Where digital meets travel + lifestyle … A collection of can’t-miss news from this week. Sign up to get the TURNER Weekly Download in your inbox every Friday.
Calling all creators! This week, Google rolled out a new app – for apps. The “App Maker” is a low-code, drag and drop app creator that lets developers build a user interface and populate it with data from GSuite applications, Google Maps, Contacts and Groups and virtually any service that offers an API. Why is this cool? Because it means that companies will be able to put together simple apps that provide solutions for specific problems. The question is no longer “Is there an app for that?” It’s “Can we build an app for that?”
Instagram is still riding in Snapchat’s coattails. This week, the photo sharing app announced that your friends will be notified when you take a screenshot of their messages. The first reaction? Panic, of course. But don’t freak out yet. This doesn’t apply to standard Insta posts, only the new “disappearing message” feature. Just another week when Instagram and Snapchat become oddly similar. Is the social media singularity near?
Holiday travel just got a little bit less brutal! Netflix will now allow users to download videos offline. Sadly, not every series is available, but much more content will be rolled out very soon. In the meantime, Stranger Things, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and The Crown, that addictive new drama about Queen Elizabeth II, are ready to be downloaded and binge-watched just in time for you to visit Aunt Betty.
Black Friday is the day when shopaholics spend – but this year, they weren’t the only ones stretching their budgets. Digital advertisers spent 17.9 percent more on Black Friday and 13.8 percent more on Thanksgiving compared to last year. It paid off. Facebook brought in some major dollars for retail brands, as U.S. shoppers spent over 3.34 billion dollars on Friday – and $1.2 million of those dollars was spent using a mobile device.
We were into the holidays before it was cool. Check out this “hipster nativity set.”