Hi there!
Hope you’ve been having a pleasant week thus far. We know Americans are feeling some relief knowing that the first set of Pfizer vaccines have been dispatched from their factories.
By the way, FB had a company-wide meeting the minutes of which leaked to Twitter here.
We’ve got some great reads for you this week, so let’s jump right in.
Airbnb’s IPO got off to a great start on Thursday stock price trading as high as 143% of its initial asking price of $68 per share. Not sure if you’ve always known this but the founders sold cereal boxes during the early days to fund their company!
The World Economic Forum’s ‘Future of Jobs Report’ surveys corporate executives in 35 countries around the world about how they think the workforce will change in the next five years. Its goal is to map the jobs and skills of the future.
Design tools (or their names at least) have entered the vocabulary of any person playing any role from teams large to small. Check out this report on which tools have captured the attention most amongst both designer and non-designer communities from a survey across a cohort of 4000 designers.
Pantone, the global authority on colour unleashed not one, but two shades for 2021 – Ultimate Gray (17-5104) & Illuminating (13-0647). In the words of Pantone themselves, the two independent colours “come together to create an aspirational colour pairing, conjoining deeper feelings of thoughtfulness with the optimistic promise of a sunshine-filled day”
Reddit Inc. has bought video-sharing app Dubsmash to expand its presence in one of the hottest corners of the internet: user-created video. Reddit already lets users upload and live-stream video but has limited editing features. By acquiring Dubsmash, Reddit will gain more sophisticated user-created video much faster than if it tried to develop the same on its own. however.
With the release of the ever-so-hyper game Cyberpunk 2077, here are some interesting takes product designers have on what design might look like in the far away time of 2077.
Xiaoice — an artificial intelligence-driven chatbot is redefining China’s conceptions of romance and relationships. It is also resulting in some heavy ethics conversations and compromises in the dignity of humans given how it records intimate desires and emotions.
This video map gives a realistic view at relative sizes for countries contrary to what the traditional Mercator projection would have you believe.
GE’s fascinating innovation barometer is a yearly report that the folks at Canvs eagerly look forward to. Check out the site and report which run through a vast array of emerging discourse in the space of tech, infra and hardware. Besides any of the interesting content, this yearly website page from GE never fails to impress on the design front.
D’Arcy Coolican of Andreessen Horowitz writes about how ‘social+’ companies that build an integral social experience into the product. These are the hallmarks, the challenges, and the open opportunities behind layering utility and community.
The blockbuster initial public offering (IPO) from DoorDash — a startup that delivers food just like Zomato and Swiggy in India— saw a 90% jump on listing. But there could be multiple reasons why its Indian counterparts like Zomato and Swiggy shouldn’t get excited yet. Article describes why the companies, although in the same business, have a fundamental difference
And that’s the lot. Thanks for checking out what we had to share with you this week. Catch up with you next Wednesday!
