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Food waste is a serious problem, but there’s nothing wrong with having a little fun and getting creative while you search for solutions. That’s exactly the approach the crew at Black Seed Bagels […]
The post A Bakery and a Brewery Turned Surplus Bagels Into Beer appeared first on Geek.com.
With Netflix’s March announcement of new partnerships with several Japanese production companies, fans can expect more anime series to grace their streaming devices in 2019. In other words? There’s no better time to […]
The post Best New Anime to Stream on Netflix in 2019 appeared first on Geek.com.
At its F8 developer conference, Facebook today announced that it is launching its Portal video chat hardware internationally by bringing it to Canada and a select number of European countries, too. This rollout will begin in June in Canada, with Europe following this fall. In the U.S., Portal sells for $199 and $349, depending on the screen size. The company did not announce international pricing.
Portal originally only launched in the U.S. As the company’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted during his F8 keynote today, the service has done better than the company expected. Given that it launched right during some of Facebook’s biggest privacy scandals, that’s a bit of a surprise, though we don’t know what Facebook’s own expectations were, of course, or how many of the device it has sold.
In addition, Zuckerberg announced that its WhatsApp messenger is also coming to Portal. That means end-to-end encrypted video chats are coming to Portal, something that should reduce some of the privacy concerns around the device. “Now, you can be sure that when you’re having conversations with your friends and family, everything stays between you,” Zuckerberg said, though most current users probably hope that this has always been the case, even when using Portal without WhatsApp.
Later this summer, Portal will also get new AR effects and a story-reading mode. Starting today, Portal can also display photos from Instagram, and Facebook is building a mobile app that lets you display photos on the Portal. You can do that today, but it’s significantly more complicated because you need to create a private album just for Portal.
Coming soon, too, is the ability to send private video messages and Facebook Live support.
University of Arizona researchers came across an unexpected discovery when they were trying to locate the source of methane on Saturn’s largest moon. The team found an unusual ice formation that wrapped almost […]
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Facebook today released a new SDK that allows mobile app developers to integrate WhatsApp verification into Account Kit for iOS and Android. This will allow developers to build apps where users can opt to receive their verification codes through the WhatsApp app installed on their phone, instead through SMS.
Today, many apps give users the ability to sign up using only a phone number — a now popular alternative to Facebook Login, thanks to the social network’s numerous privacy scandals which led to fewer people choosing to use Facebook with third-party apps. Plus, using phone numbers to sign up is common with a younger generation of users who don’t have Facebook accounts — and sometimes barely use email, except for joining apps and services.
When using a phone number to sign in, the app can confirm the user by sending a verification code over SMS to the number provided. The user then enters that code to create their account. This process can also be used when logging in, as part of a multi-factor verification system where a user’s account information is combined with this extra step for added security.
While this process is straightforward and easy enough to follow, SMS is not everyone’s preferred messaging platform. That’s particularly true in emerging markets like India, where 200 million people are on WhatsApp, for example. In addition, those without an unlimited messaging plan are careful not to overuse texting when it can be avoided.
That’s where the WhatsApp SDK comes in. Once integrated into an iOS or Android app, developers can offer to send users their verification code over WhatsApp instead of text messaging. They can even choose to disable SMS verification, notes Facebook.
This is all a part of WhatsApp’s Account Kit, which is a larger set of developer tools designed to allow people to quickly register and login to apps or websites using only a phone number and email, no password required.
This WhatsApp verification codes option has been available on WhatsApp’s web SDK since late 2018, but hadn’t been available with mobile apps until today.
Bigfoot might have had a cross-continental journey: On its official Twitter account, the Indian Army claimed it found “Yeti footprints” in the Himalayas of Nepal and social media users had a lot of […]
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There have been eleven main Mortal Kombat games. Can you believe it? The 90s were that long ago. Since then the fighting game has become a gory institution as colorful ninjas and sorcerers […]
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The monetization hose is on full blast at Instagram now, and today at F8, Facebook unveiled one of the latest developments on that front. The company said that creators will now be able to tag items to sell them directly to people viewing their posts and Stories.
For now, this will work only on items that are tagged from businesses that are part of the new checkout beta program Instagram is running in the U.S.
It’s also part of a bigger transactional swing that we’re seeing at Instagram that extends beyond just catering to consumerism and influencers speaking to Instagram’s billion-plus users.
Today Instagram also confirmed that it would be adding donation stickers in Stories — something we reported it was working on several months ago.
The tags that creators and influencers can now add is a significant development on product tagging, which up to now had been reserved just for businesses and brands, not open to individuals.
But the purpose for now doesn’t seem to be to help creators make commissions on those sales. Facebook tells us that “at this time,” creators will not make a cut on any purchases made as a result of anyone clicking on links in their posts (meaning: it may come down the line).
Rather, the point is to cut down on some of the repeat questions that creators get about what they are wearing, and where to buy it. “People are already shopping from creators by asking product questions in comments and Direct,” a spokesperson said. “With the ability to tag products, creators can provide the information their followers are looking for and get back to expressing themselves and sharing what’s on their mind, which will make their followers happy too.”
But they are not getting diddly, either. The spokesperson notes that creators will also receive additional insights with shopping posts, such as engagements and shopping insights. For those who are making a living out of their influencer status, these could help them leverage better deals with those brands, longer term.
Instagram will start testing first with a small group of creators over the next few weeks, including on the accounts of Gigi Hadid, Kim Kardashian West, Kris Jenner, Kylie Jenner and Leesa Angelique (who runs @saythelees).
“It’s my job to share beauty secrets and tips,” she said about the new feature. “I’m usually writing long, detailed captions about the latest products I’ve been using. Having this tool just makes it that much easier to let everyone know what I’m wearing and from where – down to the shade.”
A day after Disney’s superhero blockbuster Avengers: Endgame took home a record-breaking $1.2 billion at the worldwide box office, Sen. Bernie Sanders took to Twitter to criticize Disney CEO Bob Iger’s salary and […]
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It may seem like a small thing, but a little good lighting can go along way toward enhancing your experience with pretty much anything. Lighting sets the mood and can put you in […]
The post Geek Pick: Philips Hue Play Light Bar Lights Up Your Media appeared first on Geek.com.
Whatever your thoughts are on virtual reality (for me the best it’s really good for is quick cardboard gimmicks) you can’t deny that Valve has been all in trying to push the tech […]
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Facebook’s social graph is aging, full of long-lost acquaintances and hometown friends you don’t care much about seeing in the News Feed any more. But Facebook is now testing a pivot away from its core identity of connecting you with existing friends so it can revitalize the social graph and keep people coming back. Facebook’s “Meet New Friends” lets you browse people from shared communities such as your school, workplace or city who’ve also opted in to the feature. It’s now in testing in a few markets before it’s rolled out more widely soon.
Meet New Friends could give people fresh pals to follow in their News Feed, or help recently registered users grow their network until they have access to enough content to keep them busy. And eventually, Facebook could layer on monetization features similar to dating apps where users pay to be shown more prominently to potential connections.
Fidji Simo, the head of Facebook’s main app, tells me Meet New Friends was based on emerging behaviors the company had spotted. “Developing relationships with people they didn’t already know is very different from the core use case of Facebook,” but she notes, “We’ve already seen that naturally happen in Groups, and Meet New Friends will make that a bit easier.”
When users open Meet New Friends, they pick the communities through which they’re open to meeting new friends. For now they choose between schools, employers and locations, but Facebook will eventually add Groups too. In that sense it works a bit like Facebook Dating, which rolls out to 14 new countries today and opens to dating friends with its new Secret Crush feature.
Algorithms will sort potential connections by who is most relevant, such as those with mutual friends or shared interests, but you won’t get “matched” where both users have to state their interest in the other. Instead, users can just browse profiles, and then either send people a friend request (which might feel a bit out of the blue), or send them a single text-only message to a recipient’s dedicated Meet New Friends chat inbox. They can’t message that same person again until they respond (to prevent spamming), and the text-only limitation ensures no unsavory photos get blasted around. If they do reply, the thread moves to Facebook Messenger.
Meet New Friends will pit Facebook against a range of other apps, from local-focused Meetup and Nextdoor to verticalized apps like Hey Vina for women only to dating-affiliated apps like Bumble BFF. But Facebook benefits from its ubiquity, so users can try Meet New Friends without feeling embarrassed by downloading an app just to make them less lonely.
For years, the mildly creepy People You May Know feature has been a cornerstone of Facebook’s growth strategy. But it’s still just about recreating your offline social graph online. As Facebook strives to become more meaningful to people’s lives, fostering new friendships could give people a fuzzy feeling about the giant corporation.
Facebook built Dating to be privacy-safe, hoping to avoid the awkwardness of friends or family checking out your romance profile. But now Facebook has found a way to let you silently express your affection for a friend without them knowing unless they reciprocate.
Facebook Dating is opening in 14 more countries, bringing the total to 19. It will launch in the US before the end of the year. Dating brings with it a new feature called Secret Crush that expands it beyond strangers and friends-of-friends. Choose up to 9 friends you like-like. If they’ve opted into Facebook Dating, they’ll get a notification that some friend has a crush on them. If they add you as a Secret Crush too, you’re both notified and can chat on Messenger.
Facebook Dating product manager Charmaine Hung tells me that “I have 2000 Facebook friends. I’m not best friends with all 2000 people, and there’s a good chance that one of that could be a really good match with me. I trust them, I appreciate them, and I know we’re compatible. The only thing missing is knowing if we’re both interested in being more than just friends without the fear of rejection if you were to do this in real life.”
Facebook announced Dating at F8 a year ago and launched it in Colombia in September. Users opt-in, and then browse Events and Groups they’re part of for potential matches. They send them a text-only message based on something in their profile which goes to a special Dating inbox. And if that person reciprocates, they can chat and maybe meet up. Now it’s opening in the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Guyana, and Suriname.
One concern with Secret Crush is that users might spam the feature by constantly adding a removing people from their list until they discover a match. That’s why Facebook will only let you sub out one person per day after you reach your initial limit of 9.
Currently there’s still no plan to monetize Dating, but that’s not the point. After years of scandals, Facebook needs to prove it deserves to be your social network. Mindlessly browsing the News Feed has proven to be exhausting and at times detrimental to health. But if the app can introduce you to your future spouse, or even just a summer fling, you might keep a place in your for Facebook too.
Would we feel less envious, shameful and competitive if Instagram didn’t tell us how many Likes a post received? That’s the idea behind Instagram now hiding Like counts from both a post’s viewers and its author as part of an experiment in Canada. A post’s creator can still open the Likers window to see the names of everyone who hearted their post, but they’d have to count them manually.
Even though Like totals would still impact how the algorithm ranks a post in the feed, if rolled out, the change would refocus Instagram on self-expression instead of being a popularity contest. Users might be less likely to delete a photo or video because it didn’t get enough Likes, or resort to their Finsta account to post something authentic but less “perfect.” It could make us less likely to envy-spiral because we wouldn’t see friends or influencers getting more Likes than us. And people might be more willing to post what truly represents their complicated identities because they’re not battling for the biggest Like count.
“Later this week, we’re running a test in Canada that removes the total number of likes on photos and video views in Feed, Permalink pages and Profile,” an Instagram spokesperson tells TechCrunch. “We are testing this because we want your followers to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get.” The small percentage of Canadian users in the test will see a notice atop their feed warning them of “a change to how you see Likes.”
One big concern, though, is that influencers often get discovered for paid promotions or have their sponsored content measured by public Like counts or a screenshot of their Liker list. “We understand that this is important for many creators, and while this test is in exploratory stages, we are thinking through ways for them to communicate value to their brand partners,” an Instagram spokesperson tells TechCrunch.
TechCrunch first reported two weeks ago that Instagram had prototyped hiding public Like counts, as spotted by Jane Manchun Wong. The company confirmed the feature had been built but not tested in the wild. The news immediately set off a wave of commentary from users. Many, while initially shocked, thought it would make Instagram usage healthier and cutback on some of the toxic anxiety produced by staring at the little numbers.
So why test in Canada? “Canadians are highly social and tech savvy, with over 24 million people connecting across our family of apps each month. We wanted to test this with a digitally savvy audience that has a thriving community on Instagram,” a company spokesperson told us.
It’s reassuring to see Instagram adding new well-being features after the departure of founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. Systrom in particular had been a big proponent of reducing envy and inauthenticity on social media, which was part of the impetus for launching Instagram Stories, where users could share unpolished looks at their lives. Before he left in September, Instagram rolled out its Your Activity dashboard showing the average time you spent per day on the app, plus a “You’re All Caught Up” warning that tells users they’ve seen all recent feed posts and can stop scrolling.
A 2013 study by Krasnova et al. discovered that 20 percent of envy-causing situations that experiment participants experienced happened on Facebook. They also determined that Facebook causes toxic envy, noting that “intensity of passive following is likely to reduce users’ life satisfaction in the long-run, as it triggers upward social comparison and invidious emotions.” Instagram, with its focus on imagery and manicured looks at our lives, might cause even more envy. Hiding Likes would be a strong step toward us judging ourselves less.
To win chat, Facebook Messenger must be as accessible as SMS, yet more entertaining than Snapchat. Today, Messenger pushes on both fronts with a series of announcements at Facebook’s F8 conference, including that it will launch Mac and PC desktop apps, a faster and smaller mobile app, simultaneous video co-watching and a revamped Friends tab, where friends can use an emoji to tell you what they’re up to or down for.
Facebook is also beefing up its tools for the 40 million active businesses and 300,000 businesses on Messenger, up from 200,000 businesses a year ago. Merchants will be able to let users book appointments at salons and masseuses, collect information with new lead generation chatbot templates and provide customer service to verified customers through authenticated m.me links. Facebook hopes this will boost the app beyond the 20 billion messages sent between people and businesses each month, which is up 10X from December 2017.
“We believe you can build practically any utility on top of messaging,” says Facebook’s head of Messenger Stan Chudnovsky. But he stresses that “All of the engineering behind it is has been redone” to make it more reliable, and to comply with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s directive to unite the backends of Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram Direct. “Of course, if we didn’t have to do all that, we’d be able to invest more in utilities. But we feel that utilities will be less functional if we don’t do that work. They need to go hand-in-hand together. Utilities will be more powerful, more functional and more desired if built on top of a system that’s interoperable and end-to-end encrypted.”
Here’s a look at the major Messenger announcements and why they’re important:
Messenger Desktop – A stripped-down version of Messenger focused on chat, audio and video calls will debut later this year. Chudnovsky says it will remove the need to juggle and resize browser tabs by giving you an always-accessible version of Messenger that can replace some of the unofficial knock-offs. Especially as Messenger focuses more on businesses, giving them a dedicated desktop interface could convince them to invest more in lead generation and customer service through Messenger.
Facebook Messenger’s upcoming desktop app
Project Lightspeed – Messenger is reengineering its app to cut 70 mb off its download size so people with low-storage phones don’t have to delete as many photos to install it. In testing, the app can cold start in merely 1.3 seconds, which Chudnovsky says is just 25 percent of where Messenger and many other apps are today. While Facebook already offers Messenger Light for the developing world, making the main app faster for everyone else could help Messenger swoop in and steal users from the status quo of SMS. The Lightspeed update will roll out later this year.
Video Co-Watching – TechCrunch reported in November that Messenger was building a Facebook Watch Party-style experience that would let users pick videos to watch at the same time as a friend, with reaction cams of their faces shown below the video. Now in testing before rolling out later this year, users can pick any Facebook video, invite one or multiple friends and laugh together. Unique capabilities like this could make Messenger more entertaining between utilitarian chat threads and appeal to a younger audience Facebook is at risk of losing.
Watch Videos Together on Messenger
Business Tools – After a rough start to its chatbot program a few years ago, where bots couldn’t figure out users’ open-ended responses, Chudnovsky says the platform is now picking up steam with 300,000 developers on board. One option that’s worked especially well is lead-generation templates, which teach bots to ask people standardized questions to collect contact info or business intent, so Messenger is adding more of those templates with completion reminders and seamless hand-off to a live agent.
To let users interact with appointment-based businesses through a platform they’re already familiar with, Messenger launched a beta program for barbers, dentists and more that will soon open to let any business handle appointment booking through the app. And with new authenticated m.me links, a business can take a logged-in user on their website and pass them to Messenger while still knowing their order history and other info. Getting more businesses hooked on Messenger customer service could be very lucrative down the line.
Appointment booking on Messenger
Close Friends and Emoji Status – Perhaps the most interesting update to Messenger, though, is its upcoming effort to help you make offline plans. Messenger is in the early stages of rebuilding its Friends tab into “Close Friends,” which will host big previews of friends’ Stories, photos shared in your chats, and let people overlay an emoji on their profile pic to show friends what they’re doing. We first reported this “Your Emoji” status update feature was being built a year ago, but it quietly cropped up in the video for Messenger Close Friends. This iteration lets you add an emoji like a home, barbell, low battery or beer mug, plus a short text description, to let friends know you’re back from work, at the gym, might not respond or are interested in getting a drink. These will show up atop the Close Friends tab as well as on location-sharing maps and more once this eventually rolls out.
Messenger’s upcoming Close Friends tab with Your Emoji status
Facebook Messenger is the best poised app to solve the loneliness problem. We often end up by ourselves because we’re not sure which of our friends are free to hang out, and we’re embarrassed to look desperate by constantly reaching out. But with emoji status, Messenger users could quietly signal their intentions without seeming needy. This “what are you doing offline” feature could be a whole social network of its own, as apps like Down To Lunch have tried. But with 1.3 billion users and built-in chat, Messenger has the ubiquity and utility to turn a hope into a hangout.
Game of Thrones latest episode was a memorable one (warning: spoilers to follow), where fans witnessed the the death of the Night King, one of the Iron Throne contenders who had a good […]
The post Photos Show Night King’s Chilling ‘Game of Thrones’ Transformation appeared first on Geek.com.
Social media giants, including Facebook-owned Instagram, have agreed to financially contribute to UK charities to fund them making recommendations that the government hopes will speed up decisions about removing content that promotes suicide/self-harm or eating disorders on their platforms.
The development follows the latest intervention by health secretary Matt Hancock, who met with representatives from the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Google and others yesterday to discuss what they’re doing to tackle a range of online harms.
“Social media companies have a duty of care to people on their sites. Just because they’re global doesn’t mean they can be irresponsible,” the minister told parliament today.
“We must do everything we can to keep our children safe online so I’m pleased to update the house that as a result of yesterday’s summit, the leading global social media companies have agreed to work with experts… to speed up the identification and removal of suicide and self-harm content and create greater protections online.”
However Hancock failed to get any new commitments from the companies to do more to tackle anti-vaccination misinformation — despite saying last week that he would be heavily leaning on the tech giants to remove anti-vaccination misinformation, warning it posed a serious risk to public health.
Giving an update on his latest social media moot in parliament this afternoon, he said the companies had agreed to do more to address a range of online harms — while emphasizing there’s more for them to do, including addressing anti-vaccination misinformation.
“The rise of social media now makes it easier to spread lies about vaccination so there is a special responsibility on the social media companies to act,” he said, noting that coverage for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination in England decreased for the fourth year in a row last year — dropping to 91%.
There has been a rise in confirmed measles cases from 259 to 966 over the same period, he added.
With no sign of an agreement from the companies to take tougher action on anti-vaccination misinformation, Hancock was left to repeat their preferred talking point to MPs, segwaying into suggesting social media has the potential to be a “great force for good” on the vaccination front — i.e. if it “can help us to promote positive messages” about the public health value of vaccines.
For the two other online harm areas of focus, suicide/self-harm content and eating disorders, suicide support charity Samaritans and eating disorder charity Beat were named as the two U.K. organizations that would be working with the social media platforms to make recommendations for when content should and should not be taken down.
“[Social media firms will] not only financially support the Samaritans to do the work but crucially Samaritans’ suicide prevention experts will determine what is harmful and dangerous content, and the social media platforms committed to either remove it or prevent others from seeing it and help vulnerable people get the positive support they need,” said Hancock.
“This partnership marks for the first time globally a collective commitment to act, to build knowledge through research and insights — and to implement real changes that will ultimately save lives,” he added.
The Telegraph reports that the value of the financial contribution from the social media platforms to the Samaritans for the work will be “hundreds of thousands” of pounds. And during questions in parliament MPs pointed out the amount pledged is tiny vs the massive profits commanded by the companies. Hancock responded that it was what the Samaritans had asked for to do the work, adding: “Of course I’d be prepared to go and ask for more if more is needed.”
The minister was also pressed from the opposition benches on the timeline for results from the social media companies on tackling “the harm and dangerous fake news they host”.
“We’ve already seen some progress,” he responded — flagging a policy change announced by Instagram and Facebook back in February, following a public outcry after a report about a UK schoolgirl whose family said she killed herself after being exposed to graphic self-harm content on Instagram.
“It’s very important that we keep the pace up,” he added, saying he’ll be holding another meeting with the companies in two months to see what progress has been made.
“We’ll expect… that we’ll see further action from the social media companies. That we will have made progress in the Samaritans being able to define more clearly what the boundary is between harmful content and content which isn’t harmful.
“In each of these areas about removing harms online the challenge is to create the right boundary in the appropriate place… so that the social media companies don’t have to define what is and isn’t socially acceptable. But rather we as society do.”
In a statement following the meeting with Hancock a spokesperson fo Facebook and Instagram said: “We fully support the new initiative from the government and the Samaritans, and look forward to our ongoing work with industry to find more ways to keep people safe online.”
The company also noted that it’s been working with expert organisations, including the Samaritans, for “many years to find more ways to do that” — suggesting it’s quite comfortable playing the familiar political game of ‘more of the same’.
That said, the UK government has made tackling online harms a stated aim and policy priority — publishing a proposal for a regulatory framework intended to address a range of content risks earlier this month, when it also kicked off a 12-week public consultation.
Though there’s clearly a load road ahead to agree a law that’s enforceable, let alone effective.
Hancock resisted providing MPs with any timeline for progress on the planned legislation — telling parliament “we want to genuinely consult widely”.
“This isn’t really issue of party politics. It’s a matter of getting it right so that society decides on how we should govern the Internet, rather than the big Internet companies making those decisions for themselves,” he added.
The minister was also asked by the shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, to guarantee that the legislation will include provision for criminal sentences for executives for serious breaches of their duty of care. But Hancock failed to respond to the question.
It’s one of the deadliest creatures on Earth: The infamous box jellyfish developed its powerful venom to be so overpoweringly painful, human victims have been known to go into shock or die of […]
The post Antidote to Deadly Box Jellyfish Venom Discovered With CRISPR Genome Editing appeared first on Geek.com.
I think most millennial stereotypes are dumb if only because the idea of “generations,” grouping together huge swathes of vastly different people just based on the vague time frame in which they were […]
The post Samsung’s Vertical TV Is What We Deserve appeared first on Geek.com.
Pluto used to be considered a “regular planet” by astronomers until 2006, when its status was downgraded to “dwarf planet.” On April 29, experts live streamed a discussion on the matter, and interestingly […]
The post Pluto Debate Sheds Light on Challenges With Classifying Planets appeared first on Geek.com.
This is it. Sega and Paramount weren’t bluffing. The game publisher and movie studio are really following through on their threat to turn beleaguered platforming mascot Sonic the Hedgehog into the most cursed […]
The post At Last, The Live-Action ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ Trailer Is Here! appeared first on Geek.com.
Initially introduced by Mattel after their attempt to secure the Star Wars license fell through, Masters of the Universe were one of the biggest toy successes of the 1980s, boasting a seemingly endless […]
The post Toy Tuesday: The Most Powerful ‘He-Man’ Toys appeared first on Geek.com.
Burger King will reportedly roll out its Impossible Whopper—the vegetarian twist on a fast food classic—to locations across the nation this year. This month’s trial run in St. Louis went “exceedingly well,” a […]
The post ‘Impossible Whopper’ Coming Soon to All U.S. BK Branches appeared first on Geek.com.
Scientists recreated the head of an ancient dog using forensic technology typically reserved for humans. A reconstruction, commissioned by Historic Environment Scotland (HES), relied on CT scans and 3D printing to visualize a […]
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“Hacking” is a long-standing tradition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But MIT’s hackers don’t hide behind a computer screen: Rather, they are pranksters, tricksters, and creative inventors responsible for some of the […]
The post MIT ‘Hackers’ Transform Great Dome Into Cap’s Shield appeared first on Geek.com.
Hola, Alexa: Amazon this week launched a new voice model that lets developers build skills for Spanish-speaking users. Initially available to participants of the Alexa Preview program, the new feature will roll out […]
The post Amazon’s Alexa Will Speak Spanish in the US This Year appeared first on Geek.com.
Remember Prisma? The Moscow-based team behind the app that sparked a style transfer craze in 2016 has raised a €6 million (~$6.7M) Series A, led by early stage artificial intelligence focused VC firm, Haxus.
While two of Prisma’s original co-founders left the company in the middle of last year, to work on building a new social app — the still, as yet, unreleased Capture — co-founder Andrey Usoltsev stayed on to keep developing Prisma Labs, taking up the CEO role.
The Series A funding will go towards expanding Prisma’s 21-strong team and scaling the business by spending on marketing to grow uptake of its apps’ premium subscription offers. These include a subscription layer for its eponymous app which gives users access to styles not available in the free version.
“We’re going to grow rapidly. We’re going to double our team this year and set up the impressive marketing budget,” says Usoltsev.
Late last year the team released a new freemium selfie retouching app, called Lensa, hoping to capture a slice of the beauty filter/photo-editing market. Their twist was to bake in AI smarts that power automatic adjustments — smoothing skin tone, whitening teeth, brightening eyes and so on, at the touch of the in-app camera button — as if by technomagic.
Their pitch for the selfie retoucher is ‘natural’ looking enhancements. And Prisma claims it’s seeing “very high” retention rates for Lensa, more akin to a sticky social network than photo-retouching software.
They argue the app’s face-retouching machine learning algorithms have benefited from the heap of data amassed from Prisma’s multi-millions of selfie-submitting users. And while there’s certainly no shortage of rival apps out there claiming to make selfies look better, Lensa’s AI-powered retouching does offer — at a glance — less crude/more plausible results than plenty of gimmicky ‘beauty filter’ apps also touting reality-editing wares.
“There is competition [for selfie retouching] and we think that it is good because it shows the size of the market,” says Usoltsev. “It’s huge. There are millions of people using apps like Facetune and what our advantage is is that we have a great technical team, R&D team that creates the best technology on the market in some areas… that trained building Prisma.
“We’re focusing on the quality and the natural look of the results. And some apps on the market didn’t pay as much attention as needed to these two things. We’re going to focus on this. We are not the first in this space but we are going to be the best in this space.”
“Automation is the key,” he adds. “We can now provide users with new kind of product, new kind of photo- and video-editors that automate the routine and requires less effort from the user side to get awesome results.”
Lensa, which launched in December with a subscription offering right off the bat, now has more than 100,000 users, according to Usoltsev — though it’s not breaking out paying subs yet.
The early userbase skews female and young — without, according to Usoltsev, Prisma doing any overt targeting — the main group being 18-24 year old women, somewhat unsurprisingly for a selfie beautifying app.
“The product is not viral, like Prisma, and most of the users are acquired from paid sources like Facebook ads and so on so. We strongly control the amount of users we acquire and now the product is not ready for the real scale,” he continues, noting they’re in the process of tweaking the app to expand the features and improve product market fit.
They’re also playing with the business model, with the initial subscription offering definitely feeling a bit underwhelming vs the core free AI-powered edits. (You can read our first look at Lensa here.)
“Right now we’re very close to start scaling it,” he adds. “We need a couple of more releases to be ready 100% and then we start scaling.
“We’re going to expand the range of features. We’re going to add a video feature because our primary feature — retouching — works in real-time and we tested it even on livestreaming and it works well. We’re working on optimizing it even more, to work faster, and in better quality.”
Other ongoing dev work to polish Lensa’s proposition includes tweaking the auto-adjustments it makes by determining the best settings for portrait-influencing factors, such as exposure, contrast, highlights and shadows. “For each adjustment we use a neural network,” he notes. “They work together… to find the best output result.”
Prisma is also monetizing its namesake original app — which grabbed around 70M downloads in a few months back in 2016, with Usoltsev saying they’re still relying mostly on organic/viral downloads rather than active promotion, riding the Prisma craze’s long viral tail.
They now have more than 100,000 paying subscribers for Prisma, though they’re not breaking out active usage — beyond saying it runs into the “millions”. (Back in 2017 they were reporting active monthly usage for the app of around 10M.) A premium sub offering was switched on in Prisma in January 2018.
“The paying audience is actually diverse. The major group by age I think it’s 24-35 year olds. And men and women is about the same proportion,” he adds.
Last year’s launch of Lensa came despite an earlier focus shift for the startup to b2b, after the style transfer craze that had powered its namesake app’s 2016 virality appeared on the cusp of being crazed (and, well, cloned) to death.
The plan, as it was in 2017, was for Prisma Labs to offer an SDK for computer vision-powered effects that developers could use to enhance their own apps. But the team kept its hand in the consumer space, maintaining their apps as testing grounds. A decision that set them up for what now looks a full reverse pivot back to consumer.
Usoltsev tells us the earlier b2b switch was “mostly” at the behest of Prisma’s investors — and wasn’t something the wider team was keen on.
They’re fully stoked to get back to their consumer roots, he adds.
“It didn’t really resonate with our team experience and our company DNA,” he adds of the b2b phase. “But in the process we figured out this is not what we want to do. We came up with the idea for the new product in the process and came up with the broader vision for the entire company and what we want to do.
“The core team was all about consumer products and b2b was not seen as interesting topic at all.”
So what’s on the slate for the future, as the team thinks about other features and/or consumer apps it might want to launch this year?
“Right now we’re thinking a lot about video,” he says. “Video is so fast growing space right now and we see a lot of new apps that break into the market — like TikTok — that grows insanely and based on video. And we’re going to provide users with automated tools to enhance their videos.
“Videos is more complicated to edit than photos because it requires more skill… to learn how to edit videos. And if your clip is longer than one minute it’s so hard to create it because montage could be a boring process and the longer the video is the more complicated the process is. So we’re going to fix this — and provide users with automated tools to help them create great videos quickly and with no effort, or as little as possible.”
AI-enabled auto video editing is “probably” going to be a standalone app, he says, rather than a feature baked into one of Prisma’s existing apps. But, well, watch this space.
SpaceX is preparing to send the Falcon Heavy back to space soon, and this time, it will launch 23 satellites to orbit. Following its first commercial mission, the company conducted a static fire […]
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Twitter is unveiling a number of new content deals and renewals tonight at its NewFronts event for digital advertisers.
It’s only been two years since Twitter first joined the NewFronts. At the time, coverage suggested that executives saw the company’s video strategy as a crucial part of turning things around, but since then, the spotlight has moved on to other things (like rethinking the fundamental social dynamics of the service).
And yet the company is still making video deals, with 13 of them being unveiled tonight. That’s a lot of announcements, though considerably less than the 30 revealed at last year’s event. The company notes that it has already announced a number of partnerships this year, including one with the NBA.
“When you collaborate with the top publishers in the world, you can develop incredibly innovative ways to elevate premium content and bring new dimensions to the conversations that are already happening on Twitter,” said Twitter Global VP and Head of Content Partnerships Kay Madati in a statement. “Together with our partners, we developed this new slate of programming specifically for our audiences, and designed the content to fuel even more robust conversation on Twitter.”
Here’s a quick rundown of all the news:
