Digital Information World

Facebook recently had to bring some back-end structural changes and now, it has come up with a refreshed desktop platform. As a result, Facebook is announcing some new improved accessibility features and some other interesting and long overdue changes.

The site has made advancements with the React feature, and now they have worked on new accessibility tools, techniques on the basis of advanced technology. These features are specially designed for people with multiple reading disabilities and visual impairments, and who use screen readers. So, the newly crafted site structure is far more inclusive and user-friendly than before. There are more than 4.4 million people in the US alone who need screen readers to navigate through their web pages, and there are many more people out there who can use the newer techniques for improved and increased legibility, Accessible Rich Internet Applications markup, and keyboard navigation tools.

Previously, the font sizing was quite unstable and inconsistent, owing to the differences in the presentation panels on the site. However, Facebook as now improved its text rendering and has made sure that the font sizes are consistent and stable this time. This is especially good to facilitate different user preferences across the platform.

Not only the fonts, but Facebook has also remodeled its heading structure since headings are one of the most crucial things that help the people using screen readers to navigate a page easily. When Facebook adds new features or has an update, the site’s layout changes and with such frequent discrepancies, the heading levels cannot be maintained in proper, logical order for the help of people.

But now, Facebook claims to have overcome the issue and the new system will make the heading more consistent.

There are new developer requirements around text labels for buttons, some improved visual layouts for different features, and an updated and improved keyboard shortcut listing on the screen. All these added details are there to assist people through keyboard commands, and to make navigation easy for everyone with different usage requirements.

These are some great improvements and they are inclusive, helpful, and pretty straight-forward user-friendly for everyone. There is always room for more improvement though. Maybe Facebook can think about including alt-text to the posts? Or have more consideration about some other factors that will bring significant help to the people who use screen readers.

It will be nice to see Facebook considering everything from all angles that will probably help people with different reading or visual impairments.

Thanks to the rising popularity that TikTok has seen over the past year or two, it became inevitable that the hot new video streaming and social media platform would try to penetrate arguably the most profitable market in the world: America. With all of that having been said and out of the way, it is important to note that Donald Trump has been trying quite hard to ban TikTok in the country, claiming that there are issues with the app’s privacy policies that could lead to problems down the line.

While many have noted that American companies such as Facebook and Instagram seem to blatantly make use of user data while disregarding user privacy without any issues, the fact of the matter is that the US President wants to ban this app and there is a good chance that this might end up happening at this point.

Currently, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has started looking for people to potentially purchase their American operation. A big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that this would be a loophole allowing the app to still get an American audience and profit from its foray into that market even if it does end up getting banned.

One major company that is considering making a purchase is Microsoft. Microsoft has a social media platform, LinkedIn, and it has made acquisitions to help LinkedIn’s more business oriented focus. However, the tech giant has also made forays into regular social media, including an attempt to acquire Facebook in 2010. This might be a good opportunity for the tech company, and it is certainly taking this opportunity seriously. However, since there are no numbers available for how much TikTok would be demanding and Microsoft does already have its own platform it remains to be seen if and when this would happen.

Also read: TikTok’s CEO believes that the competition on social media would ‘dry up’ for the US without TikTok

It’s no secret that the vast majority of tech companies out there are not all that careful about your privacy. However, one would assume that the privacy policies of these companies would at least on paper have reasonable features in them that one could rely on. According to a research conducted by the Clemson University School, there are a number of worrisome aspects of the privacy policies of some of the voice assistant apps that these platforms often end up using.

Voice apps, which Alexa refers to as Skills and Google Assistant refers to as Actions, allow these platforms to perform a wide variety of tasks. Sometimes these tasks require collaboration with some kind of a third party app. While these voice apps are certainly great for making things more convenient for the average user, it turns out that they have some issues in their privacy policies a lot of which have to do with things like disclosure of how much data is being used, why it is being used as well as who are the parties that are using this data in the first place.

Researchers scraped as many voice apps as they could, and this came up to a total of 64,720 for Alexa and 2,201 for Google Assistant. It turns out that 11% of all of the voice apps that Google Assistant uses and a whopping 72% of the voice apps used by Alexa don’t have any links that could allow users to check out the privacy policies of these apps. Hundreds of voice apps that have links don’t link to the right pages at all, but instead lead to advertisements and the like which is even more worrying because of the fact that it indicates that absolutely no care whatsoever was taken to ensure that users might be able to get the privacy information that they truly need.

With all of that having been said and out of the way, it is important to note that Amazon’s policies are a little different from Google’s. Its developers don’t need to draft privacy policies if the app being made doesn’t require user data, which is why so many more Alexa apps have problems with the privacy policies that they are offering to their users at the end of the day. This needs to change for the good of the average tech user.

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Last year in October, Google introduced the Password Checkup tool as an optional extension. The tool warns you if your saved login credentials were compromised in breaches affecting third-party services. The tool was originally introduced as a Chrome extension, however, it was then integrated into the online password manager of Chrome. Google planned to integrate the tool into the Chrome browser by the end of the last year, however, the company could not bake it into Chrome. Now, the plan is being completed and the tool has now been integrated into the Chrome browser.

By the end of next month, the company will sunset the Chrome extension, and is already alerting users to uninstall the Password Checkup extension. Considering password reuse, third-party breaches often expose more than just one password. Password Checkup alerts you, and if you try to login using an insecure password, the tool will show you a red Safe Browsing-like dialogue prompting you to change your password.

It is worth noting that your personal information is never revealed to the search engine giant, Google since the tool operates in a privacy-preserving way. Back in October of 2019, the tool was integrated into the Google Account Password Manager. It also warns users about password reuse and weak login credentials.

With the latest integration, the issued a Sunset announcement for users that already use the extension. The Password Checkup extension is still available on the web. You will need to go to passwords.google.com to run the tool. You can also see the list of all login credentials that you have saved in the Chrome browser. However, Google announced that the extension will be removed on August 31st, 2020.

Also read: Google Is Adding New Features To Make Chrome Autofill More Secure, Rolling Out Biometric Confirmation and an Enhanced Login Experience

Google announced that now that the tool is completely integrated into the Chrome browser, and the company will be sunsetting the extension on August 31. After August 31st of this year, the extension will be automatically disabled and you will no longer receive alerts from the Password Checkup extension whether your username or password has been compromised in a third-party data breach.

If you want to still use the service, you will have to log in to the Chrome browser, and you should also make sure that the Chrome browser is up to date. Remember to enable the Chrome security setting that says ‘Warn you if passwords are exposed in a data breach.’ Google has added a convenient ‘Uninstall now’ button to remove the extension which has been downloaded more than a million times.

Read next: Google Play Services Becomes The First Android App To Have 10 Billion Downloads

LinkedIn as recently announced an interesting update in its recruitment algorithms. Harboring more than 690 million profiles and a completely unmatched database and history of helping people in looking for suitable jobs and helping organizations in helping them recruit the best candidates from its database, LinkedIn is not a new name in the corporate world.

Its development teams not only keep on looking for ways of improvement, it keeps on paving more paths for almost everyone out there.

And now, with the latest updates in its recruitment algorithms, it is seeing some amazing response rates and improved hiring activity.

To make the recruitment process more efficient, they have built a new Qualified Applicant Artificial Intelligence model. This model learns all the skills and experience that hirers look for in the applicants. This judgment is based on the activity and engagement of the hirer with past candidates.

This is quite an interesting and almost fool-proof way for the LinkedIn members to find jobs that match best with their profiles, skillset, and experience. This model will also ensure that the hirers do not miss out or overlook promising candidates.

As per LinkedIn, this Qualified Applicant AI model will predict the likelihood of an applicant to get a response for a particular job. With the help of this model, LinkedIn can predict the probability of getting a positive recruiter action based on a particular member applying for a particular job.

LinkedIn has been playing around with applicant recommendation processes. In 2019, they added the famous AI-facilitated candidate recommendation within its Recruiter Platform. Before that, LinkedIn had brought the Skills Matching listing to provide more context to the job seekers. Even way back in 2014, LinkedIn was working on experimentation tools to predict the future career path of its members.

AI-facilitated systems have been proved to lead to a better hiring system against biased human hirers and managers. But machine intelligence should always be used with caution. However, the good results from the latest update have given LinkedIn an edge and enough encouragement that they are on the right path.

LinkedIn has deployed this QA model across Job Seekers, Premium members, and Recruiters. Each business line provides slightly different prospects, like highlighted job results for the member who matches a certain job profile based on the Quality Match Product. For Premium members, Top Applicant product showcases the jobs for which a member will be more competitive than the other applicants. Lastly, hirers in the Recruiter group will see smart ranking applicants and receive notifications when a great matching member applies for the job.

All these are pretty interesting and innovative steps and we can hope for more job chances for more people especially during these difficult times of mid-COVID 19 pandemic and a generalized era of recession in the world.

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Google Search turned fifteen this year, and the company has been upgrading it to bring relevant content to users on the internet. Additionally, Google Search also brings advertisements that might be useful for some. Some people may find those ads frustrating given how much dominance these ads can have over some particular queries. Now, the company is testing a larger font size in Ad headlines with some users.

Google displays larger ad formats in Search, and the change was first spotted by PPC Hubbub on Twitter. PPC Hubbub posted on Twitter stating the company testing a new format for Headlines in the ad slots that appears on the top of the Google Search results page. The first Headline in the ad slots appears in a considerably larger font format as compared to the second Headline. Lower ad slots outside of the top 4 Headlines appears to be normal.

The user even posted a video on Twitter to show the difference in the size of titles that appears in normal Google search results as compared to others on the search results page. In these ads, their first line can be up to fifty percent larger as compared to other texts on the search results page. Well, this is something that can surely grab the attention of users. It seems that the overall footprint of the ad block is not affected by the bigger font size

Currently, it seems to be a new test, and it is not possible to replicate this behavior on any device in the Google Search app unless a user is included in the test. It is not yet clear whether the new test will be implemented in the future or not. It is worth noting that larger ad headlines in Google Search can be useful for marketers, providing extra emphasis to what advertisers want to convey to people. On the other hand, you may also note that many don’t like to see excessive advertisements on apps.

Moreover, the timing is not too great as well since Google’s CEO was questioned several times about how the company’s services were being pushed via Search, in the antitrust hearing. Google is always testing new things and the company has not yet confirmed whether it will roll out the new changes or not. Furthermore, we are not sure whether the changes would be released for only the top ad, or all the ads on the search results page.

Google testing new format for Headlines in top ad slots. Looks like Headline 1 is much larger than Headline 2. Doesn’t appear to be happening for lower ad slots outside of top 4 @rustybrick #ppcchat pic.twitter.com/WEncaF1vO5
— PPC hubbub 💬 (@ppchubbub) July 30, 2020

Read next: Google Maps: Users Will Now Have Their Own Profiles, and Can Follow Each Other

Ae per the recent reports, Pinterest has finally gained around 416 million monthly active users, and 49 million new customers started using Pinterest during the coronavirus pandemic. In the Q2 of 2020, Pinterest also saw a very slight increase in revenue, approximately 4%.

Due to the lockdown and social distancing measures that were implemented because of COVID-19, people got more engaged in looking for ideas for home decorations, inspirations for new distance learning, self-care and work from home measures, looking for building vegetable gardens, planning activities for kids, seeking ways to stay connected and entertained and to shop relevant products online through, and all of this increased their usage of Pinterest. This helped Pinterest to gain a 39% Year-over-Year growth, which is greater than other tech apps like Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter.

This result is also better than Q1’s growth, which was almost nil. So, within three months, Pinterest managed to gain momentum and show remarkable growth is something truly commendable. This also escalated the shares of Pinterest by 25%.

Pinterest is considered as a virtual mall, a directory that provides information and connection links for everything, especially for eCommerce. The Pinterest community is getting very much used to shop online, and with the limitations and inhibitions of COVID-19, the trends of online shopping have increased remarkably, and inarguably, Pinterest has played a major role in the growth of eCommerce too.

Pinterest’s streamlined connection process was launched in May, and the catalog ingestion increased by 350% sequentially in Q2, with a 10 times growth pattern in the first six months of 2020. This is all because businesses are looking for ways to merge their sales and operations online to keep the business running amidst the lockdowns, and Pinterest is the place that is popular with the shoppers. Therefore, businesses are showing a lot of interest in the app.

The app has seen a 4% increase in Year-over-Year revenue. This increase is small, and it is because of the reduced advertiser demand during the pandemic. The rate of increase in revenue is also less, but if we look at the overall picture, the app is showing slow but steady growth, is becoming popular with the masses, and gives potential in eCommerce on a broader scale.

Pinterest can get more monetization options in markets outside the US with better and more significant opportunities. It is already trying to explore the ad tools in international markets, but it needs to focus more on different areas to increase its revenue generation.

Pinterest also claims that there is a significant increase in the number of people returning to the platform, with users less than 25 years of age taking interest in the app. But this growth in the monthly active users is owing to the special circumstances, and it is quite understandable of this MAU growth declines or does not increase in the same way in the coming year.

Pinterest is also focusing on new steps to build a truly inclusive and diverse community culture and to reflect these values in their products. Some of these measures include improving the representation of content for the Pinners, training for unconscious bias within the workforce, and to give unbiased representation for senior levels. All these steps are being taken concerning the recent #BlackLivesMatter protests.

All these areas where Pinterest is focusing now will definitely help in its steady growth process.

Have you ever thought about an AI-based machine playing poker with you? If your imagination has gone that wild then Facebook is all set to make it a reality with its new general AI framework called Recursive Belief-based Learning (ReBeL) that can even perform better than humans in poker and with little domain knowledge as compared to the previous poker setups made with AI.

With ReBel, Facebook is also going for multi-agent interactions - which means that the general algorithms will soon have the capacity to be deployed on a large scale and for multi-agent settings as well. The potential applications include workings like auction, negotiations, and cybersecurity or the operation of self-driving cars and trucks.

Facebook’s plan of combining reinforcement learning with search for AI model training can lead to some remarkable advancements. This is because Reinforcement Learning is based on agents learning to achieve goals in order to maximize rewards whereas search is basically defined as a process that starts from the plan to the stage of setting the goal.

One such example is of Deepmind’s Alpha Zero that is based on a similar program to deliver state-of-the-art performance in board games like chess, shogi, and Go. However, the combination falls short when it is being applied for games like poker because of imperfect information that can arise as a result of how the situation in the game changes. Actions then take help from probability or the playing strategy.

Hence, proposing a solution to the problem in the form of ReBel, Facebook researchers have now expanded the notion of “game state” while including the agent’s belief which relies on the state they are in while playing - counting the common knowledge and policies of other players as well.

When working, ReBel trains two AI models; one is of a value network and the other is of policy network. There is reinforcement learning happening with search during the self-play which eventually has resulted into a flexible algorithm that now holds the potential to beat human players.

For a high level, ReBel operates with public belief states rather than going for world states. If that has surprised you then public belief states are there to generalize the notion of “state value” in games with imperfect information like Poker. PBS is also more often regarded as a common-knowledge probability distribution over a limited arrangement of possible actions and states, which we sometimes call history as well.

Now in perfect-information games, PBS can be distilled down to histories just like the way it distills down to world states in two-player zero-sum games. Not to forget that a PBS is actually the decisions that a player can and also the outcomes of the possibilities on one hand.

As soon as ReBel starts to work for every new game, it creates a “subgame” in the beginning which is very much similar to the original one, except for the fact that its roots go back to the initial PBS. The algorithm actually wins by repeating the runtime of “equilibrium-finding” algorithm and then take advantage of the trained value network to create estimates on every stage of the iteration. Furthermore, with enforcement learning, the values come out easily and then added back to the network as training examples. The policies in the “subgame” are also added as examples. The process continues to repeat itself until PBS becomes the new subgame root and completes a certain accuracy threshold.

The researchers also benchmarked ReBel, as a part of the experiment, for games of heads-up no-limit Texas hold’em poker, Liar’s Dice, and turn endgame hold’em. They used 128 PCs with eight graphic cards only to generate the stimulated game data and of course place random bets and stack sizes (ranging from 5000 to 25000 chips) to test its abilities.

ReBel was also trained on a game with one of the best heads up poker players in the world Don Kim and the results turned out to be ReBel playing faster than two seconds per hand across 7,500 hands and how it didn’t take more than 5 seconds for any decision. Overall ReBel scored 165 thousandths - which is a pretty good result when compared to the previous poker playing system by the social media giant Libratus that resulted in 147 thousandths.

To prevent cheating, Facebook has decided that they will not release ReBel’s codebase for Poker. The company only open-sourced Liar Dice’s implementation, which according to researchers is easier to understand and adjust.

Photo: Josh Edelson / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images

Read next: Facebook Boasts 2.7 Billion Monthly Active Users In The Second Quarter of 2020, 3.14 Billion Combined MAU across Whatsapp, Messenger, Instagram and FB

WhatsApp beta tracker WABetaInfo has recently reported that WhatsApp is testing 138 emojis in the WhatsApp version 2.20.197.6 beta for Android. These emojis are reported to be slightly different and unique from the range that is currently available on WhatsApp.

Users who are interested to have a look at these emojis can do so by joining the Google Play Beta Program and then downloading the latest beta version of WhatsApp 2.20.197.6 for Android. These emojis can also be downloaded in the APK file from APK Mirror. However, the official release date of these emojis for the public is not known yet.

The latest beta version has a lot of interesting updates and it seems that WhatsApp is going to revamp the functional dynamics of the app. A few days ago, WhatsApp rolled out animated stickers for both Android and iOS users. These animated sticker packs are available along with the regular sticker packs and they are believed to provide an excellent and efficient means of communication.

This list of initial animated sticker packs includes Rico's Sweet Life, Bright Days, Playful Piyomaru, Moody Foodies, and Chummy Chum Chums.

Now new emojis are going to be there, and this makes things pretty exciting for the users. Both Emojis and Stickers are considered as a wonderful and precise means of communication. They not only help the users express themselves easily and concisely, but they also provide a great deal of entertainment on the platform.

There are many people out there who used to create emojis from different keys, punctuation marks, and signs when emojis were not so common in the apps. When WhatsApp became a regular mode of communication for the public, they started introducing new and interesting emojis with time, and now, WhatsApp already provides a great range of emoticons/emojis for the users. With these additional 138 emojis, more fun and enhanced communication are guaranteed!

As per WABetaInfo, these new emojis will be slightly different, with the inclusion of new color tones in clothes and skin tones in some of the emojis. However, these differences are quite subtle and not to prominently visible in one glance.

Some new emojis showing a person on a wheelchair, new hand gestures, new caps, and a person playing golf seem to be visible at the moment from WABetaInfo’s report.

Recently, a ‘Mute Always’ option has been developed for WhatsApp, which will let the users put notifications from a person or a group on mute/silent for the lifetime. A new ‘Advanced Search Messages’ option has also been included in the latest beta version of WhatsApp, along with the ‘Expiring messages’ feature that has recently been added too.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology has expanded rapidly in recent years. Today, it is present everywhere, from face-recognition in Amazon stores to help bots on customer service websites.

For businesses, it is essential to analyze and adopt new tech trends, and to harness the power of expanding AI capabilities to become more efficient and productive - and to stay competitive.

One prime way of doing so is to dive deep into the AI features that are integrated into most modern business phone services that run on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Here is an overview of the most useful AI and machine learning applications that top-range VoIP business phone services offer their clients - and how you can tap into their power to boost your own business.

1 - Interactive Voice Response

“Please press 1 if you are an existing customer. Press 2 if -“

“1!”

“Please press 1 for customer service. Press 2 for -“

“1!”

“Please press 1 if your request relates to -“

“Argh!”

This is an exchange with which all customers are familiar. Calling a business, and then spending minutes listening to multiple rounds of a recorded voice reeling off a menu of choices, before finally getting routed to an extension. Only to end up being on hold for half an hour.

More likely than not, a caller who has gone through this ordeal will be irritated by the time they get to speak to an actual human company representative.

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) eliminates the process.

Photo: pressfoto/ Freepik

Based on AI-powered voice recognition technology, IVR receptionists let callers quickly state the purpose of their call and their expectations in their own words. The request is then processed within a fraction of a second, and the call routed to the right extension.

Not only does this save callers an immense amount of frustration, but it also lightens the load on company lines since requests are processed much more efficiently.

2 - Call Transcription

Another handy application of AI in business phone services is call transcription. The same voice recognition technology that powers IVR can also be used to transform call recordings into text documents.

VoIP features such as voicemail-to-email and voicemail-to-text are based on this principle. As the names of these features suggest, they take voicemail messages, transcribe them, and then send them to your email inbox, or your chosen messaging platform.

That means that no matter where you are - in a meeting, on your commute, or on a business trip - you can instantly catch up on your voicemail messages without having to wait to get back to the office. It’s also convenient since you can then respond quickly, systematically file them to be taken care of later, or archive them entirely.

In the same manner, AI can transcribe entire conversations between customers and company representatives. Such conversations can then be stored in internal databases or applications like Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. Down the line, such a virtual paper trail comes in handy in case of disputes. It’s also useful when you’re looking to create a personal connection with a customer and want to refer back to information they gave you earlier.

3 - Translation Assistance

Today, Deep Learning translation AIs can produce incredibly accurate renderings of texts and conversations in a matter of seconds.

In a business world that is becoming increasingly international, this can be a saving grace. With customers, team members, and business partners based around the globe, having AI-based translation technology built into business phone services facilitates communication. And paves the way to business success.

Whether it’s the transcription and subsequent translation of voicemail, the instant translation of messages sent by partners overseas, or a vocabulary popup for a company agent on a foreign-language call, AI can be an invaluable asset in navigating international waters.

4 - Analytics

One of the most fundamental advantages of AI and machine learning algorithms is that they have the power to deal with staggering amounts of data in a matter of seconds. And to provide in-depth, actionable insights for businesses to optimize their strategies.

In VoIP business phone services, AI-driven analytics can be used to gain better insights into call metrics, caller behavior, and the performance of individual company agents. Over time, as data accumulates, the algorithms will become smarter, more adept at recognizing patterns, and at reporting vital information. On the basis of this information, businesses can act.

Delving even deeper, AI-powered analytics can also be used to systematically mine call transcripts for nuggets of information. In conjunction with CRM systems, this allows you to optimize personalization for everything from follow-up calls and text message campaigns to website visits and email marketing.

5 - Process Automation

Finally, a strong suit of AI applications in general, and their VoIP versions in particular, is that they can help streamline and automate processes. Boosting your business’s efficiency has never been easier.

On the basis of the data delivered by analytics, you can perform a review of various processes in your enterprise. With some VoIP providers, you can even have your AI application produce such a report automatically.

Once you’re aware of the performance of individual agents, teams, process flows, and internal structures, you can use AI and machine learning to improve areas of low efficiency.

You can do this by harnessing AI to do anything from streamline workflows by automatically shuffling tasks between agents based on their performance, or automating cumbersome and monotonous processes such as the scheduling of follow-ups.

The Bottom Line

In the modern business world, AI has become an integral part of efficient and effective operations in everything from marketing to logistics.

Many modern business phone services capitalize on this technology to provide the best possible user experience to their clients.

However, the extent to which AI and machine learning features are implemented in VoIP platforms varies between providers. Therefore, the extent to which these technologies are available should be a key area of consideration when you’re figuring out how to choose a VoIP service from the many offers on the market.

At the end of the day, with the right business phone service, and the right tools, AI has the power to boost your business communications.

Nearly one out of every five adults in the US get their news from social media platforms. This has started to become quite the trend, and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that it is just a lot easier to get bite sized, easily digestible bits of news from social media during your daily scrolling than it is from actual news organizations. The problem with this is that this has resulted in an increased focus on headlines without much nuance being drawn from the bulk of the article.

Research conducted by the Pew Research Center has revealed that the 18% of American adults that get their news from social media don’t really follow major stories apart from reading their headlines on social media platforms and reading the opinions of those that really aren’t all that qualified to give any opinions.

25% of respondents to the three surveys that the research center conducted said that they got most of their news from news websites or apps, 16% each said that they got their news from either cable or local news channels and 13% said that they got their news from network channels. 8% of respondents preferred radio news whereas 3% said that they still preferred print media. Hence, social media is a more popular way to get news than virtually all other sources of news apart from news websites and apps, which is concerning when you take into account the fact that these sources take a lot of nuance out of the news that is being received. Something really needs to be done about this because of the fact that 18% of US adults are not as knowledgeable as they need to be, and this is particularly concerning when you take into account the fact that this is an election year.

Facebook has recently added licensed music videos, a new feature that is almost similar to the music video experience that YouTube provides. Official music videos will be published on Facebook in the hopes of providing a new and better social experience for the viewers.

Facebook’s ‘music experience’ is already available in India and Thailand, and now it is going to debut in the US also.

Music Business development Vice President Tamara Hrivnak and entertainment vice president Vijae Raji have termed this new venture of Facebook as a ‘music experience’ of its own kind in an online post. The reason why they think that it is going to be something unique is that Facebook and its developmental and experimental teams believe that this venture will bring together official music videos, with promised premier content from ace artists like J. Balvin, Karol G, Sebastian Yatra, and many more.

Facebook believes that with this venture of official music videos on its platform, the users will be able to experience something more than just watching a video. There will be amazing social experiences with the help of their musical partners that will bring new ways to enjoy the music, share it and while doing so, connect with other people who share similar musical interests and passion.

Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and BMG are amongst the US partners who will be collaborating with Facebook from now on.

Not much else is known about this ‘music experience’ so far, but from the initial talks and looks, it seems to be almost similar or pretty much inspired by Google-owned video sharing service YouTube. And that is quite a turn off for many users. Facebook is already known for its notorious attempts to copy the patterns of other famous apps, some of which fail miserably!

Although YouTube has a completely different and extremely variable video library, with more than 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook is currently talking about only musical videos and not any other types of videos like the ones that YouTube provides. So, in this way, it seems that Facebook is not being a copy-cat and maybe this music venture is as interesting and unique as their teams claim it to be. Maybe the new social experience they are talking about is really going to be different from YouTube.

Also read: Facebook Boasts 2.7 Billion Monthly Active Users In The Second Quarter of 2020, 3.14 Billion Combined MAU across Whatsapp, Messenger, Instagram and FB

One understandable thing is the need for Facebook to come up with such an app or feature. People all over the globe started turning towards video-streaming and sharing apps, and other tech apps for entertainment, information, and communication amidst the coronavirus pandemic. So, when the ‘demand’ increases, the sources of ‘supply’ have to increase too.

How different is this venture? This can only be known once it becomes officially available worldwide for the masses.

Snapchat has recently published a new report that gives interesting insights into the way consumers’ video consumption behavior is evolving. This study also gives good information for the kind of content that people are mostly getting more inclined towards. So, for businesses that are looking to reach out to younger audiences especially, this study provides a lot of recommendations too.

This report is based on the research study conducted by The National Research Group and involves over 1000 respondents from ages 13-35 in the US. Snap also provided localized versions of this study for KSA and the UK.

The first thing that this report highlight is the fact that usage of smartphones has increased dramatically since last year, and the media consumption with daily engagement has grown to 40% in 2020 alone. People from Gen Z and the Millennials are found to have increased watch time on their smartphones, and 73% of consumers are watching mobile videos in comparison to the previous year.

In 2019, 65% of Gen Z and Millennials were into watching videos on their smartphones.

Another important thing to note is that mobile videos outpace desktop viewership. People are generally spending approx. 50 minutes with digital video on OTT, connected devices, or gaming consoles. They spend 47 minutes watching videos on mobiles, and hardly 24 minutes watching videos on a desktop or a laptop even.

This shows a remarkable consumption behavior shift in recent times.

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, 85% of consumers watched more video content on their smartphones, while 82% are watching more streaming/ on-demand shows. And 61% are watching live TV.

In 2010, smartphones were considered quite ubiquitous, but in the early 2010s, apps that allowed user-generated videos and content started gaining popularity, and suddenly people were hooked to them. Now, in 2020, there is a remarkable rise in the Premium mobile video watch time.

These kinds of behavioral changes are especially important for effective content and marketing strategy planning.

If we look at the video content forms, it has been noted that 82% of Gen Z and the Millennials are watching user-generated short-form video content every day.

Also read: The second-quarter results of Snapchat show a small decline in business, but nothing alarming so far amidst the coronavirus pandemic

52% of these consumers watch long-form TV shows every day, and 49% of them watch short-form premium videos every day, which are videos of 10 minutes or less.

This shows that while all forms of video content are being consumed, the highest percentage is of the short-form user-generated content, something close to the Stories format that most apps these days provide.

According to this report, the points to consider for new business opportunities include the things that can help people connect with these businesses. The key factors of engaging mobile video content are that they should be:

Personal
Shareworthy
Relatable

Snapchat has shared some insights into the most popular mobile video genres amongst Gen Z and the Millennials.

63% of them watch Music videos, 50% watch Entertainment videos/ Pop culture news, 63% of them are into Gaming and eSports, 49% of them are into Beauty, 44% of them are into Food, Cooking and How to do tutorials, 41% watch Vloggers and Influencers, and National/Local news, 33% are into sitcoms, and 32% of the consumers are watching Animal content and Reality TV.

Google often comes under fire from the public and the media and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that the tech giant is often accused of not giving user privacy as much thought as it should. Google’s top players are well aware of how precarious a situation like this can get, and this is why they are working on new tools that are going to help users acquire more information regarding how certain digital ads were selected for them and what kinds of data this was initially based on.

With all of that having been said and out of the way, it is important to note that one of the features that Google is going to be improving is the “Why This Ad?” feature. The great thing about this feature is that it has a tendency to be widely used with about 15 million interactions occurring every single day. However, the information provided by this feature is often not all that adequate, and because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up giving people the wrong idea about how their data is being used, Google is planning on increasing how much information you eventually get as well as the quality of the information provided.

The new tool that is coming is called the Ad Transparency Spotlight. This tool is primarily meant to give users information that they might need, but Google plans on introducing a few privacy tools as well. All in all these tools are going to be quite helpful to Google as the tech giant tries to improve its image. Transparency is essential otherwise users are going to avoid using the platform as much as they can and this will give the chance for small competitors to enter the market and grow.

According to recent developments - that are surfacing on the platform already and the company is also carrying out surveys for - Twitter is in plans to introduce new features that will become a part of its paid service. The list includes things that Twitteratis have lately wished for like “undo send” button and badges to be allotted to individuals’ employers.

Matt Navara, a social media app researcher and someone who is known for revealing authentic leaks shared the screenshots of the survey that read “What would you be willing to pay for” along with a number of potential feature options.

If the “undo send” button comes to life then it will provide users the opportunity to edit or recall a tweet for up to 30 seconds. This seems to be an incremental update from the current days where Twitter users are bound to delete their tweets if they have to edit it or fix some information.

Furthermore, with the badges feature (that would specifically be more of use for journalists) a user will get the badge on their profile which will be linked to business they own or work for. So, in case of journalists, the badge will represent the magazine the person writes for.

The survey is designed in such a way that the one asked to give an opinion have to rank the features from most important to least important and the list does continue with canned responses to select for faster replies, job recruiting features, custom stickers, hashtags, and the most important debate of seeing less or no ads at all.

As Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is aiming to take the company on another level, he has openly shared his plans in the investor call last week that Twitter will keep the bar high for consumers by introducing the kind of aspects on the platform that will remain to be worth the value for money. Everyone at Twitter is planning for new revenue lines right in accordance with the advertising strategies.

Here’s a few more... pic.twitter.com/PFl2OkhjH2
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) July 31, 2020

Twitter is also asking users if they’d be willing to pay to see NO ads on social media...

h/t @WFBrother pic.twitter.com/YHvKDDTHLh
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) July 31, 2020

NetMarketShare is a service that tracks the usage share of web technologies. Recently, NetMarketShare released a new market share report for July 2020.

As per this report, amongst the Operating Systems share by version, Windows 10’s shares have gone a little up in comparison to June 2020. Then, the share was 58.93%, and for July, the share is 59.59%.

On the other hand, Windows 7 seems to continue spiraling downwards as it continues to see a decline in shares. In June, its share was 23.53%, but in July 2020, the share has further gone down to 23.11%.

However, the overall share of Windows has increased slightly. Previously it was 86.69%, and in July, it is 87.59%.

Coming to the Operating System Market Share, there is sad news for macOS. Previously, its share was 9.22%, which was already quite less. But now, it is 7.08%, which is a considerable drop in comparison to Linux.

Linux’s share is continuously increasing. Previously it was 3.61%, but now it is 4.73%. Some people find this trend quite mysterious and incomprehensible, especially when macOS is in the line of fire at the moment. Many people have now started to believe that if Linux’s share continues to increase, there is a possibility that it might overtake macOS completely in a couple of months.

While macOS seems to be suffering, Chrome OS seems to be in a deeper pit. It has only 0.42% of the share, which has increased a bit from 0.41% since June 2020.

But this is only for the Chrome Operating System. Chrome Browser seems to be the king of browsers in the Browser Market Share currently!

Chrome browser had a 70% market share previously, but now, it is accounting for more than 71% of share in the market.

Microsoft Edge had 8.07% of share in June 2020, but now, it has slightly gone up to 8.09%.

While this is quite disappointing for Microsoft users, it is quite understandable. The Classic Edge was quite unique, but Microsoft did not do proper justice to it. The updates were slow, and there were complaints of browser freezing all the time.

On the other hand, Google was and still is very good and regular with Chrome updates, and inarguably keeps bringing interesting features off and on. Besides, it is very user-friendly and almost everyone uses it, which shows its immense popularity.

Now with the latest Edge version, Microsoft is trying to redeem itself, but it still has to go a long way. Microsoft especially needs to give a good treatment to its new version of the Edge browser if it wants to be able to stand in a proper competition with the mighty Chrome.

Amongst other browsers, Firefox saw a decline in share from 7.58% to 7.36%. While, Internet Explorer also saw a decline from 4.53% to 4.23% share.

Read next: Google Chrome Tests New Tab Freezing and Media Control Options

In some time, you can now also expect your iPhone to become a mobile payment terminal as well - all thanks to Apple’s newly acquired startup Mobeewave Inc. which will now help the company in making this technology a reality.

For those of you, who are hearing about Mobeewave Inc. for the first time, the start-up has been known for introducing a unique system that lets users to tap their credit cards or smartphones on the other phone for making any specific payment. Their developers have made the processing possible with the help of an app and hardware specifications of Near Field Communications, or NFC chip which are already present in iPhones ever since 4s came out in 2014.

According to Bloomberg, Apple has paid about $100 million to Mobeewave Inc. and the acquired company is said to have a dozen employees which the Cupertino based technology giant has accepted retain. However, all of the employees will continue working from Montreal.

In recent times, Apple has continued to buy smaller technology companies all with the hopes of bringing in unmatched innovations for future iPhone models. This one in particular seems to be more aimed at improving the Apple Pay option, which the company first launched in 2014. Due to it users can now pay for physical goods with a single tap in selected retail stores.

Last year, the company also took the whole process one step further by launching its own Apple Card. Now with Mobeewave inc.’s integration, one can expect iPhones to make payments without the need for additional hardware. However, this move will put Apple head to head with Square Inc. which is already regarded as the leading provider of payment hardware and software in the mobile phone and tablet world.

Mobeewave Inc. has also partnered up with Samsung Electronics Co. last year to integrate the same technology. In fact, Samsung’s venture arm has also been one of the investors in the start-up with a contribution of $20 million as per the estimates of PitchBook.

This isn’t the only deal Apple has made this year as the list also includes weather app Dark Sky, virtual-reality content broadcasting company NextVR, Voysis, Xnor.ai and Inductiv to improve Siri and artificial intelligence, and Fleetsmith for enterprise device management. But what Apple is planning to do with the technology seems more enticing.

There’s no doubt that the ongoing pandemic has impacted businesses worldwide. To study these impacts, Salesforce conducted a survey on how shoppers are connecting with brands on various channels and what type of content are they finding compelling during times like these. More than 3500 people from all over the world took part in this survey.

It goes without saying that COVID-19 has resulted in changes in how consumers interact with brands. To keep up with these changing standards, Salesforce surveys the masses every two weeks.

The latest survey results show that buyers (belonging to all demographics) are finding social media the most appealing channel. TV ads are next in line in terms of noticeability, which is surprising considering how there’s been a hefty reduction in the investment amount allocated for TV ad spend.

Tips and Tricks or How-to-digital guides have captured the interest of consumers and, in turn, made it possible for brands to display sound leadership.

The survey results also showed that while millennials are more likely to opt for personalized offers, Gen Z is barely interested in such types of offers.

Another interesting finding from the survey was that brands have encountered a confusing issue i.e. buyers prefer less volume of brand content but a diverse collection of brand content. Moreover, although offering discounts is a universally-accepted practice for engaging a buyer’s interest, most consumers (58%) are vouching for brands to reduce or drop discounts if that could help them retain their employees.

While COVID-19 has already stopped us from celebrating various holidays and festivals, consumers are now ready to bring normalcy back into their lives, and their urge to get presented with holiday promotions is a proof of that.

As mentioned above, social media has emerged as the channel that has grabbed maximum consumers’ (65%) attention. Video material (especially the sound leadership webinars) and virtual content are also preferred by most buyers. Additionally, six in every 10 consumers like detailed digital content published by brands and packed with information about the things they are interested in.

Also read: Snapchat conducts a new study to understand the shift and evolution in the consumers’ video consumption behaviors

More than half of the surveyed buyers (54%) claimed that they pay attention to social media brand content all the time or frequently. 53% of the participants said that Email marketing manages to grab their attention always or regularly. 53% of the buyers also said that they are likely to pay attention to TV ads in some capacity.

While the social media channel is the most observed one in almost 70% of the surveyed markets, TV ads take the top spot in the UK and Australia. In America, social media grabs the #1 spot in the list of most noticed brand communication types, followed by email and then TV ads.

In the UK and Brazil, Digital Video platforms such as Prime Video and YouTube get the most notoriety from consumers. Plus, display ads’ performances are quite impressive in Brazil and France.

When it comes to the cadence of messages, 59% of the consumers called for it to be decreased, while 58% stated that such messages’ variety should be increased. Also, 73% of the buyers voted in favor of these messages focusing more on products and less on brand messages.

Interestingly, 76% of consumers believe that brands should modify their messages and promotions in accordance with the ongoing conditions. Moreover, relevance, safety, and accessibility are the filters that consumers are applying while spending their money.

With the economy taking a hit and people losing their jobs left and right since the emergence of the virus, buyers are getting more careful about spending their money and because of this, brands have to adapt by focusing on speed to value, personalization, and intelligence.

Source: Salesforce.

Read next: Why Online Reviews Matter and How Businesses Can Improve Them (Infographics)

Google Chrome 84 is finally available for all the desktop users since last month, and Google seems to have continued the war against annoying website notifications that it began with Google Chrome 80.

Now that Chrome 86 is in the testing phases, TheWindowsClub has recently reported that Google is testing a feature that will set an expiration time for web notification subscriptions.

A user would have to enable this feature, but once that is done, they can choose a time and date for some web notifications that they have allowed to receive. After the expiration time, these notifications would stop on their own. This way, a website will not be able to pester the users or abuse the notifications for push ads and any other content after a set time period.

Google is testing this default expiration time to be around 90 days, but it may change eventually.

Currently, this feature has not reached the Canary channels of Chrome 86, and it might take some time for it to reach the beta testing phase also. So, a polished version of this feature may not be available anytime soon. But the news that Google is working out something like this is enough to make the users happy and content at the moment. This feature was an absolute necessity for many people out there, and it was long overdue that some browser takes an action against all those annoying web notifications and websites that would continue spamming until either their notifications were allowed or the user would give up on the site altogether to avoid them!

The Chrome 84 also has the SameSite cookie changes that Google started implementing since Chrome 80 to prevent system security issues because of cookie vulnerabilities.

Secondly, Chrome 84 also comes with the ability to block all kinds of intrusive and annoying web notifications, including 'follow' requests from websites that keep popping up on the screen on every visit.

Now, users can simply click the bell icon in the address bar and opt for the ‘Continue blocking’ option. This will prevent the pop-ups to reappear on the screen again.

Another feature that Chrome 84 has is that when the user tries to download an EXE, APK, or any other executable files over an HTTP or an HTTPS page, the browser will notify the desktop users and provide an added layer of security to protect their system from any potential threats.

So, it seems that Google Chrome has is very serious about these web notifications and has been introducing one feature after another just to curb these notifications that waste a user’s time and make the user’s browsing experience pretty annoying.

Princeton University published new research which suggests that 4 out of Big 5 personality traits can be predicted by analyzing the smartphone usage patterns of a person. The Big Five model is a widely used system in psychology for organizing personality traits and was founded back in the 1980s.

According to researchers at Princeton, the data they collected could partially predict four personality traits including openness to experience, conscientiousness, emotional ability, and extroversion. Researchers were not able to reliably determine the fifth personality trait: agreeableness.

The researchers gathered the data on the communication and social behavior, music consumption, usage of apps, overall smartphone activity, activity levels, and mobility of users. Some data streams proved to be more useful as compared to other data streams like predicting love of order facet of conscientiousness.

The researchers stated that the accuracy of these predictions is similar to the predictions based on digital footprints from social media, and it demonstrates the possibility of obtaining data related to someone’s private traits from their smartphone usage patterns. The team of researchers noted the obvious ethical concerns in their report and wrote that the current work serves as a harbinger of benefits as well as the dangers of the widespread use of behavioral data passively obtained from the smartphones on people.

Additionally, the team listed the ability to use the gathered-data in staff recruitment processes instead of mere estimates extracted from self-reported questionnaires. We should not underestimate the negative consequences of the routine collection and uncontrollable trade of users’ personal smartphone data. Researchers wrote that evidence indicates that the data is being used for psychological targeting to influence the actions of people.

PredictiveHire is an Australian startup and reckons that it can tell whether a person is more likely to job hop or change jobs frequently, based only on the responses of job candidates to a chatbot’s open-ended questions.

PredictiveHire’s researchers published a paper and wrote that the language you use while responding to questions in an interview about situational judgment and past behavior is predictive of your likelihood to job hop. In the HEXACO model, the company discovered a positive correlation between the openness to experience trait of a candidate and their likelihood to job hop.

Cornell University researchers reviewed vendors of algorithmic pre-employment assessments in 2019 and discovered that most of them were a fairer alternative to human-based recruitment. Algorithmic hiring is becoming a labor rights issue, and an adjunct associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Nathan Newman, states that big data is being used to drive down the wages of employees.

Read next: Study Shows Those Who Get News from Social Media Are Less Informed and Engaged

Facebook provides an overview of some latest improvements in the accessibility features, keyboard shortcuts and rendering text font

Microsoft Might Buy TikTok if Trump Bans It

Research Reveals Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa Voice Apps Have “Problematic” Privacy Policies

Google Has Integrated the Password Checkup Extension into the Chrome Browser, Google to Sunset the Extension by August 31st

LinkedIn updates its recruitment algorithms for improved job response rates and better chances of hiring

In A New Test, Google Is Displaying Considerably Larger Font in Ad Headlines in Search for Some Users

Pinterest boasts 416 million monthly active users and 4% revenue growth in Q2 of 2020

Facebook's New Algorithm Can Play Poker And Beat Humans At It

WhatsApp is testing 138 unique emojis for the upcoming version for Android

5 Amazing Ways Modern Business Phone Services Harness Artificial Intelligence

1 - Interactive Voice Response

2 - Call Transcription

3 - Translation Assistance

4 - Analytics

5 - Process Automation

The Bottom Line

Study Shows Those Who Get News from Social Media Are Less Informed and Engaged

Facebook is bringing a YouTube-inspired licensed music video experience to its social network in the US

Snapchat conducts a new study to understand the shift and evolution in the consumers’ video consumption behaviors

Google Announces New Digital Advertising Privacy Tools

Twitter Might Introduce Employer Badges and "Undo Send" Button As A Part of Paid Subscription

NetMarketShare’s recent report suggests Google Chrome reigning browser world with 71% market shares

Your iPhones Might Become Payment Terminals Soon

Social Media vs. TV: Consumers Reveal their Preferred Channel for Interacting with Brands!

Google Chrome is testing a feature that will set an expiry time for annoying web notifications

According To a Latest Research from Princeton University, Your Smartphone Usage Can Tell a Lot About Your Personality