Every two weeks, Vanguard distills hundreds of digital media headlines into the best “byte”- sized pieces of useful information. Each edition has news ranging from the latest Facebook algorithm changes to best practices for email marketing. Share Digital Bytes with your organization to keep your digital strategies ahead of the pack.

Digital Bytes

Happy New Year! Except to Apple. ☹

Apple’s stock has dropped 38 percent in the past 90 days and CEO Tim Cook has reduced revenue projections for the first quarter. What went wrong? Combine exorbitant iPhone prices, sluggish sales in China and a lack of innovation. The Washington Post has a nice round-up of all the issues.

In other news …

• The Consumer Electronics Show begins next week in Las Vegas, and you can expect announcements about AI-powered bots, concept cars and digital health products like fitness watches.
• Fifth generation cell phone networks (5G) are coming in 2019. Read this primer explaining 5G and how it will affect everything from your personal cell phone use to security cameras and drones.
• So, um, can we talk about bathrooms? In another “make your business Instagram worthy” trend, hotels are now installing novelty bathrooms in hopes guests will take selfies.
• The Atlantic writes about what the “post-advertising” future of the media will look like in 2019.
• The 50 biggest fake news stories on Facebook were compiled and released by BuzzFeed this week. Take a look at your own risk.

Fun Resources

• BuzzSummo released a report with research about the best ways to post content on Facebook. It confirms some best practices about content: shorter posts and videos receive the most engagement, and audiences are on Facebook more on the weekends and evenings than during business hours.
• Social media image sizes change about as often as my mood when I scroll through Twitter. MakeAWebsiteHub.com has a handy guide for 2019 so your images are optimized for each platform.

Finally …

This is my personal plea to YouTubers to please, please, don’t do the Bird Box challenge. 2019 is already shaping up to be quite a year!