Insights

For a completely free tool, Google Analytics packs in an amazing amount of data-driven information for anyone with an interest in web traffic stats. Since practically anyone dealing in digital content or online sales should have an acute interest in those numbers, the Google Analytics Certification: Get Certified in 2...

Certain governments have been censoring web content for years; with China, Iran and Turkey among the biggest offenders. But if there was something unique about Russia’s block of the Telegram messaging service in April, it was the extent to which the government was willing to go to. Russia went for a wholesale,...

Facebook and Twitter have, within a few hours of each other, revealed new ad transparency measures this week. In both cases, the company in question reveals more details about what ads each account or page is running. It’s also offering further insights on political ads. Trouble is, it all depends on how much effort...

The former “America’s Next Top Model” and “Dancing with the Stars” contestant weighed in on Twitter. Pornhub recently added closed captioning so that the horny and hearing impaired among us can more fully enjoy the adult platform’s offerings. Deaf activist and former...

A patent from Facebook came to light earlier this week, depicting technology that Facebook would use to quietly activate a user’s microphone in order to listen to them as they watch ads. How hard can I “nope” out of that? The details: The patent, filed earlier this month, was originally discovered by Metro. It...

Over 100,000 escorts and allies are using Switter now. Before the passage of FOSTA (Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) earlier this year, critics had warned that it could put sex workers at risk. The law was meant to deter internet sex trafficking by targeting online content...

Google’s UK-based sister company, DeepMind, recently developed an AI that can render entire scenes in 3D after having only observed them as flat 2D images. Broad strokes: AI researchers at the cutting-edge are trying to teach machines to learn like humans. Rather than see the world in pixels, we look around our...

THE ROCK – the world’s most charismatic steroid user – has just released a product he described on Instagram as “the WORLD’S FIRST over the ear headphones engineered for HARDCORE TRAINING.” Apart from, THE ROCK, they aren’t really, are they? Are they? Are they really, THE ROCK? In fact, other famous...

Mike Rognlien outlines how to figure out when it’s time to move on and the best way to do it. The average American worker holds between 10 and 15 jobs during their lifetime, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and if you want your salary to not become stagnant, experts suggest you change jobs every...

As of early this morning, the account was still visible, with Twitter users meticulously going through his tweets and posting screenshots. More than 13 hours after a gunman killed five people at the Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, Twitter has suspended the apparent account of the suspect, Jarrod W. Ramos,...

14% of respondents said it’s “very important” that people on social media know they are living their best life. Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your friends are jerks. Or at least 36% of them are.Read Full Story

At least two Facebook patents describe listening to users’ TVs. Facebook says it will “never” deploy the technique, but other firms are using similar methods. Amid persistent rumors that Facebook is spying on you through your phone’s microphone—rumors that the company has denied...

We heard back in February about Google’s plans to build a game streaming platform, codenamed Yeti. Now, Kotaku has a scoop on hardware that’s being developed at the company to complement this upcoming service. It isn’t yet clear if Google’s gaming contraption will be a high-powered console like a PS4 or Xbox...

Quite possibly the best thing about being a YouTube Red/Premium/Google Play Music subscriber is the ability to watch videos in a floating picture-in-picture (PiP) window on my phone. That allows me to continue watching a video while chatting, browsing the web, or doing pretty much any activity. I’ll soon be losing...

We may now be having the first of many public conversations about how AIs should talk to humans. Google’s much-hyped reservation-setting AI, Duplex, is a one-trick pony with nowhere near the conversational versatility we’ll see in the artificial general intelligence (AGI) of the future. But the natural...

There was a reported shooter in the Maryland newspaper’s office. The Capital Gazette newspaper out of Annapolis, Maryland, is dealing with an active shooter situation. Both the Anne Arundel police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) have confirmed this incident on Twitter.Read...

The talent agency announced this long-overdue initiative at its second annual Amplify conference. A few years ago, a group of writers and editors, including Durga Chew-Bose and Jazmine Hughes, started the Twitter account Writers of Color. It’s an online resource, complete with a list, that spotlights people of...

Instagram Stories – everyone’s favorite Snapchat rip-off – has launched a feature that lets you put music over your visual creations. We reported on this potentially happening around two months ago, but it’s set to roll-out to some users shortly. Over 400m people use Stories every day, so there’s little...

The hashtagging, meme-sharing, emoji-writing analyst is the scourge of titans like Disney and the champion of New Media. What’s in it for him? Last Thursday, media analyst Rich Greenfield could have spent the first day of summer almost anywhere.Read Full Story

In an attempt at transparency, Dorsey takes a lazy cue from sheepish celebrities. What is the future of Twitter, you may ask? And the answer is: I don’t know! The social network has been under fire for what seems like ever. First, the platform helped the rise of trolls during the GamerGate saga. From there,...

The company’s bot is learning what Facebook ads look like so it can block them, even as Facebook tweaks its code. The makers of Adblock Plus want you to submit screenshots of the ads in your Facebook feed so a new artificial intelligence system called Sentinel can learn to recognize them.Read Full Story

Pokemon Go creator Niantic wants to follow in the footsteps of Amazon and Google to build a lucrative business on top of the platform that powered its own product. Developers who watched with envy as Pokemon Go became the fastest app in history to earn $1 billion in revenue could soon build their own applications on...

For Google to catch up to Amazon, the company should just give away Google Home Minis “to every US (arguably global) household.” By 2022, 70% of American homes are expected to have smart speakers, dominated by Amazon Echos, says Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak in a new research report on Alphabet....

Early numbers indicate that Instagram’s engagement time is up. Earlier this month, Instagram announced a new major feature called IGTV. It is essentially a channel for popular Instagram creators to stream longer content to their millions of followers. It is quite obviously a way for Instagram–and by...