsrooms are still using processes and mental models designed for the pre-internet era, writes Hearken CEO Jennifer Brandel. “To put it frankly: those old processes aren’t working well in an age where individuals are empowered with access to seemingly-infinite content,” Brandel said. “And poorly-designed processes create inaccurate information and lead to misguided decisions which ultimately […]

When Facebook Messenger announced that publishers could create bots for the platform, many expected publishers to jump on it as a new way to deliver readers news. But since then, the list of publishers with bots for Messenger hasn’t expanded much beyond the initial group of publishers and brands at launch. While Facebook hasn’t done […]

In preparation for its eighth virtual reality production, The New York Times and Google are sending out another round of Google Cardboard virtual reality viewers. This time, NYT will be targeting its online-only subscribers, sending 300,000 viewers to its “most loyal” digital subscribers, as determined by how long they’ve been a subscriber. This round of […]

In a meeting in London on Wednesday, director general Michael Møller will talk to journalists about United Nations’ new Constructive Voices program and call for the media to take a more “constructive” and “solutions-focused” approach to news. Constructive Voices is an online resource designed to help journalists find case studies with practical solutions to problems. […]

According Greenlight VR and Road to VR’s 2016 Virtual Reality Industry Report, consumers will own 2 million (non-Google Cardboard) virtual reality headsets by the end of 2016. But despite that growth, the report says that virtual reality is still 6 to 8 years away from “hypergrowth” and mainstream adoption. The report says that a “killer […]

When Microsoft’s artificially intelligent bot Tay went rogue and was taught to be racist, publishers got a free lesson in what can go wrong with bots, Garett Sloane writes. Despite the risks, The Washington Post is building a news bot. Director of product Joey Marburger says the Post is managing those risks in how the […]