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☆ Bluesky’s user base has doubled in the past 90 days. Is it a mass exodus from X?
▼ + stars: | 2024-11-13 | by ( Clare Duffy | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Bluesky’s user base has doubled in the past 90 days — on Tuesday the company said it had gained 1 million new sign-ups in the past week alone, bringing it to more than 15 million total users. “X usage is at an all-time high and continues to surge,” X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a post Wednesday. Bluesky also saw daily visits jump on Election Day and the day after to 1.2 million and 1.3 million, respectively, up from around 800,000 in the days before. On Bluesky, daily users more than doubled from-mid October to the post-election week. In the run-up to the election, Musk spread false and misleading claims about Trump’s competitor, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Persons: Bluesky rocketed, Elon, Musk, Donald Trump, Charlie Warzel, New York Times ’ Mara Gay, Don Lemon, X, White supremacists, Linda Yaccarino, “, Similarweb, Bluesky, ” David Carr, we’ve, Ed Zitron, EZPR, Zitron, Mike Isaac, ”, Trump, MAGA, Kamala Harris, Vivek Ramaswamy, Vladimir Zelensky, Musk’s Starlink, That’s, – CNN’s Liam Reilly, Matt Egan Organizations: New, New York CNN, Apple, New York Times, CNN, Guardian, ” New York Times, Trump, Twitter, “ Department, Government Locations: New York, anecdotally, Bluesky, ”, Russia

The Noticias Telemundo channel on WhatsApp gained more than 30,000 followers in just the first two weeks and now has more than 820,000 followers, Ms. Planells said. Meta, which owns the app, says about 1.9 billion of its two billion users live outside the United States. WhatsApp Channels exist in a separate tab from the main messaging section of the app. People, businesses or organizations can create a channel to send video, text or links to anyone who follows them. The traffic created by WhatsApp still pales in comparison with what Google and Facebook send to publications.

Persons: Planells, ”, WhatsApp Organizations: Noticias Telemundo, WhatsApp, Meta, Google, Facebook Locations: United States

Susan Wojcicki, who helped turn Google from a start-up in her garage into an internet juggernaut and became one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent female executives with her leadership of YouTube, died on Friday. Her death was confirmed by her husband, Dennis Troper, who wrote on Facebook on Friday that she had been living with lung cancer. A YouTube spokesman confirmed the date of her death. Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, announced her death in a statement on Friday. “She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her,” he said.

Persons: Susan Wojcicki, Dennis Troper, Sundar Pichai, ” Organizations: Google, YouTube, Facebook

☆ Meta in Talks to Use Voices of Judi Dench, Awkwafina and Others for A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2024-08-02 | by ( Mike Isaac | Nicole Sperling | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Meta is in discussions with Awkwafina, Judi Dench and other actors and influencers for the right to incorporate their voices into a digital assistant product called MetaAI, according to three people with knowledge of the talks, as the company pushes to build more products that feature artificial intelligence. Apart from Ms. Dench and Awkwafina, Meta is in talks with the comedian Keegan-Michael Key and other celebrities, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions are private. The talks remain fluid, and it is unclear which actors and influencers, if any, may sign on to the project, the people said. If the parties come to an agreement, Meta could pay millions of dollars in fees to the actors. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has invested heavily in artificial intelligence, which the biggest tech companies are racing to develop and lead.

Persons: Awkwafina, Judi Dench, Dench, Keegan, Michael Key Organizations: Meta, Bloomberg

More than 100 venture capitalists said on Wednesday that they had pledged to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in November and had solicited donations for her presidential campaign, in a rejoinder to the splintering among tech leaders over whom to support in the election. The group includes Reid Hoffman, a founder of LinkedIn; Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures; Mark Cuban, the former principal owner of the Dallas Mavericks; Ron Conway, a well-known angel investor; and the billionaire Chris Sacca. “We are pro-business, pro-American dream, pro-entrepreneurship and pro-technological progress,” the group said in a statement posted to their website, VCsForKamala.org. “We also believe in democracy as the backbone of our nation.” The website asks people to sign a pledge to support Ms. Harris and another to donate to her campaign. The effort was buttressed by another group of tech entrepreneurs and workers called Tech For Kamala, which also wrote a letter this week expressing “enthusiastic and unwavering support for Vice President Harris.” The letter gathered more than 550 signatures in two days.

Persons: Kamala Harris, Reid Hoffman, Vinod Khosla, Mark Cuban, Ron Conway, Chris Sacca, “, Harris, ” Organizations: LinkedIn, Khosla Ventures, Dallas Mavericks, Tech, Kamala

How the election is dividing techThe tech world has long been divided by rivalries: Macs versus PCs, open source versus closed source. It’s a reminder, as DealBook has noted, that Silicon Valley’s libertarian wing is feeling more emboldened to flex its money and influence to buck what has become a traditionally Democratic consensus. Who’s who: Some of the most vocal Democratic donors among the tech elite are Hoffman; Vinod Khosla, the venture capitalist; Aaron Levie, the C.E.O. On the Republican side are a camp of libertarians that includes Musk and the investors Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Then there are those staying neutral, including Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, who are ostensibly trying to avoid antagonizing whoever wins in November.

Persons: Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Ryan Mac, Erin Griffith, Mike Isaac, DealBook, Who’s, Hoffman, Vinod Khosla, Aaron Levie, Roger McNamee, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta Organizations: Republican

Less than an hour after a gunman in Butler, Pa., tried to assassinate Donald J. Trump this month, David Sacks, a venture capitalist based in San Francisco, directed his anger about the incident toward a former colleague. “The Left normalized this,” Mr. Sacks wrote on X, linking to a post about Reid Hoffman, a technology investor and major Democratic donor. Mr. Sacks implied that Mr. Hoffman, a critic of Mr. Trump who had funded a lawsuit accusing the former president of rape and defamation, had helped cause the shooting. Elon Musk, who leads SpaceX and Tesla and previously worked with Mr. Sacks and Mr. Hoffman, then weighed in on X, name-checking Mr. Hoffman and saying people like him “got their dearest wish.”In Silicon Valley, the spectacle of tech billionaire attacking tech billionaire has suddenly exploded, as pro-Trump executives and their Democratic counterparts have openly turned on each other. The brawling has spilled into public view online, at conferences and on podcasts, as debates about the country’s future have turned into personal broadsides.

Persons: Donald J, Trump, David Sacks, “, Mr, Sacks, Reid Hoffman, Hoffman, Elon Musk Organizations: Democratic, SpaceX, Tesla, Trump Locations: Butler, Pa, San Francisco, Silicon Valley

☆ Mark Zuckerberg Stumps for ‘Open Source’ A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-23 | by ( Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

That debate — closed versus open source — has become inflamed by the rapid development of artificial intelligence and worries that A.I. In an open letter on Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, reinforced what some said was a risky stance taken by his company: that open source development of artificial intelligence would allow technologists to learn how powerful A.I. models are created and use that knowledge to build their own A.I. Mr. Zuckerberg said it was unrealistic to think that a handful of companies could keep their A.I. technology secret, particularly when Silicon Valley has for years been a target for espionage by countries such as China.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg Organizations: Meta Locations: China

☆ Grab Them. Then Stump Them.
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-11 | by ( Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

What’s a five-letter word for an activity that media and technology companies are increasingly relying on to gain subscribers and keep them coming back? GAMESApple released a series of word-focused puzzles in its subscription news service last fall. LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, debuted a set of word games this spring. For media companies, games are a way to attract new customers as their sites face declining traffic from Google, X and Meta, which have backed away from emphasizing news. “They want to recreate that same satisfying experience for people that they might have had over years of doing a crossword in the newspaper.”

Persons: What’s, ”, John Temple Organizations: Apple, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Morning, The Washington Post, Vox Media, Boston Globe, Google

☆ What to Know About the Open Versus Closed Software Debate
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-29 | by ( Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Few debates have raged longer and more contentiously in the computing industry than one: Is “open source” better than “closed” when it comes to software development? Source code makes up the underlying building blocks of the apps you use. Developers can write tens of thousands of lines of source code to create programs that will run on a computer. Open-source software is any such computer code that can be freely distributed, copied or altered to a developer’s own ends. The nonprofit Open Source Initiative, an industry organization, sets other stipulations and standards for what software is considered open source, but it is largely a matter of the code’s being free and open for anyone to use and improve.

Organizations: Google, Microsoft, Initiative

☆ How A.I. Made Mark Zuckerberg Popular Again in Silicon Valley
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-29 | by ( Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, announced last year that his company would release an artificial intelligence system, Jeffrey Emanuel had reservations. Mr. Emanuel, a part-time hacker and full-time A.I. When Mr. Zuckerberg introduced Meta’s A.I. system, Mr. Zuckerberg made the code “open source” so that it could be freely copied, modified and reused by anyone. He said he appreciated that Meta’s A.I.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Jeffrey Emanuel, Emanuel, Zuckerberg, Meta’s Organizations: Meta, Google, Microsoft

☆ Meta’s Profits More Than Double, While Spending on A.I. Rises
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-24 | by ( Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Profit was $12.4 billion, up from $5.7 billion a year earlier. “It’s been a good start to the year,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, referring to the company’s A.I. efforts and “healthy growth across our apps.”But Meta’s efforts on A.I., which require substantial computing power, come with a lofty price tag. The Silicon Valley company said it planned to raise its spending forecast for the year to $35 billion to $40 billion, up from a previous estimate of $30 billion to $37 billion. infrastructure, including data centers, chip designs and research and development costs.

Persons: “ It’s, ”, Mark Zuckerberg Organizations: Revenue, FactSet Locations: A.I

☆ Apple, Meta caught in proxy war between U.S. and China, NY Times' Mike Isaac suggests
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-19 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

In this videoShare Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailApple, Meta caught in proxy war between U.S. and China, NY Times' Mike Isaac suggestsMike Isaac, New York Times technology correspondent, joins 'Fast Money' to talk the proxy war brewing between U.S. and China over technology.

Persons: Meta, Mike Isaac Organizations: Apple, NY Times, New York Times Locations: China

Apple said it pulled the Meta-owned apps WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China on Friday on government orders, potentially escalating the war over technology between the United States and China. The House of Representatives was preparing to vote on a bill as soon as this weekend that would force the Chinese internet company ByteDance to sell its popular video app TikTok or have it be banned in the United States. U.S. lawmakers have said TikTok poses a security threat because of its ties to China. Apple said that China’s internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration, ordered the removal of WhatsApp and Threads from its app store because of national security concerns. “We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree,” an Apple spokesman said.

Persons: Apple Organizations: U.S, Cyberspace Administration, Apple Locations: China, United States

☆ Meta, in Its Biggest A.I. Push, Places Smart Assistants Across Its Apps
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-18 | by ( Mike Isaac | Cade Metz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On a call with investors last spring, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, said he believed that he had an opportunity to introduce artificially intelligent assistants “to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful.”A year later, he is making good on his statement. On Thursday, Meta will begin incorporating new versions of its A.I.-powered smart assistant software across its apps, which include Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook. The latest technology will be rolled out in more than a dozen countries, including Australia, Canada, Singapore and the United States. software will become practically omnipresent — inside the news feed, in search bars and in chats with friends. People will be able to ask the assistant, Meta A.I., for help in completing tasks and getting information, such as what concerts might be occurring in San Francisco on a Saturday night or the best options for vegan enchiladas in New York.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, Meta A.I Organizations: Meta, Facebook Locations: Australia, Canada, Singapore, United States, San Francisco, New York

☆ Ready for a Chatbot Version of Your Favorite Instagram Influencers?
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-15 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Being an influencer can be a lot of work. Instagram is pitching popular influencers on a program that relies on artificial intelligence to interact with fans, the latest example of how Meta, Instagram’s parent company, is trying to expand the technology across its products. The program will essentially be a chatbot that mimics the “voice” of the Instagram influencer to respond to fans, the people said. Most of the messages would be sent automatically and would at least initially disclose that they were A.I.-generated, according to two of the people. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were asked to sign nondisclosure agreements as part of the program.

Persons: Instagram, A.I

☆ Meta’s Smart Glasses Are Becoming Artificially Intelligent. We Took Them for a Spin.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-28 | by ( Brian X. Chen | Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In a sign that the tech industry keeps getting weirder, Meta soon plans to release a big update that transforms the Ray-Ban Meta, its camera glasses that shoot videos, into a gadget seen only in sci-fi movies. Next month, the glasses will be able to use new artificial intelligence software to see the real world and describe what you’re looking at, similar to the A.I. software, they can be used to scan famous landmarks, translate languages and identify animal breeds and exotic fruits, among other tasks. software, wearers just say, “Hey, Meta,” followed by a prompt, such as “Look and tell me what kind of dog this is.” The A.I. then responds in a computer-generated voice that plays through the glasses’ tiny speakers.

Persons: Meta, Ray, Ban, ”

☆ Reddit’s Long, Rocky Road to an Initial Public Offering
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-13 | by ( Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

During a leadership crisis in 2015, Reddit asked Steve Huffman, one of its founders, to return to run the social media platform. This month, Reddit is poised to reach the stock market in one of the first tech initial public offerings of the year. Unlike a recent crop of start-ups that are focused entirely on artificial intelligence, the 19-year-old company is a throwback to an earlier era of social media. But what stands out the most is that Reddit is able to go public at all. After being early to social media, the San Francisco-based company stagnated for years.

Persons: Reddit, Steve Huffman, Huffman, “, Mr Locations: San Francisco

OpenAI said on Friday that Sam Altman, its high-profile chief executive, would rejoin its board of directors more than three months after he was briefly pushed out of the company. The move caps a highly anticipated report by a law firm hired by OpenAI’s board of directors to investigate Mr. Altman and his sudden removal from the company in November. “The special committee recommended and the full board expressed their full confidence in Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman,” Mr. Taylor said, referring to Greg Brockman, the company president who quit in protest after Mr. Altman was removed. “We are excited and unanimous in our support for Sam and Greg.”The company said that the report found that OpenAI’s board acted within its broad discretion to terminate Mr. Altman, but also found that his conduct did not mandate removal. Mr. Taylor said the company would continue to expand its board.

Persons: OpenAI, Sam Altman, Altman, Bret Taylor, . Brockman, ” Mr, Taylor, Greg Brockman, Greg, ”

☆ Big American Tech Profits From Chinese Ad Spending Spree
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-06 | by ( Daisuke Wakabayashi | Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Temu, the international arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, is flooding Google with ads for absurdly inexpensive goods. With an initial public offering looming, the fast-fashion merchant Shein is inundating Instagram with ads for clothes and accessories at rock-bottom prices. Developers of China’s video streaming and gaming apps are dumping marketing dollars into Facebook, X and YouTube to entice potential users. In the last year, Temu has placed about 1.4 million ads globally across Google services, and at least 26,000 different versions of ads on Meta, according to Meta’s Ad Library. “You can’t escape their ads across Facebook, Instagram and Google Search.”

Persons: Shein, Temu, ”, Canaves Organizations: Facebook, YouTube, Google, Meta, Ad Locations: China, United States, eMarketer

☆ ‘Dune: Part Two’ Gives Sci-Fi-Obsessed Silicon Valley a Reason to Party
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-04 | by ( Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In a top-floor atrium in downtown San Francisco on Thursday evening, tech workers from Google, Slack, X and Mozilla mingled next to a pair of cardboard cutouts of Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya. Alex Stamos, the former head of security at Facebook, was also spotted. “Do you think they’ll let me take home one of the freaky sandworm popcorn buckets?” someone in the crowd tittered. The techies were all there to celebrate Silicon Valley’s newest obsession: “Dune: Part 2,” the latest movie adapted from the Frank Herbert-authored science-fiction saga, which helped inspire many of them to become interested in technology. The film, which follows the 2021 installment “Dune,” sold an estimated $81.5 million in tickets in the United States and Canada over the weekend, the biggest opening for a Hollywood film since “Barbie.”

Persons: Zendaya, Dustin Moskovitz, chatted, Tim O’Reilly, Alex Stamos, Frank Herbert, ”, “ Barbie Organizations: Google, Mozilla, Facebook Locations: San Francisco, United States, Canada

☆ Instagram’s Uneasy Rise as a News Site
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-22 | by ( Sapna Maheshwari | Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On a recent Wednesday in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, Mosheh Oinounou, a former producer for CBS, Bloomberg News and Fox News, swiped through Instagram. Then he spent much of the day turning many of the articles into posts on his Instagram account, under the handle Mo News. The content has earned Mo News 436,000 Instagram followers, turning what had been a pandemic side project into an enterprise with three full-time employees and a bigger spotlight. In December, the State Department offered Mo News an interview with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. Mr. Oinounou said the agency had told him, “We understand how people are getting their news.”

Persons: Will, Oinounou, Biden, Antony J, Blinken, “, ” Organizations: CBS, Bloomberg News, Fox News, Mo, Republican, Mo News, State Department Locations: Instagram, New Hampshire

☆ Meta Calls for Industry Effort to Label A.I.-Generated Content
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-06 | by ( Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nick Clegg, president of global affairs at Meta, called a nascent effort to detect artificially generated content “the most urgent task” facing the tech industry today. On Tuesday, Mr. Clegg proposed a solution. Meta said it would promote technological standards that companies across the industry could use to recognize markers in photo, video and audio material that would signal that the content was generated using artificial intelligence. The standards could allow social media companies to quickly identify content generated with A.I. “While this is not a perfect answer, we did not want to let perfect be the enemy of the good,” Mr. Clegg said in an interview.

Persons: Nick Clegg, Clegg, Meta, Mr Organizations: Economic, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Adobe Locations: Davos, Switzerland

☆ Meta Rejected Efforts to Improve Children’s Safety, Documents Show
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-31 | by ( Cecilia Kang | Mike Isaac | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Hours before Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, was set to testify on Wednesday about child safety online, lawmakers released internal documents showing how his company had rejected calls to bulk up on resources to combat the problem. In 90 pages of internal emails from fall 2021, top officials at Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, debated the addition of dozens of engineers and other employees to focus on children’s well-being and safety. One proposal to Mr. Zuckerberg for 45 new staff members was declined. The documents, which are being released in full for the first time, were cited in a lawsuit last year by 33 state attorneys general who accused Meta of getting young users hooked on its apps. They contradict statements from company executives, including the head of global safety and the head of Instagram, who testified in congressional hearings on child safety during that period that they prioritized the well-being of their youngest users and would work harder to combat harmful content on their platform.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, Meta, Richard Blumenthal, Marsha Blackburn Organizations: Meta, Facebook, Republican Locations: Connecticut, Tennessee

One proposal to Mr. Zuckerberg for 45 new staff members was declined. It was rejected and he returned to Mr. Zuckerberg in November with a scaled-down proposal for 32 new hires. It is unclear what Mr. Zuckerberg decided. At the hearing, Mr. Zuckerberg plans to suggest that Apple bear the responsibility for verifying ages via its App Store, according to his prepared remarks. Mr. Zuckerberg has long positioned Meta — and the internet writ large — as a place for both good and ill.

Persons: Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg, Meta, Richard Blumenthal, Marsha Blackburn, Mr, Blumenthal, “ We’ve, Andy Stone, Sheryl Sandberg, Nick Clegg, Clegg, Zuckerberg’s, ”, “ Organizations: Meta, Facebook, Republican, Apple Locations: Connecticut, Tennessee

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