The Elon Musk Twitter deal has just been confirmed, and he is taking the company private for approximately $44-billion, or $54.20 per share. What does he have planned for the social media giant? Musk aims to enhance the product with new features, such as making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.
Photo credit: Let’s Go Digital
Could a social media network for pets be coming soon? Technically, there have been many over the years, but none have really yet caught on, that is unless Meta’s Petbook changes that. Meta filed for the ‘Petbook’ trademark on May 24, 2021 in Mexico at the Instituto Mexicano de la Propiedad Industrial (IMPI) and shortly after, with the European Union Intellectual Property Network (EUIPN).
During the Facebook Connect 2021 event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will be rebranding as Meta, with the main goal being to bring together their apps and technologies under a new name. The ultimate goal is to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities as well as grow their businesses. Users will be able to share immersive experiences with other people, even when you’re not together physically. Read more for two videos explaining everything and showing how it will work.
The famous 56-second-long “Charlie Bit my Finger” viral video that was first uploaded to YouTube back in May 2007 will be removed forever in just a couple of days and be auctioned off. It featured Harry Davies-Carr (who was aged three) and Charlie Davies-Carr (aged one), two brothers from the United Kingdom. The video will be sold as an NFT, which basically means that the original version of the video is going to be sold as if it were an original art piece. Read more for a video showing the brothers now and additional information.
Soya no Sohi, also known as Azusa Gakuyuki on Twitter, gained thousands of fans on social media platforms as a young motorcycle enthusiast traveling the scenic roadways of northern Japan. This social media influencer traversed through mountains, beaches and the countryside on Yamaha sport bikes. What most did not know is that Soya was actually Yasuo Nakajima, a 50-year-old man who used the AI-powered FaceApp to transform his face in every shot.
Rarely are foods so hyped that they need to create their own Instagram account, but that’s exactly what happened with Dunk-a-roos. First launched in 1990, they consisted of a snack-sized package with ten small cookies and a side of frosting. As the name implies, the cookies were meant to be dunked into the frosting before eating. They were discontinued in the US some time during 2012, but just today, General Mills announced that they’ll be making a comeback this summer. Read more for a trailer and additional information.
Vine co-creator Dom Hofmann launched Byte, a new Android / iOS app that lets its users share six-second looping videos. Even though it was just released, its biggest competitor comes from China’s Bytedance, the maker of the popular social app TikTok, which lets you string together 6-15 second clips into a 60-second (maximum) video. Read more for a first look at the Byte beta and additional information.
Photo credit: Madelynn Ellagrace via Oddity Central
When 15-year-old Madelynn Sumpter broke the rules by sneaking in boys at a sleepover party, her parents, Tawnya Ford and Larry Sumpter, gave her a choice of handing over her phone for a month, or giving them access to her social media for two weeks. As you might have already guessed by the title, she chose the latter and unintentionally gained over 10,000 new followers. Read more to see a couple of her Dad’s posts.
TikTok, the an iOS / Android social media video app for creating and sharing short lip-sync, comedy, as well as talent videos, has revealed its first smartphone, the Smartisan Nut Pro 3. Parent company ByteDance acquired various Smartisan patents and helped them develop the Nut Pro 3, complete with branded features. It features a 6.39-inch FHD+ AMOLED display, an in-display fingerprint scanner, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855+ processor and comes in three storage configurations: 8GB of RAM + 128GB of internal storage, 8GB of RAM + 256GB internal storage, and 12GB of RAM + 256GB of internal storage.
Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and other social media platforms make it easy to share videos on-the-fly, but sometimes, you record in the wrong format. Thankfully, there’s Auto Reframe, an Adobe Premiere Pro tool that automatically reframes content in different aspect ratios using artificial intelligence. Adobe’s Sensei machine-learning technology analyzes, crops and pans footage for different square, vertical and widescreen versions.