The newsletter

#73 - 🚁The Snap drone, the social network made in EU & the paradox of connected watches

Greg Taieb ¡ ¡ 5 min read

Hello,

This newsletter comes a little late this week but “hey it's still Tuesday”.

Have a good read and don't hesitate to share this newsletter if it has taught you something.

🚁 Snap launches its drone: Pixy

I'm not talking to you not enough Snap (the former Snapchat) and yet things are happening on the social network side with 300 million daily active users (which places it ahead of Twitter).

Last week the big annual conference was held with a lot of interesting new features on the menu:

But the announcement that interested me was that of Pixy, a mini-drone capable of taking photos and videos.

Spectacles. The goal each time? Enrich the social network experience by offering new ways to capture photos and videos.

With Pixy Snap offers a very cute and very light mini-drone (100 grams) which is simply controlled using gestures and records video sequences that you can then use on Snapchat.

Casually, the Pixy solves 2 problems with drones:

  1. Ease of use: no need to pilot it. It takes off and lands in your hand and has pre-programmed flights.
  2. Its cost: €249 makes it an affordable gadget.

Strangely Pixy is only available in 2 countries in the world as I write these lines: the US and France. Finally, if we take into account that France is the 3rd country with the most Snap users, this is perhaps not so surprising.

Unlike its previous Gadgets, I think that Pixy is the first notable foray into hardware and that we risk seeing many devices follow it in the years to come. Snap relies heavily on augmented reality and what's better than cool gadgets to create the Wow effect?

Is it a useless gadget that risks ending up in a drawer after a few hours of use? Maybe.

Did I order one within the hour? Absolutely.

I'll receive the toy in July, count on me to talk to you about it again.

💬 The European Commission launches its alternatives to Twitter and Youtube #BonChance

In the “what’s the point” section of the week, I would like to tell you about the European Union’s latest digital initiative: “EU Voices”.

EU Voices, is none other than the alternative to Twitter launched by the European Union a few days ago as part of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) Concretely, it is an Open Source alternative based on Mastodon to Elon Musk's future social network.

In parallel with this initiative, a “European” version of Youtube called EU Video was also launched. All of this is in a pilot state for the moment.

The objective: to offer Europeans an alternative that respects their rights, their data and their privacy to competing American services. Indeed, here no advertising, no profiling and total control of the data collected.

What should we remember?

I am more than divided on these two initiatives. Already it is more about media than social networks: you cannot create an account on EU Voices, you must create an account on one of the Mastodont communities identified. For EU Video same price you cannot create accounts to load videos.

Basically I have the impression that the reason for these initiatives is to offer European citizens the possibility of consulting content that would be posted on US social networks without having to use them. A sort of principled position which would consist of boycotting Twitter and Youtube without clearly saying it... while continuing to use them because... That's where the users are ;-)

⌚ The paradox of connected watches

Even if Apple initially tried to sell its Apple Watch as a fashion accessory, it It must be recognized that the use that has emerged is that of an activity tracker.

Heart rate, number of steps, quality of sleep, etc. So much data collected on millions of individuals which provides very valuable information that can be used for health research.

Only one recent study of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on 1000 people noted certain inequalities since the people participating in the study who sent their data were from a more advantaged background. Worse still, 58% of people who did not have connected watches did not buy them mainly because of the price.

And that is a problem for several reasons.

Especially when we know that using an activity tracker has a certain effect on health. By measuring we are more aware of possible deficiencies and there are many stories of people saved by their connected watch (Apple actually made an ad about it). So not having a connected watch means depriving yourself of the means to monitor your health on a daily basis.

We can of course put things into perspective, there are connected bracelets for €30 that do the job well and even if you dream of one Apple Watch older models are found new ones for 200€ and they do the job perfectly.

Nevertheless, this study sheds light on a problem that I wasn't aware of...so I'm sharing it with you.

🎙The podcast of the week

As promised last week Remi & I returned in detail to the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk.

We look back in 30 minutes on the few crazy weeks that preceded the takeover and the prospects for Twitter.

To listen if you don't want to be a has-been at the coffee machine.