The Digit

🥊 In Europe, tech competition regulations gain steam

The European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is taking aim at some of the world’s largest tech brands (Google, Meta and others included) to ensure they don’t abuse their power against consumers, their data or their privacy. While this is a first step, we’ve seen how other tech-specific regulations — like GDPR — can quickly impact U.S. businesses as well. As you advance your digital road map, prioritizing data privacy, accessibility and usability is paramount for creating long-term success and defending your position in the market.

 

🐢 or 🐇 : How fast is your e-commerce checkout?

Yes, we’re saying it. Holiday shopping season is here — for the early birds, anyway. Even if you’re not yet ready to make your lists, these early weeks of fall represent e-commerce sellers’ last chance to prepare for the true holiday shopping rush. Even so, many sellers continue to support checkout processes that require endless amounts of user data and multiple minutes to complete. Google’s advice on how to store and remove payment cards may feel like a life hack, but it also speaks to how fast and simple today’s buyers — both B2C and B2B — expect online purchasing flows to be. Ask yourself, “How quickly can my customers purchase from me?” If your answer is greater than one or two minutes, give us a call.

 

🎺 ¡Toca! Duolingo adds music lessons

The popular language-learning app Duolingo — whose AI assistant, Duo, rose to prominence alongside the AI-hype cycle this year — is adding new music lessons to its existing portfolio of language and math instruction. Learning, training, onboarding and the like are ripe spaces for disruption at the hands of advancing generative AI tools like ChatGPT. Current wisdom indicates that companies with strong innovation cultures are primed to succeed with emerging technologies. We can help with that — from culture to ideation to implementation.

 

🏝 How to never attend a virtual meeting again

We tried hard to stay away from workplace tools this week, but it’s technology conference season, so we failed. Google’s AI tools will soon be able to take virtual meeting notes for you, summarize meetings if you show up late or, if you don’t want to go, even attend on your behalf. It’s possible we’re heading toward a future where “your bot talks to my bot” becomes the norm. But knowing how to go from where you are today digitally to where you need to be in 10 years can sometimes feel like staring into a black box. Start asking questions and experimenting now so you can be ready when big changes like this hit.

 

Emojis are 🔥 in Google Maps

You can now use emojis to mark saved locations in Google Maps, instead of just multicolored pin icons. Regardless of how you may use the fun glyphs in daily conversation, younger generations have developed their own language using emojis — and they aren’t afraid to use them in the workplace. Emojis are also becoming more commonplace in B2C marketing departments. It might sound silly, but not having an emoji strategy could harm growth as more and more young consumers enter the market.