This Week's 3 Bells
We highlight 3 things from the world of work and business. And ring 3 bells for you.
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Can your messaging app do all THIS?
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Quick - can you do all of the following with your favourite messaging app? Make payments to friends; buy a movie ticket; check air quality around you; pay for food, even on the street; publish on your blog; report something to the police; order your groceries; check current queuing times; buy airtime; attend an online talk; track your daily run; find an apartment; play virtual games? All from within the app?
Well, if your favourite app is China's WeChat, then you can indeed do all those things. Zara Zhang, writing for The Information, confirmed what many others have told me: WeChat, owned by Tencent, is way ahead of its competitors on the sheer number of things you can do with it. Ms Zhang tells us that in China, WeChat isn't a messaging app; it's a way of life. For many, it is the Internet.
Photo credit: Sinchen.Lin / Flickr (adjusted)
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The 3 Bells has been telling you to keep your eye on messaging. This is way beyond mere chat. There's a race on to claim your eyeballs and your wallet.
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WhatsApp reneges on a promise
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WhatsApp's founders were famous for saying they would never allow advertising on their hugely popular app. They were also not interested in your data, they said; their purpose was just to give you the best messaging experience.
Well, Facebook changed all that. It bought WhatsApp in 2014, and now WhatsApp has announced it will, after all, begin sharing phone numbers and analytics with Facebook, which makes money through advertising. Facebook owns the app, and the data emanating from a billion users is very valuable to it. End of story. Targeted ads and messages from businesses will no doubt begin to flow. At least you can opt out of data sharing...
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WhatsApp had deep convictions behind it in its early years. But convictions must be backed up by money. With no subscription model, some form of selling to corporates was the only way to pay its way. Let's see how this plays out.
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Another big company abandons traditional performance appraisals
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IBM, Gap, GE, Deloitte, Accenture, Microsoft. Now SAP. The German software maker has just ditched the annual performance review for its staff. They are too time-consuming, too expensive to run, and often demotivating. Ahem. Millions of employees across the world are actually evaluated using SAP's own software products...
SAP's 80,000 employees will now use an appraisal process centred on regular check-ins. There is a general move towards more regular feedback, shorter, simpler formats, less pronounced peer rankings, and a focus on the future rather than the past. Hallelujah, I say. I've hated these annual rituals as an employer and an employee. If you want to know more, here's something I wrote on the subject way back.
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Performance-evaluation reform is a hot topic. If your company is still using the miserably old-fashioned annual ritual, it can only be because it is wedded to an archaic view of people management. Shake off the cobwebs.
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