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Here’s what happened at Elon Musk’s meeting with civil rights leaders • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in content moderation, Elon Musk, Social, TwitterNo Comments

After meeting with a group of civil rights leaders about his content moderation plans, new “Chief Twit” Elon Musk has committed to uphold existing election integrity policies until at least after the results of next week’s U.S. midterm elections have been certified. According to statements from leaders who attended the meeting, the mogul said he will not reinstate previously banned Twitter users until there is a transparent process for doing so. Musk also committed to including representatives from groups that suffer from hate-fueled violence in his proposed content moderation council. “Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on [the] platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks,” Musk wrote in a tweet about the meeting. He did not elaborate on which users would qualify to be reinstated. Musk has not always followed through on promises he has made about his business plans, making it hard to take his plans at face value. But for now, he has claimed he won’t be making vital content moderation decisions alone. According to Musk’s tweets, his meeting included representatives from Free Press, the Asian American Foundation (TAAF), Color of Change, the NAACP, the Bush Center, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). ZebethMedia reached out to these groups to independently confirm their attendance; all but the Bush Center, LULAC and TAAF have confirmed thus far. “The NAACP met with Elon Musk to express our grave concerns with the dangerous, life-threatening hate and conspiracies that have proliferated on Twitter under his watch. According to a report, hate speech increased by approximately 500% in the first 12 hours following his acquisition. Now let that sink in,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson in an emailed statement. “Nazi memes, racial slurs, and extreme far-right propaganda do not belong in the ‘town square’ of any democracy or online platform. […] In the immediacy, it is critical that Twitter’s existing election integrity policies remain in effect until at the very least after the midterm elections have been certified.” Multiple leaders present at yesterday’s meeting have been vocal critics of Musk’s ideas for Twitter. The CEO of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, wrote a statement after Musk took leadership of Twitter on Thursday, expressing the organization’s concern about the safety of marginalized groups on the platform. “We are concerned that Mr. Musk’s acquisition of Twitter may accelerate what ADL has seen repeatedly: the pushing out of marginalized communities from social media,” the statement reads. “As with Telegram, Gab, Parler, Rumble, and other platforms that refuse to address incitement and slander in the name of free speech, such platforms have become hotbeds for radicalism and hate. This invariably reduces the diversity of views on these services and narrows rather than expands the public conversation.” This was certainly a productive meeting & I appreciate @ElonMusk’s willingness to hear our concerns. With these 3 commitments, we’re cautiously optimistic about the future of @Twitter & will provide input & insight whenever possible. Ultimately, actions speak louder than words. — Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) November 2, 2022 After he and ADL Vice President Yael Eisenstat participated in the virtual call with Musk, Greenblatt said that he is “cautiously optimistic” about Musk’s promises. Free Press has also taken action to respond to Musk’s ownership of Twitter. Yesterday, Free Press and dozens of other civil society groups published an open letter, calling on top-20 advertisers to demand that Musk uphold the network’s existing content moderation policies. “These commitments are a good first step but really just the beginning of a long process,” wrote Free Press co-CEO Jessica J. González in a statement. “As the report Free Press published last week shows, hate, abuse and conspiracy theories are rampant on Twitter. There is much more to do to make Twitter a space for robust and healthy dialogue.” Musk had already stated that he wants to build a content moderation council, which will discuss issues like the ban on former President Donald Trump’s account, which Musk has said he believes was a mistake. Twitter permanently banned Trump’s account in the days after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol because his tweets violated Twitter’s Glorification of Violence policy. Even though Musk claims he will not re-platform any banned users until a clear process is established, users are concerned about how these plans will impact vulnerable groups, like the LGBTQ community. Last week, Musk replied to a tweet from the daughter of academic and self-help author Jordan Peterson, who was suspended from the platform for deadnaming trans actor Elliott Page and calling Page’s surgeon a “criminal physician” over the summer. When she asked if he would bring her father back on the platform, he replied: “Anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail.” Even Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has tweeted at the SpaceX and Tesla CEO about reversing Peterson’s ban. Anyone suspended for minor & dubious reasons will be freed from Twitter jail — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022 Even though Musk promised these civil rights leaders that his content moderation council will include members of groups who face hate-fueled violence, this claim is at odds with Musk’s recent platforming of anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theories. Musk’s own Twitter history doesn’t set a reassuring precedent either. In April, he posted a meme making fun of Twitter’s head of policy and trust, Vijaya Gadde (who he fired immediately upon securing his takeover). The post, which criticized her for having a left-wing bias, incited a torrent of abusive, racist tweets at the executive. Earlier this month, Musk also warmly welcomed Ye (formerly Kanye West) to Twitter after he was suspended from Instagram for posting antisemitic messages. But 12 hours later, Ye was suspended from Twitter as well — he had continued his antisemitic tirade on the platform now owned by Musk, threatening that he was “going death [sic] con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.” For the last week, Musk’s

Instagram will soon allow select creators to make and sell NFTs directly in its app • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in Apps, Facebook, Instagram, meta, SocialNo Comments

Meta announced today that’s introducing a number of new creator updates across Instagram and Facebook. Most notably, the company revealed that creators on Instagram will soon be able to create their own NFTs and sell them directly to fans, both on and off Instagram. With this update, creators will have access to a toolkit that will help them create, showcase and sell NFTs. People on Instagram will be able to buy the NFTs directly within the app. Meta says the process will take place via traditional in-app purchases across iOS and Android. And for now, Instagram is not taking a cut of the creators’ revenues. Meta is testing this new feature with a small group of creators in the U.S. and plans to expand it to more countries in the future. Instagram is also adding support for the Solana blockchain and Phantom wallet, which join the blockchains and wallets that it already supports, including Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, Dapper Wallet, Ethereum, Polygon and Flow. In addition, information for select collections where the metadata has been enriched by OpenSea, such as collection name and descriptions, will now be available on Instagram. In addition the NFT updates, Instagram is also expanding access to subscriptions to all eligible creators in the U.S. The social network began testing subscriptions in January with a small group of creators. The feature lets creators offer their followers paid access to exclusive Instagram Live videos and Stories. Subscribers also receive a special badge that helps them stand out in the comments section and creators’ inboxes. Meta also announced that Facebook is increasing access to Stars, which let creators earn money directly from followers on Reels, live and video on demand. Facebook is also going to start testing automatic onboarding for creators, which means that the ability to send stars will automatically appear on their content. Facebook is also bringing Stars to non-video content, such as photos and text posts. For creators who are already using Stars, Facebook is bringing Stars Party to reels. A Stars Party is a Stars community challenge that ends in a celebration if the creator reaches their goal, Meta says. The social network is also giving creators on Facebook more tools to engage with people who send Stars. For example, creators will be able to add a filter in Comments Manager that displays all of a creator’s Stars comments in one place, which will give creators the option to reply to multiple comments at once. Meta also announced that it’s introducing gifts on Instagram, starting with reels, to give creators a new way to earn money from their fans. The new feature lets fans send gifts on reels by purchasing Stars within Instagram. Meta is testing this feature with a small group of creators in the U.S. first, and plans to expand it to more creators soon. In addition, Meta is expanding its professional mode profile setting on Facebook to all creators. Professional mode is designed to be used by creators looking to monetize their followings on the social network. Facebook began testing professional mode with select creators in December 2021 and is now offering it to anyone on its platform. The new changes come at a time when Meta is investing in its creator user base, as it sees the potential in a new revenue stream that comes from things like creator subscriptions. With these new updates, Instagram is trying to shore up its platform against the threat of competition, namely from TikTok, which has attracted a growing number of creators. And as Meta continues to build the metaverse, it’ll need the support of creators, so it’s not surprising that it’s looking to broaden its offerings for creators.

Meta to ditch human-curated Facebook News stories globally • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in Facebook, facebook news, Media & Entertainment, meta, SocialNo Comments

Some three years after first introducing a curated news section for publishers, Meta has confirmed that it’s ditching the humans and leaning entirely on algorithms for Facebook News in all markets where it’s available. Meta, then known simply as Facebook, introduced Facebook News back in 2019, kicking off initially to a small subset of users in the U.S. before eventually expanding nationwide and into international markets starting with the U.K., Germany, Australia and France. Facebook News, essentially, is a dedicated tab inside Facebook that surfaces notable local and international news relevant to each market. Although most of the surfaced articles were already determined algorithmically, there was a “top stories” section curated by humans. Soon, this section will also be determined by algorithms. Image Credits: Facebook News As per a report in U.K. trade publication Press Gazette today, Meta is ending a contract it had with Axel Springer-owned Upday, which provided the freelance workforce that powered news curation in the U.K. market, albeit with heavy direction from the powers-that-be at Meta. As an aside, this followed shortly after a negative report from Press Gazette detailing some of the working conditions the freelancers had to contend with. “We are always evaluating our global curation partnerships based on user and product needs,” a Meta spokesperson said in a stock statement. The changes will come into effect in the U.K. some time in early 2023. However, the Meta spokesperson confirmed to ZebethMedia that it will in fact be ending human-curated stories in all markets where Facebook News operates. As noted by Press Gazette, Upday originally curated the German news tab, but due to conflict-of-interest concerns owing to parent company Axel Springer’s association with the news industry, Meta gave the curation contract to a local press agency called the Deutschen Presse-Agentur (DPA) earlier this year. But in the wake of this latest news from Meta, it seems the DPA’s role in curating the top stories in Facebook News will be limited to the duration of its remaining contract. Bad news While news-sharing has been a cornerstone of the Facebook platform almost since its inception, it’s clear the company has been making moves to deprioritize this aspect of the social network in favor of the so-called creator economy. Part of this has also involved renaming the trusty ol’ news feed simply as “feed.” But this shift has been driven, perhaps, by a broader industrial pushback that has led to new legislation in countries such as Australia that now stipulate that online platforms such as Facebook compensate publishers for their content. Similar mandates are working their way toward fruition in other markets too, including the U.S. While Meta is seemingly reducing its investment in news — from a human perspective, at least — there is no indication that Facebook News itself is going the way of the dodo any time soon. But that is one potential outcome here, given the company claims that creator-driven content is what its users are most interested in — both on Facebook and on Instagram. The Meta spokesperson said that it makes little sense to over-invest in areas that most of its users are not interested in.

‘CZ’ Zhao on why Binance bet big on Twitter despite Musk’s machinations • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 2, 2022Posted in Social, VentureNo Comments

It’s hard to imagine committing to invest $500 million in someone’s vision for a company, only to watch that individual almost immediately try to distance himself from it. But Changpeng “CZ”Zhao told an audience tonight at Web Summit in Lisbon that he wasn’t bothered when, after committing to invest $500 million in Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, Musk then tried for months to torpedo the deal. First and foremost, suggested the founder and CEO of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency platform, “When we invest in a deal, we’re very comfortable if the deal goes through. We’re very comfortable if the deal doesn’t go through. We always want to get to a point where we’re in that position.” In fact, while, Zhao admitted that he was “honestly” a “little bit surprised” when the deal finally went through — Musk is “pretty hard guy for me to predict,” Zhao said with a laugh on stage — getting on board again as an investor and active user and web3 proponent was a no-brainer for “many different reasons,” he told interviewer Katie Prescott of The Times. He said, for example, that Binance wants to be “completely supportive of free speech” because Binance’s great ambition is to “increase the freedom of money” and free speech, he said, is inextricably tied to the freedom of money. Free speech is also paramount to Zhao as a founder who finds himself in the headlines and doesn’t always like what he reads. “Little guys like us,” said Zhao, whose personal fortune is estimated in the tens of billions of dollars, “have our followers. We can correct the news.” (Asked by Prescott if Zhao thought Twitter was constricted on this front previously, he said no.) Zhao also sees Twitter as an important business development tool, he suggested, calling himself an “active Twitter user” who uses the app more than he uses the Binance app. (“I don’t trade. I just store my crypto on Binance and then I use Twitter,” where the “crypto community” lives and “where politicians go.”) Naturally, however, the biggest driver is Musk himself, who Zhao said Binance “loves to support for his “different ideas.” Despite forking over a massive check to Musk, Zhao insisted that he doesn’t receive much detail about what’s happening inside Twitter HQ right now, telling Prescott that he heard of Musk’s apparent plan to charge verified Twitter users $8 per month at the same time as the rest of the world. But he said that “we’re very supportive of anything that can reduce the bots on Twitter.” Zhao further suggested that what he appreciates most is that Musk doesn’t deliberate for long. “You can see the speed of change in Twitter is much faster now. Last year, I don’t know how many new features (the company rolled out); I didn’t see that many new. But I fully expect that with Elon now in charge, the speed of new features rolling out will be much much faster.” Not all of them will stick, Zhao added. “I would actually say probably the majority of them will not stick,” he said. “But that’s how you figure out the rest of the 10% of the features that will stick; by defining a lot of new features.” As for when Zhao expects a return on his money — Musk has said he plans to take Twitter public again in a few years — he demurred, unsurprisingly. “We’re very long term investors so we anticipate to be involved in the next 10 to 50 to 100 years. We’re not bothered by short term; we don’t care about that. We care about long-term potential for the platform, and with Twitter plus Elon? Independently, they have a lot of potential, but combined, there is such high potential. Ten to 20 years from now, we’re very confident that this will be a much stronger platform than Twitter yesterday.”

They’re not going to ban TikTok (but…) • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in bytedance, Government & Policy, Social, TikTokNo Comments

We’ve been hearing for years how TikTok hoovers up data globally and presents it to its parent company in China, and potentially thence to the powers that be. But despite renewed calls today from FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, the popular app is very unlikely to be outright banned. That doesn’t mean it will be allowed to carry on with impunity, though. Commissioner Carr’s opinion appeared in an interview with Axios, during which he stated that he doesn’t believe “anything other than a ban” would be sufficient to protect Americans’ data from collection by Chinese companies and authorities. (To be clearhis is him expressing his own position, not the FCC’s; I asked two others at the agency for comment and have not received any response.) This isn’t the first time Carr has voiced this idea. After BuzzFeed News reported data improprieties implied by leaked internal communications, he wrote in June to Apple and Google calling the app an “unacceptable national security risk” and asking the companies to remove it from their app stores. They didn’t, and now it’s back to the question of federal action — first pondered by the Trump administration, which despite many actions restricting China’s reach in the U.S. never managed to get a lock on TikTok. The reason for that is pretty simple: it would be political self-sabotage. TikTok is not just a wildly popular app, it’s the liferaft to which a generation that abandoned the noble ships Facebook, Instagram, and soon Twitter have clung for years. And the reason why is that American companies haven’t come close to replicating TikTok’s feat of algorithmic addiction. TikTok’s success in gluing Gen Z to their phones isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing — that’s a different discussion. Taking as a given its place in the zeitgeist, however, it makes a ban politically risky for multiple reasons. First, it would be tremendously unpopular. The disaffected-youth vote is supremely important right now, and any President, Senator, or Representative who supports such a ban would be given extreme side-eye by the youth. Already out of touch with technology and the priorities of the younger generation, D.C. would now also be seen as fun police. Whether that would drive voters to the other side or just cause them to not vote, there aren’t any good outcomes. Banning TikTok does not secure votes and that is fatal before you even start thinking about how to do it. (Not to mention it kind of looks like the government intervening to give flailing U.S. social media companies a boost.) Second, there isn’t a clear path to a ban. The FCC can’t do it (no jurisdiction). Despite the supposed national security threat, the Pentagon can’t do it (ditto). The feds can’t force Apple and Google to do it (First Amendment). Congress won’t do it (see above). An executive order won’t do it (too broad). No judge will do it (no plausible case). All paths to bans are impractical for one reason or another. Third, any effective ban would be a messy, drawn-out, contested thing with no guarantee of success. Imagine that somehow the government forced Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their stores and remotely wipe or disable it on phones. No one likes that look — the companies look too weak and too strong, letting the feds push them around and then showing off their power to reach out and touch “your” device. An IP-based ban would be easily circumvented but also set another unpleasant censorship precedent that ironically would make the U.S. look a lot more like China. And even should either or both of these be attempted, they’d be opposed in court by not just ByteDance but companies from around the world that don’t want the same thing to happen to them if they get a hit and the government doesn’t like it. For those reasons and more, an outright ban by law, decision or act of god is a very unlikely thing. But don’t worry: there are other tools in the toolbox. If you can’t beat ’em, bother ’em Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / ZebethMedia The government may not be able to kick TikTok out of the country, but that doesn’t mean they have to be nice about letting them stay. In fact, it’s probable that they’ll do their best to make it downright unpleasant. The company and service exists in something of a loophole, regulator-wise, like most social media companies. The addition of Chinese ownership is both a complicator and an opportunity. It’s more complicated because the U.S. can’t directly affect ByteDance’s policies. On the other hand, as a “foreign adversary,” China’s ascendancy over private industry is a legitimate national security concern and policy can be shaped around that. This involves various more independent agencies that are free to set rules within their remits — the FCC can’t, in this case, make a case. But what about the Commerce Department? Homeland Security? The FTC? For that matter, what about states like California? Rule-making agencies have a free hand — and like tacit Congressional backing — to extend their own fiefdoms to the edges of TikTok, with national security acting as a catch-all reason. If Commerce adds “connected software applications” to supply chain security rules as it has proposed, suddenly the data coming and going through the app is arguably under its protection. (This would all be shown in various definitions and filings at the time of the rulemaking.) What if TikTok’s source code, user data, and other important resources were subject to regular audits to make sure they complied with cross-border data supply chain rules? Well, it’s a pain in the neck for ByteDance because it needs to scour its code base to make sure it isn’t giving too much away. Having to prove that it handles data the way it says it does, to the satisfaction of U.S. authorities given free reign to be picky — not pleasant at all. And that’s just from a relatively quick rule

Twitch opens Guest Star up so anyone can run their own talk show now • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in Social, TwitchNo Comments

With its biggest product launch in years, Twitch is betting on a near future of the platform that features more dynamic conversations, expanding its current focus beyond mostly solo streamers. Through a new tool called Guest Star, which launched in a limited beta earlier this year, streamers can now easily pull other creators and fans into their streams for talk show-like experience. Guest Star makes it possible for anyone to pull up to five speakers into a stream at once. Creators can can host and manage guests from Twitch Studio and OBS, the streaming software of choice for many of the app’s more advanced creators. Guest Star can be enabled through the creator dashboard where it’s now available to everyone. Image Credits: Twitch With Guest Star, streamers can directly invite guests or tap members of chat to join. Viewers in chat can also ask to be featured on stream, providing another way for creators to incentivize and reward their supporters. Hopping into someone else’s stream just requires clicking a pop-up notification and guests can join with either video or just audio enabled, a setting that the host can determine and toggle on and off. Moderation tools give hosts a few ways to manage what guests do, including controlling their audio levels, disabling video like we mentioned and ultimately giving them the boot if they misbehave. Twitch’s suspicious user detection feature adds a layer of safety for hosts looking to choose members of chat to bring into a stream. As an additional safety layer, only phone-verified Twitch users can appear as guests and a digital “backstage” area makes it possible to lay out ground rules and coordinate before Twitch sees Guest Star as a natural evolution of the success it’s seen in the “Just Chatting” category, which has exploded since 2020. Comparing the first five months of 2022 to the first half of that year, hours watched in the category shot up 151% and Just Chatting creator revenue grew 169%.

Heylo wants to help you build your own little social circles for events • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in funding, Social, Startups, worklife venturesNo Comments

If you’ve worked at large tech companies, you’ve probably seen that a bunch of groups show up, whether officially or unofficially. Google calls ’em Employee Resource Groups (ERG), Facebook has its internal version of Facebook with groups, and other orgs have systems that range from listservs that have been running since the 1990s, to internal Slack groups, or perhaps a Mighty Network or two. Heylo just raised some money to bring these types of special interest groups to startups and companies of all sizes, giving employees a way to help each other in novel ways. “After working at Google and other corporate jobs for a decade, a sense of purpose was missing in my life. I tried new activities — running, reading and even teaching myself how to do a backflip. But after years, I still felt empty because I was pursuing these activities alone,” said Eric Winters, Heylo’s CEO & founder, in an interview with ZebethMedia. “I tried to join groups, but struggled to belong. After years of searching, I finally found the right group. It changed my life. I had experiences I could never imagine and met people I never knew existed. Too many people feel the way I did — a little lost, a little lonely. I found my calling by helping people belong to great groups.” Heylo was founded in 2019, by Xooglers (that’s ex-Googler) Eric Winters and Brandon Pearcy. They bootstrapped the company to profitability, and today announced they raised $1.5 million in a round led by Worklife Ventures to bring their product to the whole world. One of the core problems the group solves is payments; if you’re arranging an outing at work, receiving payments in cash or Venmo is possible, of course, but that gets messy once you scale your event past 30 or so; who has paid, who hasn’t, what-have-you. In addition to payments, the software streamlines group chats, event details, DMs among members, booking and waitlist features, etc. The lead investors are Charles Hudson from Precursor Ventures and Brianne Kimmel from Worklife. “Before the pandemic, millions of people had much simpler lives. They went to an office every day and their co-workers were often their most important relationships. Now, with remote work, people have lost that workplace camaraderie and must proactively cultivate relationships based on common interests,” said Brianne Kimmel of Worklife Ventures. “New kinds of social groups are on the rise: running groups, kayaking groups, book clubs, roller skating, volleyball, it’s endless. I see Heylo as being the glue and toolkit that makes these groups easy to organize and manage. More importantly, I see Heylo as a catalyst for the creation of groups that wouldn’t otherwise exist.” “Charles has been a seed investor for over 20 years. He has seen all the pitches and advised companies large and small. Moreover, he’s a sincere and genuinely good person. He knows everyone, and you can’t find anyone to say a bad thing about him. We are huge beneficiaries of his expertise and network,” said Winters. “Brianne is a leader herself. Worklife brings people together, literally, in their community spaces. Brianne has been instrumental in hiring and go-to-market strategy. She encourages us to think big and make a meaningful impact on the leaders we support.” By day, Josh Goldman is a doctor at UCLA. By night, he is the co-founder of the Electric Athletic Club, a social fitness group. He has grown EAC to multiple cities throughout the US and unites his members through active, social lifestyles. Image Credit: Heylo / Michael Rodmaker The company’s near-term goal is to help group members get so much value from their group that they are happy to pay for it, in turn using that as leverage not only to provide resources for leaders, but it increases participation and engagement from members. Under the mantra “We value what we pay for,” Heylo has helped groups launch memberships, host paid events and receive donations. The company claims that in many cases, its platform offered the first time for leaders to receive meaningful money from their group. “Heylo has collected over $500,000 for our initial cohort of leaders, and their groups are growing and engaged more than ever,” says Winters, He explains his longer-term vision: “Heylo will change the paradigm for leaders. No longer will leading a group be a cost center in their life. It can become a financially viable pursuit — one that is equally fulfilling and entrepreneurial. We want to inspire the next generation of creators to lead groups. The world doesn’t need more content or online products. We need more leaders who can build community and make a positive impact on their members.”

Facebook expands its professional mode profile setting to all creators globally • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in Apps, Creators, Facebook, meta, SocialNo Comments

Meta has announced the global expansion of its professional mode profile setting on Facebook to all creators. Professional mode is designed to be used by creators looking to monetize their followings on the social network. Facebook began testing professional mode with select creators in December 2021 and is now offering it to anyone on its platform. Professional mode is somewhat similar to Pages in the sense that it gives creators a separate profile to build their presence on the social network. In a blog post, Facebook said that it sees professional mode as a way to “build a public following, earn money from various monetization programs, and connect with your audience in more meaningful ways.” The profile setting gives creators access to monetization features and analytics tools, such as Facebook’s Reels Play bonus program that allows you to earn money for the reels you share. Professional mode also gives eligible creators access to Stars, which lets you earn money directly from followers on reels, live and video on demand. In-stream ads will also be launching to eligible professional mode creators, which gives them the opportunity to earn money by enabling ads before, during or after longer videos on demand on Facebook. The company is also testing ads on Facebook Reels on professional mode with a select group of creators across the globe. The company says the ad format integrates into reels by placing ads on reels or in between looping reels. Creators on professional mode also get access to subscriptions, which gives creators the option to share subscriber-only content on the social network. Subscriptions haven’t fully rolled out yet, and are still in the testing phase. “Professional mode allows you to build a global audience of followers, while still staying connected to friends and family from your personal Facebook profile,” the company said in the blog post. “As you post public content, you’ll have access to features designed to help you obtain and engage new followers – that were previously only available on Pages.” The expansion comes at a time when Meta is investing in its creator user base, as it sees the potential in a new revenue stream that comes from things like creator subscriptions. As Meta continues to build the metaverse, it’ll need the support of creators, so it’s not surprising that it’s looking to broaden its offerings for creators.

Twitter ad sales head resigned amid turbulent Musk takeover • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in Elon Musk, Sarah Personette, Social, TwitterNo Comments

Twitter’s Chief Consumer Officer Sarah Personette has left the company, she wrote in a Twitter thread Tuesday morning. Personette, who was in charge of Twitter’s ad sales business, said that she resigned on Friday, and her work access was officially cut off by Tuesday. The day before her resignation, Musk fired four key executives immediately after his takeover: CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde. It has been the greatest privilege to serve all of you as a leader and a partner. Many have heard me say this but the most important role I believe I played in the company was championing the requirements of brand safety. — Sarah Personette (@SEP) November 1, 2022 With Personette out of the picture, the number of remaining pre-Musk executives at Twitter is dwindling, with more key personnel rumored to be leaving as well. Jay Sullivan, Twitter’s head of product, deleted the bio on his Twitter account, which previously denoted his role at the company. The previous head of product, Kayvon Beykpour, was let go by former CEO Agrawal in May. A former Facebook marketing VP, Personette had worked at Twitter since October 2018, when she joined as a VP of Global Client Solutions, per LinkedIn. She was promoted to Chief Customer Officer in August 2021. That role is crucial to Twitter’s business, since the majority of its revenue comes from ad sales. With Musk expected to make changes to content moderation policies, ad sales could be impacted. As newly installed “Chief Twit” Elon Musk took over on Thursday, he posted a screenshot of a letter he wrote to Twitter advertisers, vowing that the platform “obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape.” Personette quote-tweeted his message, saying that he had a great conversation with the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. She added, “Our continued commitment to brand safety for advertisers remains unchanged. Looking forward to the future!” But by the following evening, she had resigned. “It has been the greatest privilege to serve all of you as a leader and a partner,” Personette said. “Many have heard me say this but the most important role I believe I played in the company was championing the requirements of brand safety.”

Meet Crowd.dev, an open source user-led growth platform for fostering developer communities • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 1, 2022Posted in Community-led growth, crowd-dev, open source, Social, Startups, VentureNo Comments

Community-led growth (CLG) has emerged as a popular mechanism for driving business, as companies strive to foster an ecosystem of fervent users that draws in new customers organically, serves as a support network for millions, and bangs a company’s drum completely off its own volition. Businesses such as Stripe, Slack, Canva, Notion, and Figma have grown substantially off the back of their respective communities, which in turn has led to a slew of new technologies dedicated to helping such businesses harness their fanbase, unearth their biggest advocates, and keep that CLG flywheel spinning. Investors have taken note, too: in the past year alone we’ve seen companies such as Commsor raise a $50 million Series B; Common Room secure $52 million; Threado draw in a $3.1 million seed round; and, more recently, Talkbase raise $2 million to power user-led growth for any company. Now, another new company has entered the community-led growth fray with a slightly different approach to the existing players, one focused on developer communities and with open source at its core. Founded out of Berlin in 2021, Crowd.dev brings together data from myriad developer communities including GitHub, Discord, Slack, Twitter, DEV, and Hacker News, and serves up analytics and workflow automations on top of this aggregated data. For example, a developer tool company might want to understand its users better and build relationships both with them and their employers to hone their product and find a better product-market fit. This might involve gathering and viewing all direct and indirect feedback in a single interface, or using one of Crowd.dev’s premium tools such as Eagle Eye which leans on natural language processing (NLP) to identify community discussions ripe for engagement. Crowd.dev: Eagle Eye app Image Credits: Crowd.dev To help take things to the next level, Crowd.dev has just raised €2.2 million ($2.2 million) in a pre-seed round of funding led by Seedcamp and Lightbird, with participation from Possible Ventures, Angel Invest, and a handful of angel backers. On top of that, the German startup has open-sourced its core platform, a move that goes some way toward differentiating itself in an increasingly crowded space. But first, it’s worth considering why developer-focused firms might need a dedicated platform to steer their community-led growth efforts, given that the incumbents can already be used for any community of users — including developers. Verticals Crowd.dev CEO and cofounder Jonathan Reimer argues that the word “community” has a broad gamut of connotations, and could mean anything from from social media influencers to online learning groups. Ultimately, a “one-size-fits-all” approach doesn’t work — a company laser-focused on attracting developers will probably need different tools to a company seeking to attract creators or crypto fans. “There has been hype around community, but also disappointment regarding new tools made to make community-building easier,” Reimer explained to ZebethMedia. “I have tried [existing] tools at previous jobs and was never satisfied as they didn’t match my use-case. Similar to CRMs (customer relationship management software), we believe there will be a verticalization in the community software space. We’re the first going in the developer space.” This “verticalization” is important in terms of building a platform that people actually want to use. In the case of Crowd.dev, which is aiming to create a product that suggests actions that a user can take based on developer community data, specializing in this way allows it to better tailor its product and “build more reliable model,” as Reimer puts it, for example in terms of detecting feedback or evaluating sentiment. “Achieving this for all kinds of communities at the same time would be incredibly hard,” Reimer said. “Developer communities have astonishing similarities, and especially for open source communities, we have access to a ton of historical training data.” Crowd.dev analytics Image Credits: Crowd.dev The open source factor Open source communities have long played a fundamental role in driving adoption of software, which is partly why a growing number of companies choose to make their products available under an open source license. If developers are able to tinker with software themselves with minimal friction, contribute some code, and even add new features, they are more inclined to use the software in their places of work — and thus, they are more inclined to convince their employers that it’s worth paying for premium features on top of the open source product. And this is the main driving force behind Crowd.dev’s focus on open source development communities, and its reasons for open-sourcing its own platform. “We believe that an essential tool for developer-focused, open source companies — as community management is — should be open source itself,” Reimer said. Transitioning to an open source platform may hold other benefits, too. For example, enterprises seeking greater transparency and control over their data can host Crowd.dev on their own infrastructure, and then pay Crowd.dev to unlock access to unlimited users and integrations. Or companies can elect to pay for the hosted incarnation of Crowd.dev, which includes a basic free tier in addition to more advanced enterprise plans. In its short lifespan so far, Crowd.dev claims a fairly impressive roster of customers such as The Linux Foundation and Microsoft, a company that has increasingly embraced open source over the past eight years after a somewhat frosty attitude toward community-driven software in years previous. Reimer said that Microsoft uses Crowd.dev to operate Flatcar Linux, a Linux distribution for container workloads it now operates after acquiring developer Kinvolk back in in 2021. “They use Crowd.dev mainly to analyze community members’ engagement, spot relevant stargazers on GitHub, and create reports,” Reimer said. In truth, Microsoft and its big tech ilk won’t be typical users, due to the fact that most of Crowd.dev’s target customers will be smaller companies seeking growth. But still, it’s an indication of the mindshare that Crowd.dev has managed to secure so far, with “several hundred organizations” joining the company’s beta product since March this year. “Eighty percent of our users are companies between Seed and Series B that see community