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Google invests $50m in a fund to encourage more women to embrace coding

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Google invests $50m in a fund to encourage more women to embrace coding

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This week, Google launched a new initiative called Made With Code, aimed at getting young women excited about learning to code and close the gender gap in the tech industry. The idea behind it is to show young girls that the things they love, from apps on their smartphones to their favorite movies are made with code, and they can apply the skills they learn to their own individual passions.

Google is investing $50 million into the program over the next three years, and Made With Code has a host of partners to help foster the community including Chelsea Clinton, Mindy Kaling, MIT Media Lab, Girl Scouts of the USA, Girls Inc., Girls Who Code, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, and TechCrunch as a media partner.

The Made With Code website will offer resources and projects for kids to learn how to code, communities to discuss different lessons and projects with each other and mentors, as well as information about regional events. This is all in an effort to get women in the driver seat when it comes to the technology of the future.

Looking at the numbers, women have actually lost ground when it comes to getting Computer Science degrees in the U.S.

Google X EVP Megan Smith explained that there are a number of factors that can turn this around, all of which are well within our grasp. The first is to encourage young girls to try coding, even if the person doing the encouraging isn't technical. "You don't have to know how to code to encourage someone else to code."

Smith also identified that for some girls, there isn't a clear avenue to try coding, and that there are no heroes for girls to look up to. Even in television shows, men are represented as the computer scientists far more than women.

Made With Code looks to solve these problems, as well as encourage others to take steps to encourage young girls to try coding, and give them people to aspire to be like.

We checked out the launch event and spoke with the people involved, which you can see in the video below.

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Google Invests $50 Million In "Made With Code" Program To Get Girls Excited About CS

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This week, Google launched a new initiative called Made With Code, aimed at getting young women excited about learning to code and close the gender gap in the tech industry. The idea behind it is to show young girls that the things they love, from apps on their smartphones to their favorite movies ...

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At its core, content marketing comes down to one big challenge: building and sustaining a loyal audience. It's not an easy task.

During the Contently Summit on Wednesday, PureWow Director of Marketing Alexis Anderson, Mediaco Editorial Director Erin Scottberg, and Refinery 29 Senior Director of Marketing Irene Lee detailed some of the strategies they've successfully employed to build a loyal audience, as well as the steps they've taken to ensure that their audience is growing in the right way.

1. Focus on quality, not quantity

As the entire media industry shifts away from vanity metrics, the number of readers becomes far less important than their level of engagement.

"Size doesn't matter to us much anymore," Anderson said. "It's very much about the perceived quality of audience. We'd rather have 100 great readers than 1,000 mediocre ones."

When acquiring an audience through a paid distribution campaign, it's crucial to track the quality of those new visitors. Are they spending time with content? Are they coming back?

"We want people to be interested in engaging with our content," Anderson said, explaining that PureWow isn't interested in acquisitions of readers that are less engaged than their organic readership-no matter how cheap and efficient it is to acquire those readers.

"Refinery29 spends a little at a time to see how people do and if they're the right audience," Lee said of her company's experiments with paid audience acquisition.

2. Email is the key to building an audience

As BuzzFeed VP of Agency Strategy Jonathan Perelman said, "Content is king, distribution is queen, and she wears the pants."

Anderson is quick to tout the benefits of focusing acquisition campaigns on email, which give you an audience that you own-as opposed to one that you rent, like on Facebook or via display.

"Don't buy display; buy dedicated emails," she recommended.

3. Embrace the power of partnerships

"What has been the most successful for us in terms of growth is partnerships," Lee said, noting that partnering with like-minded sites is a great way to not only introduce a new audience to your content, but to acquire those oh-so-valuable email addresses as well.

Scottberg pointed out that brands need to trust their partners' understanding of their audience, which can help ensure that the campaign will resonate.

4. Always be testing

"The key to our success is that we test a lot," says Lee. Refinery29 A/B split tests everything that they send out. They also use data to determine when content will perform best and optimize email and social media engagement. Lee and her team pull back the curtain on those tests in brilliant detail on R29's Intelligence blog, which launched last month.

5. Create high-quality content

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's important to remember that building an audience always comes back to creating high quality content that's tailored to a specific type of user.

This includes headlines, and Anderson was quick to emphasize the huge role that PureWow's "compelling, smart and a little risqué" headlines play in engaging their audience via email and social. "No offense to [Refinery29], but we have the best writers on earth," she said.

But of course, highly clickable headlines still need to deliver on their promise, as Scottberg noted.

6. Remember that design matters

Great design isn't just about good images; in our modern tech world, it's absolutely imperative to make sure that both your emails and site are mobile-responsive.

Lee points out that simply changing the email signup module on mobile, which was previously buried and inaccessible, yielded over a hundred email subscription signups a day in a limited test. It showed proof of concept and allowed Refinery29 to devote time to perfecting the module.

7. Don't take shortcuts

If Refinery29's Intelligence blog is any indication, the ongoing process of consistently iterating and improving content, design and strategy in response to data is never-ending and takes a lot of work. But it's possible for most any publisher to follow in their footsteps.

In the powerful words of Anderson: "Growth is not a hack."

What's the deal with The Content Strategist? It's something we created at Contently because we believe in a world where marketing is helpful, and businesses grow by telling stories that people love. Take advantage of our tools and talent and come build that world with us.
Jacquelyne Pierson

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'Growth Is Not a Hack': 7 Strategies For Building a Loyal Audience - Contently

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At its core, content marketing comes down to one big challenge: building and sustaining a loyal audience. It's not an easy task.

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Friskies cat food co-creates ad with Buzzfeed

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Friskies cat food co-creates ad with Buzzfeed

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Meet Josh. Josh is a 30-year-old artist/chef who lives in a converted warehouse in Hackney, east London. Josh has a beard, glasses and cares about the provenance of his coffee. He pays his tax, doesn't have a 9-to-5 job and, along with his five polymathic flatmates, shuns public transport, preferring to ride a bike.

On paper, Josh is the archetypal hipster - just don't call him one: "I don't hate the word hipster, and I don't hate hipsters, but being a hipster doesn't mean anything any more. So God forbid anyone calls me one."

At some point in the last few years, the hipster changed. Or at least its definition did. What was once an umbrella term for a counter-culture tribe of young creative types in (mostly) New York's Williamsburg and London's Hackney morphed into a pejorative term for people who looked, lived and acted a certain way. The Urban Dictionary defines hipsters as "a subculture of men and women, typically in their 20s and 30s, that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics". In reality, the word is now tantamount to an insult.

How to be a hipster

So what happened? Chris Sanderson, futurologist and co-founder of trend forecasting agency The Future Laboratory, thinks it's simple: "The hipster died the minute we called him a hipster. The word no longer had the same meaning."

Fuelling this was a report last month from researchers at the University of New South Wales who discovered that the hipster look was no longer "hip". In short: the more commonplace a trend - in one instance, beards - the less attractive they are perceived to be. And in 2014 we may have reached "peak beard". Could it be that the flat-white-drinking, flat-cap-wearing hipster will soon cease to exist?

Sanderson thinks it's more a case of evolving than dying. Talking to the Observer last week, he suggested there are now two types of hipster: "Contemporary hipsters - the ones with the beards we love to hate - and proto-hipsters, the real deal." And herein lies the confusion.

"Historically, proto-hipsters have been connoisseurs - people who deviate from the norm. Like hippies. Over the years, though, they inspired a new generation of young urban types who turned the notion of a hipster into a grossly commercial parody. These new hipsters want to appear a certain way, to be seen to be doing certain things, but without doing the research. So they appropriated the lifestyle and mindset of a proto-hipster."

It's a definition neatly summarised in the song Sunday, by Los Angeles rapper Earl Sweatshirt: "You're just not passionate about half the shit that you're into."

The problem is that it is now almost impossible to differentiate between the two. "Hipsters are more interested in following; proto-hipsters are more interested in leading. Yet they look the same, so how are people to know the difference?"

This lack of visual disparity has probably led to society's fondness for hipster-bashing. As Alex Miller, UK editor-in-chief of Vice, explains: "I couldn't define a hipster. I guess it's 'The Other'. But as a general term it's blown up because people finally realised they had a word to mock something cool and young which they didn't understand."

It's an age-old scenario. In Distinction, his 1979 report on the social logic of taste, French academic Pierre Bourdieu wrote that "social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat". So our inability to define a hipster merely fuels the enigma.

"And as you can imagine, this is greatly exasperating to proto-hipsters," says Sanderson.

It hasn't always been like this. While the definition of hipster hasn't altered vastly over the years, there was a time when it was considered to be something both meaningful and specific.

The word was coined in the 1940s to define someone who rejected societal norms - such as middle-class white people who listened to jazz. Then came a reactive literary subculture, realised through the work of beatniks such as Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. It was Norman Mailer who attempted to define hipsters in his essay The White Negro as postwar American white generation of rebels, disillusioned by war, who chose to "divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self".

A decade later, we had the counter-culture movement - hippies who carried their torch in a fairly self-explanatory fashion, divorced from the mainstream. The word mostly vanished until the 1990s, when it was redefined so as to describe middle-class youths with an interest in "the alternative".

In the "noughties", hipsters became the stuff of parody, via Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker's satire Nathan Barley, which earmarked the "twats of Shoreditch". Nowadays, though, anyone can appear to be a hipster provided they buy the right jeans. From the twee Match.com adverts featuring hipster-style couples to the cocktails served in jam jars at the trendy incomer bar the Albert in EastEnders, "the idea of the hipster has been swallowed up by the mainstream", says Sanderson.

Luke O'Neil, a Boston-based culture writer for the online magazine Slate, says it is the same in the US. "I've even noticed what I call the meta-hipster: a person who sidesteps the traditional requirements and just wants to skip ahead to the status. Like putting on glasses and getting a tattoo somehow makes you a hipster," he says.

But while Miller agrees that hipster has morphed into a negative term, it is less about the word and more about what it represents: "Growing up, we just used other words - 'scenester' at university, 'trendies' at school - and they mean the same. Hipster has simply become a word which means the opposite of authentic."

Not everyone agrees. At Hoxton Bar and Grill in east London, 24-year-old graduate Milly identifies with hipsters: "I mean, that's why we all live in east London. It just feels so real, like something creative and cool is happening."

Manny, a 28-year-old singer who has lived in Dalston for more than five years, likes the sense of community: "Young people haven't got jobs or work and they need it. It's like a tribe, like goths. I hope hipsters aren't dead, because I just signed a year lease on my flat."

Miller adds: "We've never written about hipsters as a subculture at Vice because I don't think hipsters are a subculture. However, I do appreciate that people like the idea of belonging to something, so I suppose on that level the idea exists." As O'Neil explains: "Whoever said [hipsters] wanted to be unique? I think it's more about wanting to belong."

So what next? "I think hipsters will have an overhaul. There will be a downturn in this skinny-jean, long-haired feminised look over the next few years owing to the rise of the stronger female role model," says Chris Sanderson." And in its place? "A more macho look, almost to the point of caricature, in a bid for men to reinforce their identity."

Perhaps this explains the phenomenon of "normcore", a term coined by New York trend agency K-Hole in their Youth Mode report last autumn. Though widely derided by the fashion world, this plain, super-normal style is arguably a reaction to the commodification of individuality, the idea that you can buy uniqueness off the peg in Topshop. "Normcore doesn't want the freedom to become someone," they say. "Normcore moves away from a coolness that relies on difference to a post-authenticity that opts into sameness."

It sounds like a joke but, says Sanderson, it might actually might be a thing: "It's the opposite of what people think is hip now, but it's also very masculine - which ties in to the return to blokeiness."

But for many, including Josh, the desire to categorise people is infuriating. Arvida Byström is a Swedish-born, London-based artist, photographer and model. Though sometimes identified as a hipster aesthetically speaking, her work, which focuses on sexuality, self-identity and contemporary feminism, would suggest she is much more than that. Sanderson would describe her as "someone who leads not follows".

She balks at the idea of being a hipster: "I haven't been aware of people calling me a hipster. I certainly don't identify as one. What is a hipster, anyway? It is such a general term. I don't even know if they exist any more."

But as Josh says: "I don't see why you can't just be a guy in east London liking the stuff that's around without being branded as something."
Topics

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The end of the hipster: how flat caps and beards stopped being so cool

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Meet Josh. Josh is a 30-year-old artist/chef who lives in a converted warehouse in Hackney, east London. Josh has a beard, glasses and cares about the provenance of his coffee. He pays his tax, doesn't have a 9-to-5 job and, along with his five polymathic flatmates, shuns public transport, preferring to ride a bike.

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Ad watchdog comes down hard on native ads in 'precedent setting' ban

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Ad watchdog comes down hard on native ads in 'precedent setting' ban

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The Advertising Standards Authority has banned a 'recommended links' promotion for failing to make clear that linked-to articles were paid for by advertisers.

The ruling against content distribution business Outbrain has added fresh fuel to the debate on native advertising content and its relationship with editorial.

The ASA investigation was prompted by a complaint against an un-named newspaper which ran a 'You may also like these' bar on pages which linked to advertiser websites. The ASA ruled that the links were not clearly marked as advertising content and banned Outbrain from using the format.

Outbrain argued that the content "was not advertising in the traditional sense" and said they were better described as "'promoted content' or 'promoted stories'".

However, the ASA concluded that the links were misleading.

"We considered consumers would not necessarily realise that the various different 'recommendations' included formed part of the same 'panel' and that they might not notice the 'Recommended by' text, which appeared in the bottom corner," the ASA said.

"We also considered consumers might not realise that the logo included a link to additional information. Nevertheless, we noted that marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as such and considered the test 'You may also like these' and 'Recommended by', as well as the information provided in the pop up and in the link below the ad, was not sufficient to ensure it was obvious to consumers that the ad was a marketing communication.

"Because the ad was not obviously identifiable as marketing communication, we concluded that it was misleading. The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Outbrain to ensure future advertising placed by them was obviously identifiable as such."

Francis Turner, managing director of native advertising business Adyoulike, which is part of the Internet Advertising Bureau's (IAB) native working group, said the ASA's view came as "no surprise".

"The ASA ruling against Outbrain's labelling of their ads is no surprise as we have been aware of the ASA's stance for some time. The ruling was primarily against terms such as 'more from the web' and 'you may also like', which do not by themselves denote that they are advertising placements.

"In our opinion, full disclosure leads to a better consumer and publisher experience. Our findings suggest that the native content we create and distribute for our brand partners is engaging, informative and likely to boost brand uplift as a result. It's not about tricking website visitors to click on some content that they didn't know was an ad. Brands should want people to know that it's their content."

Charles Lloyd, head of advertising group (UK) at law firm Taylor Wessing, added that the decision highlighted tension between advertisers and the regulator over the labelling of native advertising.

"Advertisers clearly do not want to flag up such content as 'contextually targeted' advertising even if publishers could be persuaded to, so there is a tension with the regulator who has jurisdiction and a wide discretion here to decide its 'misleading ' and an 'unidentified marketing communication' in breach of the CAP Code to not label this content by words such as 'sponsored' or 'promoted' despite Outbrain's claim that it followed industry practice," he said.

"This outcome is hardly surprising given that Outbrain merely used the text ' you may also like these' and 'recommended by' next to their logo on the third party websites. Clearly the regulator is looking for a much clearer label for 'native advertising' like this even if it does have a negative effect on this kind of copy."

Responding to the ruling, a spokesperson for Outbrain said the company was working with regulators, publishers and consumer groups to establish clearer industry guidelines.

"Outbrain has always worked within best practice guidelines on this issue - not just in the UK, but in every territory it works in," the company said. "Content discovery is still a relative newcomer when compared to traditional web advertising, so the situation is fluid and there is still a great deal of discussion to be had about labelling and disclosure. We feel that we lead the market in terms of clear labelling and providing quality content that will be of genuine interest to consumers.

"We're continuing to work with regulators, publishers and consumer groups on a framework that satisfies all parties."

Various industry organisations are currently looking at creating clearer guidelines on native advertising to address concerns about the blurring relationship between editorial and advertising.

CAP guidance released last year advised publishers to ensure that content "contextually embedded" should be clearly signposted, adding: "We would advise against using the argument that a consumer can just 'click back' to where they started from if they discover the landing page is advertorial. Past ASA action shows that if the initial ad is misleading, explaining it on the landing page may not be sufficient."

In April, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a set of "base line" definitions for marketers to help define the varying forms of content marketing and clarify terminology in the rapidly expanding market.

Native advertising has been embraced by marketers and publishers alike. In a report last year The Huffington Post suggested it could help publishers find a financial model capable of sustaining online journalism. Publishers and brands such as Buzzfeed, Trinity Mirror, Bauer Media and the Guardian have all embraced the new wave of content marketing.

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ASA rules against native ad 'recommended' links promotion on publisher website

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The Advertising Standards Authority has banned a 'recommended links' promotion for failing to make clear that linked-to articles were paid for by advertisers. The ruling against content distribution business Outbrain has added fresh fuel to the debate on native advertising content and its relationship with editorial.

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London-based business IOCS has secured £2m investment led by Notion Capital.

With this new investment, the company plans to expand its team to meet increasing demand from banks, insurers and alternative lenders.

It will also invest in new partnerships to take their expand their product into new markets.

No more paper

IOCS provides an online platform which processes complex agreements - higher risk and higher value transactions - which have traditionally needed a paper contract.

They cut out expensive administrative costs and bureaucracy which can stall sales, lead to fraud and contractual disputes.

This announcement comes after the news that IOCS's systems have processed £2bn worth of transactions.

'A compelling proposition'

Abe Smith, Founder and CEO of IOCS, believes the business is completely unique.

IOCS opens up more complex and higher value transactions to genuine online execution, not only reducing costs and sales friction but also increasing enforceability and reducing risk. That is a compelling proposition for our customers.

IOCS's clients include some of the world's largest automotive and other asset-based lenders, including Hitachi, Bank of Ireland & Close Bros as well other high-value commerce offerings such as BNP Paribas and Next.

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IOCS raises £2m to meet rising demand - UKTN (UK Tech News)

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London-based business IOCS has secured £2m investment led by Notion Capital. With this new investment, the company plans to expand its team to meet increasing demand from banks, insurers and alternative lenders. It will also invest in new partnerships to take their expand their product into new markets.

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Reuters Institute digital news report 2014

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Reuters Institute digital news report 2014

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This year's data provide further evidence of a new wave of disruption and change in digital news. In particular, we see mobile and social consumption reaching a new level of intensity, we see the different behaviours of young and old becoming more pronounced, and new kinds of journalistic organisation emerging.

The use of smartphones and tablets has jumped significantly in the past year, with fewer people using their computers for news. More than a third of online news users across all countries (39%) use two or more digital devices each week for news and a fifth (20%) now say the mobile phone is their primary access point.

The number of people paying for digital news has remained stable over the past 12 months, although we have seen a significant switch to more valuable ongoing digital subscription in most countries.

Our new (and unique) social media index for news shows Facebook is by far the most important network for news everywhere. Although Twitter is widely used in the US, Spain, and the UK, it is far less influential in many other European countries. Google+ is emerging as increasingly important for news, along with messaging application WhatsApp.

European respondents remain strongly committed to news that tries to be neutral (or impartial) but Americans are more interested in hearing from brands and reporters that are open about their own views and biases.

Traditional brands remain strong in most markets, with cross-platform newspaper reach averaging 75% in most countries, but pure players and aggregators are now more or as popular in the US, Japan, and Brazil.

US social sharing news sites like Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and Upworthy are beginning to make inroads around the world, with new formats and a fresh tone of voice aimed at younger people. Our survey shows a new category of weird news proving more/as popular than entertainment news.

Rapid Growth in Both Mobile and Tablet Use for News

Over the past year we have seen another significant jump in the adoption of both smartphones and tablets for news - as consumers embrace the benefits of smaller, personal, always-on devices. Germany and France have had a catch-up year, while others like Denmark have surged further ahead with 52% of the sample using a smartphone for news and 34% using a tablet on a weekly basis.

On average over a third of our global sample (37%) is accessing news from a smartphone each week and one in five (20%) from a tablet. In turn, this is driving more frequent access to news and from more locations.

As more people come on board, the profile of multi-platform users is getting more mainstream. Smartphone news users are getting older - we have seen a significant jump in usage by the 25-44 group - while falling prices have enabled tablet use to spread to less affluent groups and to the young.

Overall, we are moving away from use of a single device for news (traditionally the fixed computer or laptop) with particularly large drops in France and Germany.

Across our sample almost four in ten (39%) of those who use digital devices for news now use more than two to access the news, up from 33% in 2013. The number using more than three devices has grown from 9% to 12%.

On average a fifth (20%) of all users of digital devices say that the smartphone is now their MAIN way of accessing online news, with 10% using the tablet as their primary access point.

Industry Impact and the Role of Apps

These changes matter because new devices are not just increasing the frequency of news but also the way it is packaged, distributed, and discovered.

On smartphones, we find that news apps - rather than mobile websites - are often the main way of accessing news. In the UK, almost 50% of smartphone users say they mainly use apps. This figure has risen considerably over the past year (+6%) - as has the split between news apps and mobile browsing on tablets (+9%).

App or mobile website to access news - UK

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This is surprising given that most news organisations have introduced responsive websites that are better optimised for mobile. To some extent these data may reflect the strong penetration in the UK of Apple smartphones, which have tended to favour the use of apps. By contrast, in Finland where many people use Nokia phones, the use of apps on smartphones is far lower (around 30%), with most users preferring their web browser for news.

% of those using news apps on smartphone or tablet - selected countries

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The use of apps varies considerably between countries and is mainly - but not entirely - dependent on the number of people using smartphones and tablets. News apps are proportionately used more on smartphones than tablets and the age profile is very different. In the UK, most (67%) of those using news apps on a tablet are over 45, whereas on the smartphone the majority of app usage is by the under 45s.

% using news apps by age group - UK

Q11. Thinking of the way you looked at news online in the last week which of the following ways of consuming news did you use?
Base: Smartphone app users=267, tablet app users=152

The proportion of Apple iOS to other operating systems such as Android varies considerably between countries. Apple continues to be the biggest player in the US, UK, and Denmark but elsewhere other devices and operating systems are far more important - particularly for smartphones.

Proportion of Apple smartphones + tablets per country

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This is important because our data show that Apple users are much more likely to access news on their smartphones and tablets and are more likely to pay for digital news. Even after adjusting for other variables such as income, education, and interest in news, we find that Apple tablet users in the United States were more than one and half times as likely to pay for digital news - and in the UK twice as likely. Also in the UK, tablets from other manufacturers are also significantly increasing payment for news but at a lower level.

Smartphone Encourages Fewer News Sources

Another important finding from our research is that users tend to use a narrower range of news sources on a smartphone than they do on a desktop or tablet. Across all of our countries, over one-third (37%) use just a single source each week on a smartphone - compared with 30% on a desktop or laptop. In some countries the difference is even starker, with 55% of UK smartphone users saying they use one news source each week compared with 45% of computer users.

55% access one news source weekly on a smartphone (UK)

This suggests a growing dependence on a small number of news apps, perhaps related to limited screen real estate available on a smartphone. In the UK the top trusted breaking news sources like the BBC and Sky - both of which have strong app propositions - seem to be benefiting from this 'smartphone effect', while aggregator brands like Yahoo and MSN are losing out.

Selected UK brands - smartphone vs. computer

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But multi-platform is not just about digital news. Across all of our countries, an average of 50% of those who access news on a tablet say they also read a printed newspaper at least once each week; 86% also watch TV news and we see similar patterns with smartphone users.

Heavy smartphone users are more likely to keep up to date with news throughout the day compared with an average news user (74% vs 66%). In Denmark and the UK, smartphones have overtaken print as the main way of accessing news on public transport such as trains and buses (69% vs 21% and 53% vs 40% respectively). New digital devices are changing consumption patterns particularly amongst the young but they are a long way from replacing traditional platforms, which remain important for all.

Paying for Online News

The growth in digital payment we saw between 2012 and 2013 seems to have stabilised in most markets - although some individual publishers are bucking the trend. Across our sample, just over one in ten (11%) say they have paid for digital news in the last year - either via a one-off purchase or ongoing subscription.

This is in line with publisher experience where new paywalls and paid apps often find easy growth for a while and then stall - after the supply of loyal users runs out.

In the absence of significant growth in the overall numbers, news organisations are focusing on maximizing revenue from those who are prepared to pay. Among this group we find that the majority (59%) are now making ongoing payments in the form of digital subscriptions - normally on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. There are two exceptions to this: Spain where more people are making one-off payments and Finland where there are more people paying for print and digital bundles.

Move to subscription (% of paying digital subscribers with ongoing subscription)* - selected countries

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Q7ai. Which of the following types of payment have you used to pay for ONLINE news?
Base: US=238, UK=139, Germany=173, France=216, Denmark=206, Brazil=233
* net subscribers include those with direct digital sub, combined print or with ISP or cable operator

In the UK, just over one-third of all digital subscribers have signed up with The Times, followed by the Telegraph and the Sun which both introduced paywalls in 2013. In the US, large numbers of digital subscribers have signed up for either the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. In France, it is Le Monde and Mediapart leading the way and in Germany, the recently launched Bild+ from Axel Springer is having an impact especially on mobile and tablet platforms.

The low figures for the likelihood to pay in the future (for those not already paying) make particularly worrying reading in the UK and may be explained by the abundant supply of quality free news from the BBC, Sky, Mail Online, and the Guardian. But in other markets such as (urban) Brazil, Spain, and Italy there is more potential for growth.

Reasons for Subscription - and Reasons for Staying

In this year's report, we've also explored the motivations for online payment in a number of countries (US, UK, Germany, Spain, and Finland).

Reasons for signing up for online news subscription - selected

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Alongside the quality of content, important factors in getting people to subscribe in the first place seem to be a desire to access favourite content anytime on any platform, combined with a fear of not being able to access that content for free. It is not surprising, then, that news publisher marketing efforts have focused on pushing their paid smartphone and tablet options heavily as part of the drive for wider bundled print and digital subscriptions.

In contrast, our survey suggests that keeping subscribers tends to be more about the actual experience of the content, along with its quality. The quality of individual writers is a particularly important factor in France and the United States, both countries where journalists have traditionally had a high profile.

It appears that the process of subscribing tends to reinforce the value placed by readers in the brand and its writers - either through the increased usage of the brand, a rationalisation of the decision to pay, or because paid content is valued more highly.

Social Media and the News

This year's report contains new and unique data on the extent to which different social networks are used for news in particular countries - along with evidence about their role in sharing and discovery around breaking news.

Top social networks and top networks for news - all countries

Q12a/b. Which, if any, of the following have you used for any purpose/for reading, watching, sharing, or discussing news in the last week?
Base: Combined sample=18337

In aggregate Facebook is by far the biggest network with 60% using it for any purpose and over a third of our sample (35%) saying they used it for news. The popularity of other networks, however, like Twitter, Google+, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Reddit varies considerably.

Twitter is widely used in Spain (21%), the UK (12%), and US (8%) - in part because leading broadcasters (BBC, CNN) and newspapers ( El País, New York Times, Guardian) have promoted its use in wider coverage. By contrast it is less used in Germany (3%) and Finland (6%) where Google+ is twice as popular for news.

YouTube is heavily used for news in Italy (23%), France (16%), and the US (17%) but much less in the UK (6%) and Denmark (5%). Strong brands in countries like the UK have been reluctant to put too much video content onto YouTube, hoping they can continue to attract users directly to their own websites. The age profiles for news are also significantly different everywhere, with Facebook broadly representative of all ages and Twitter focused on younger groups.

In Spain 60% of our sample use WhatsApp and 26% said they are using it for news, with El País the first major Spanish site to enable direct sharing. We also see high usage in Germany and Italy.

But our research also reveals other important networks and social aggregators. In Finland there are two important local networks: Suomi 24 (8%) and Ampparit (12%). In Brazil, Orkut is still used by 12% of the population. Japan has popular networks such as Mixi, and Line, while Germany has a number of networks including Xing for business connections.

Gateways and News Discovery

A key issue for the industry is the extent to which news brands are being disaggregated by search engines, social networks, and portals. Our 2014 results again highlight the very different habits around news discovery across our countries.

In UK, Denmark, and Finland, countries with strong news brands, users tend to start their journeys with a trusted news provider, but it is a very different picture elsewhere, with search still the main gateway in France, Germany, Italy, the US, and Brazil.

In Italy, Google News is accessed by 25% of weekly online news users and in Germany by 11% compared with only 2% in Finland and 5% in the UK. These international differences are at the heart of the current battles over the role of aggregators like Google in the European market.

On the other hand our data also reveal how search is helping users get quickly to favourite brands. In breaking down different types of search query we find that more than half (56%) relate to navigation to a particular website. Effectively these are 'pass-throughs' to a trusted brand.

In terms of social media, we asked additional questions in the UK about how networks like Facebook and Twitter are used for news discovery. Of those consumers who use Twitter for news, our UK survey shows they are highly active during an average week

57% click further to read or watch (story, video, or picture)

60% actively share or favourite or comment on the news

65% check their newsfeed to see what's new

Of those who use Facebook for news, respondents show broadly similar types of engagement. They are, however, significantly less likely to click on a news story than Twitter users (though the aggregate effect is bigger because of the number of users). They are more likely to click on a news video.

Twitter and Reddit have amongst the highest proportion accessing news (around 50% of their users use them for news each week) reinforcing their reputation as influencer networks and for surfacing news.

Amongst those respondents in the UK who used social networks for discovering an important breaking story such as a natural disaster or political crisis, 65% said they would turn to Twitter and 54% to Facebook - even though Facebook has three times as many users in general.

Working with polling partner YouGov, we have also analysed UK social media usage in Twitter. This shows that media brands or journalists post much of the content that is discovered and valued in Twitter. Our analysis shows that 64% of people on Twitter in the UK (c.5.4 million) get news from one or more type of 'news account', with 48% of them following a journalist, two in five (40%) following a breaking news account and just over one in three (35%) following a general news brand.

Sharing and Participation

In total 16% of our UK sample share a news story via a social network (12%) or email (6%). This hasn't changed much in three years. The figures are considerably higher in the US, Italy, and Spain.

Top sharing nations - % sharing via email or social network weekly

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Young people are more likely to share or comment using social networks whereas older groups are more likely to share news via email and comment on a news site. But apart from the tools they use, the overall desire to talk about and share news appears to be affected more by national culture than by age.

The Rise of Visual Journalism

Over the last year newspapers, broadcasters, and digital pure players have been producing more visual content, pictures, data-rich charts, animated gifs, and video itself. This is partly because of the multimedia capabilities of new devices, partly because distinctive visual content works well in social media - but also for commercial reasons. Video in particular is attracting much higher advertising premiums.

Despite this, our research shows that, for the moment at least, most users remain wedded to words (traditional articles and lists), though we do find that pictures and videos are relatively more important in the US, Brazil, and southern European countries like Italy and Spain.

This year we asked a number of additional questions about the appeal of video content in five countries (UK, US, Spain, Germany, and Finland) and the balance between text and video content.

In most of these countries we found just a small percentage (10% at most) that prefer online news to be video-led. Some of these are to be found in the United States where services like NowThisNews and Vice News have been gaining traction and where newspapers like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have expanded video teams considerably. But even here, more than two-thirds of our sample (70%) only consume or mostly consume news in text. Our research into video also shows that many users are put off by technical problems and by small screen size.

24% would rather watch on a bigger screen

18% video doesn't work or takes too long to play

News clips that add context to a text story are valued most by users. In terms of topics, videos about celebrity, fun, and sports news are especially popular, while local news video content is rarely consumed despite a high level of general interest.

Impartial News and the Value of Reporters vs Brands

This year we have also explored whether traditional journalistic disciplines of objectivity and impartiality are still relevant or wanted in a digital news environment.

Some practitioners like the blogger and political journalist Glenn Greenwald have suggested a new approach in which journalists should argue a particular point of view - while being open about their sources and their biases.

Our survey suggests that consumers at this stage strongly prefer traditional approaches. This may be because their views are shaped by what they already know but most respondents support the notion that a reporter's job is to present a range of views and let the reader/viewer decide - especially in the UK and Germany. However nearly a third of Italian consumers prefer a reporter to argue a particular point of view, reflecting the more partisan journalistic practice of parts of the media there.

In addition our survey showed that audiences TRUST sources more that try to be neutral over those that are open about their views and biases.

We also looked at the issue of whether, as some commentators have argued, individual journalists are overtaking the organisation as key drivers of trust and engagement. We see some support for that view particularly in France, Spain, and the US - whereas we find the brand itself is a more important driver in the UK, Japan, Denmark, and Finland.

The growing importance of individual reporters has been fuelled by the ease with which new enterprises can be set up and distribute content in the internet era. In the US in particular we see increasingly successful news organisations such as Business Insider (Henry Blodget), the Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan), Vox Media (Ezra Klein) that are built around their journalistic stars. In most other countries, newspaper columnists and high-profile reporters still largely ride on the coat tails of established brands for traffic and reach.

Rise of New Players and Social Aggregators and the Growth of Weird News

Across the world we are seeing the rising impact of pure players that are bringing a new tone of voice and innovations in format and business models. Some are now international players creating new disruption in many of our surveyed countries. The Huffington Post operates 11 international editions, many of which are joint enterprises with traditional news groups such as Le Monde in France and L'Espresso group in Italy. Buzzfeed runs sites in the UK and Germany and has recently launched versions in French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Huffington Post and Buzzfeed (weekly usage) by country

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These sites attract younger audiences and generate much of their traffic from mobile and social media. They have also been experimenting with new 'native' advertising formats where sponsored messages appear as part of the content itself.

Part of their appeal is the 'fun' nature of much of the content, which is mixed with more serious news stories. In this year's survey we have tracked this new category of Fun or Weird news for the first time. Overall, we find this category is accessed more often than celebrity and entertainment news. It is particularly popular with Japanese (28%), French (22%), and Italians (21%) and is mainly driven by young men and women - whereas entertainment and celebrity news skews heavily towards 18-35-year-old women.

These latest disruptions from social sharing sites come on top of Web 1.0 portals and aggregators such as Yahoo, MSN, and Google News. Google News is the most accessed news website in Italy and also a leading player in France and Germany. In combination, we see that in countries like the United States pure players and aggregators now attract almost as many users as traditional media online. Japan is a special case where Yahoo holds over 60% of the market and where the national broadcaster NHK has been restricted in its internet activities. Strong brands have done well in the UK, while in Finland - protected by language and by the relatively small size of its market - there is far less disruption (see chart).

Traditional brand websites vs pure players and aggregators - selected countries

Q3. Which, if any, of the following have you used in the last week as a source of news?
Base: UK=2082, Finland=1520, US=2197, Japan=1973

In this year's report we have also looked in particular detail at the position of newspapers which play an important role in democratic countries - not least because they still employ the vast majority of journalists creating original content. Overall we find that cross-platform reach (print and online) still averages around 75% in most countries but online-only newspaper reach varies wildly from 31% in Japan to 82% in Finland.

Conclusion

This year's data represent to some extent a continuation of trends we have seen before, but in combination the impact feels more intense. With many news organisations now getting the majority of their web traffic from mobile and tablets there is a growing realisation that this is just the start of a new wave of disruption.

The smartphone is pushing the internet into a more personal space and extending our access points for news and information. Tablets are offering new possibilities for monetisation but in these converged multimedia spaces news is just one form of content competing for attention with all the rest.

Media companies are rethinking their strategies to fit new platforms and changing needs, but for many this remains a battle for survival. There are new opportunities everywhere but also dynamic competitors emerging with fresh thinking. Money must be found to invest in new products but older groups still want news delivered in a traditional way. Embracing digital is clearly the future, but news brands can't afford to leave behind groups who still carry huge influence and drive most of the revenue.

Like last year we also see the uneven nature of digital change both between and within countries. We see how some countries are protected to a degree by culture, language, or regulation, while others face the full force of digital competition. We see everywhere how young people are finding, consuming, and sharing news and information in very different ways - putting mobile and online first.

And yet in this web of contradictions we find evidence that trusted news brands and trusted reporters remain important to almost everybody. The names of those brands may be changing, along with the means of delivery, but notions of credibility, immediacy, and relevance remain core ingredients of success.

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Executive Summary and Key Findings of the 2014 Report

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This year's data provide further evidence of a new wave of disruption and change in digital news. In particular, we see mobile and social consumption reaching a new level of intensity, we see the different behaviours of young and old becoming more pronounced, and new kinds of journalistic organisation emerging.

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With the lifestyles of many consumers in Britain in flux over the past five years, Mintel's annual British Lifestyles report reveals the legacy of the economic downturn. When asked about how their spending habits have changed over the past five years, some 56% of all Brits (amounting to 23 million adults) claim to now only buy items when absolutely needed and almost four in ten (37%) say they are buying fewer treats for themselves and their families.

While just over a fifth (22%) of consumers agree they have been better off over the past year, more than a third (36%) say things have become more difficult. A further third (36%) of Brits claim to go on fewer holidays and almost a fifth (17%) are working longer hours as a consequence of the downturn. In addition, while in 2008 six in ten Brits (60%) were perfectly happy with their standard of living, this fell to 50% in 2012.

Today, the top three financial priorities for British consumers are 1. Keeping up with bills (82%) 2. Adding to rainy day savings (67%) 3. Saving for big ticket purchases (58%). Just 6% of adults admit they haven't changed their spending habits in response to the economic downturn.

Ina Mitskavets, Senior Consumer and Lifestyles Analyst at Mintel, said:

"Amidst the rising cost of living and biting austerity measures, British consumers are adjusting to the new economic reality, with financial prudence and savvy shopping already the default for many. Britons are working harder and saving more money for the future, as a direct consequence of the recession. The reduced desire to fritter away hard-earned income on 'nice-to-haves' will shape retail offerings and will have far-reaching implications for consumer expectations about quality, price, product variety and customer service."

Mintel's research also examines the value of every consumer market covered by their market research and the impact of consumer spend on market sectors to 2017. Valued at £999 billion in 2012, overall, consumer spend is set to grow a further 17% between 2012 and 2017 to reach £1.17 trillion. Key consumer sectors that stand to benefit in the next five years include: non-alcoholic drinks - set to increase 25%, in-home food +20% and beauty and personal care +18%. The slowest areas of growth will be technology and communications +5%, home and garden +7%, foodservice +7%, holidays +9% and leisure and entertainment +11%.

Coffee and energy drinks markets break a billion in 2012

Highlighting consumer demand for functionality in non-alcoholic drinks - and especially energy boosting in difficult economic circumstances, both the coffee and energy drinks markets have broken the billion mark in 2012. The energy drinks market grew 78% over the past five years (2007/2012) to reach £1 billion in 2012 and the coffee market growing 34% over the same period to reach £1 billion in 2012. More than six in ten (62%) consumers claim that their purchasing habits of non-alcoholic drinks did not change in 2013 in comparison to 2012.

Home baking and crisps are star performers, while bread fails to get a slice of the action...

Valued at £76 billion, the majority (52%) of consumers are spending 'about the same' on in-home food in the beginning of 2013 as they were in the beginning of 2012. The economic downturn kick-started a renaissance in the home-baking market with some 34% of Brits cooking or baking more from scratch and value sales rocketing by 84% over the past five years to reach £410 million in 2012. Expenditure on crisps, nuts and snacks increased by 29% to £3.3 billion from 2007-12 - but expenditure on bread and baked goods has been unconvincing, growing just 1.5% to £3.6 billion over 2011-12.

Looking good - beauty remains buoyant despite recession

When times are tough, women often use beauty products as an affordable way of lifting their mood. The so-called "lipstick effect" has held true throughout the recession, with the UK beauty and personal care industry estimated at £10.6 billion and showing total growth of around 16% between 2007 and 2012 - the equivalent of an additional £1.3 billion. Notwithstanding the growth of the UK population by some 5.3 million between 2007 and 2012, this still equates to an 11% rise in per capita spend. Furthermore, the beauty and personal care market is expected to grow by 18% between 2012 and 2017, with the highest growth projected for shampoos (25%) and conditioners (26%).

Dishwashing sales bubble up in difficult economic climate

Sales of dishwashing products have outperformed the overall household care market between 2007 and 2012 growing by 16% compared to a 10% growth for the household care market as a whole. While sales of machine dishwashing products have been virtually static over the past two years, it is handwashing products which have been the star performer in the market, sales of washing up liquid increasing 5% alone between 2011 and 2012. Washing up liquid has benefitted from a boost in new product development with new fragrances and packaging. Valued at £5.3 billion, the household care market is projected to achieve further growth of 12% between 2012 and 2017, with household hard surface cleaning and care products (27%) and fabric care (22%) experiencing strongest growth.

Good news for staycations - but sun seeking Brits remain...

The domestic holiday segment has performed well since the crash, growing 19% in value between 2007 and 2012. Some 13% of consumers have taken more holidays in the UK and fewer overseas as a result of the recession. However, while the domestic segment has benefitted from consumer efforts to cut costs, the overseas segment has suffered. The value of the long-haul holiday market fell by 6% between 2007 and 2012, while the short-haul segment saw a 10% drop. Despite contraction in the segment, some 54% of adults agree that it is important to get a sunny break each year, half (51%) prefer overseas holidays to holidays in the UK and a quarter (26%) agree that holidays in the UK aren't real holidays.

Market sweet for cider - but Champagne loses its sparkle...

The alcoholic drinks market has seen steady growth throughout the recession, driven by the off-trade, reaching a total of £39.5 billion in 2012 and estimated to grow to £45 billion by 2017. The recent value growth seen in the UK cider market of 46% between 2007 and 2012 to stand at £2.7 billion looks set to continue in 2013, benefiting from its accessible flavours and a growing presence of premium brands. Sparkling wine also looks set to continue overshadowing its more illustrious cousin (Champagne) as the reputation of drinks such as Prosecco continues to grow, with over a third (36%) of Champagne and sparkling wine drinkers claiming that there is 'little difference' between the two.

How to spend a lottery win...

Mintel's British Lifestyles report asked consumers how they would spend a lottery win of £1000 and 2013 findings were compared with 2008 when the exact same question was posed to the nation. In 2013, the top five things Brits would use a lottery win for are: 1. Holiday (27%), 2. Put aside for a rainy day or an emergency (23%) 3. Give it to a family friend (12%), 4. Spend on home improvements (11%) and 5. Pay off outstanding bills (11%). Comparing our attitudes with those pre recession, five years on it seems that consumer attitudes of what to spend a lottery win on have remained much the same - with the exception of home improvements. While holidays remain the number one desire for would be lottery winners (27% in 2013 vs 30% in 2008), in contrast, home improvement has seen a vast decline - with those claiming they would spend their lottery windfall on this falling from 20% in 2008 to just 11% in 2013.

"As the economic climate is taking its toll, people are increasingly looking for ways to get away from the doom and gloom, which is a reflection of the popularity of holidays. The decline in likelihood of spending on home improvements reflects an extreme unwillingness to spend on homes. The fact that almost a quarter of Brits would put a lottery win aside for a rainy day, is perhaps the strongest testament to just how frugal today's Britons have become, and how entrenched their desire for savings is in the current economic climate." Ina continues.

Looking at the differences between the nation's men and women, it is women who are more likely to prioritise spending winnings on a holiday (29% of women vs 25% of men), meanwhile, the nation's men are more likely to put money aside for a rainy day (26% of men vs 21% of women). It is also Britain's women who are the more generous consumers, indeed, some 15% of British women said they would give their winnings to a family or friend compared to just 11% of men.

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Mintel's British Lifestyles report highlights the legacy of the economic downturn in Britain and finds savvy ways are here to stay

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With the lifestyles of many consumers in Britain in flux over the past five years, Mintel's annual British Lifestyles report reveals the legacy of the economic downturn.

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Nestle Japan lets train travelers pay for tickets with chocolate bars

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Nestle Japan lets train travelers pay for tickets with chocolate bars

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People can buy special packs of the chocolate bar to ride the Sanriku Railway.

As part of an initiative to rejuvenate tourism in the northern part of Japan, train travelers going on the Sanriku Railway can use KitKat as their train ticket.

The initiative is the first time that a Japanese rail company has allowed the use of chocolate bar packaging as a train ticket, but it isn't the first project that the Nestle confectionery brand has done to support the reconstruction projects of the Sanriku Railway.

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KitKat Lets Japanese Train Riders Pay With Chocolate Bars Instead Of Tickets - PSFK

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People can buy special packs of the chocolate bar to ride the Sanriku Railway. As part of an initiative to rejuvenate tourism in the northern part of Japan, train travelers going on the Sanriku Railway can use KitKat as their train ticket.

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The consumer confidence index exists negative territory for the first time in 9 years

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The consumer confidence index exists negative territory for the first time in 9 years

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Our world is changing fast. Consumers, users, and buyers are calling the shots. New things become possible every second. And more complicated, too.Our clients are businesses around the globe. To make the best possible decisions every day, they need to really know what is going on, now and in the future.We don't have a crystal ball, either. But we love data and science and we understand how to connect the two. We care about attention to detail and accuracy. We are digital engineers who build world-class research, powered by high technology.

Because people who know best lead the way. This is why GfK means Growth from Knowledge.

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Our world is changing fast. Consumers, users, and buyers are calling the shots. New things become possible every second. And more complicated, too.Our clients are businesses around the globe. To make the best possible decisions every day, they need to really know what is going on, now and in the future.We don't have a crystal ball, either.

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And they're expecting digital content to be free

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And they're expecting digital content to be free

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A new YouGov report reveals that there is a consensus that digital content should be free, with this view particularly prominent among children and young adults, who are also likely to view file sharing as 'normal'.
The research found that just less than half (49%) of children (8-15 years old) agree or strongly agree that you should be able to download or access content you want for free from the internet. This age group shows and above-average propensity to agree that using file-sharing sites is so easy (6%) and that it has become a normal thing to do (7%).

49% of 16-24 year olds say that online content should be free. Online services that offer a free service (usually ad-supported) such as Spotify, YouTube and Blinkbox, tend to be popular with this group.

Cost is the major factor in the decision to use file sharing sites. Over half (51%) of adults and 44% of children who file share do so to save money. A quarter of 16-24 year olds say file sharing is the only way they can afford to access such content, whilst 27% believe that CDs and DVDs are too expensive. 41% of adults and 38% of children believe that it is a quick, convenient and easy way to access content.

Although ethical concerns do exist, only 16% of children strongly agree that it is wrong to access content without the creator or artist's permission, whilst just 7% say file sharing is a form of stealing. Indeed, six in ten (60%) of 16-24 year olds agree that the companies and websites allowing illegal content should be punished, rather than those who have accessed the content.

In terms of what could motivate children to pay for content, a fifth say they would be happy to pay for content if it got them something new or exclusive. 13% say they would pay if there was a specific up-and-coming artist they want to support.

James McCoy, YouGov Research Director, said: 'Children aged 8-15 are the key adopters of digital technology, and are likely to be more familiar with accessing content without paying. File sharing is most common amongst younger adults; cost and availability are key drivers.

'Children in this generation have grown up with digital material and are used to having access to what they want, when they want it and for some of the time not paying for it. They do not just listen and watch digital content; they consume it by downloading, file sharing, streaming, making playlists and going on recommendations from friends or contacts via social media.'

'Whilst they appreciate the issues surrounding piracy and illegal downloads, if they can get away with it, then they will. Why change the habit of a lifetime? The challenge for the industry is to find ways to engage with this group to change their mind-set about accessing content and to educate them in a relevant and non-condescending way about the issues surrounding this matter.'
Learn more about this report Go to YouGov reports

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Digital content should be free say younger online users

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A new YouGov report reveals that there is a consensus that digital content should be free, with this view particularly prominent among children and young adults, who also likely to view file sharing as ‘normal’. The research found that just less than half (49%) of children (8-15 years old) agree ...

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Over 50s: the majority feel ignored by tech brands says survey

Research from High50 has found that 66% of consumers between the age of 50 and 64 feel that marketing and advertising is aimed at 16- to 34-year-olds in nearly every sector, while admitting that they feel advertisers are either "not at all" or "barely interested" in them as a target audience.

Technology giants such as Apple and Samsung were among the brands found to target the over 50s the least, with 95% of the demographic feeling they were not targeted at all, despite 21% saying they could not live without a smartphone or computer technology, and 57% saying that they quite liked it.

High50 surveyed more than 1,300 people between the ages of 50 and 64 in May, and found that one in five feel "absolutely excluded" from brand marketing.

Marks & Spencer, John Lewis and the BBC were the top three brands who were found to actively talk to the 50- to 64-year-old target market.

James Burrows, chief executive of High50, said the study highlighted a "vast disunity" between advertisers' targets and "those with any spending power".

He said: "A stunning 67% of those with children aged over 21 and still living at home, support them financially, yet our most economically powerful generation is one that is largely ignored by advertisers.

"It is clear that existing preconceptions about the over 50s is significantly outdated, and it's time we acknowledged that for many, becoming 50 is the start of the better half of their lives."

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Tech-savvy over 50s feel shut out by the likes of Apple and Samsung

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Research from High50 has found that 66% of consumers between the age of 50 and 64 feel that marketing and advertising is aimed at 16- to 34-year-olds in nearly every sector, while admitting that they feel advertisers are either "not at all" or "barely interested" in them as a target audience.

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Over 50's feel ignored by both advertisers and tech brands

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Over 50's feel ignored by both advertisers and tech brands

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LONDON: A majority of older consumers in the UK think that advertisers ignore them and that few brands talk directly to them, according to new research which highlights a gap between the age groups targeted by marketing and those with most spending power.

High50, a global community designed for people over the age of 50, surveyed 1,305 people between the ages of 50 and 64 in May 2014 and found that 66% felt that most advertising was aimed at 16-to-34 year olds, despite the fact that the older generation outspends them in nearly every sector.

A further 30% said most advertising was aimed at 35-49 year olds with just 4% stating that most advertising was aimed at those over 50.

The picture was only slightly less depressing when respondents were asked whether they thought brands and advertisers were interested in them. A mere 11% declared this to be the case while 19% said 'not at all' and 46% said 'a little'.

M&S emerged as a 'brand hero' for the over-50s, with 55% feeling the retailer talked to them directly. Another retailer, John Lewis, scored 38% on this metric, with Waitrose, its associated grocery business close behind on 31%.

At the other end of the scale, Apple and Samsung were singled out by 95% of respondents as brands that didn't target them at all, despite 21% saying they couldn't live without a smartphone and computer technology, and 57% saying they quite enjoy it.

And while it may not have been a great surprise to see a brand like YouTube (3%) failing to register with the over-50s, VW (7%) and Dyson (14%) might be expected to take more interest in a demographic willing to pay a premium for quality.

"The disconnect between people's positive feelings about being 50, their high disposable income compared to other demographics, and the astonishing lack of attention the ad industry pays the 50+ age group is both bizarre and unacceptable," declared Stefano Hatfield, editor in chief, High50.

"By the years 2020, 50% of the population will be 50+, and the advertising world is simply looking in the wrong direction," he added.

Data soured from High50; additional content by Warc staff

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LONDON: A majority of older consumers in the UK think that advertisers ignore them and that few brands talk directly to them, according to new research which highlights a gap between the age groups targeted by marketing and those with most spending power.

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4 reasons why London is driving global fintech

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4 reasons why London is driving global fintech

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Amazon launches the new Fire phone - Firefly is the most significant feature for marketers

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Amazon launches the new Fire phone - Firefly is the most significant feature for marketers

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With the debut of the Amazon Fire Phone this afternoon, the company introduced a new feature called Firefly, which is largely designed to let you identify - and then, of course, buy - things you see out in the real world. Firefly takes advantage of the smartphone's camera to let you identify things like phone numbers, movies, books, games, CDs, food and more just by pointing your camera at them.

The feature is a key part of the new phone, in fact, as it even has a dedicated button on the side - a perfect example of how much this new hardware is about bringing customers into Amazon's ecosystem and turning them into regular online shoppers.

A Firefly button is sort of like "instant gratification" built into your device.

During the demonstration on stage, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos showed off how Firefly can be used to scan barcodes on items, a book cover, a CD and more. There's a Shazam-like audio recognition-component, as well. Firefly can identify songs you're listening to, and it can even listen to a show, and then let you access that specific scene on Amazon, which is a clever trick. Naturally, you're directed to buy the tracks and shows and movies on Amazon.

Firefly Looks Like "Flow"

To some extent, Firefly looks like a feature built on top of Flow, Amazon's visual-recognition technology that used to reside in its own standalone mobile app before more recently being introduced into the main Amazon native application.

Flow, which was run by Amazon subsidiary A9 (the search and advertising wing of Amazon), was first launched over two years ago. That app, and now Amazon.com's flagship app, work by identifying media package covers, logos, artwork and other unique visual features.

So by Amazon's description of Firefly, it's clearly an extension of Flow, though that was not said outright. (It's unclear why the company decided to rename it. But "Firefly" does sound cooler.)

Firefly can also recognize art, and then pull up the associated Wikpedia entry, which is something Apple's Siri and Google Now can't yet do.

At launch, Firefly is capable of recognizing over 100 million items, said Bezos. That includes 245,000 movies and TV episodes, 160 live TV channels, 35 million songs and 70 million products.

It's worth noting the Firefly feature isn't only about finding things you can buy, although clearly that's its larger goal.

Under the hood, the technology being used includes "semantic boosting," Bezos continued, which is a fancy way of saying it can smartly identify and understand text based on the context. It can identify phone numbers using image-to-text conversion and can determine if a phone number doesn't exist. This feature was demonstrated by pointing the phone at a sign for a pie shop, which then allowed you to kick off a phone call to that store.

The feature works for signs, posters, magazines or business cards, and it lets you send emails, save as a contact, or go to a website without typing a URL.

Firefly for Developers

In addition, developers will be able to tap into Firefly, which makes the feature even more promising.

An SDK will allow third-parties access to all the functionality in Firefly itself. One company, the health-focused MyFitnessPal, has already taken advantage of the feature to create an app that can determine the nutritional information from the food your camera sees. Today, users have to manually enter this data or select a food from a set of search results. Firefly makes MyFitnessPal's food diary "point and shoot."

Included in the SDK are text, audio and image recognizers, content databases and support for custom actions allowing developers to bend Firefly to their own personal needs.

In another example, Vivino is releasing an app that gives you information about the bottles of wine you scan. Other early adopters include iHeartRadio and StubHub.

While Flow functionality may have seemed gimmicky at times - after all, it's not that hard to enter a search query - opening up Flow (via Firefly) to a wider audience of developers has effectively just created a new app category, and something that - for now at least - is exclusive to Amazon's platform.

While Google has also experimented with visual recognition technology in the past ( remember "Google Goggles? "), it hasn't really been a huge focus for the company. Meanwhile, it makes sense for Amazon to pursue this feature, as the company sees identification as the first step in the purchasing process, not just another cool trick you can do with your phone.

The Firefly SDK is being launched today, said Bezos.

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Amazon's Fire Phone Introduces Firefly, A Feature That Lets You Identify (And Buy!) Things You See In The Real World

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With the debut of the Amazon Fire Phone this afternoon, the company introduced a new feature called Firefly, which is largely designed to let you identify -- and then, of course, buy -- things you see out in the real world. Firefly takes advantage of the smartphone's camera to let you identify thin...

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Will the grocery sector see an impact from start-ups and 'the sharing economy'?

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Will the grocery sector see an impact from start-ups and 'the sharing economy'?

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State of the Art

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When you buy groceries from Instacart, the company summons a green-shirted "personal shopper" through its smartphone app to pick up your items from a grocery store and deliver them to you. Credit Credit Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

"I hope you realize that you are about to witness a remarkable display in ineptitude," the technology investor Michael J. Moritz said as he entered a Whole Foods store in San Francisco one recent afternoon.

Mr. Moritz, the chairman of the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and a recipient of a British knighthood last year, was wearing a bright green T-shirt bearing a logo for Instacart, a two-year-old grocery delivery start-up that Sequoia has invested in. He was here to show me what it's like to work for the start-up - in particular, how unexpectedly difficult it is to quickly and accurately buy and deliver an assortment of groceries for a stranger.

Instacart might not sound like a novel service. It is one of several companies that is trying to revive a dream first floated, and then shelved, during the last dot-com boom - the dream of ordering your staples online and having them show up at your door a short while later. At least a half-dozen firms offer grocery delivery across the country, including Amazon.com's AmazonFresh, FreshDirect, Peapod and services run by big grocery chains.

But behind the scenes, Instacart is unusual and intriguing. It operates according to a decentralized business model that borrows from services like Uber, Airbnb and other firms in the so-called sharing economy. And it is not only potentially lucrative, but also could redefine how we think about the future of labor.

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Credit Stuart Goldenberg

When you buy groceries from Instacart, the company summons a green-shirted "personal shopper" through the firm's smartphone app. The shopper receives your list, scurries through a grocery store to pick up your items and then heads across town in his own car to deliver your stuff.

Instacart's shoppers earn from $15 to $30 an hour, depending on how quickly they deliver people's food. That's quite a high wage considering the job does not require a college degree, is part time and can be done during flexible hours. It's substantially more than the typical supermarket worker salary of about $9 to $11 per hour - though of course without any benefits like health insurance. Instacart says the workers are independent contractors, responsible for paying for expenses like their own Social Security taxes.

Still, Instacart's success suggests that rather than simply automate workers out of their jobs, technology might create new labor opportunities for people who haven't acquired formal credentials or skills in an economy where low- and medium-skilled workers face a bleak outlook. Like the ride-sharing service Uber, Instacart creates work by connecting affluent customers who have more money than time with part-time workers who have the opposite problem - lots of time, not enough money.

But unlike ride-sharing or apartment rental services, Instacart isn't intruding upon a regulated industry, and its service poses little risk to its customers' health or property, so it faces few of the complications that have dogged other sharing companies. Because it expands the customer base for physical stores, it has also been welcomed by some grocery chains as a potential bulwark against the wider rollout of Amazon's delivery service.

"When you ask what kind of niches we'll see for people who used to be in traditional middle-class jobs, this is the kind of labor that could fit into that," said Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University whose book "Average Is Over" contemplates how technology is altering labor markets. "I wouldn't want to suggest people will become grocery-delivery millionaires," he said, "but if you don't have a college education but you're smart and responsible, could you make a living doing this and maybe piecing it together with some of these other kinds of jobs? Absolutely."

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Instacart creates vast selection for customers by allowing them to shop at many different stores, from large chains to specialty shops like San Francisco's worker-owned, vegan-friendly Rainbow Co-Op. Credit Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Instacart was founded in 2012 by Apoorva Mehta, now 27, an engineer who spent two years working at Amazon.com. "I had this problem of never having groceries in my fridge and never having the motivation and energy to go to the store," Mr. Mehta said. But he found most grocery services, including AmazonFresh, too cumbersome. They required him to submit his order many hours in advance of delivery, and they sometimes didn't offer the merchandise he was used to getting at his local store.

What's more, traditional grocery delivery services are costly to set up, requiring warehouses to store perishable food, a fleet of custom-painted trucks for delivery and a staff of full- or part-time workers to package and deliver the orders. "We were the clowns who invested in WebVan, and we are only just getting out of therapy from that," Mr. Moritz said, referring to the first boom's spectacular grocery flameout.

Instacart does not maintain warehouses or trucks. Instead, the service is assembled out of found parts - existing supermarkets, willing part-time workers and their cars. The model has many advantages. It creates vast selection for customers by allowing them to shop at many different stores, from large chains to specialty shops like San Francisco's worker-owned, vegan-friendly Rainbow Co-Op. It allows for extremely quick delivery too, including an option that will deliver your groceries in under an hour.

Though he declined to provide specifics, Mr. Mehta also said the firm had turned a profit in certain markets. Instacart now operates in ten cities, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Austin, Seattle and Los Angeles, and plans to be in 17 by the end of the year. It has 50 full-time employees and more than 1,000 independent shoppers under contract, many of whom fall into two demographic groups: college students and middle-aged mothers looking for flexible work.

Despite its low-cost business model, Instacart isn't cheap. The service charges a delivery fee of $3.99 for most orders, and it also makes money by marking up store prices. The amounts vary depending on the item, but I noticed Instacart's prices coming in at about 20 percent more than I could find at my local store.

Apoorva Mehta founded Instacart in 2012. "I had this problem of never having groceries in my fridge and never having the motivation and energy to go to the store," he said. But he found most grocery services lacking. Credit Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

The markup explains in part how Instacart can afford to pay shoppers such high wages. But as I discovered as I shopped with Mr. Moritz, there's another factor behind high pay: Shopping is a skill, and Instacart pays handsomely to get people who are very good at it.

Though he could talk at length about the virtues of Instacart's business, Mr. Moritz is a billionaire investor, but he turned out to be a poor shopper. As we walked through Whole Foods, he often needed my help to locate a customer's items. I had to show him where to find grapes, bananas and Perrier; neither of us had any luck finding Babybel cheese.

A few days later, I went on another delivery with Sharon Schedler, a 43-year-old mother who has been working for Instacart for about a year. She was a pro. Despite my peppering her with questions, she completed an 11-item order in under 10 minutes, including giving the customer a call to suggest substituting chicken breasts for chicken tenders, which were out of stock. Ms. Schedler was also meticulous about picking produce. "I try to be pickier than I would be for myself," she said as she studied zucchinis for nicks.

Lawrence F. Katz, an economist at Harvard who studies technology and labor, offered a few reasons to stifle excessive optimism about Instacart's model. First, technology may yet one day render Instacart's shoppers obsolete. Drones could pick our groceries, after all.

Another possibility, he said, is that wages will be bid down as more people compete to become Instacart shoppers. Or, as the company's software becomes more sophisticated, it could squeeze more efficiency out of workers; they may end up doing more work and not earn any more money for it.

A third problem is the lack of job security and benefits, which were once considered standard features of middle-class jobs. But Mr. Mehta says he doesn't see that shifting. "The advantage to this model is that you choose your own hours," he said. More corporate control over work habits "is something that would drive a lot of people away. The independent contractor model - I'm not sure that's going to change."

Correction:

An earlier version of this column provided an outdated number of cities in which Instacart, a grocery delivery start-up, operates. It now operates in 10 cities, not eight.

Email: farhad.manjoo@nytimes.com; Twitter: @fmanjoo

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Grocery Deliveries in Sharing Economy. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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State of the Art "I hope you realize that you are about to witness a remarkable display in ineptitude," the technology investor Michael J. Moritz said as he entered a Whole Foods store in San Francisco one recent afternoon.

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Why the FT is ditching the CPM for a new ad currency - time spent

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Why the FT is ditching the CPM for a new ad currency - time spent

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"Engaged time" has been one of the biggest buzzwords in the media universe of late, as publishers and brands seek a unit of measurement that accurately values how much time people are spending with content. It was a hot topic of conversation during Creativity Week and Columbia's Data Conference, but until ads begin to get bought and sold based on something other than CPMs and clicks, it will be just that-a topic of conversation.

Recently, however, the media world saw a big breakthrough.

The Financial Times recently announced that it will sell display ads based off the time its audience spends with content. The British newspaper hopes this will solve some of the viewability problems that plague the advertising industry, and more properly value the Financial Times' deeply engaged audience. According to Jon Slade, commercial director of digital advertising for the Financial Times, the newspaper's readers are spending six times more time on the Financial Times than on similar business sites.

This strategic shift is part of the broader vision that the Financial Times sees for the future of advertising. Slade said that the Financial Times wants to distinguish every aspect of its brand through quality, and using time as an advertising currency fits that mission perfectly.

"Quality comes with great service, great ideas, and an appropriate currency," said Slade. Our full conversation can be found below:

Jon Slade, commercial director of digital advertising, the Financial Times
So, why are you doing this?
It's still something of an experiment. We have a hypothesis we want to prove: that the longer you show somebody a piece of brand creative, the more resonance that piece of content has with an audience. That's normally not how we value advertising; we're talking about an attention economy. I quite like it because it says to me that all of the time we spend engaging with our audience building great experiences, putting a great environment in place, remains the focus of our game, the card we're playing.

Are we honestly saying that there's no difference to the brand between one second of exposure and five seconds of exposure? Logic would say: Let's start to value the amount of time spent with a brand.
Why do this now? Have we reached the right moment when the technology is ready?
The technology is ripe. So is the conversation about viewability and the idea that if an ad is not seen, then it shouldn't be paid for. But most importantly, in my conversations with brands and agencies, they are increasingly seeking quality. I think we've been in an environment where ads have been commodified and brands now know they can buy cheap, but cheap is not necessarily what they want. Quality comes with great service, great ideas, and an appropriate currency, and we think this shift reflects a meeting of those forces.

We think there's real logic in what we're doing here. Financial Times readers are spending six times more time with the site than on other business news sites. We can say, 'We have 30,000 hours of CEO time on the Financial Times; how much do you want for your conversation?'
How does this metric work?
The trials we're doing during the summer are two-fold:

1. From an operations perspective, how do we find that inventory and deliver it efficiently? We're working from a hypothesis that one hour is our currency, with a minimum of five seconds of exposure. So we could sell you 720 impressions at five seconds or other lengths of exposure, depending on the total time you would like. Our task during the summer is determining how to find and sell the five seconds of time to C-level executives the right way.

2. The second experiment is to see if we prove the efficacy of doing this. Can we prove that if we do this for a period of time, there is a greater impact for the brand? We're working with a research company to run controlled tests to determine how much time has the best bang for the buck for the brand over the older pageview metric. Then we can prove a better value.
Where does content marketing fit into your plans? You're already running some content marketing experiments on Howtospendit.
We say: Let's put all of our time and effort into the quality endgame. That's where measurement currency, analytics, and content marketing can come together. Content marketing is a wonderful mechanism for allowing a brand to tell a story. That's the way we're headed. It has to be about business outcomes and quality outcomes to our audience, and content marketing fits very well into that.

Contently arms brands with the tools and talent to become great content creators. Learn more.
The original headline of this article, "The Financial Times On Why They Ditched CPMs For a New Ad Currency: Time Spent," has been amended. The Financial Times still gives clients the choice to buy ads on a CPM basis. BET

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The Financial Times on Why They Embraced a New Ad Currency: Time Spent - Contently

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The Financial Times recently announced that it will sell display ads based off the time its audience spends with content. The British newspaper hopes this will solve some of the viewability problems that plague the advertising industry, and more properly value The Financial Times' deeply engaged audience.

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Growing up - and excuse me for dating myself here a bit - kids were into Swatch watches, jean jackets, stirrup pants, and jelly bracelets. My sister grew up collecting something called " pogs," which I never understood. Today, kids are more technically oriented. They obsess over iPad-connected toys like Furby, and the never-ending game that is Minecraft. They also like apps, and have the power to move markets - turning otherwise silly one-off's like "Flappy Bird" into international viral sensations.

Adults are now participating in these faddish App Store trends, too. Stupid apps, like " Make it Rain" (yes, it is what you think), have even spent time at the top of the App Store charts. Another case in point: the sheer ridiculousness that is the talk of the web crowd: " Yo."

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with those who see a deeper meaning in the rise of Yo.

Yo is a fad. Nothing more.

Sure, it's a conversation starter: Did you hear of this app that does almost nothing and apparently they have funding?

This is the stupidest thing ever! [Proceeds to download and look.]

Did you hear Marc Andreessen thinks it has potential?

Ugh, I need to move to a deserted island until this "bubble" is over!

Andreessen, in case you didn't see his latest tweetstorm, thinks Yo could represent a modern take on "one-bit communication" and is reminiscent of the global "missed call" phenomenon. (That is, how people in third-world countries and other developing markets regularly ring someone and hang up as a type of communication.)

Seemingly he misses the point that the signal is not often "yo," it's "I'm out of minutes; I don't have money; here is my message."

Sometimes, the missed call is a request for a return call. But often, it's just a means of saying something without having to spend. People say: I've arrived, I'm late, or whatever else has been pre-arranged and discussed.

It is not, however, a "Yo" - as in an app that runs on first-world smartphones where data plans offer unlimited gigabytes of communication to giggly users who pay hundreds per month for data to power digital toys. Phones where getting someone's attention is as simple as a text, iMessage, Facebook message, Snapchat, WhatsApp, tweet, or even - you know - a phone call you can afford.

No, "Yo" is not the next big thing. It is the next "Flappy Bird." It's an " I Am Rich." It's water cooler chatter. A Happy Meal toy. Idiocracy. A momentary distraction as we tire of Facebook.

Today, we Yo, tomorrow we throw.

It's disposable.

It's an app that will be much-discussed, maybe even mimicked ( please let Hodor be real), then tossed when the next weird and crazy app comes along.

And that's just fine.

After all, no one ever said all apps have to be Facebook-level success stories or find multi-billion-dollar exits. There's room for apps that are one-hit wonders.

"Call Me Maybe," Yo.

And we could have all just enjoyed yo'ing for a while, but someone had to go and bring us back to our senses. Party poopers.

Still, if you chose to set this particular app aside, you might have been feeling like you're missing out. And sure, today you are, but you won't in the long-term.

Yo?

No.

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Growing up - and excuse me for dating myself here a bit - kids were into Swatch watches, jean jackets, stirrup pants, and jelly bracelets. My sister grew up collecting something called "pogs," which I never understood. Today, kids are more technically oriented. They obsess over iPad-connected toys ...

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The story of Yo - the app that went viral last week.

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The story of Yo - the app that went viral last week.

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Moshe Hogeg was getting tired of asking his employee Or Arbel for a favor.

Hogeg, the CEO and founder of Tel Aviv company Mobli, had requested a simple way to get in touch with his wife and his assistant on his smartphone. Email chains were burdensome. Even texting encouraged longer conversations than Hogeg had time for. He envisioned a simple app with large buttons that, when pressed, would send a one-word notification to another person: "Yo." The "Yo" would let the person know they were needed or being thought of.

Arbel was a talented engineer at Mobli who could build Hogeg's simple product quickly. But when Hogeg told him about Yo, Arbel dragged his feet. It was dumb, Arbel protested. No one would use it.

"I went to him and I said, 'Develop this stupid app for me,'" Hogeg nudged.

Hogeg spent the next few weeks pestering Arbel, who warmed to the app. He and his friends often sent single-letter texts back and forth, such as "!" or "?" After eight hours, Arbel presented Yo to Hogeg. It was better and simpler than Hogeg had envisioned. The app didn't even have an icon or a way to log in. All it had was the ability to find a friend and send them the prewritten Yo message.

Hogeg was pleased, but he was embarrassed to show others what he and Arbel had built. "At Mobli, we make serious technology," he says. "I didn't let him publish it under our names."

Yo launched quietly on April Fools' Day, but Apple rejected its App Store application. Yo lacked substance, Apple argued. The pair fought back and defended Yo's simplicity. Eventually, Yo was published.

Apple initially rejected the Yo app, which launched on April Fools' Day, because it lacked substance.

Hogeg shared the app with his wife and assistant. Soon he and Arbel made it available to all Mobli employees but asked them not to share it with friends. The app proved impossible to contain.

"Everyone became addicted," Hogeg says of the beta-testing employees. Within a month, 20,000 people around Tel Aviv were Yoing one another.

In early May, a product evangelist and tech blogger from San Francisco, Robert Scoble, visited Hogeg. Hogeg showed him Yo and asked for his feedback. "This is the stupidest, most addictive app I've ever seen in my life," Scoble told him. Hogeg agreed.

When Scoble returned to California, he posted a link to the Yo app on Facebook. One of his friends, a DeviantArt product manager, posted it on a website that's like Reddit for new apps, Product Hunt. There, it flourished, and soon top Silicon Valley venture capitalists were emailing Hogeg.

"We started to get emails from very familiar, well-known people in the VC world," Hogeg said. "They wanted to hear about the vision for Yo."

Hogeg explained there was no "team" behind Yo. Both he and Arbel were focused on Mobli, and Yo was a goofy side project. But when the inquiries kept coming, Arbel and Hogeg revisited Yo's numbers. The engagement was unlike anything either entrepreneur had ever seen.

"We asked ourselves, 'If we didn't know what Yo was or what it did, and if we just examined the data and the usage numbers like it was any other startup, would we invest in it?'" says Hogeg. "The answer was, 'Hell yes.'"

We asked ourselves, 'If we didn't know what Yo was or what it did, and if we just examined the data and the usage numbers like it was any other startup, would we invest in it?' The answer was, 'Hell yes.'

The app, they agreed, was dumb. But somehow, they'd captured lightning in a bottle. "We decided Yo deserved a chance," Hogeg says.

A few hundred thousand dollars was all Hogeg and Arbel needed to see if their app had legs. But after Yo was featured on Product Hunt, investors were eager to give it much more money than that.

While the startup still doesn't have any money in the bank, a handful of investors have committed to give it $1.2 million. Hogeg, the app's lead investor, still needs to wire $200,000 into the company's bank account, and he expects the round of financing to close next week.

While $1.2 million sounds like a lot of money for an app like Yo, it's modest compared to what Hogeg and Arbel could have raised. Hogeg says investors have offered to give Yo more than $2.5 million, but Arbel and Hogeg declined.

"The amount of money that wants to go into this company is unbelievable," says Hogeg, who doesn't think it's responsible to raise much more money given Yo's early, uncertain state. "People have been fighting like crazy with us, but we are not willing to take their money ... Investors want to give Yo a crazy valuation, but we don't think it deserves that at this stage. If Yo kept growing like this for months, maybe, but it can't go on like this."

An important milestone for the company will come next week, once the global infatuation with sending a "Yo" dies down. "Then we'll begin to know if it's a phenomenon, or if it's just a funny marketing experience that we'll learn a lot of lessons from," Hogeg said.

In Tel Aviv, where people have been using the app for two months, early users have either deleted the app, or they are sending just a few Yos a day. Yos are used as verifications ("Yo, I made it home from school"), acts of thoughtfulness ("Yo, I'm thinking of you") and as alerts ("Yo, I need your help"). Hogeg's wife, for example, will Yo him daily to let him know she loves him. His 2-year-old son, on the other hand, uses Yo as a toy and sends the noisy notifications back and forth between Hogeg's two phones.

Hogeg and Arbel know the future of Yo is uncertain. "Gimmicks don't survive," Hogeg says. "Only products that create value do." But Yo's stickiness is something neither serial entrepreneur has ever experienced before, and they're eager to see where it goes. The app is currently used by 500,000 people who have sent more than 4 million Yo notifications. It's one of the top fives apps in the iPhone's App Store.

"Sometimes you see a movie and you say, 'This sh-- is so crazy, it can't really happen,'" says Hogeg. "But sometimes reality is so crazy, it suppresses every movie."

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THE INSIDE STORY OF YO: How A 'Stupid' App Attracted Millions Of Dollars And Rocketed To The Top Of The App Store

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Moshe Hogeg was getting tired of asking his employee Or Arbel for a favor. Hogeg, the CEO and founder of Tel Aviv company Mobli, had requested a simple way to get in touch with his wife and his assistant on his smartphone. Email chains were burdensome.

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Teens. Since the beginning of humanity, they've always represented what the future of humanity would look like. Now, thanks to a new survey, we have an idea of what kinds of websites, apps, and online services the future of humanity will enjoy- at least for the next few years of existence. Then, an entirely new crop of startups replaces the upstarts that recently rose to power.

Curator startup Niche conducted a sizable survey of 7,000 teens, and this is what it found:

Popularity in general

Facebook and Youtube reign supreme, with 61 percent and 55 percent of daily active users, respectively. Instagram and the Facebook-nemesis team over at Snapchat are neck-and-neck in the race for photo sharing apps (around 50 percent).

Signs are good for the beleaguered micro-messaging app, Twitter, with 35 percent, a trend that has seen dramatic growth over the past two years.

The sad panda award goes to Foursquare, with a self-reported zero-percent daily active userbase among teens (3 percent overall). Of course, there are certainly teens that use Foursquare daily, but not enough to be picked up in a pretty large survey.

Finally, no shocker: The largely unemployed slice of teens legally required to attend high school do not spend much time polishing their Linkedin Profiles (2 percent daily use) - this in spite of LinkedIn's efforts to court college applicants.

The Atlantic's Derek Thompson has a nice graph ranking all of the popular websites/services by daily use.

News

Teens must love listicles and sideboob stories: 15 percent report reading Buzzfeed occasionally, and 21 percent visit the Huffington Post. The Onion and Reddit are tied for the semi-serious news gold medal, at about 10 percent of occasional users.

Entertainment

YouTube dominates video with 55 percent daily users. The fact that Hulu is at around 23 percent of daily users is more evidence that teens aren't just watching TV online - they are watching traditional TV programming much less.

Pandora leads the pack on music (37 percent), meaning that discovery could be more important than random access(14 percent report using Spotify, and 32 percent, iTunes).

You can see the full survey here.

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Here are the apps teens actually love, in 5 charts

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Teens. Since the beginning of humanity, they've always represented what the future of humanity would look like. Now, thanks to a new survey, we have an idea of what kinds of websites, apps, and online services the future of humanity will enjoy- at least for the next few years of existence.