users
Latest
Elon Musk wants to quadruple Twitter users by 2028
Among the biggest questions on people's mind since Elon Musk made his bid to buy Twitter is how the service might change under his ownership. We're still a long way off from the deal becoming official, but Musk nonetheless has had to pitch investors on his vision for the company to get the funding he needs. As it so happens, the New York Times has obtained a copy of a pitch deck for investors, which gives us an idea of the preposterously grand vision that Musk has for the company. Here are a few highlights.
Meta says its VR platform has grown by ten times since December
Facebook rebranded itself as Meta in order to fully embrace virtual reality via the Oculus platform, so how is that actually going?
Podcast: A chat with the directors of 'A Glitch in the Matrix' and 'Users'
We chat with Rodney Ascher and Natalia Almada about their new documentaries, A Glitch in the Matrix and Users.
'Users' is a fascinating meditation on life and parenting in the digital age
It’s not hard to imagine Users becoming its own series like the Qatsi films. It felt as if I was handing my newborn over to our new god -- technology. “She's in the satellites orbiting around us in space. “She and I are in a battle over my children’s affection.
A third of TikTok’s US users may be 14 years old or younger
As much as a third of TikTok’s 49 million users in the US may be 14 years old or younger.
Browser add-on verifies that sites actually honor their privacy policies
Researchers created a browser plug-in that verifies whether a website is compliant with its own privacy policy.
Twitter doesn’t want to call its users ‘users’ anymore
Twitter has announced that, at least in its public documents, it's going to stop calling the people who use its platform "users." It's "an effort to demonstrate more empathy for the people who use Twitter," explains the company's most recent financial results covering the fourth quarter of 2019. Instead, it's reframing the talk to be about Monetizable Daily Active Usage, Twitter's shorthand for users people it can sell ads against.
Windows 10 is used on over 900 million devices
Windows 10 is now being used on over 900 million devices. Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi tweeted about the milestone today, saying that Microsoft added more new Windows 10 devices in the last 12 months than ever before.
DoJ pushes Google and Apple to ID 10,000 users of a gun scope app
The US government has reportedly ordered Apple and Google to hand over the names, phone numbers and IP addresses of at least 10,000 users of a gun scope app. The data request is part of an investigation into weapons export violations, but it has privacy experts understandably concerned. According to Forbes, this is the first known case of US investigators demanding personal data from users of a single app from Apple and Google.
Apple fires hundreds of contractors hired to listen to Siri recordings
In the wake of revelations that Apple has people listening in to some Siri requests, Apple has fired more than 300 contractors in Cork, Ireland. As The Guardian reports those contractors were hired as part of a "grading" program that reviewed audio recorded by Siri. News broke last month that those contractors often heard sensitive information -- like medical info, criminal activity and "sexual encounters." After temporarily suspending the program, Apple has reportedly decided to terminate it.
Apple Music now has 60 million paid subscribers
Apple Music now has 60 million paying subscribers. The company's Eddy Cue, a senior vice president of services, confirmed the milestone with French business publication Numerama today. According to Music Business Worldwide, Apple also noted that Beats 1 has "tens of millions of listeners."
Uber will deactivate riders with low ratings
Rude behavior or leaving trash behind could get you booted from Uber. The company has added "ratings-based rider deactivations" to its safety policy. Users can now get kicked off the app if they develop a "significantly below average rating."
Twitter is more profitable despite losing 9 million 'users'
Twitter has announced that it made a profit for the fourth successive quarter, capping a year of profitability. In its most recent release, the company said that it pulled in $758 million in revenue and turned a net profit of $106 million. Since the start of 2018, Twitter has seen profit figures grow from $61 million in Q1, through $100 million in Q2.
Pinterest is still being used by 250 million people every month
While more prominent social networks are facing slightly slower growth or even seeing user numbers dip a little, Pinterest has quietly become bigger than ever. The company has revealed that more than 250 million people are using the service every month. Pinterest also has more than 175 billion pins, an increase of 75 percent since early 2017, which underlines the platform's growth.
Twitter reportedly suspended 58 million accounts in Q4 2017
Twitter reportedly suspended 70 million accounts across May and June of 2018 as part of its purge of fake users. Now, according to a tweet from the Associated Press, the social media company had already suspended at least 58 million accounts in the last quarter of 2017.
House Republicans seek answers from Apple and Alphabet on privacy issues
In the wake of last week's Google scandal around third-party apps accessing user information, top Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to both Alphabet and Apple. The top Republican leaders asked Alphabet CEO Larry Page about the third-party access to user email, while checking in with Apple CEO Tim Cook about access third-party developers might have via the iTunes App Store. The leaders also inquired about the ability of smartphones to listen in on users, something both Mark Zuckerberg has denied and researchers haven't found any evidence of.
Twitter hides daily user numbers to avoid Facebook comparisons
While Facebook is happy to wax lyrical about its user metrics, Twitter is keeping schtum on the number of its daily visitors -- even after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) got involved. Instead, Twitter wants everyone to focus on monthly numbers and the percentage growth of people who use it daily. But they're vague about that, too. The company has only disclosed that the number of monthly active users has stood at 328 million for the last two quarters, and the percentage growth of daily active users (DAUs) has increased more than 10 percent in each of the last three quarters.
Instagram's expansion continues as it tops 500 million users
With 1.6 billion users, Facebook is used to big numbers. Even Whatsapp has one billion people using it every month. Instagram, on the other hand, isn't quite as big as its counterparts, but that doesn't mean it's not expanding at a decent clip. In a short blog post today, the photo-sharing service announced that it now has 500 million registered users, adding 100 million accounts in nine months.
Apple doesn't know how many people are using its News app
Apple has admitted that it has no idea how many people are using its News app, according to the WSJ. The confession doesn't put the company in too bad a light, because Apple believes it has been undercounting its users. VP Eddy Cue said that, "We don't know what the right number is. We're in the process of fixing that, but our numbers are lower than reality." He added that was better than being too optimistic, but some publishers are concerned. Atlantic Magazine CEO Bob Cohn, for one, said that his organization needs precise figures for Apple's audience, "and that's still an open question."
Periscope's live streaming video reaches nearly 2 million users daily
Now that Facebook is getting into streaming (soon for non-celebs too) and even Google/YouTube is taking notice, the folks at Twitter-owned Periscope are publishing some stats to let us know where the bar is for live video apps. In a blog post on Medium, the team says it has grown past 10 million registered accounts just four months after its launch. An accompanying graph shows its number of Daily Active Users has risen to nearly two million people, with a spike showing where it just about doubled in May with the launch of an app for Android. Rival app Meerkat beat it to the punch on Android, but we don't have similar stats on its growth yet. By their measure however, the important stat is "Time Watched", which Periscope reports has risen to over 40 years of video being watched every day. This includes "huge viewership" on the web, outside of its iOS/Android apps, which the daily users stat does not. in a video Q&A, Periscope CEO Kayvon Beykpour says that features coming soon include landscape video support and better tools for handling spam/abuse.
