Need to Know
23 : 08 : 18

US – In collaboration with creative agency Mother, The New York Public Library has launched celebrated novels in the form of Instagram stories.

The project will transform classic tales into Insta-optimised edits, where each page of the book is transformed into a Instagram story slide.

‘Instagram unknowingly created the perfect bookshelf for this new kind of online novel,’ says Corinna Falusi, partner and chief creative officer of Mother. ‘From the way you turn the pages, to where you rest your thumb while reading, the experience is already unmistakably like reading a paperback novel..

Falusi notes that, through the use of technology, the collaboration can help to bring literature to wider audiences, adding, ‘We have to promote the value of reading, especially with today’s threats to American system of education.’

With teenagers’ attention spans monopolised by social media, brands are drawing inspiration from their social habits to augment storytelling. For more, read our Chat Fiction microtrend.

US – Described as a personal nutrition guide, Pinto is new a tracking app that helps users choose foods in order to meet specific dietary requirements.

To get started, users create a personal profile stating their specific dietary needs, choosing from pre-built profiles such as vegan, gluten-free or ketogenic diets, or adding in any allergies or disliked ingredients. The app can then be used to scan products or search through 100,000 foods on its existing database, informing users whether an item is suitable for their diet.

Pinto can also provide nutritional information about products, including total calories and fibre, sodium or fat content. ‘What we saw in the space was there’s a tremendous amount of data and information that’s potentially out there about food and about nutrition, but the way that data is sourced and the way that it gets to consumers isn’t really from the lens of what a consumer today needs,’ explains Sam Slover, co-founder and CEO of Pinto.

With consumers increasingly aware of the high salt and sugar content of some pre-packaged foods, brands are reacting with new services and devices that offer more information than the label alone.

US – Google hopes to tackle the burden of bad news in our daily feeds by introducing a new digital assistant that makes positive news easier to find.

Amid political turmoil, environmental concerns and racial tensions, Tell Me Something Good is an experimental tool that delivers Google device users with a daily dose of good news. By simply asking, ‘Hey Google, tell me something good’, users will receive a brief news summary about the people and projects helping to solve problems and do good in the world.

Its selection of stories, drawn from a range of media outlets, are sourced by Solutions Journalism Network – a trained set of journalists who aim to discover the problem-solving stories missing from our newsfeeds.

This update from Google comes at a time when tech brands are having to demonstrate how they can have a positive impact on society.

The latest figures from Euromonitor suggest the men’s beauty market will continue to grow over the next five years. This is particularly evident in China, where the industry can anticipate a 15.2% increase in sales, compared to 11% globally.

As such, beauty brands are capitalising on this growing interest by introducing male beauty bloggers and vloggers to their marketing strategies. Both Le Mer and Aesop have already worked with video bloggers in China, including Lan Haoyi, better known as his online persona, Lan Pu Lan.

For more on how the Men’s Beauty Market is developing, read our full report here.