7:10 AM

You know Researchers found that Facebook has apparently allowed advertisers to earn money by targeting children who are interested in gambling, smoking and other inappropriate things


The multinational tech giant  Facebook has yet again involved itself in another controversy. Even though it's one of the most used apps in the world, it still is on the news for one thing, and that not for good things but mostly controversies. Reset Australia group has found that children below the age of 18 years and as young as 13, have started to become a target by business owners for their advertising.

Children at this age are usually interested in different things and want to know the answers to everything, but not every question is to be answered to them at such tender ages. With every source of information now being available online, it is up to these large social media platforms to come up with ways to prevent such young audiences from getting exposed to the things they are still too young for. The group found that children who have been observed to take interest in gambling, smoking and weight loss have become an easy way for these advertisers to earn money from by targeting them for their ads. In order to prove this, the group created a page on Facebook and also an advertising account named ‘Ozzie news network’ to see which type of ads the tech giant will provide to this page through its ‘Ads Manager’ platform and even if Facebook does not allow ads related to alcohol to people who are below the age of 18, the social media app has no system as to stop these advertisers from targeting young people who show interest in alcohol.

The Australian group found out that Facebook has allowed the page to put up ads to about 740,000 children who are aged between the years of 13 and 17, they also found out that pages who allow to put up inappropriate ads were able to put up ads mainly of alcohol, vaping, gambling, weight loss, fast foods, smoking and dating services. Apparently it will only cost $3.03 to reach 52,000 teenagers for alcohol ads and around $11.24 to reach the 14,000 teenagers in Australia who have shown interest in gambling.

The report after its release has caused Facebook to receive a huge amount of backlash and rightfully so, the social media platform should be a safe place for children to discover things that suit their own age group.

The Australian group has asked the law makers to come up with strict measures that can ensure the kids protection against such topics and have a system that can regulate over the kids data and their media to which they get access to. Along with this they have also asked for parental consent to be there as well with this.

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7:03 AM

You know Ever thought about how many influencers exist in the world, and across all the major social media platforms? This research shows some astonishing figures

Over the last two decades, social media has become a major part of our daily life as we spend more of our time on these platforms because these platforms connect us with our friends and family. As more users have joined social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Triller, Instagram Reels, many of them have become content creators themselves, curating and creating their own stories, photos, and videos for others to entertain. Therefore, the influencers market has seen rapid growth and many children now want to become vloggers or influencers when they are grown up. The pandemic situation could be a reason to change the mind of many people to start their own channels. Now, many people are thinking that how many influencers exist in the world and across all social media platforms. Some hints say that it is somewhere between 3 to 38 million.

It is difficult to calculate the number of influencers without a viable methodology. Therefore, Mediakix established the influencers tier to get information about how many influencers exist on the given platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok for every tier. To determine the number, Mediakix gathered the data from 4 influencer marketing platforms like (Julius, CreatorIQ, HypeAuditor, and Influencity). Mediakix evaluated the top 1000 influencers’ channels on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok from HypeAuditor and Social bakers; however, this does not include the channels of brands, celebrities, and non-influencers accounts.

There are a number of fake influencers on these platforms and the authenticity of many influencers can be ignored especially on larger influencer marketing platforms. During the assessment of many datasets of Mediakix, it noticed a wide range of data between third-party estimates and influencers marketing database. Now the main thing to be kept in mind is the influencer can be mean many things for a normal person but the area of Mediakix limits to only those influencers having these criteria:

  •     They must have more than 1000 followers or subscribers on their channels
  •     Influencers of all age, nationalities and language favorites are included in this report
  •     The study is limited to YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok


By using the sample size of 1000 accounts of influencers on each of these platforms, Mediakix roughly estimated the segments of influencers that exist on these platforms excluding celebrities, brand accounts, and publications, etc.

The influencer marketing platforms vary in size, offerings, number of audience, and methods of finding influencers on these platforms and this inconsistency is evident by some of the wide range of estimates for the number of influencers for every tier. For instance, one influencer platform has 2000 heavily-vetted expert Instagram influencers while the other offers 20 million Instagram influencers with limited information on profile reliability.


According to the estimation method of Mediakix, the size of Instagram Influencers is as following:


>1 million followers 20,000 to 40,000

>100,000 followers 300,000 to 2000,000

>1,000 followers 2000,000 to 37000,000

According to the data of HubSpot and Mention, 52% of Instagram users have less than 1000 followers while 48% of users have more than 1000 followers. However, Instagram has 500 million active users daily. While taking 500 million Instagram users with more than 1000 followers means that they are 48%, then evaluating the ratio of influencers from the top 1000 Instagram accounts study (35%), we can find a wide ceiling range of 83 million potential Instagram users. While studying the data of HypeAuditor and Influencity, the total numbers of Instagram users (over 1000 followers) are between 8.7 million to 69 million correspondingly. However, after applying the reliability check filters the influencers’ search result went down to 176,000 to 37000,000 respectively. The credulity check filters reduced the number of influencers from 30% to 97%.

Mediakix has distributed the influencers into various tiers like:


 1000 followers to 10,000 followers are considered as Nano tier and they are 54%, 10,000 to 50,000 followers are known as Micro tier and they are 33%, 50,000 to 500,000 followers are considered as Mid-Tier and they are 11%, 500,000 to 1000,000 are considered as Macro-Tier and they are less than 1%, while more than 1 million followers are Mega-Tier and they are also less than 1%.


The Numbers of influencers on YouTube

According to the study from Tubics, there are around 37 million YouTube accounts and almost 32 million accounts have less than 1000 subscribers, the residual 5 million accounts have more than 1000 subscribers, but it does not differentiate active accounts from influencers accounts. To determine the influencers account from these 5 million accounts having more than 1000 followers, these influencers’ accounts are around 30% of the top 1000 channels, publishers and brands are 47%, and celebrities are 22%. After applying the reliability filters we can estimate the number of influencers on YouTube is somewhere between 1.5 million to 5 million out of 2 billion daily active users. Less than 1% is actually influencers.

YouTube influencers’ distributions are (however these tiers differs from other platforms):


 1K to 10K distributed as Nano Tier is 38%

10K to 25K distributed as Micro-Tier is 39%

25K to 100K distributed as Mid-Tier is 20%

100K to 1 million distributed as Macro-Tier is less than 2%

More than 1 million are distributed as Mega-Tier is less than 1%
The number of Influencers on TikTok
Some platforms say that TikTok has over 22 million influencers on its platform but according to the study of Mediakix, this lacks reliability. Julius gave the data that there are 43000 TikTok influencers while using the check filter on HypeAuditor and Influencity, Mediakix claims that there are 50,000 average ranges of influencers on TikTok with over 1000 followers.

TikTok influencer distributions are:

1K to 10K distributed as Nano-Tier is 15%

10K to 50K distributed as Micro-Tier is 16%

50K to 500K distributed as Mid-Tier is 29%

500K to 1 Million distributed as Macro is 4%

More than 1 Million distributed as Mega is amazingly 36%.

However, TikTok has not granted access to their API, therefore to check these data; companies have to go through non-official channels to gather the data of influencers.


 MediaKix's data also shows stats around influencer overlap across platforms, and according to it "90 percent of all influencers who make a top 1,000 account list do so for one platform only (TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube)."

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6:56 AM

Did you know YouTube provides update on Self-Certification Feature, Timed Comments Experiment, Mobile Permissions, and More

YouTube is one of the biggest video platforms in the world with more than 2 billion monthly active users. People are now not just watching videos but many of them have started their own channel to influence many people around. However, keeping in view the increasing number of creators on this platform, YouTube is bringing some exciting updates like a few weeks ago it launched the 4K video quality that mobile users can watch on their device to increase their experience.

Recently, YouTube has launched a Self-certification update, through self-certification, YouTube makes monetization decisions easily and accurately with the combination of machine learning and human input to decide what content complies with the advertiser-friendly guidelines and what does not. In other words, what content might get you a yellow dollar sign icon which means you can get limited ads, and there is also a green dollar sign icon which means fully monetizable. The problem with YouTube’s self-certification was that it defaulted previously to the algorithmic monetization rating if a creator self-certifies any of their videos incorrectly. Now, as per Creator Insider, in the new update, YouTube allowed the creators to make two incorrect ratings on two separate videos per 90 days before defaulting back to the algorithmic monetization rating. The system of YouTube will only punish such creators who intentionally self-certify as green on its upload when it’s in fact yellow.

YouTube has also shared updates on mobile permissions, previously when the creators allowed someone access to their channel through permissions can only do so through studio desktop version, but now the great news is in the coming weeks, YouTube will be rolling that access to YouTube studio mobile as well, now the delegate users can use this access to view mobile dashboard, artist’s analytics, as well as video meta-data settings. This permission will be launching on Android devices first and it will be launched later on iOS devices later.

Now the Experiments links from the Main app to studio, this link is going under your videos list in the library, YouTube is trying to make it easier for the creator to switch between the two apps, for instance, in the case of uploading videos.

YouTube is also testing an exciting feature of time commenting to a specific moment that you are watching videos that can give more contexts and will share the best conversation experience through comments. However, it is being experimented with a small group of users and a small group of videos; if you want to check whether you are a part of this test, tap on the top comment on Timed Beta on your Android or iOS device. This will be introduced to all users soon.

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6:52 AM

Did you know Facebook has imposed strict legal action against the sale of Counterfeit goods across all of its platforms

Counterfeit goods are basically products of low quality or goods that are made or sold under another company’s name without permission from the actual brand. The sale of counterfeit goods has become more common than expected, as it wasn’t actually believed that so many people will become gutsy enough to start making money out of this. To protect the platform and decrease the sale of counterfeit goods to help in the evolving of the eCommerce business, Facebook has launched new legal action in collaboration with Gucci over the sale of these counterfeit goods on its platform.

Facebook has said that the multinational company and Gucci have actually sued an individual in the United States District Court, Northern District of California for over stepping on the policies set by Facebook and Instagram and for breaking the law of Gucci’s intellectual property rights. The individual that has been sued actually set up multiple accounts on both Facebook and Instagram to not get caught and continue the sale of counterfeit Gucci products. The most disadvantage these counterfeit sales bring is that when people buy something from such platforms thinking that these products are form the actual brands at a low price, they trust those products into buying them and when of course due to the low quality the product doesn’t come out as expected the actual brand gets backlash.

For the first time the tech giant has imposed some lawsuit against this and it comes off as an expansion to its legal enforcement efforts to help reduce the toxicity in the app due to such activities. The lawsuit also tells that Facebook is aiming towards growing the eCommerce business and wants to ensure that for this the platform is safe from all sides to do business in. Facebook has also launched an update to the Commerce and Ads IP Tools which will allow businesses to upload an image of their products to first go through Facebook and Instagram’s content to make sure there are not any counterfeit listings of that product. This makes it an important step for Facebook in order to make sure that its platform can be safe for both businesses and buyers and the products sold on the platform are all authentic. This also of course provides a new means through which brands can protect their products on the platform and with the new legal action imposed by Facebook not many will dare to take this risk of misusing the platform for counterfeit goods sale.

The legal action will for sure help Facebook into setting up boundaries in the app for in-app purchases and sales.

illustration ectorjuice / freepik

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6:38 AM

Did you know A new Immersive View is being introduced to make Zoom virtual meetings more fun

With the on going pandemic situation where things are still getting done online including the virtual meetings that are being held on Zoom platform. The video communication application became famous worldwide when many businesses started using the services provided by the app for their online web conferences.

These virtual conferences are not as much engaging as they used to be during in person meeting. That is why the developers are trying to make things more fun and user friendly while using this platform. This time the developers decided to go outside the box and introduced a new feature that they named as Immerse View. This new view will enable the host to arrange the video participants or the panelists in a single frame with a virtual background. This will bring participants more closer in a single scene so they can get linked and collaborate in a more united virtual meeting zone.

These new upcoming features were announced last year in October at Zoomtopia. Along with this Immerse View, many other new features including more set of emojis, new reactions and animations for nonverbal communication with an audio element such as the sound of clapping, participant box as well as the disappearing pen were also announced.

The host will be able decide the background and will have the authority to create a sensation for being in a boardroom, auditorium, class room or any other favorite place. The host will also be able to manually as well as automatically place the participants in the chosen virtual place. Not only this but the host can also move participants all around the screen and adjust the size of the visible image of any participant to make it look more natural. In the initial version of the application the host had the power to mute the participant as well as to allow and remove them from meeting similarly even in this new update, host will be able to undo and go back to speaker view anytime they want to. In the beginning a few background scenes has been provided but the host can upload their own view as well. If a host wants to share screen with other participants, at that time the Immerse View will not be available but as soon as the sharing screen will stop the feature will start working again. Currently the participant limit for immerse view is just 25 people .

While clearing out some of the frequently asked questions, the official Zoom blog website cleared that this feature will be available for Windows as well as MacOS clients and has been enabled for all the free and Pro single account with 5.6.3 or higher Zoom version.

6:32 AM

Did you know Apple has earned revenue of $89.5 billion in just the second quarter of 2021 already

Apple released iPhone 12 in October of 2020, as said by many, this release was one of the most important one for Apple and also made some impactful marks as well. The launch of this model of iPhone will always be one of the many important launches made by the company. This year too started with a bang for the multinational company. It has been reported that the multinational tech giant company earned $47.9 billion with just its iPhone sales. While people were expecting the revenue to be $77.3 billion, the company is reported to have earned revenue of $89.5 billion in its second quarter of 2021. The sales of iPhones remained unaffected even with the stores being closed all across the United States. There was apparently a global shortage of chip which deeply affected all the sales of MacBooks and iPad and their supply has been postponed at the moment by the tech giant company due to this crisis. The production of iPhones however is not to get affected due to this shortage.

Apple opened all of its 270 stores across the United States in March for the first time since the global COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of these stores. The revenue earned by the sales of iPhone is $47.94 billion whereas the expected revenue was $41.49 billion, for wearables the expected revenue was 7.52$ billion but what came in was 7.8$ billion. By the looks of it, Apple has been going a few steps ahead than what is predicted for the company. Apple has made quite some headlines for its soon to be released iOS 14 and at one part where they have received backlash from other tech companies like Facebook, they have also received praise from their users on the other for taking the huge step just to ensure that their users have control over their privacy and who to allow to look over it.

The company is also expected by Wall Street to deliver around 220 million iPhone units and that too throughout the year 2021 as due to the global shortage of the chip, the company has already pushed back its deliveries for MacBooks and iPads.

Even though Apple stores all across the United States have reopened after a hiatus of one year, the stores are practicing all the SOPs and other safety protocols to ensure safety of their buyers.

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6:24 AM

Did you know Instagram Is Adding Tools Facilitating Influencer Content and Merchandising On The Platform

Instagram is further elaborating upon its platform for content creators, as it looks to add e-commerce tools in order to facilitate branded merchandise being sold online.

These features were introduced by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with Instagram's current head Adam Mosseri as part of a livestream, as reported by Engadget. Content creators and influencers have managed to drive much of the ad revenue on both platforms, and further catering to both them and their audiences feels like a natural next step for the social media giants to take. With both individuals elaborating on the new features, and how they'll affect the Instagram landscape as a whole, there's a lot for us to unpack here. Accordingly, let's begin.

One of these tools is labelled Creator Shops. As the title implies, this latest addition will cater to online creators and influencers to sell their relevant merchandise in an easy, accessible way. Shops itself is less of a brand-new creation, and actually stems from the already existing Facebook Shops, which caters more to businesses and startups as opposed to personal brands. Creator Shops is, as expanded upon by Zuckerberg, a response to content creators establishing online brands for themselves and their fans. In a way, providing this platform to them both adds to the ease of purchasing and advertising, while also lending to a sense of authenticity the products will carry.

Another feature being worked on by Instagram is setting up a rewards system for Instagram celebrities promoting products and items. The goal with such an endeavor is allowing these personalities to receive discounts on the products their promoting, in order to ensure that larger brands aren't taking any undue advantage of their images. Zuckerberg also further stated that plans were in motion to establish an affiliate recommendations marketplace, in order to promote such brand-creator relationships in the first place.

Finally, a final tool discussed by the duo dove into Instagram's plans for setting up an online marketplace for branded content, that would allow creators on the platform to connect with sponsors. Such a feature's existence could even help younger influencers, or simply more up and coming ones, to easily set up sponsorship channels as well as monetize their content. Zuckerberg even confirmed as much, wishing to establish a "creator middle class" that could be catered to on the platform.

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6:19 AM

Did you know Twitter Policy Head Addresses The UK Parliament Over The Topic Of Managing Online Discourse

While addressing The UK Parliament, a Twitter spokesperson argued that the platform is not meant to be a "wholly positive or nice place", in regards to a discussion regarding online moderation.

The moderation of online discourse and censorship has been a heatedly debated topic since the advent of social media. With events such as the recent US Capitol Riots, and subsequent news about how much of it originated via platforms such as Facebook, this debate has only been kicked into second gear. The involvement of government organizations in the regulation of international platforms has made the online landscape a bit more difficult to navigate. Yet, such discussion and involvement is important in order to create a safe space online that manages to avoid infringing on the basic human right to free speech.

Representing Twitter, Katy Minshall argued in the favour of allowing online discourse to continue mostly uninterrupted, citing movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter as examples of movements that would only be suppressed by censorship laws. Ms. Minshall speaks from a place of expertise as well, acting as Twitter's Head of Public Policy in the United Kingdom. In this very context, she further elaborates that platforms such as Twitter, which highly revolve around opinionated discussion, act as mirrors that reflect inner societal problems and turmoil. Representing that mirror inherently means that Twitter cannot always be held to the standards of consistently wholesome, and must sometimes be allowed to delve into harsher topics.

Regarding the matter of hurtful discourse, Ms. Minshall clarifies that Twitter does take action in certain cases. If online debates are getting out of hand and users resort to harmful language, an AI bot will send pop-ups, dissuading these users from posting. She even further clarified the matter of removing the previous US president Donald Trump from the platform while allowing other potentially hate-mongering content online. Citing the case of Ayatollah Khameni's tweets against Israel and Zionism, Ms. Minshall states that such tweets were often left up in order to have such public figures left to the collective criticism and public debate of its community.

It should also be noted that a Facebook representative was also invited to join this parliamentary discussion. Facebook's spotty history with online discourse on the platform, as well as its recent involvement in the Capitol Riots gave users across the world cause for concern about the platform's future. As the company has set up its Oversight Board, and is planning for future communication between the Board and Facebook's general userbase, the company itself has come prepared for any sort of discussion on the matter. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, however, has been quoted by The Guardian as being unconcerned by the matter, stating that the company is willing to lose a small fraction of its revenue in order to preserve its policies.

H/T: Independent.

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6:15 AM

You know According to Microsoft's Latest Performance Update, LinkedIn is observing a steady growth as it's launching new features to increase user experience

LinkedIn was founded in 2002 with a concept unique on its own. LinkedIn is an online service that operates through both websites and mobile apps and provides employment opportunities to people all around the world. The platform is used for professional networking and allows people who are looking for jobs to post their CVs and for employers to post about different job openings. The online service has helped many all across the globe.

LinkedIn was bought by Microsoft in 2016 and since then it has been observed that the usage and performance data on LinkedIn including the charts that represented user engagement and growth on the platform have been all lost and for this the platform was criticized as well. Even though there are a total of 756 million users on the platform, it doesn’t say much about the user experience as it used to and how much the app is experiencing usage on a daily basis or how much people spend their time on the platform when using it, these days some people predict that 10 minutes to the max are spent on LinkedIn per session.

Now Microsoft dedicates a short column for the online service which gives a small summary of LinkedIn within Microsoft’s earning results which basically give an overall of the platform’s numbers. However, it has been reported recently that LinkedIn is seeing a record engagement with total session to up to 29 percent, according to the latest performance update from Microsoft, LinkedIn is also seeing growth in its ads sales and is up to date with the usual trends. All in all, LinkedIn’s growth has been steady.

People all around have had their own predictions to the usage number, some day that the actual usage is 25 percent, some say its 40 percent, but no matter what ever it is the active user count is 300 million to the minimum. By looking at these numbers the usage doesn’t seem that much but Microsoft says that LinkedIn has been continuously seeing a steady growth and with the on-going pandemic where people are looking for jobs, the rate will see a boost soon which will also attract advertisers to invest in the app too.

Keeping the numbers aside, LinkedIn was bound to soon witness a steady growth as is has launched a whole range of new features that also includes ‘My Company’ tab, new profile features. Creator Mode and video cover stories. My Company tab, which allows businesses to share their business relevant posts, is getting much popularity these days along with the video cover stories which gives different platforms a good exposure. It has also been reported that LinkedIn is soon to launch its own Clubhouse-like audio chats to increase user experience and allow people to connect professionally all across the globe. By the looks of it the platform is soon to unleash many growing opportunities.

Photo Credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images

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6:11 AM

Did you know Google and its parent company Alphabet have earned three times more than they did last year in the first quarter

It looks like no matter what’s going on in the world. Things have been going extremely well for Google and its parent company Alphabet, who according to the financial results of the first quarter have been able to earn about 18 billion dollars in just the span of three months.

The parent company of Google, Alphabet was able to earn three times as much as it did last year in the first quarter. The company has achieved a net profit of 17.93 billion dollars and last year at the same time and position, the net profit of the company was 6.84 billion dollars. There was a 34 percent increase in the revenue of the first quarter, with the revenue of this year being 55.31 billion dollars. The American multinational company earned around $26.29 greater than what was expected which was $15.82 per share.

Revenue from Google Cloud too got a huge raise, from 2.77 billion to 4.05 billion. Quite frankly, the major area from where Alphabet earns the most money is through Google Search and YouTube ads. Most of the profits that the company earns are through these platforms. This year, Google search was able to bring in profit that is around 30.2 percent more than what it achieved in the first quarter in 2020. Google search brought in 31.9 billion dollars profit to the company. If Google Search earned this much profit then so did YouTube, YouTube ads were able to make 6.005 billion dollars profit to the 4.04 billion dollars it made last year. This increase is about 48.6 percent which of course helps the company in more ways than possible. Google has even hired new employees from all around the world, the numbers being 17,000.

Through all of this we can say that when everything around the world was facing some kind of loss due to the global pandemic, Google still put its game face forward along with helping people against this deadly virus too. Google and Alphabet have beaten every target from last year and the numbers of the profit gained tells that as well. If Google was able to achieve this in just the first quarter, then what comes with the company during the rest of the year is to the question. If Google manages to keep up with this progress, then the rest of the year for sure looks exciting not only for the company but for us to see too. The company has gone beyond every expectation this year and this too in only three months!

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6:07 AM

Did you know Pinterest Publishes Its Progress Report For The First Quarter Of 2021, Revealing That The Platform Is Still Going Strong

Pinterest has published a progress report for Q1 2021, revealing a whopping 478 million monthly active users on the platform.

There's a lot else that the progress reports delves into as well, but Pinterest's continual growth has certainly been a highlight of the company. While the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic certainly had more people clamoring to social media outlets in the face of lockdown, this Q1 2021 report seems to prove that the surge of activity on the platform isn't stopping anytime soon. A total of 478 million active users every month is an impressive milestone, and this number sees an overall 30% increase when compared to last year's first quarter. However, it should be noted that while this growth rate is certainly better than Q1 2020's 26%, it's still a decline from the consistent 37% held by last year's Q3 and Q4 respectively. Ultimately, much of this can be owed to the reopening of stores and physical merchandise outlets. Pinterest forms a big part of the online e-commerce scene, and ultimately this drop, while perhaps slightly disappointing to some, is to be expected.

As revealed by the report, 98 million of the 478 million users are comprised by USA citizens, with 380 million users being international users. The ratio of international users to US citizens has also increased as compared to Q1 2020, displaying that Pinterest's international platform keeps on growing. The former audience saw a 37% year to year increase, while the latter displayed a 9% increase. Ultimately, ratios aside, Pinterest holds a frim grasp over a very comfortable online niche. It's monthly active userbase exceeds numbers provided by the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Reddit, although it is still trumped by Facebook and Instagram.

Pinterest's average revenue per user (ARPU) has seen a year to year increase as well. In Q1, 2021, this number stands at a global USD $1.04, as compared to Q1, 2020's $0.77. However, as with the monthly active users, this number is actually a disincline from Q4 2020's $1.57. The same reasoning can be applied here as was postulated above. US citizens make up the bulk of these earnings, at $3.99 ARPU, with the international userbase contributing $0.26 ARPU.

As for total revenue, Pinterest stands at a USD $485 million for Q1 of this year, seeing a global year to year increase in revenue of 78%. The international market itself saw a 170% increase in revenue generation, even if it ultimately only corresponds to $95 million of the total. The rest is supplemented by the USA's generation of $390 million, a 65% increase as compared to Q1 2020.


6:02 AM

You know The Microsoft Windows 10 installed base has set a new record by reaching 1.3 billion active users

The Computer Software Giant, Microsoft has never failed to set up its superiority over others. The Microsoft Windows shortly known as Windows which is a set of various families for graphical operating systems. Microsoft is the one who develop and markets these operating systems. The current Windows version that is Windows 10 has recently reached a new height as it successfully managed to host up to 1.3 billion Window 10 users.

This new milestone has been achieved at the time of ongoing pandemic when everything has shifted online, either it be something related to work or business or even education, everything is being done through online, this drastically increased the figure for people using services provided by Microsoft Windows. This showed that the pandemic situation came in handy for Microsoft in many ways which can also be seen in the recently released earning report. Last year Microsoft added 300 million new users for Windows 10 and in March 2020, they reached 1 billion and now it has been revealed that the figures have reached 1.3 billion users.

The financial results that were released for the 1st quarter that is March, showed that the sales number for Microsoft were ahead as compared to the figures estimated by the analysts. As according to these analysts, $41.03 Billion was estimated however the final financial results showed $41.7 Billion as generated revenue. The two main reasons behind these rock solid financial outcome were powered by Azure Cloud service and the famous Microsoft Office 365. According to Satya Nadella, the Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, one year into this pandemic situation and the curve for digital adoption is not slowing down. It is going up and accelerating. She further added that the company is building the cloud for the upcoming decade and will be expanding their addressable market and will be bringing in more innovation in every layer of the technology stack so they can help their customers to withstand their transformation.

The work from home situation has played an important role to bring the users towards computing devices with larger screens. This demand caused a high consumer purchase possible. It is early to think what the future holds for Microsoft Windows once this Covid-19 situation end and the pandemic is left behind. However for Microsoft, it can be seen that the company will be doing its best to retain these numbers which can be done by introducing new Edge, a consumer driven feature for kids.

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5:57 AM

Did you know Facebook responds to the launch of the latest iOS 14.5 updates with a pre-emptive pop-up message

Facebook had many concerns regarding the latest update of iOS 14.5 due to the reason that Apple gave the option to its users whether to permit the advertisers to track their data or not and many advertising companies including Facebook were quite sure that these users will never permit them to track their data. Facebook said that Apple is making this policy to harm small businesses. Now, As Apple is determined to launch this update, Facebook said in an updated Newsroom post that pre-emptive iOS 14 reminders it gave the details in February are now launching. As soon as the iPhone users are installing the new update while having the Facebook and Instagram apps on their devices, they are seeing notifications from Apple about whether they want to permit those applications to track them across apps and websites which are owned by other companies.

If the users restricted to grant access to Facebook and to other companies to track their data that can certainly affect their businesses because they will have fewer data to have the information about the activities of the users. Facebook’s notification will accompany the prompt of Apple and provide additional information on why and how the social media network uses people’s apps and website happenings. Facebook said in a post that providing extra informational context is allowed therefore, Facebook will show a notification to aware people before presenting Apple’s prompt, that will help them know how their data is used by these social networks, it is possible that they make an informed decision and allow the companies to track their data, as it was reported a couple of weeks ago that 48% people are ready to grant the access to social network to track their data.

This supplementary context will provide more details to the users about how their data is used in personalized ads as well as Facebook confines the use of activity that other websites send to it if people don’t turn on this device setting, the screen of Facebook will also tell people that they will see the prompt of Apple due to its requirement of iOS 14.5. The notification of Facebook will also let people know that most businesses are run on personalized ads to reach their customers so they need to support them. Facebook is hopeful that more people will grant access to the advertisers.

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5:54 AM

Did you know TikTok is going to open a Transparency center in Europe that will deal with the questions about how it approaches content moderations and security issues

TikTok gained much popularity in just a few years even after getting banned in India and huge threats from the administration of the US government. However, there are still certain issues regarding the content moderation of the platform that need to be dealt with. Therefore, TikTok has decided to open a Transparency center in Europe where the experts will show the details about how the platform approaches the content moderation and recommendations, and they will also deal with the questions regarding the security of TikTok and the privacies of the users. After opening a transparency center in the US prior year, TikTok will open a similar named The European Transparency and Accountability center and it is committed to providing transparency regarding the issues with the content of the platform and security issues.

TikTok will also reproduce the structure of its advisory council in Europe this March with a different combination of experts, just like it is fully reproducing the US approach with a dedicated European TAC. So far, TikTok has said that more than 70 experts have participated in the digital tour of the US where they have learned the details regarding the operations, safety, and security policies. This platform has already faced many investigations regarding content issues as the popularity of the platform has increased a lot. The lawmakers, civil society, and other regulators have some concerns regarding the child safety and security of data of users. The Italian data protection regulators made an urgent intrusion after the sudden death of a native girl who was participating in the content challenge of the platform, TikTok has confirmed that it will recheck the age of all the users on its platform in Italy as a result.

This transparency center will initially work as a virtual center but TikTok is planning to open a physical center in Ireland owing to the ongoing pandemic situation, where it bases the regional headquarter in 2022. EU lawmakers and regulators have recently projected a path of updates to digital regulations that look set to dial-up importance on the accountability of AI systems, including the content recommendation engines. The draft AI regulation offered by the commission last week also suggests an absolute ban on the subconscious use of AI technology to control the behaviour of people in such a way that could be dangerous for them and to others. The other component of the EU’s draft AI regulation establishes as a prerequisite for human surveillance of high-risk submissions of artificial intelligence. However, the AI regulation is just a part of the commission’s platform-focused policymaking. The UK is also working on its own Online Safety Regulations as there are many regulatory rules for a platform like TikTok to conform within Europe.

TikTok’s head of trust and safety says that TikTok has more than 100 million users in Europe, and TikTok wants to gain the trust and credibility of the users, as the TAC will help the people to understand the processes and policies of the platform and we welcome experts from across Europe to our TAC.

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6:40 AM

Did you know Facebook CEO Asks a Question On the Platform and Among All the Replies His Father’s Wins Heart

Facebook is one of the most used social media platforms with a large following to it. However, the CEO respects all the people that have helped him come to a place where he stands currently and therefore occasionally tries to interact with the followers on his main page on the Facebook app whether it is about products Facebook should come up with or what their reviews are on a product he company has launched, the CEO tries to communicate all this himself too.

Last week, on Friday, the founder and CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg had a question for all of his millions of followers on the social media platform. He asked them “Do you ever get so excited about what you're working on that you forget to eat meals?” This question was followed by his own answer in the comment where the CEO told the public how often this happens to him where he gets excited about something and forgets to eat because he is so engrossed working for that particular thing. The CEO further took the space to enlighten the public that because of this habit he has lost 10 pounds in the past month, however the new products the company will be launching are going to be (inserts a fire emoji) therefore he has no regrets.

Many people under the comments section shared what happens with them when they get excited with a user Danielle W. Lundberg saying she gets hungry and gets headache and therefore never skips meals. Another user Caitriona Fiáin Ní Dhaltúin took a jibe and said he knew what Zuckerberg was up to and that was working so hard exposing the corrupt cabal. Another user Bhupendra Raut said that while Zuckerberg lost 10 pounds, he had gained 10kg during the COVID lockdown. Camil Suello Nuesca, hoped Zuckerberg was working on something related to digital currency considering how crypto has taken over the world in these past few years.

One user Rabab Kamal said under the comments that she was totally the opposite of the CEO in terms of eating when she gets excited saying she eats more than she normally does when she is excited and in between all that forgets to work.

However, the sweetest and the most heartwarming comment under the post was from none other than the CEO’s father himself who commented “Do you need Mom and I to deliver meals?” In reply to the older Zuckerberg’s comment a Facebook user Issac Arturo wrote “You can be a billionaire but your parents never stop worrying about you,” and appreciated the genuine and wholesome exchange between the father and son.

The CEO last week had announced the launch several audio products, including a Clubhouse-style live audio rooms and a way for users to find and play podcasts. The company took this decision of launching audio tools and podcast services after the massive blow up of Clubhouse which is an audio only conversation application currently only working on iOS and has taken the world by storm just in the few weeks it launched and billionaires and celebrities, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, have popped in to chat on that platform as well.

Zuckerberg said in the coming months the world's largest social media network plans to launch new features, including short-form audio clips called Soundbites and ways to create sound effects or improve audio quality.

However, we hope the CEO does not forget to eat further more in all this excitement and takes care of his health as well.

Photo: Marlene Awaad/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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6:12 AM

You know YouTube Select Will Now Offer Seasonal Opportunities for Brands to Increase Their Reach

YouTube is one of the worlds most used platform and probably the best one to stream your videos and watch video content on. The application knows that it has a large following and therefore it works hard every day to offer the best it has to its community.

YouTube offers brands an option called YouTube Select which allows brand to select on which videos they want to display their brand marketing and ads and hence brands can select the site’s top videos and channels to display their advertising. However, things are now changing as Google is now expanding what YouTube Select offers with seasonal sponsorships that will be available quarterly.

A new update will allow an expansion in the slate of the sponsorship opportunities it offers through YouTube Select and this option will give brands more ways in which they can promote their brands to specific moments and themes within the app. According to the platform, this new seasonal sponsorship will allow users to focus on what’s prominent in culture during that time of year like Mother’s Day, Summer Wellness or Women in Music during Women’s History Month and advertise on such seasonal trending videos.

This sponsorship opportunity will offer brands more ways to tie into popular, thematic content, and have their promotions displayed alongside videos in a broader and more diverse range of categories which will increase their reach.

YouTube will offer various new sponsorship opportunities like:

YouTube Greenlight, which will enable brands to sponsor an original series from a group of emerging YouTube creators.

New gaming content opportunities through event like Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards.

NFL Game Day All Access will be a period in which advertisers will have the opportunity to sponsor the show for multiple episodes during the regular season and postseason.

New sustainability will offer more focused programming

Seasonal event sponsorship opportunities, including Mother's Day and Black Music Appreciation Month

The video search giant says that the seasonal opportunities will be made available throughout the year depending on what is trending along with connected programs and channels which will be tied to various events and all this will help brands to maximize their reach and branding across the platform and while this kind of branding can be a little expensive but it can be made up when more people will look for the same content at different periods and this will be very good for a brands reach to a more larger audience. 

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6:03 AM

Did you know Reddit is working on to improve the search experience for its users and has even hired more people for this

Reddit is a platform that hosts discussions on various topics that includes people from all around the world. The members of the site submit their content that includes links, images, videos and text posts, the content of the users is then either voted up or down by the other members. It is a network where news related to different topics goes viral; it contains web content rating and offers a lot more. The site has also included live streaming into its site through the Reddit Public Access Network.

Now like every other social media site at the moment, Reddit too is trying to find new ways and is also developing more tools that can increase engagement on the platform. The online forum is at the moment mainly focusing on its search option to make the experience for that more comfortable for their users. The platform when informing about this in a blog post said that they have actually increased the number of people that were working on to improve the search experience for their users to about twice as much. This shows how much the site is ready to put their all in with recruiting more people just to devote their attention on improving search experiences of their users.

Even though Reddit is putting forward a survey for their users to know which area of their search options lack in, but in order to improve the search experience, its engineers will be redesigning the whole layout of the search results page. They will be improving the understanding of everything that gets searched upon on the site, so that they can provide with results relevant to what the user searched for. Suggestions for misspelled searches will be included along with that improvement in ranking algorithms on posts will be made more relevant, and searching within a community on the desktop version of the site will see an improvement too. Users will be allowed to evens search for comments, and the search suggestions which appear on the search bar will be made better too.

Along with making the search experience better for their users, it is also on the news that Reddit is on a constant effort to improve its notifications experience as well and is actually testing out a change for push notifications where the notifications are sent on the basis of how many times the user has received notifications in the span of 24 hours. The site is also working on to test these new features that will apparently help set up communities and grow them.

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5:53 AM

Did you know After animals and cars, Google Search brings Pac-Man, Hello Kitty and several other characters into its interactive AR objects library


Google has extended its 3D augmented reality feature in mobile search with the inclusion of 14 new Japanese characters including Pac-Man which the most searched anime character on tech giant and the number one country for Pac-Man searches is Peru, followed by Hello Kitty but its search number was almost less than half of Pac-Man and other like Gundam, Ultraman, and Evangelion, and many more are characterized in their 3D form.

 


Google has taken these characters from the well-known pop culture franchises in Japan. For the past few years, Google was adding 3D models for various animals, dinosaurs, insects, and planets, and other types of educational kinds of stuff.

Users can view these characters when they are searching by their names on Google app on Android and iOS devices but these types of content can only be viewed on such devices having Android 7 and iOS 11 or above, and only AR Core enabled devices will be able to view this content. 


These characters can be searched on several degrees of scale and users will also have an option to render them at life-size, even they can put them in their home environment as Google has posted a video that is made with the help of Google’s AR technology using the camera view of the mobile device. Just search these characters on the Google app or its browser and scroll until you get the animated card inviting you to launch the experience ‘’in your space’’. The main attraction of users will always be putting them in their environment to make videos of memorable or viral moments.

Google has been working for the past few months to boost its abilities on its search engine to help many students, parents, and teachers to improve their learning experience by screening answers for tough Science, Engineering, Technology, and Mathematics thoughts. The Google search will elaborate chemical formulas with the help of equations and 3D graphics as these are the measures of Google L.E.A.R.N. this is not it Google has been testing the AR in other places too like the additions of walking AR directions in Google Maps but this is still restricted to specific malls and Airports but the planning of this company is that the digital directions are coated over the users’ real-world images in Live view feature.

There are 14 characters available in total including, Ultraman Pac-Man, Gundam Evangelion, , Ultraman Zero Hello Kitty, Kogimyun Xi Gundam, Ultraman Belial Pompompurin, Taiko Master Gundam Penelope and Gomorra Little Twin Stars.

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5:45 AM

Did you know Report reveals how safe Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and other big social networks are for consumers and advertisers

For the first time, a comprehensive report on the joint steps taken by major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest) in addressing problems like inciting hatred and graphic content has been revealed.

The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) has released a new study that ranks brand safety success across all seven major social media channels. The reason for this is to aid in the integrity of the media supply chain and to assist advertisers in deciding where to invest their hard-earned advertising dollars.

The study, which was released by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), a cross-industry project of the trade organization that aims to discuss how advertising supports negative content online, subjected to provide a shared structure for the whole advertising world.

The report's goal is to act as a baseline, tracking the progress social media firms are making in regulating their networks.

The GARM Aggregated Measurement Report is founded on publicly available first-party data and compliance reports from companies including Facebook, Snap, and Instagram. The WFA then compiles this information into four main questions that advertisers will use to evaluate their success over time.

The WFA expects that the study will present a unified and centered structure for ad industry leaders to make better impactful advertisement investment strategies.

The aggregated data shows that the amount of offensive material deleted in the 1st and 2nd halves of 2020 from platforms stayed constant, with 3.3 billion bits of data – including videos and photos – expelled for breaching social media site guidelines. Around 80 percent of the content pieces were deleted because they fit into spam, inappropriate materials, offensive language, and acts of violence categories. According to WFA reports, the number of user accounts suspended for infringing content has increased across the digital spectrum. Over 30% on average accounts were deleted across all sites that took part in the study and exchanged data during the first 6 and last 6 months of the year 2020. Whereas, some networks reported deletions of up to 14.9 million accounts. This increase on accounts deletions was 40 percent for YouTube.

The data also revealed a rise in platform lack of action on inciting hatred and acts of violence throughout sites, along with a brand strike in June that showed some of the world's largest advertisers halt social media spending to bring pressure on big media to address the issue.

The WFA noticed increased compliance throughout platforms' shared statistics. These contained YouTube's advancements in this field, specifically with account removals. Facebook, also, decreased the level of offensive speech on its platform, reporting a 20% decrease from third quarter to fourth quarter in 2020.

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5:37 AM

Did you know Facebook’s Covid-19 Misinformation Problem in Europe is Worse Than People Thought

Facebook has come under a lot of very justified criticism for its role in propagating misinformation about the covid-19 pandemic, and while the social media platform has worked a bit to make the problem a little less prevalent in the US, it seems that the company has not placed nearly as much emphasis on Europe. This problem is particularly prevalent in situations where the misinformation in question is being spread through some language other than English.

According to a detailed study conducted by Avaaz, about 56% of the misinformation in Europe that was not in English did not get acted upon by Facebook. If you compare this to the situation in the US, only 26% of misinformation got ignored by Facebook which indicates a clear bias towards English that has become a mainstay of the debate surrounding the internet over the course of the past few years.

This sort of thing is particularly egregious when you take into consideration the fact that Europe is currently having a pretty tough time of it. A destructive third wave of covid-19 is going through the entire continent, and Facebook is not doing its part to prevent misinformation from making the problem worse than it already is.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Italians seem to be faring the worst in this regard. Over 60% of the misinformation being spread in the Italian language is being ignored by Facebook. The social media platform really needs to take a more proactive role in engaging with content moderators who speak multiple languages, since most of the world doesn’t speak English and they are suffering from Covid-19 just as much as the English speakers of the world and in many cases are faring even worse.



 

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5:26 AM

You know Google Photos Now Allows Users To Upload Pictures And Create Albums While Offline

A recent update to Google Photos now allows users to upload pictures and content to the platform even when offline.

Google Photos is essentially the company's way of providing a service much similar to the popular Google Drive, but instead of uploading files and folders, users now have a dedicated space for uploading their favorite photos and cherished memories. And what a space it is. With unlimited storage and the ability to upload pictures up to 16 megapixels and 1080p resolution, users finally have the perfect spot for storing their precious digital keepsakes.

Of course, this service comes with its limitations. One being that the unlimited storage and quality conservation of photos is a limited time offer and from the 1st of June, 2021, a limitation of 15GB will be applied. If users want to further increase storage space and upload pictures in their original quality, subscription packages must be purchased. The second limitation, and the topic of discussion in this article, is that pictures cannot be uploaded to the platform offline.

This naturally comes off as mildly irritating for the general userbase, considering that while internet is more easily available than ever nowadays, it still isn’t all encompassing. Especially for users looking to store photos while they’re on tours to more rural areas and the like, internet's hardly a reliable source. Again, this comes off as less of a deal breaker and simply more of an inconvenience that users would rather find a loophole around. Well, it seems that Google itself is quite willing to provide that loophole.

A new update to the Photos interface now allows users to upload pictures to the platform without the presence of an internet connection. This update was silently doled out across mobile devices, and was spotted by eagle-eyed reporters as the Android Police. The feature was found under the 5.37 build of Google Photos. Uploaded data can be sent to existing albums, or added to new ones, and once an internet connection returns, the photo albums will sync and backup.

Other than just the convenience that comes with uploading photos offline, especially when on one of those afore-mentioned tours, the feature also adds to a smoother user experience. No longer must users wait for old pictures to upload before starting something else on the platform. Now, albums can be simultaneously created while older photos are uploaded and/or synced up.

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5:19 AM

Did you know These new Billing Fraud Apps on Google Play Store were downloaded by over 750K Android users

A set of apps responsible for fraudulent activities have been discovered by a team of researchers. These applications were present on the Google Play Store responsible for hijacking notification of SMS messages for billing scam. Most of the users that were targeted by the apps were from Southwest Asia and from the Arabian Peninsula. The app successfully managed to reach more than 750K downloads before being uncovered by the researchers and getting removed from the hosting platform. Two cyber security firms namely McAfee and Trend Micro were the first to report these findings independently.

According to the researchers from McAfee, these apps used to depict themselves as photo editors, wallpapers, keyboard skins, puzzles and many other apps related to the camera. Later these applications would hijack the SMS notification by the embedded malware and would start unauthorized purchases from the hacked user. It was found that these fraudulent apps were the property of the commonly known as joker also known as Bread. For the past four years this malware has been successfully able to sneak through the Google Play reviewers, repeatedly as a result, Google took down almost 1700 infected applications at the beginning of the year 2020, with this malware. Currently, McAfee is also tracking down an other potential threat with a different moniker named as Etinu.

This malware is well known for committing frauds related to payments through the spyware capabilities that it holds which includes the ability to steal the SMS messages, device data and information as well the user’s contact list. The developers of this malware uses a method known as versioning that can help them to upload a malware free version of the app in order to gain trust from the Play Store users and once the app is installed, the fraudulent codes are introduced through the updated version of the application later. This is how they manage to slip past the review process.

The additional codes that are introduced as a payload for first stage, which is actually a deception that these codes are harmless, while they are establishing with C2 also known as the command and control in order to revive a hidden key which is used to decode the file. This mid state payload ultimately decrypt and the malware is installed. After investigating the C2 service, it was discovered that all personal information including phone number, SMS messages, IP address , carrier, network status and country was gathered. A list with 9 apps with this malware was also released. Which had names including:

  •     Keyboard Wallpaper
  •     2021 wallpaper and Keyboard
  •     Barber Prank Hair Dryer, Clipper and Scissors
  •     PIP Photo maker
  •     Pop Ringtones for Android
  •     Picture Editor
  •     PIP Camera
  •     Cool Girl Wallpaper


In a statement given by Trend Micro researchers they stated that based on how the developers of Joker continuously makes sure that malware stays persistent on the Google Play Store even though it has been taken down many times. They said its a proof that the developers are earning profit from this method.

 

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5:15 AM

Did you know Threat Actors Continue to Use Google Alerts to Spread Malware and Scams

Google Alerts can be a great way to stay up to date with the world around you because of the fact that this is the sort of feature that could potentially end up getting you the specific news that you need as soon as it breaks out in the world. However, it is important to note that in a lot of situations Google Alerts tend to be hijacked by various malicious actors so that they can spread malware or potentially end up making people fall for various scams and the like as well.

This trend has actually started to increase in recent time, and even if you sort your Google Alerts so that you only get the highest quality ones threat actors can still find a way to work around this. At this point you might be wondering how they manage to trick Google, and basically the answer to this question is that they use cloaking which is a form of SEO that makes them seem legitimate even though they’re in no way so.

Users should be careful while checking out various Google alerts that they are receiving lest they end up in a situation where they get infected with malware or end up falling for a scam that can cost them a lot of money. This is the kind of thing that really tends to be underreported as well, so it is up to Google to try and make sure that all of its users can stay as safe as possible. The sinister thing about this is that most users can’t even tell if a site is malicious before they go to it, and at that point it will be far too late to prevent the worst from happening.

H/T: BC.

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