TECHNOLOGY
Facebook loses daily users for 1st time, ad growth slows
The massive stock drop instantly wiped out roughly $200 billion in its market value. The Meta-owned Facebook platform registered 1.929 billion daily users in the fourth quarter of 2021 -- from 1.93 billion in the previous quarter. The company confirmed late on Wednesday that it is the first sequential decline in its history.
Facing backlash, Spotify reports 180 mn paid subscribers
Monthly active users on the platform grew by 18% (on-year) to reach 406 million. Advertising represented 15% of Spotify's revenue in the fourth quarter (October-December period), the company said late on Wednesday. "We're trying to balance creative expression with the safety of our users, and of course, this is a very complicated issue, a said Spotify CEO Daniel Ek over the Rogan controversy that forced several high-profile celebrities to leave the music streaming platform.
YouTube's video player getting new look on Android, iOS
The old version hid most of those features behind a swipe-up gesture on the "more videos" section, where the new version puts them front and center, relegating related videos to a button in the corner, reports The Verge.
Netflix expanding its gaming line-up, adds Riot Games
Among the new addition is Riot Games' 'Hextech Mayhem', a League of Legends story, which is also available through other gaming platforms and marketplaces, including Nintendo Switch, Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG.com, where it is offered as a paid download of $9.99, reports TechCrunch. Notably, this is a fairly new game that just became available to other gaming platforms in November 2021.
Musk blocks teen who asked for $50k to stop tracking his jet
According to The Guardian, while Musk offered Sweeney $5,000 to delete the bot @ElonJet, Sweeney asked for $50,000. Musk declined to pay and has now blocked Sweeney on the micro-blogging site. The billionaire reached out to the 19-year-old last November to express concern about the bot.
Google purged 500K bad content in India in Dec, user complaints up
The tech giant received 31,497 complaints from users in India in December. These complaints were related to third-party content that is believed to violate local laws or personal rights on various Google platforms. The 94,173 pieces of content was removed under various categories like Copyright: 93,693, Trademark: 438, Court Order: 37, Graphic Sexual Content, Circumvention and others. Google said that it also removed 405,911 pieces of content as part of automated detection in the said period.
Mozilla announces new privacy features for its mobile, desktop VPN
"We are always looking for ways to offer privacy within our family of products and, after a successful rollout in English in November, we are combining one of our users' favorite Firefox Add-ons, Multi-Account Containers, with Mozilla VPN, our fast and easy-to-use VPN service, to offer a unique, privacy solution that is only available in Firefox," the company said. Firefox's Multi-Account Containers would allow users to separate different parts of their online activities.
Telegram's latest update adds stickers, improves message reactions
Telegram said that its animated stickers have unmatched quality and efficiency -- needing less than 30 KB of data per sticker. However, creating such stickers requires experience and specialised software such as Adobe Illustrator. "Like always, you can publish your packs with the @Stickers bot -- or add some of the new sets made by others," it added.
Google One VPN is now available on iPhones
While a Google-run VPN has been available on the platform for months via the Google Fi cell service, the latest update means that anyone who pays for 2TB or more of Google One storage should now also get a VPN for their phone, reports The Verge. VPN is available to people in 18 countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, and Mexico. iPhone users may be familiar with the idea of an upgraded storage plan that also comes with a way to keep your IP and Internet traffic private.
YouTube Shorts hit 5 trillion all-time views: Sundar Pichai
The Google-owned video streaming giant on Tuesday said that this is helping its creator community reach newer and bigger audiences. "We are also seeing exciting momentum at YouTube. YouTube Shorts continues to drive significant engagement. We just hit 5 trillion all-time views and have over 15 billion views each day globally," the company said in a statement. "In fact, more people are creating content on YouTube than ever before," it added.
Don't Miss
Advertisement