🏃‍♀️ Resolutions vs 30 day challenges 💦

Happy 2019! I hope you enjoyed your New Years Eve and had a great Christmas. I know Chrimbo Limbo confused me (so much so I sent this on a Wednesday 😉). I read a lot over the festive period including Shark Tanks Daymond John’s Rise and Grind, I started A Spy Amongst Friends (it was recommended a number of times on Twitter) and caught up on a ton of articles in pocket. Here are a few books I read last year and recommend.

The Five

🐝 How bees might actually talk and discuss where they are going to find nectar next - Link

Ⓜ️ TFL bosses released some interesting stats about the tube lines - Link

🍔 VICE star Oobah (the guy who made the fake restaurant to #1 on Trip Advisor) did a Reddit AMA about his videos and experiences - Link

🕹The makers of fortnite banked $3b this year (let that sync in) - Link Fortnite are also creating their own app store to compete with Apple and Android - Link

🏷 My friend Dan Barker (he is that guy almost everyone you meet follows on Twitter @danbarker) had a great tweetstorm / thread on why UK retailers sale constantly - Link

Resolutions vs 30 days challenges

• Rather than doing a full years resolution, why not try the 30 day challenge (proven to work and from Xoogler Matt Cutts) - 3 minute TED Talk Link 

• Simon Sinek (most popular links on the newsletter are always from Simon) suggests asking for help more - Video Link

Let me know what your New Years resolutions are @dannydenhard

Business

• Netflix released some stats (they never do) about Bird Box (which was weak IMHO), a view in this instance is 70% of the film is watched. Will be interesting to see what other stats are released. 45 million viewers from 137million subscribers is a huge return. Here is the ex head of Amazon Studio tweetstorm on how powerful Netflix homepage is - Link

• Netflix have also now stopped anyone renewing or signing up via iOS devices to stop them from losing 30% Apple tax (this is important as Apple does not allow subs to be linked out from) - Link

• Michael Brito (well worth a follow on your social network of choice) released his thoughts on 2019 and how data is finally going to be super important in PR - Link 

• The world’s most underrated social entertainment site Imgur released their top posts from 2018. Interestingly on average top posts only get 250k or so views - Link

• Amazon had their best ever year and Christmas, with Brits being most excited (asking how many sleeps until Christmas) - Link

• Here’s how messenger tests and makes sure their 1.3b users can send Happy New Years Messages on their ‘busiest day’ (most likely 36 hours or so) - Link

• It’s likely the end of those annoying bikes (those yellow Ofo and orange ones mobike) that are dumped everywhere, as Chinese startups cannot be unprofitable for long, the TL;DR: thousands of bikes are dumped and have been removed from a number of large cities by the local authorities, not to mention the last mile transportation scooters are the new hot thing, this is why uber and lyft are fighting over scooter acquisitions - Paywalled link

• Emojis are a gift and here is a good article on how emojis have evolved in 2018 - Link

Interviews

• This is a good interview from Dave Trott (ad man & author - highly recommend his books) and his career and the state of advertising - Link

• Fascinating interview (yes taken place inside a Nando’s) of Evan Spiegel by the FT - Link

• Lastly, How the internet happened from Netscape to the iPhone is basically Brian McCullough’s (From Techmeme podcast) The history of the internet and well worth knowing the past to inform the present -

Have a great first week of January and see you next week.

Thanks,

Danny