In select markets, Amazon is beginning to deliver Whole Foods groceries using its two-hour delivery service, Prime Now. “That enables shoppers to get much of what they can usually buy at a Whole Foods store delivered directly to their door in two hours,” Business Insider reports. “Amazon indicated that the offerings will include fresh produce, seafood, meat, flowers, baked goods, and dairy products.”

Google is now letting Search users book flights and hotel accommodations right from their phones. “Next time you go to search for a hotel on your phone, you'll see that the interface has been updated to fit more data on the screen at once and present everything in a fashion that's easier to read,” Android Central writes. “Google's also added the ability to filter hotels by their price, and when you find the perfect match, you can book it without ever leaving Google Search.”

In recent years, Facebook has hired pollsters to closely track the public perception of top execs like CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, The Vergereports. Way beyond basic brand measurement, “It is unusual for a company to have a staff person charged exclusively with monitoring perceptions of its CEO full time,” it writes. “The move reflects [Zuckerberg's] close association with Facebook’s brand and his role as the company’s chief spokesman.”

Apple and Goldman Sachs are reportedly negotiating a partnership through which the bank would offer financing to help consumers buy Apple products. “Buyers of a $1,000 iPhone X could take out a loan from Goldman instead of charging it to credit cards that often carry high interest rates,” Reuters writes, citing a pay-wall-protected story in The Wall Street Journal.

Twitter is losing the head of its AR/VR team, Alessandro Sabatelli, after 18 months on the job. “Sabatelli joined Twitter in June of 2016 after leaving a virtual reality startup he led which created music-focused VR experiences,” TechCrunch reports. More broadly, “Twitter hasn’t always been the quickest in its product development and the AR/VR scene … hasn’t seen the company make too many daring moves.”

Apple is apparently emailing ad spend and install summaries to the wrong app developers. “The issue … appears specific right now to developers using Search Ads Basic, pay-per-install ads that appear as promoted apps when people search on the App Store,” TechCrunch writes.

Initial reviews of Apple’s first smart speaker appear to be mixed. The HomePod’s sound is apparently pretty great, but it suffers from Siri’s long decline as a smart assistant, and its lack of integration with other services and devices. As The Verge suggests: “Unless you live entirely inside Apple’s walled garden and prioritize sound quality over everything else, I think you’re better served by other smart speakers that sound almost as good and offer the services and capabilities that actually fit your life.”  

Politico explains how Twitter bots and Trump followers turned #ReleaseTheMemo into a viral beast. “Computational propaganda -- defined as ‘the use of information and communication technologies to manipulate perceptions, affect cognition, and influence behavior’ -- has been used, successfully, to manipulate the perceptions of the American public and the actions of elected officials,” Politico writes.

Stateside, Apple Music has about 36 million subscriptions, and is growing at about 5% per month, The Wall Street Journal reports. Because Spotify is only growing at about 2% a month, Apple is on track to overtake the rival music streaming service, The Journal suggests.  

Facebook is interested in turning more content creators onto Watch, CNBC reports. “Instead of buying rights to these shows, however, Facebook wants to create a system where creators can upload their shows for free, then earn a cut of the revenue from ads placed on that content,” it writes.