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The Laravel team released 8.79 with a full-text search for MySQL and PostgreSQL, new Stringable methods, and the latest changes in the v8.x branch.

eCommerce activity has seen a huge jump over the past two years, with the pandemic forcing more of us to find alternative means to browse and buy, due to lockdowns, store closures and other restrictions.

That’s accelerated the already rising trend towards online shopping, which now looks set to remain a key focus for some time, with new variants causing more outbreaks, increasing concerns about a return to physical interaction.

The future of e-commerce will be driven by personalization. To improve accuracy in messaging, as well as ROI, brands will have to simplify data sources and their e-commerce stack, according to Tracey Ryan O’Connor, Group Vice President at personalization technology company Qubit, which was recently acquired by AI-powered experience platform Coveo.

“Overall, brands have achieved a high return on investment in their personalization spend, but the e-commerce and digital marketing stack has grown very complex, which has led to disparate data sources that threaten the effectiveness of delivering personalized experiences,” said O’Connor. “As a result, brands began efforts to simplify the tech stack and cut down on the number of customer data sources from which they create actionable intelligence in 2021. 

Facebook – now Meta – is making a play to control the next stage of digital connection, in the theoretical metaverse that will provide all-new ways to facilitate interaction and engagement. If and how that comes to fruition will be a key element to watch, but it’s interesting to consider the broader social media landscape, and where things are placed in the final stages of the year.

This graphic from Visual Capitalist does exactly that, with a bubble chart of the biggest social media companies in the world, and their various properties.