Digital Information World

Twitter has announced a new updated feature for the users of iOS. Now they can easily see the “tweets to their tweets” with comments without any hassle, in one place.

Once a tweet is shared, the counter shows the number of retweets and likes to that particular tweet. It used to be quite time-consuming to fish through all the retweets to look for relevant comments and respond to them. Many a times, tweeters could not respond to important comments also.

This new feature of Retweet with Comments seems to be an extended version of “quote tweet.” The difference is that once someone retweets a tweet, they can now add a comment to it, and instead of losing this comment in a sea of retweets and other information, the original tweeter can easily find and respond to that comment through this new feature.

All a user needs to do is to click on their original tweet, and then click on the retweets counter below that tweet. This will promptly open another screen, which will show a complete list of retweets, separating those without comments from Retweets with Comments.

Now this is quite an efficient and time-saving way to reach out and communicate with people who left a comment for you while retweeting your tweet.

Previously, when users resharing a tweet needed to personally address you or seek your attention, they would mention you in their comments along with retweets. With this new feature, it seems that this will not be necessary anymore, because there is no danger of losing their comment amongst all. So, in a way, this small change looks quite promising for now.

However, at the moment, this feature is only available for iOS, much to the dismay of Android users. There have been tweets and rants about this on Twitter since it has announced this new feature. Android users are disappointed that this seemingly important update has not been made for them, but Twitter has responded positively to it. Ambiguously enough, but they have said that Android users must stay hopeful that this update will release for them soon as well.

How long the wait is going to be, that is another question. Twitter already seems to have a lot on its plate at the moment. Recently, there was news that they are testing to roll out a new counter system for retweets and comments. A week ago, there was a news that they are testing a warning message for people to halt and re-think about their tweet before posting it. This message will reportedly appear only when the user’s tweet will contain hateful or harmful language.

With all these features in testing phase, and a new feature already launched, it seems that while the world is quarantined and has nothing much to do, Twitter on the other hand is working hard to provide better and improved experience to its users.

Keep up the good work, Twitter!

Photo: GettyImages

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Instagram has announced a trio of features that can help users manage all the negative or hateful comments on their posts. This will also enable them to highlight the positive comments and manage who can tag or mention them in comments, captions, or Stories.

These features are especially useful for accounts having a large number of followers, like celebrities. It is very common to see all kinds of people coming and spewing venom in their comments, playing the freedom of speech card. Sometimes, there are coordinated attacks by online trolls on viral posts too.

Instagram has come up with a new feature that allows deleting comments in bulk and restricting specific accounts from posting negative comments. This feature showed positive feedback, so now Instagram has released it for mobile users.

For iOS users, all they need to do is to tap on a comment, select “Manage Comments” from the dotted icon in the top-right corner, and delete up to 25 comments in one go.

By tapping on “More Options,” they can block or restrict commentators and their accounts in bulk too.

For Android users, they will need to press and hold a comment and then choose Block or Restrict by clicking on the dotted icon.

The second feature from this trio is of Pinned Comments, which will allow the users to pin positive and encouraging comments to the top of their comment thread. This will boost the overall image of the platform as one that is against bullying and hatred and is always trying to set an air of optimism around.

This feature is in its testing phase now, but it sounds genuinely promising.

Twitter has a similar feature to let the users have some control over their posts and the way they allow others to interact with them by giving them the option to “Hide” replies. The comments or replies are not removed, they are just hidden, and can be viewed anytime the user chooses to.

Instagram’s approach is more “Cut Direct.” There is a chance that even valid criticism might get blocked this way, but then again, it is all to control bullying in any form, so it sounds all right at the moment.

The third feature that Instagram has rolled out is the option for the users to choose who can mention or tag them in comments, captions, or Stories.

It is either “Everyone,” or “Only People You Follow” or “No one” for all mentions and tags. Apart from this, whenever someone tags a user, they will have an option to manually approve or not those tags too.

The launch of these features is a part of the anti-bullying campaign, and it coincides with the release of Facebook’s fifth edition of its Community Standards Enforcement Report, which shared enforcement data for bullying on Instagram. As per this report, Facebook has taken strict action against 1.5 million cyberbullying pieces of content in 2019 and early 2020.

Facebook has also made improvements in its technology that matches image and text to find out and remove child porn, sexually exploitative content, and suicide and self-harm promoting content on both Facebook and Instagram.

All these necessary changes are important and efforts by Facebook to reinforce more positivity in an already negative environment are extremely commendable.

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Facebook has released the fifth edition of its Community Standards Enforcement Report, which details all the violations of rules and policy that Facebook acted against, on both the platforms of Facebook and Instagram in the past few months.

There are 12 policy areas on Facebook, and 10 on Instagram that are covered in this report extensively.

Instagram has seen a dramatic surge in popularity and usage over a small period, therefore this report especially focuses on four prime areas of concerning content on Instagram. They include Hateful Speech, Adult Nudity, and Sexually Exploitative Content, Violence, and Cyberbullying and Harassment.

This report also shares data on the appeal count that people have made for content removed on Instagram, as well as the action count that has been taken when Facebook identified the issues with the appealed content. Stats reveal that Instagram restored almost a quarter of the content that it had originally removed after appeal.

Through some other stats, this report gives insights into the rising trends in the content on Facebook and Instagram. Surprisingly, drug-related posts have seen a surge in the recent months of January to March 2020.

This period coincides with the time when the coronavirus pandemic had begun, and global lockdown measures had started to be implemented. It looks like when people were homebound, their interest in drugs and other harmful activities also increased! And Facebook had to act against all such content to stop promoting it.

Facebook has claimed in its report that it has improved its image and text matching detection technology that is used to find and remove various vices on the platforms of Facebook and Instagram. So, the detection of drug-related content also went with another vice, and that is Hateful Speech.

Facebook has had to remove a lot of content containing hate speech and harmful language. While this shows the company’s efficient detection technology that can find out hate speech in multiple languages now, it also reveals another ugly facet of our society. When the world is going through a major crisis, people are losing their minds and resorting to hate speech and drugs and other silly activities just to kill time and get over the crisis! That is horrible, to say the least.

But this is not all! Facebook has reported that there has been a significant increase in user activity related to nudity, child pornography, sexual exploitative content, and terror-related posts too, against which Facebook has had to take strict action. The number of contents removed is huge, and that suggests how low people are stooping even in such critical times when lives are at a stake!

In this report, Facebook also revealed that despite their advanced and improved detection and removal processes, there are still more than 130 million active fake profiles on the platform.

Instagram has recently launched some features that work against cyberbullying, harassment, suicide, and self-harm promoting content. All these issues have also surged in user activity across Instagram over the past few months, and this is quite alarming.

Facebook has given stats about the number of governments requesting user data insights from the company which has increased by 9.5% in the last six months of 2019.

The governments that are seeking public data more are of the US, India, UK, Germany, and France, respectively.

The total requests by governments from July to December 2019 were 140,875. Facebook produced around 74% data in response to these requests! No matter what justifications they give, the revelation of personal data will remain a genuine cause of concern amongst many people all over the world.

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Facebook’s net result on the world has been an overall positive in a wide variety of ways and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that they have managed to make it so that they can provide a lot of benefits to people when it comes to connecting as well as communicating with one another, something that is not all that likely to happen in situations where social media platforms are not widely available to as many people as possible.

However, with all of that having been said and out of the way, it is important to note that Facebook also has its fair share of problems. One of them has to do with the fact that there is a lot of hate speech as well as misinformation on the platform. This is something that is bound to happen when you create a forum where so many people are able to say more or less whatever they want and get people to follow them in the process creating entire networks based around misinformation or hateful rhetoric.

As far as misinformation is concerned, this is the sort of thing that has the potential to be even more dangerous given the pandemic that we are currently going through at this point in time. Misinformation surrounding covid-19 can be disastrous, which is why Facebook is so adamant about clamping down on it.

So far Facebook has done a variety of things that are meant to make it so that hate speech and misinformation becomes a lot less widespread on its platform, but another thing that it has managed to do is to make it so that it can utilize AI for this purpose. The main benefit of AI is that it can automatically detect posts that fall into these categories and remove them.

However, there are a few problems associated with AI as well, and a lot of these problems have to do with the fact that AI is at the end of the day a machine and it can make mistakes that were a part of its original programming. The fact of the matter is that Facebook has optimized a lot of the AI that it is using, to the point where now the AI and algorithm that is used is much better at detecting nuances in language.

These are details that Facebook published in its quarterly report, and they shed quite a bit of light on the kind of progress that has been made in this regard. It will be exciting to see what direction this progress moves in as we move forward during this pandemic.

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Facebook is a pretty enormous platform, so much so that it can be almost impossible to manage in a lot of different ways. Most of the time when you think about the various ways in which content is uploaded on the platform, you would end up looking at things like the average everyday content that most people tend to view on a regular basis.

However, there is a lot of very unseemly and downright disturbing content that people try to upload as well, and while there is an algorithm that tends to take content like this down, the final say is had by a group of human content moderators all of whom would need to look into a wide variety of really disturbing content.

The content that they look at often includes things like child pornography, violent imagery, hate speech as well as all kinds of other things that nobody would want to be forced to look into. Hence, it is understandable that they would develop mental illnesses such as PTSD, depression as well as substance addictions that would help them cope with their job.

Facebook got these content moderators through an outsourcing agency known as Cognizant which is now defunct after TheVerge's investigation into its questionable business practices. Because of the fact that its content moderators were outsourced, Facebook did not seem too keen on providing adequate compensation in spite of the fact that the job involves a lot of very difficult tasks that can take a toll on any sane human being.

The great news here is that one former content moderator has successfully sued Facebook, forcing the social media platform to pay over 52 million dollars in damages. Facebook has assured that every current and former content moderator will receive between $1000 to $5000 as compensation, and although some might say that this really isn’t enough to justify the work that they had to do it’s fair to say that this is at the very least a step in the right direction.

Photo: Toby Melville / Reuters

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Tech giant Google, which also runs the Android OS for smartphones is seen testing a new Facebook-like emoji reaction feature for its messages app. Rich Communication Service (RCS) was supposed to upraise Google’s regular messages app as a competitor to Apple’s iMessage app. However, the update rollout by carriers had been support patchy and was taking too long to be released. Then, the search giant Google had to take the matter in its own hands, and the company brought Rich Communication Service (RCS) support to the Android SMS app directly. Currently, the search giant is working to bring RCS chat to people via Google’s stock SMS app on the Android operating system.

If we compare the latest rollout to Apple’s iMessage app, the range of features supported by the regular SMS app is small. However, Google is continuously releasing new features to Google’s SMS app to provide its users with the best overall experience possible. It appears that the company is testing one update on the wild, bringing Facebook-like emoji reactions to the SMS messaging app.

The feature was first discovered by Redditors, displaying the emoji reactions. Users can find the emoji reactions in a small circle at the bottom right corner of the messages Android users exchange during a conversation. Some of the Reddit users reported that they are able to use a Facebook-like emoji reaction feature on RCS messages.

To react to any message, you will have to long-press an SMS message, and a plethora of emojis will appear. You can choose between seven different emojis while using the new feature. Currently, we are unclear if there are more emojis available, but these emoji reactions look very similar to that of Facebook reactions. The feature will come in handy for many users, and it will prove to be a way for users to have fun in their conversations.

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It seems that Google has been working on bringing these emoji reactions for some time, based on earlier teardowns of the app. However, we did not know when the feature will be made available for public use. Now, it finally appears that Google is rolling out this feature to beta users.

It appears that the company has not rolled the feature widely till now. However, we expect that the company will make the feature available for all of its users after a bit of testing.

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Uber announced on Wednesday that from 18th May, the company will require everyone to wear face masks. The company is imposing these new rules to fight the spread of coronavirus among the masses as individuals have started to return to work.

The company also stated that they are providing $50 million for drivers registered with Uber. The amount will be given to drivers to buy essential supplies such as face masks, disinfectants, and hand sanitizer. Drivers will use these essential supplies in their cars, and will also offer these supplies to riders, the company stated.

During a press conference, Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO Uber stated that everyone should take necessary precautions to protect themselves from the virus. He said that taking proper precautions will protect everyone including the drivers and the next passengers getting in the vehicle from catching the coronavirus. According to Dara Khosrowshahi, it is not only about protecting yourself from the virus, but also protecting everyone around you, so that we will be able to stop the virus from spreading.

The company will impose the new rules from the coming Monday, and drivers working in most of the countries around the world will have to wear face masks. You might be wondering how the company will monitor whether the drivers are wearing face masks or not. Sachin Kansal, the company’s senior director of product management answered this question. He told the reporters that the company will require the drivers to prove they are wearing a face mask. The drivers can prove they are wearing a face mask by uploading a photo of them wearing a face mask via the Uber app before signing in to their accounts.

Kansal said that although self-certification is good, sometimes it is essential to verify. Issuing guidelines and requirements is one for the company, he stated, but enforcing the company’s requirements is sometimes necessary for them.

The company will also require the drivers to self-certify other measures such as sanitizing their cars, washing their hands regularly, and not driving the car if a driver is sick. These measures are similar to that of ‘Lyft’ announced during this month. However, Lyft did not specify when the policies will be enforced by the company.

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Kansal stated that Uber has designed the new policies in a flexible way so that the company will be able to implement them as needed based on the region and severity of the outbreak of the virus.

Drivers can cancel the trip as well as report the passenger if they refuse to wear a face mask. Drivers as well as riders can leave comments while rating a fellow user. Kansal stated that if any rider or driver is found repeatedly violating the new policies, the company may also remove them from the platform.

The company is also making some changes for Uber Eats such as reminders to maintain distance while being in restaurants. Kansal concluded that the company is not encouraging the masses to go outside of their houses, but if they go, the company wants to be ready for people.

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Facebook can’t stop surprising us! Even when a pandemic is running rampant all across the world, the king of social media is doing everything in its power to make sure that its users are enjoying their quarantine time. The recent change in Facebook for iOS is yet another example of how the social networking platform never stops experimenting with new features and settings.

Recently, renowned social media consultant Matt Navarra tweeted that Facebook has rolled out an “Avatars” shortcut on its iOS app. He even attached a screenshot to his tweet that shows the “Avatars” option resting between the “Ads Manager” and “Crisis Response” options.

In case you are unaware, Avatars were recently launched in the Australia, Europe and US. Inspired by Snapchat’s Bitmoji, an Avatar is basically your digital representation on Facebook, one which you can customize in order to make it completely resemble yourself. Facebook even allows you to adjust the hairstyle, outfits, and complexions of your Avatar. Moreover, you can use it in chats, comments, and Stories for now.

With the shortcut in question now available for iOS, it will be easier for you to access and create/update your Avatar.

It looks like the Avatars shortcut is being rolled out slowly since not all iOS users seem to have it currently. However, it will be available soon and you are recommended to keep your Facebook app updated to its latest version.

Conversations on Facebook are about to become a lot more interesting now.

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One of the major challenges during the COVID-19 is to fight against the misinformation about the virus online. After some of the reports pointed out the spread of fake information about coronavirus through Wayback Machine, The Internet Archive has started warning users when they click on any story that has been debunked or removed from the web.

Brandy Zadrozny, the NBC Reporter, Twitted about a yellow banner added on the site on a popular Medium post which was originally removed after being labeled as misinformation. The website persuades users to watch some of the videos from the video archive, comprising misinformation, like the conspiracy documentary, Plandemic, which was reposted.

Mark Graham, Director at Wayback Machine while commenting on the videos said it is about the context’s importance and value in archiving.

The Internet can be understood through the valuable resource available at The Internet Archive. Three years ago, First Draft News, a fact-checking organization, collaborated with the Internet Archive and verified the online information through the Wayback Machine.

In April, Joan Donovan, a researcher, debated in MIT Technology Review about how the Archive is aiding in spreading wrong information about the coronavirus through its stories, as the site includes archived copies of pages that originally have been removed or banned by the social media platforms.

The effectiveness of these warnings on the sites is not yet clear as websites are still analyzing how the alerts can help let people know about the misleading information. There are other sites as well that allow users to save and share the deleted content.

The Internet Archive also allows users to share comments or reviews on the videos which appear along with or above the fact-check by Graham. However, undoubtedly the Internet Archive has recognized the coronavirus misinformation as a major issue and is finding ways to deal with it.

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Facebook revealed its plan to introduce a new News tab last year, and it is still not available to all the United States Facebook users. Publishers are used to seeing the company releasing a new feature with much fanfare and then have a momentum fizzle. Publishers are starting to experience a similar feeling.

Facebook News is available to all users in the US in the bookmark section of the Facebook app since Apr 2020. A company’s spokesman stated that ‘millions’ of users are using the Facebook News tab currently. Yet, he did not provide a specific number. According to sources at seven various publishers within the news tab, Facebook is still messing with the new feature, so there is not much to get enthusiastic about.

While the company has started to take steps to promote the feature, most users using editorial collections of news stories around significant events derived from news digests (News participants) that Facebook will not be releasing ads aimed to promote the News feature until later in this year.

A source at one of the News participants stated that the company was evident that the process was going to be slow, and Facebook had a lot to experiment with Facebook News. He also said that Facebook Watch also took a long time to become popular among the users.

Still, some News participants have begun to worry that Facebook is not prioritizing the News as it should. When Facebook released the Coronavirus Information Center and placed it at the top of the news feed, some publishers saw that a different feature is solving the kind of problem the News feature should have addressed.

For a lot of Facebook users, Facebook News lives in the bookmark section along with Facebook Dating and Facebook Marketplace, where only a few users engage with the News. Facebook automatically migrates the feature into the user’s tabs if they regularly engage with Facebook News.

Some News participants are taking steps to establish direct relations with newsreaders such as Thrillist, and the NY Daily News are seen experimenting with a ‘follow’ button. The follow button will let the users reach more of the content from these publishers.

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Parsley data shows that Facebook referrals experienced a 44% month-over-month increase from Fab to March of this year, and there was an overall 80% YoY growth during Apr 2020. The traffic generated by Facebook referrals has played a significant role in surging news publisher’s content consumption during the last two months.

News publishers cannot draw any conclusions as they do not have the necessary data, and state that it is challenging for them to provide a firm opinion on how Facebook News is faring. Publishers are not able to differentiate Facebook News referrals from other referrals coming from various Facebook’s parts like news feed.

According to a source at a second News participant, what’s the point when you don’t know how many individuals are using the product, and there are a lot of crucial elements for publishers to worry about.

Photo: Wsj.

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Tesla and SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk has again come under scrutiny and severe criticism by Facebook’s head of AI, Jerome Presenti.

Musk is notoriously famous for his repeated warnings about AI becoming more powerful than humans, to the point that it might end up outsmarting humans and his claims that this poses an imminent threat to the existence of humanity!

Jerome Presenti has reacted quite negatively to Elon Musk’s remarks about AI being better than nukes, and in a tweet, he said that Musk does not seem to know anything when he talks about AI!

Presenti is not the only person who has this opinion about Musk’s claims and “all-knowing” remarks about AI.

Recently, many AI researchers and CEOs presented their concerns over Musk’s comments in front of CNBC, and they reportedly questioned Musk’s AI credentials in not so kind words.

These researchers from various companies told CNBC that they find Musk’s comments about AI quite offensive, inappropriate, and non-sensical. They call him a sensationalist, and someone who is a negative distraction. They even urged the public to not take him seriously.

As per these people, even the smartest computers have a long way to reach human-level intelligence. They can excel on a narrow range of tasks as yet, so AI is not a danger to the human race at all.

It is not like the researcher community of AI does not acknowledge Musk’s accomplishments. It is just that his loose remarks and open worrying about the downside of Artificial General Intelligence are what they have a problem with. And rightly so, because these kinds of baseless concerns can make general public worried and stressed too, especially in recent times when the world is already going through so much due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Now coming to Elon Musk’s accomplishments; he was an early investor in many prominent AI startups, one of them includes the $1 billion worthy OpenAI lab and another is the DeepMind in London. Both these startups were later acquired by Google and Musk also left OpenAI’s board in 2018.

Now with so much AI exposure, it is expected from him to talk and comment on this issue reasonably. But he keeps insisting that due to his exposure to the most cutting edge AI, he strongly believes that people should get really concerned about it because it is a potential risk to the existence of human civilization.

After the CNBC story released, Jerome Presenti reacted to it on an individual level, and he said that he was not representing Facebook when he tweeted. Later on, Musk responded with "Facebook sucks" in a response tweet.

But this is not the first time that someone from Facebook showed his reservations about Elon Musk’s comments.

In 2017, Mark Zuckerberg called him “irresponsible.” He has even been called “nuts” by Facebook’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, back in 2018.

A former DeepMind engineer, Edward Grefenstette, who has watched Musk closely, and who now works for Facebook has called him an opportunistic moron in response to his tweets saying Free America Now.

After so much criticism, surprisingly there is no reply from Tesla or Elon Musk himself as yet. Let us wait and see what they have to say in response to all of this.

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

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Over the past few years, machine learning and artificial intelligence have become omnipresent in the business world. What once sounded futuristic is now commonplace.

But often, the concepts still sound abstract and their applications hardly concrete. With the recent volley of innovations, it is often complicated to winnow the broad technological offering down to what can be useful for your business, or for one specific goal.

This article takes a closer at the concrete applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in customer relations. Keep reading to find out how you can harness the power of AI to enhance customer experience, and boost your conversion rate.

Chatbots and AI-Powered Virtual Assistants

One major application of AI in customer relations is as virtual assistants such as chatbots. Generally, live chats are amongst the most popular of customer service channels - they are fast, personalized, and have high rates of customer satisfaction. AI saves you from having to hire a dedicated live chat team to deal with the more mundane issues.

Using natural language processing and analyses of standardized responses to common questions, chatbots can respond to the needs of visitors to businesses’ websites. AI can give information on products, prices, or answers to questions that normally a human customer service agent would have to take care of.

But what are the big advantages of using this technology?

Well, for one - chatbots are available 24/7. That means that your customers can have personalized interactions no matter at which time - or from which time zone - they contact you. 64% of internet users value the full-time availability of chatbots, with the speed they can get simple responses or resolve complaints close behind.

What’s more, having chatbots take care of routine customer service inquiries also allows you to streamline your customer service department. So that your human agents only have to take care of the truly complex queries. Estimates say that by 2022, chatbots will help businesses save a whopping $8 billion.

The increasing interest in chatbots is also reflected in financial figures. Recent reports project that the chatbot market will grow to a stunning $9.4 billion until 2024 - up from $2.6 billion in 2019.

With recent advances, chatbots and virtual assistants are relatively easy to integrate into business websites, with a huge array of companies offering plugins, or more extensive services.

AI Analytics

Artificial intelligence can be used to process large amounts of data and to automatically recognize patterns in that data.

Using AI and machine learning to do your data analysis for you is hugely advantageous.

First off, it’s a major time-saver. No more hunkering down in front of a screen and crunching numbers yourself. Instead, once your AI is set up, it will automatically deliver reports at intervals - about the impact of your most recent blog post, or the typical behavior of visitors to your website.

But that’s just the beginning. The insights that can be gained with machine learning and neural networks uncover many more layers than even a whole analytics team could manually. This can help you gain vital insights into the behavior of your target groups, the performance of certain products, or areas for improvement.

AI learns from every bit of data it is fed. The more data it has to analyze, the better it performs. The results can be transformed into actionable insights and fed into CRMs or other marketing automation tools to streamline your sales funnel.

Analyzable data ranges from plain text and social media metrics to information provided by facial recognition software.

While this may all sound very complex, there is no need for you to know any advanced statistics or code to take advantage of AI for analytics. While there is a whole range of companies offering either services in AI analytics or easy-to-use platforms, even Google got in on the game and is offering AI tools to make AI accessible for everyone.

Content Curation and Predictive Personalization

As mentioned above, AI is top-notch at uncovering patterns in data.

This allows you to construct a profile for every member of your target audience, and to adjust the content they are provided with accordingly. Whether it’s in the newsletters they receive, or during visits to your website, AI can ensure that your potential customers see what is most relevant to them.

Based on data such as previous communications, geographical location, psychographic factors like habits or attitudes, referral sources, search behaviors, and on-page interactions, AI can construct a profile for each potential customer and match them to known customer personas. Such a profile might include age group, sex, geographic location, socioeconomic background, and their main interests related to your products and services.

Based on this data, AI can curate the content and tailor it to each potential customer’s needs, and even go as far as to predict their likely future behavior to make further adjustments down the line.

In today’s business environment, this is crucial. 74% of internet users say they quickly get frustrated with websites if the content they are shown isn’t tailored to their needs and interests. And 91% of customers say that they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are directly relevant to them.

Unsurprisingly, 88% of marketers who have implemented content personalization report measurable improvements and significantly increased ROI.

Implementing AI personalization for your business can take a wide array of forms. It can be as simple as installing AI and machine-learning enabled WordPress Plugins for your website. Or it can go as far as investing in holistic marketing tools that integrate AI, such as HubSpot.

Final Thoughts

It’s crucial to realize that artificial intelligence and machine learning have long since become part of our daily lives - and an integral part of business and marketing strategies.

Investing time and resources in harnessing the power of AI to optimize your customers’ experiences will return massive benefits both in the short and long term. It will help you earn your customers’ trust, satisfaction, and loyalty, thus boosting your conversion rate and profit. AI is an invaluable ally in keeping up with your competition, and even outpacing them.

Illustration: Upklyak / Freepik

Instagram adds new features every so often in order to make it so that the average user has something new and exciting to look forward to in terms of the kind of enjoyment they want to obtain from specific aspects of their overall social media usage. One of the new features that is coming in is the option to add a fundraiser to your profile, and the fact of the matter is that this might be quite huge in a lot of ways.

These days if you want to start a fundraiser you would have to go to sites like GoFundMe or Kickstarter, and the fact of the matter is that it can be difficult to integrate these campaigns into the kind of work that you may be trying to do at the end of the day.

With all of that having been said and out of the way, integration of fundraisers into social media can be huge because of the fact that it can make it so that the fundraising as well as the raising of awareness can all be done from a single location, something that quite surprisingly was not the case previously in all that many ways all in all.

Instagram is working on “Add Fundraiser” in Edit Profile pic.twitter.com/x5wap1FxVr
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) May 13, 2020

It remains to be seen whether this fundraiser feature will only work for charity or legitimate causes or if anyone can use it in the manner that they use Venmo or CashApp. If it is the latter then it will be a big change because of the fact that it would make the transfer of money far easier than ever before, but it is far more likely that it would end up being the former and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that it would be quite difficult to regulate at such a large scale.

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Google has announced the launch of a new feature that will let users organize their tabs in separate groups.

This feature is especially helpful for people who have multiple tabs open in the Chrome browser at one time. It is currently available in the latest Chrome Beta and will roll out for desktop versions next week.

The news itself has got people very excited. With multiple tabs open in the browser at one time, the Chrome browser is usually a place of utter chaos and disarray.

A little organization can go a long way. Managing your tabs just got easier on desktop. Learn more about the latest version of tab groups, now available in #Chrome beta: https://t.co/enX8yrjaN9 pic.twitter.com/gebDyzoEo2
— Chrome (@googlechrome) May 13, 2020

Very often, you want to open one tab, and in your hurry, you end up opening another next to the one that you wanted to open. Or worse, you accidentally close the browser and all tabs shut down too. Then there is the hassle to go to the History and reopen all the tabs, but even then, some of them are lost in the sea of all other tabs and sites that you had opened previously. So, there is no denying that these issues have always been there with Google Chrome, and many people can relate to such annoying and time-wasting instances.

Therefore, this news is like a breath of fresh air for millions of Chrome users around the globe.

This new feature will let users put similar or inter-related tabs in one group. There will be customizations available, so users can name and assign colors to these groups too. Once a group is given a certain color, all the tabs in that group will also become color coordinated.

Users can also drag tabs from one group to the other if they want to re-arrange the organization.

This sounds super exciting and so schematic! Without the display of all the tabs widely disarrayed in the browser, this feature is surely going to bring so much order! For many people, this might actually be a soothing, calming sight and psychologically, it might make their working process smoother, more organized, and more efficient.

Previously, such an in-built tab-grouping feature was available in Vivaldi, so Chrome is not the first browser to have this feature. There were third party extensions that could let Chrome users get this tab-grouping, but it was another headache too, as users had to rely on these third parties and the experience was mostly unreliable and iffy.

Coming to think of it, the need for this feature has always been felt, so maybe Google Chrome should have launched this utterly useful feature way sooner... but it is okay. Better late than never, right?

Read next: Automatic Live Captions For Videos Are Now Available In Google Chrome Too!

It has been seen that Google Chrome is gradually enhancing media playback support such as enlarging PiP (Picture-in-Picture) support and featuring media controls on the toolbar on desktop platforms. Now, Google Chrome is working to add another common playback tool to Chrome’s interface, suggestions for the upcoming videos which users will play/watch.

According to XDA-developers, the engineers at Google Chrome have put forward a new tool that they call Media Feeds API (Application Programming Interface) feature. The Media Feed API feature will let the sites to offer a personalized media list suggestions to the internet browser.

Although the public documentation might have been published accidentally and has been pulled to a large extent, you can still find a cached version of the proposal of this feature on GitHub. The page states that the company wants to provide support for websites to suggest content to users to enhance media controls functioning. The media content suggested by the websites may be entirely new for users, or it may be related to the content a user has begun to watch. The page also reads that this will allow the company to offer a better experience to people.

The idea behind Media Feeds feature is that websites will be able to offer media content suggestions to Google Chrome via a manifest file. The manifest file is similar to the web app manifests that are already used by the company for providing icons, application names, and other information. Each media item suggested by the websites will include the title, the name of the content creator, the date when the item was published, a thumbnail, genre, and other information. As the Media Feeds feature is still in the initial stages of its planning, the feature currently provides support for video content only which means that the feature is not available for audio content, or there will be no podcasts.

In the end, we can theoretically say that with the help of the Media Feeds feature, users will be able to control functionality from Google Chrome’s interface similar to that of the ‘Up Next’ feature available on YouTube. You will not have to look for the function inside the page, or users might not even have to switch to media pages at all while using the Media Feeds feature.

It will be fascinating to see how the developer will implement Media Feeds feature into Google Chrome, and if the developers of this feature will be able to make the Media Feeds tool useful for users instead of an annoying feature for people. The New Tab Page on Google Chrome for Android features a news feed in which the content is suggested by Google. However, while using the Media Feeds feature, users will see media content suggested by the sites they are visiting.

Read next: Google Meet Is Now Free For Everyone

In April 2020, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new feature of adding Rooms to Messenger, which would allow up to 50 participants in a video call. He had said that in the beginning, Messenger Rooms will be available for personal accounts only, and not for the Pages and Groups.

However, now, Facebook has announced that Messenger Rooms will be available within groups and events too.

While this feature is still in the process of rolling out, it is interesting to see how Facebook plans to work around it.

The Group Rooms are exploring different options currently; both Group admins and group members can create dedicated rooms from the Groups composer settings, which will allow them to host video calls with up to 50 people at one time.

Group admins will have full control over the settings of these Messenger Rooms. If members create a group and the admins do not approve of it, they can remove it. With this rein in the hands of the admins, it will be easy to manage the discipline in the group and keep the community safe.

Admins can create Rooms with “Admin-only” settings too if a group has a post approval system. Members will be able to join the chat in these rooms anytime they want. Admins can allow any group member to create a designated room too, which can then be shared amongst other group members. There is also an option to add links and make Room sharing possible to invite more people who are not in that group but are in the friends' list of group members.

If a group does not have the post approval system on, then as per the default settings, anyone in the group will be able to create a Room.

Different settings and control options are working out for Group Rooms, so that interaction with people is made possible, virtual meetings of large groups, virtual hangouts of friends and family are possible through this medium. This is going to especially prove helpful in current times when social distancing and lockdown are implemented due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In the case of Events, users can mark their event listings as an “Online Event.” To help people engage more easily when they attend an Online Event, Facebook is integrating the Rooms feature. These rooms within events will let people invite their friends, family members, colleagues, and classmates to join through easily accessible and shareable video chat links.

For the time being, these Rooms will be available for Private Online Events only though. However, it is going to make communication and interaction with people sharing similar interests and views easier and swifter.

As previously mentioned, these Messenger Rooms are still in the process of development and are available for Australian users only. The notion and the looks so far seem to be really positive, but there is a “room” for improvement too. Especially the notification settings are not so good, and some buttons and control options need to be fixed, otherwise, it is a great initiative by Facebook in these trying times when communication with other humans is only advisable through online media.

Also read: Facebook is rolling out Avatars Shortcut for more users

Keeping this in consideration, Facebook is going to bring back its “Live With” video streaming feature also, which will allow users to co-broadcast with another person in their Live videos on Facebook. New features are going to be added to make the live streaming more profound and interactive for the users.

Messenger Rooms for Groups and Events are going to be made available for iOS, Android, and desktop once they become fully functional and available worldwide.

As more people are working remotely during the lockdowns, companies are working to recreate an office atmosphere virtually. LinkedIn, recently released two new features which show how the platform is playing its part to improve virtual engagement during the pandemic. LinkedIn is rolling out a new ‘Polls feature’ which will help users to canvas opinions and achieve feedback from their audience.

LinkedIn also announced another feature called ‘LinkedIn Virtual Events’. This tool allows users to create and broadcast video events through LinkedIn’s platform. It is interesting to note that the LinkedIn Virtual Events tool does not tap into Skype or Teams, despite Microsoft now owns LinkedIn. Teams and Skype are Microsoft’s two most significant video products.

According to LinkedIn, the polls provide the audience more of a ‘voice’ than they would achieve only by reacting to the post. Jane Manchun Wong first spotted the feature a few weeks ago, but other platforms including Facebook and Twitter have been providing the polls feature for years now. LinkedIn had polls feature in the past but the company removed the feature back in 2014.

You might say that LinkedIn took too long to restore the feature, or it was the right time to introduce the polls again as people are spending more time on social media platforms during the pandemic, and are searching for ways to change the experience and interaction.

You will see an option for polls in the menu of items while starting a new post on LinkedIn. You can add up to four choices in the answers and set the time limit ranging from 24 hours to two weeks as well as write an introduction post with hashtags. LinkedIn is releasing the polls feature today.

The LinkedIn Virtual Events tool will increase people’s engagement on the platform, and will surely be very popular as it will fulfill a very certain need of users.

The tool is a merger of LinkedIn’s products- LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Events. LinkedIn aims to provide people with a way to carry out virtual events over the live platform.

LinkedIn was planning to expand ‘Events’ when it first released the LinkedIn Events product. Now, the company has accelerated its product roadmap, and the Virtual Events tool is designed to help people strengthen their relations with the targeted audience.

The company is working with third-party broadcasting partners such as Wirecast, Socialive, Restream, and Streamyard, to enhance the quality of production. LinkedIn stated that Live receives 6X more reactions, and 23X more comments on posts compared to a simple video.

Read net: LinkedIn Is Introducing Two New Features To Help Users Prepare For Virtual Job Interviews

Given the situation that the entire world is struggling to come to terms with, a lot of people are mentioning the fact that misinformation has started to become a far greater issue than it has ever been before. A big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that people are hungry for information because of the fact that it helps them feel a little calmer since they would now understand the situation that we are currently in a little bit more than might have been the case otherwise.

A recent study published in BMJ Global Health has revealed some troubling statistics. Essentially, one out of every four most watched videos on YouTube whose main subject matter is Covid-19 or the novel coronavirus contains information that could be considered misleading in a lot of different contexts.

YouTube has been both a force for good as well as for bad in a lot of contexts due to the reason that the platform itself doesn’t upload content specifically, at least it didn’t in the cases of Ebola and Swine Flu both of which were pandemics that people on YouTube spread a fair amount of misinformation about. Things have changed now ostensibly with YouTube being a lot more cognizant of the impact that it can have and therefore making it so that less misinformation is posted.

However, it is pretty clear that YouTube is not doing a good enough job when every fourth most watched Covid-19 video contains misinformation. People tend to go for the most watched videos in every category because of the fact that they assume that a high number of views means that the information being presented would be more or less trustworthy in some way, shape or form.

Also read: Internet Archive's Wayback Machine Warning Users about the Misleading Coronavirus Archived Stories

The best videos according to the study were those presented by professional institutions as well as government agencies, both of which managed to make things a lot more reliable by providing information that could be verified by third parties. Essentially, if you want to avoid inaccurate or misleading information, try to get all of your info from official sources that would not be trying to hoodwink you for a wide variety of reasons.

It should be noted that the videos that were assessed were only those that were using English, but it is likely that misinformation does not really rely on any specific language and that the situation is just as dire for videos being created in other languages. Videos pertaining to entertainment news seemed the most likely to be misleading and so you should watch these videos with a grain of salt all in all.

Recently, Google has updated and added new features in the search experience by introducing a new user interface in Google Earth. These updates are available for all operating systems and web all around the globe.

Many interesting new features like data layers, quizzes, and must-see-views have been added in this updated search experience.

As per Google, when a user begins to search for a location in Google Earth, they will be shown different suggestions to choose from.

The user may choose a place manually, or from their personalized search history, or from Google Earth’s suggested must-see-places.

After choosing one category, the user will see the option of Data Layers on the user interface. These Data Layers further narrow down the search for the user with different other options.

These changes in the user interface are available as a live feature for all the users of iOS and Android.

Additionally, there is a sidebar on the web interface that will show identical changes to the user.

With the option of must-see-views, Google Earth provides suggestions that are truly worth noting. Users will be able to get better ideas and formulate better plans with the help of this improved search experience, once traveling resumes after the coronavirus pandemic gets over.

Quizzes are an equally beneficial feature. Questions about various places on Earth will not only help the users advance their knowledgeable skills, but they will also provide a great engaging and interactive experience for them.

The option of Data Layers will show maps, explorer guides, and other important information regarding a certain place, including its historical and heritage value and significance.

Google has been making commendable efforts in providing a worthwhile and useful experience to the users. Taking steps like the inclusion of favicons, or improving its Dark Mode in the Chrome Browser, and very recently, announcing a built-in tab-grouping feature for Chrome, it is quite evident that constant work is going on in the Google world.

All these things may look small, but they are still significant changes. Addressing the problems that users have been facing, Google shows that they care for their consumers, and will go to all possible lengths to give them an amazing experience, especially when there is so much competition around.

These efforts have special significance now when the entire world is going through a crucial phase. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, people are homebound and their reliance on the internet has increased a lot. So, by bringing positive tweaks and changes in their browser settings, web store, or Google Earth, it is like giving out a small ray of hope to the people out there. It is like Google is trying to tell people that “ everything is going to be alright soon, and we all need to stay put and fight this pandemic together, with hope and optimism.”

This is certainly a wonderful notion, and Google must be appreciated for all the positivity they are trying to infuse in an otherwise negative world.

Read next: Google Is Bringing Facebook-Like Emoji Reactions Feature For SMS Messages In The Recent RCS Update

Facebook is buying Giphy, a web-based Gif search engine, and provides a huge GIF library to its users. Internet users can add these GIFs to their messages and social media accounts. According to a report by Axios, the Giphy deal is worth $400 million, while Facebook declined to disclose the terms of the deal.

Giphy has been be a central source for providing high-engaging content that is shareable. Giphy’s animated content can be found across Facebook’s family of apps and they are also available across other social networks and services on the internet.

Most importantly, Giphy is the provider of the built-in sticker and search feature for Facebook-owned Instagram. Giphy will continue to operate in the same capacity even after Facebook's acquisition. It is becoming a part of the Facebook-owned Instagram app. Giphy will also be made available to other applications owned by Facebook with existing as well as new integrations.

Welcome to the family! For those wondering, GIPHY will continue to operate its library and relationships with content and API partners, so if you use GIPHY on other platforms, nothing will change. https://t.co/DR1e3wCrn9 pic.twitter.com/U6XWAohtzU
— Instagram Comms (@InstagramComms) May 15, 2020

You will still be able to upload your own GIFs using Giphy. Facebook plans that Giphy will continue to operate under the same branding and it will also be able to offer integration to foreign developers.

Facebook states that the company will invest in Giphy for further technology development, and it will also build out new relations for Giphy. Facebook says that it will build out new relationships on both aspects for Giphy-the endpoint developer side, and the content side.

In a blog post Vishal Shah, VP of FB Product, explained that 50 percent of the traffic Giphy receives already comes from its family of apps such as Messenger, Instagram, Facebook app, and Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging service.

Here's how users are reacting about the development on social media:

Facebook to buy Giphy for $400M in meme format, colorized (2020) pic.twitter.com/WRWkzqtMe0
— Ramp X Æ A-12 (@RampCapitalLLC) May 15, 2020

Goodbye @GIPHY #giphy #Facebook pic.twitter.com/RBpw6WhCLV
— Bala (@bala_jpeg) May 15, 2020

Facebook will still allow its partners and competitors to use Giphy while collecting their usage data. Access to competitors without technically being anti-competitive.

FB will analyze GIF usage patterns (& could possibly front-run trends).

IG already has a food delivery app. pic.twitter.com/XHUzSVdUru
— Koshiek Karan (@iamkoshiek) May 16, 2020

Holy smokes…how is the Facebook purchase of GIPHY going to effect how GIFs work on Twitter?
I’m not sure I like where this is going, y’all... pic.twitter.com/oOSuTWzNYK
— Jon-Stephen Stansel (@jsstansel) May 15, 2020

Giphy was originally a simple search engine people used for searching GIFs, and it was founded back in the year 2013. The first significant product expansion of Giphy’s website was an extension with which introduced sharing content through Facebook. The extension was introduced by Giphy a year after it was founded, and Giphy added Twitter as the next integration quickly after its first product expansion. The latest data from Crunchbase displays that Giphy had raised around $151 million. Giphy was able to raise the amount across five rounds, that were backed by funders such as Lerer, Hippeau, DFJ growth, Betaworks, Lightspeed, and many more.

Read next: Facebook enables Messenger Rooms for Groups and Events

No need to skim through Retweets to read relevant comments because Twitter has brought a fresh update for iOS users

Instagram launches some new ways to silence trolls and cyberbullies

Facebook’s Latest Report reveals insights about Community Standards Enforcement

Facebook Starts Using AI in its Anti Hate Speech and Misinformation Campaign

Facebook Agrees to Payout for Content Moderators Who Developed Mental Illnesses on the Job

Google Is Bringing Facebook-Like Emoji Reactions Feature For SMS Messages In The Recent RCS Update

Uber Announced That Drivers And Riders Will Have To Wear Face Masks, And The Company Will Use AI To Impose The New Law

Facebook is rolling out Avatars Shortcut for more users

Internet Archive's Wayback Machine Warning Users about the Misleading Coronavirus Archived Stories

Facebook News Feature Remains A Question Mark To News Publishers Even After Six Months Of Its Release

Elon Musk under fire again due to thoughts about Artificial Intelligence and its implications on the humans

How to Harness AI to Enhance Customer Experience

Chatbots and AI-Powered Virtual Assistants

AI Analytics

Content Curation and Predictive Personalization

Final Thoughts

Instagram’s New Fundraiser Feature Might be a Gamechanger

Google brings on a tab-grouping feature for its Chrome browser and it is as good as it sounds

Google Chrome Is Working On Media Feeds Feature That Will Allow Websites To Suggest Videos In The Browser

Facebook enables Messenger Rooms for Groups and Events

LinkedIn Launches ‘Virtual Events’ Feature And ‘Polls’ Feature To Enhance User Engagement Across Its Platform

Study Shows Quarter of Most Viewed Covid-19 YouTube Videos Contain Misinformation

Google Earth optimizes its Search results and provides a new, profound user experience

Facebook acquires Giphy For $400 Million, and plans to integrate its GIF library into Instagram