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Youtube Helping prevent from Coronavirus

YouTube Doing All It Can to Promote Good Content in the Times of COVID-19

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As the COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc around the world, all spheres of our life are reeling in the aftermath. Around the world, cases seem to be on the increase and most governments are putting curfews in place to prevent the further spread of the virus. During this time of need, several people have been accused of spreading false information regarding the disease. When everything is digital, it becomes effortless to popularize and legitimize fake news. Since doing so can have serious repercussions, officials are asking people to be careful regarding what they share with family and friends. Therefore, having a legitimate source for news and updates regarding the COVID-19 has become integral, and Google seems to be stepping up to the occasion. Here’s a look at how YouTube and Google are handling the situation.

Saving Grace from Google

Google recently released specifications regarding how they are helping users fight the COVID-19. They have set up an education website that will help users gain insight into how the virus works and how we can protect ourselves against it. This website is working in tandem with the Trump administration to help curb the spread of the virus. This partnership with the government will help users gain information regarding how the virus spreads, WHO guidelines and even CDC control measures. The initial version of the website was to become active on the 16th of March.

Furthermore, reports state that Verily, which is owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, is working on setting up COVID-19 testing centers. These will launch in the San Francisco Bay Area and will help speed up the testing process, limiting its spread. The company is also said to be developing an online tool to help patients self-quarantine themselves if they show symptoms. However, both these tools are only in their testing phase and may require a lot more time to become operational. Furthermore, the tech giant will also dispense vital information using Search, Maps, and YouTube. Let us take a look at what YouTube plans to do.

Google’s homepage now promotes the Do the Five campaign, which aims to raise awareness regarding measures people should take to limit the spread of the disease. These guidelines, which have been devised by the WHO, has been popularized by Google. Within just 24 hours from release, these guidelines have been viewed by millions in the US alone. Google’s My Business will also allow businesses to mark themselves as Temporarily Shut due to the COVID-19.

From Google to YouTube

YouTube has been spread misinformation in the past, and Google aims to stop that from happening this time. Therefore, Google has taken down thousands of videos that promote misleading and factually incorrect news regarding the COVID-19. Several of these videos claimed to have treatments and prevention methods against the coronavirus but had no medical proof to back up their claims. Similarly, Google Maps has also taken down malicious content and reviews regarding healthcare locations.

Furthermore, the tech giant has warned content creators against posting false information. Also, they have told creators that due to staffing changes owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, more and more reviews will rely on automated systems. Therefore, most of the removals and revisions will be done by automated algorithms and not through human intervention.

This may lead to an increase in video removals, with even some video which does not violate policies being taken down. In such cases, creators can appeal against the taking down of their video, and the teams associated with QC&QA will review the decision. However, YouTube has also made it clear that such reviews will take longer than usual due to a workforce shortage. Furthermore, the company will be more careful about what content goes up in order to prevent the spread of false information. Everything, including live streams, will be carefully analyzed with content awaiting review not being available via search or in recommendations.

YouTube will also come out with a new row of verified content on its homepage to help people looking for updates on the viral outbreak. These videos will feature news from authoritative outlets and health providers, rather than random users. This COVID-19 shelf will be available in 16 countries initially, and this includes the US, UK, India, Germany, Italy, and Brazil from this week onwards. In due time, it will be made available to more countries. Google has also pulled paid ads that try to capitalize on the virus from YouTube, giving more space to NGOs and government authorities.

twitter

Twitter Updates Its Safety Policy Amid The Coronavirus Outbreak

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In this era of the internet and the fastest growing social platforms, it is very easy to reach people and communities. But at the same time, it has also become easy to spread false news and rumors. Currently, novel coronavirus is spreading in a very fast manner and so are the rumors and false news. This fake news may turn lethal for those who believe them.  To control the spread of any misinformation and the ongoing pandemic COVID-19 outbreak, twitter has taken extra precautions to wipe out tweets from twitter which are false and may cause chaos among people. It is mostly using auto flagging and machine learning for the same.

On March 18, Twitter updated its safety policy which allows them to restrict the tweets which may put people at higher risk of spreading COVID-19. The new safety policy bans tweets related to fake and nonsense corona treatments, various prevention techniques that are not given by any health authorities. Also, Twitter is banning the misinformation by the people who have fake accounts and pretending to health experts on this microblogging site. Twitter has twitted from its official account that its new safety policy requires people to delete tweets related to all the above-mentioned points.

Misleading tweets will stay hidden

If a user tries to violate this policy, he/she will be notified via email to remove that tweet or put an appeal. In this entire notice period for the user, the misinforming tweet will stay in hidden mode to keep people away from any kind of a half-truth. Twitter has specifically outlined that if any tweet says that social distancing is ineffective, that will be removed immediately. This platform is going to require users to remove misinforming tweets claiming to follow dangerous things like intaking bleach, cow-urine or visiting any temple to stay away from corona, (even if it is as a meme) as it may prove harmful if people take this into another context.

If twitter observes any activity on twitter that asks people to do against what health authorities like WHO has suggested, such tweets will be banned. If someone tweets saying that “Go out and have fun at the local bar”, it will be debarred immediately. A few politicians and public figures already faced a lot of criticism by netizens for giving wrong messages to their fan base and followers.

Panic tweets also restricted

Another kind of tweet that is not allowed is, which cause panic amongst people. For example, a few people pretending to doctors tweeted that “A wet cough is definitely Cancelled out chances of having corona but if you have a dry cough, you are corona positive”. Another example is “One sneeze means coronavirus”, etc. Such tweets may lead to panic attacks.

Twitter is also banning tweets that attack a particular race, nationality, and community. For example, “Eating at Chinese restaurant causes coronavirus outbreak” or “Black people cannot be affected by coronavirus” or “Coronavirus outbreak cannot affect Hindus” etc. Such tweets will not fly on this platform.

Twitter to delete misleading tweets automatically

Though Twitter has prepared a set of stringent rules for its platform, it will be difficult to enforce where people have less awareness about this pandemic. To overcome this, Twitter has put a content severity triage system to automatically delete content with the highest damage and risk. Using this, the tweets will be flagged by themselves. Previously, Twitter announced that it will rely mostly on the automation and machine learning part for sensitive content removal, but later it admitted that it can cause mistakes in a few cases such as relevant hashtags and images.

People need to support to fight against coronavirus outbreak

Usually, we never see such an aggressive approach by social media platforms, but right now the world is in the need of care. It’s a global health emergency where the economy, people and their physical, as well as mental health, is at risk. Any misinformation may lead to the spread of this virus which can cause another emergency of lack of resources. It is all over the news that, keeping the spread of coronavirus in mind, it is observed that the number of doctors, nurses, and specialists are being transferred to affected areas to facilitate the care. So, one lethal misinformation can cause a lot of trouble. So, stay rightly informed and follow authentic sources for all the precaution adversaries.

Jio is combining its digital capabilities with Microsoft Teams, the unified communication and collaboration hub for teamwork in Office 365, to enable individuals, students, educational and healthcare institutions to continue their professional lives while still practicing social distancing,” the statement said.

The company said it will use the Jio platform for healthcare and learning from home. Jio will provide basic JioFiber broadband connectivity, wherever it is geographically feasible, without any service charges, for this period. For all existing JioFiber subscribers, Jio will provide double data across all plans.

Facebook’s Oculus Quest

Facebook’s Oculus Quest to Get a New UI Revamp

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The coronavirus has impacted the tech world the same way it has hit the healthcare industry. The presence of the COVID-19 and its aggressive transmission across Europe and the US, has led to the mass cancellation of conferences. Across the world, major tech companies are having no option but to cancel their developer conferences and meetings. Some of the major conferences canceled have come from Facebook, Google, and even the Microsoft Build conference. However, Facebook seems to be compensating by indulging in other announcements. While their Game Developers Conference could not take place as planned, Facebook is now creating ripples by making Oculus-related announcements. Here’s a look at everything you need to know regarding these announcements and what this means for the tech world.

Game Developers Showcase

Facebook has been making announcements regarding the Oculus series via a Game Developers Showcase. The biggest news which has come through is that Facebook’s Oculus Quest will be undergoing a huge UI change which will help the company implement more VR functionalities. The UI now works through a somewhat confusing menu system that floats around a space that resembles a virtual living room. This menu appears whenever the user presses the main Oculus button. However, the new menu will get rid of this style, and replace it with a more minimal, and easily navigable menu. Also, this new system will bring all the applications available under one access system, which will make it easier for the user to access any application, right from the home screen. The new menu will also enable users to access the Quest’s volume and brightness controls. The immersive overlay also helps users access several functionalities such as live streaming, casting and approving updates.

Additional Features

Furthermore, the new system will host a new feature that supports multi-window functionality within the Quest’s in-built browser. This will help users rearrange their windows, open new ones and close existing ones with ease. Therefore, from now on users will be able to watch a football game in one window while handling their work emails in the second one and even check their Facebook profile on the side using the third screen. Also, the company has announced that the same feature will soon be available for AppStore and Chats. Facebook explained that these added functionalities would help the system support new VR technologies. The VR set of the future requires people to be able to multitask with ease, while also staying connected with loved ones efficiently. Everything from the gaming industry to the entertainment field will be transformed by this new update and VR will finally grow to become the next biggest thing in computing.

The Oculus Quest

The Oculus Quest is essentially a game console now that is highly self-contained, which is exactly how Facebook markets this product. Over 20 titles released by them has brought in more than $1 million in revenues for Facebook, just from Quest alone. Also, the company says that studies show that almost 90% of the people who bought the headset in the holidays, had never owned a product by Oculus before. On Christmas day alone, Oculus stores sold merchandise worth over $5 million, as per Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Hence, Facebook believes that this update will usher in a new age for the company, with more people getting introduced to the world of VR as a result of the product.

These new updates will start hitting the stores by the end of this month. All users have to do to enable them is go to the Settings, click on Experimental Figures and then switch the update on. In 2019 alone, the company boasted over 45,000 employees and this will only increase as the company keeps investing in the company to expand its VR capabilities. Also, supporting these claims is a report from Apex Construct which revealed recently that their game’s Quest version has been the best performing when compared to other versions. Similarly, the Quest version of Red Matter sold more than its Rift version in as little time as a week.

The success of Quest can be primarily associated with its accessibility, fast updates, reliability, and portability. This huge success has also lowered the entry barrier into the world of VR, helping more and more people get introduced to this concept. The demand has been so high that Facebook has failed to match production to demand. The headset went out of stock several times in the past couple of months with the holiday season increasing sales tremendously. Furthermore, the COVID-19 outbreak has had a significant impact on production, leading to a decline in the availability of not just the Quest, but also various other electronics products. However, this new update has excited fans from all over the world, who will now be closely watching the tech space to gather more updates regarding the release of this new version.

Moteefe

Moteefe: How Mathjis, Lev, and Olivier set up on-demand Social commerce business?

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In the last couple of years, social commerce is growing rapidly. Also, we will see exponential growth in this field in the future. Additionally, online shopping is completely changed due to the social media platform. Which in turn changed the requirements of the social commerce platform. Hereafter comes the role of Moteefe. Moteefe enables many opportunities in social commerce and allows to sell products on social media. In fact, entrepreneurs can easily create custom designs on the Moteefe platform. These designs can then put in front of niche audiences. The company Moteefe is set up in 2014 by Mathijs, Olivier, and Lev. However, it features over 30 products on its social commerce platform.

What is Moteefe?

It is a tech e-commerce company that helps users with selling custom products online. Also, it is reliable and easy to develop its own brand with Moteefe. Young entrepreneurs Mathijs, Olivier, and lev founded the company in 2014. However, the vision behind the formation of the company is to bring great clothing designs to the totally hassle-free market. In a short duration, the company achieved trustworthy customers with its one-stop online shop for all kinds of products. Starting from the baby grows, cushions, clothing to the mugs and phone cases; everything can sell or buy on Moteefe.

The Inspiration Behind Setting On-demand Social Commerce Platform

The founders of Moteefe always wanted to promote entrepreneurship. Also, they were aware of the risks, hassle and the obstacles that come into the way of creative people to sell their products. They found the social commerce business as a perfect platform to help such creative peoples. Additionally, they feel everyone is unique so everyone should wear unique products. Thus, to achieve all these goals the Mathijs and his co-founders set up an e-commerce platform for on-demand merchandise.

The backstory of Foundation

While studying at INSEAD, Moteefe founders had the task to create a full plan for scalable online business. That’s how the idea of Moteefe sparkled into the mind of founders. However, they felt that it’s a golden opportunity to flourish the business. Because of that time, very few social commerce companies were working in the market. After that, they researched and planned on this after completing MBAs at INSEAD. So, after deep researched they decided to set up the social commerce business and founded it in 2014.

Struggles During the Start of the Business

​At the start of the business, they had to face many problems. Because they wanted to help entrepreneurs to create their own businesses. Furthermore, the big challenge was to set the method of creating custom made products. However, Moteefee developed an efficient platform that helped sellers to produce only needed goods. As well, ensure to not left with stock they can’t shift.

Relaxed Maniacs of Moteefe

The founders of Moteefe likes to call themselves as relaxed maniacs. Because they think its fun to provide awesome service. Also, they enjoy while working and searching for creative ideas. Well, these relaxed maniacs are Mathjis Eefting, Lev, and Olivier Stapylton-Smith.

Mathis Eefting

He is the founder as well as the CEO of the company. Mathjis is a native of Holland, he went to INSEAD for perusing MBA. Before establishing Moteefe, he worked as a consultant at Holland. Presently, he is serving as a CEO at the social commerce platform Moteefe. UnderMoteefeMoteefe his policies, the company rising the business day by day. However, he met the co-founders during his MBA.

Olivier Stapylton-Smith

He is the co-founder and CMO at Moteefe. However, he started a successful financial start-up before assisting the Moteefe’s establishment. Presently, he is serving at the company as a CMO and he is responsible for the revenue side of the business. Since the foundation of the company, he is constantly working on the lookup for new avenues of growth for the company. As well, Olivier shared an equal contribution to creating new business opportunities at Moteefe to make it an even better platform.

Education and Career

From 1995 to 2007, Oliver went to Lycee Francais Charles de Gaulle for his formal education. After that, he studied BSc at UCL in Economics and Geography. However, he further studied Business Administration and Management at INSEAD. During his MBA, he met his future business partners. Earlier, he worked as a non-executive director in the field of equity crowdfunding at Volpi for two years. Also, Olivier worked at Ondra partners as a Corporate Finance Advisor.

Search Engine Land, Success Story Of A Publication Company Pioneering In The World Of Search Marketing

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The most used and the most popular search engines that have been dominating the market since the arrival of the internet are namely Yahoo! and Google. And even before Google was launched in the market, it was Yahoo! that ruled in the web search engine. But, with time many search engines came up, few of them dissolved while the rest of them are just trying hard to exist on the web. So, a lot of confusion arises regarding search engines and search marketing. To eradicate this problem from the domain of search engine, SEO and SEM permanently especially for the people who are aspiring content creators, Danny Sullivan along with Chris Sherman founded Search Engine Land in 2006.

Search Engine Land is basically a publication that has got every news, information and trendy topic related to the search engine on the website. It is a very popular platform used by content creators, search marketers and consumers from different fields as well.

Danny Sullivan

Born in 1965, Sullivan was brought up in California. He pursued his Bachelor’s degree from the University of California and started working as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register. Sullivan was intrigued by the internet and left the job as the reporter in 1995. He wanted to delve deeper into the world of search engines and hence started doing research about these engines and posted guidelines on the web which was popular as A Webmaster’s Guide to Search Engine. In 1996 he became Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Watch.

Sullivan’s guide continued for years and he finally co-founded Search Engine Land in 2006. The parent company of Search Engine Land was Third Door Media and Sullivan served as the Chief Content Officer of the company from 2006 to 2017. Sullivan, after founding Search Engine Land was named as one of the 50 marketing influencers in 2015. After he retired from the company, Sullivan announced that he will be joining Google as an Advisor.

Chris Sherman

Sherman went to the University of California, San Diego and pursued his Bachelor’s degree in visual arts followed by acquiring a degree in Interactive Educational Technology from Stanford University. In 1988, Sherman was named the Vice President, Technology of Leadership Studies International followed by becoming the Executive Editor of SearchEngineWatch.com. In November 2006, Sherman joined Third Door Media and in the next year, he became the Founding Editor of Search Engine Land.

Founding Search Engine Land

How many of you are confused between Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch? Search Engine Land is under the company Third Door Media which was founded by Sullivan in 2006 as a digital agency to provide services in the area of marketing technologies, SEO, SMX, and related services. On the other hand, Search Engine Watch is the company that both Sullivan and Sherman worked for co-founding Search Engine Land. Search Engine Land was launched as the product of the company, Third Media Door in the same year when it was founded.

When Sullivan become a newspaper journalist and started off his career in 1995, the Internet just started gaining popularity. So, with people around him who wanted to advertise their websites through search engines barely had any idea about how they are ranked in a search engine at all or how they can improve their rank. This motivated Sullivan to do research about it, publish on the internet about search engine guideless which ultimately led to founding his own company after a decade.

The popularity of Search Engine Land

With the arrival of this new era of digital marketing, every start-up or freelancer or the content creators needs to understand the importance of SEO and SEM. Sullivan, in one of his interviews, said that he since day 1 has preferred to emphasize SEO and its importance though there were much negative feedbacks initially. But, with the site providing ample news, suggestions, updates, and guides about SEO, SEM and more, the company is leading in the publication world for technology. It covers every aspect of the search marketing industry that one user can probably lookup for on the internet and the company also conducts events and conferences around the world.

Currently, the company is having around ten team members with its headquarters based on New England. The estimated annual revenue of the company is $4.4 million and to date there hasn’t been any funding round for Search Engine Land. The website tracks more than 1 million monthly visitors and it is ranked 52,645 among all the global websites.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite : A Platform to Manage All Your Social Media Accounts

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Imagine being a food blogger, having dinner with your friends in a beautiful restaurant and putting up a story on Instagram, and at the same time, tweeting about the unsatisfactory service of that place. Well, as much as we love to keep us updated, we also enjoy letting people know what is going in our life as well. This isn’t pretty bad after all, is it? Many of us love following up the newsfeeds in social media platforms. But, there is already plenty of them, and at times, it really becomes a nightmare to manage them all at once. Some of the major social media platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, and every nine out of 10 people are users of more than at least one social media platforms.

Ever heard of Hootsuite? People, who are smart enough, have already installed the Hootsuite app on their mobile phone, a platform that is programmed to manage all your social media accounts through a single interface. Created by Ryan Holmes in 2008, this social media management platform is serving throughout the globe witnessing more than 16 million users to date. Ryan Holmes along with Dario Meli and David Tedman launched the product in December 2008, and Holmes is still serving as the CEO of the company.

Dario Meli

Meli studied Commerce, followed by graduating with a degree in Digital Media from Vancouver Film School. He joined Invoke (founded by Ryan Holmes) in 2004 and served as co-CEO. Apart from co-founding Hootsuite, Meli is also a co-founder of BrightKit, Foodee and Quietly.

David Tedman

Ryan Holmes hootsuite
Image Source: forbes.com

Tedman also graduated from Vancouver Film School who is an Angel Investor and till date has invested in many companies like Hack Capital, FutureEngine, Hazel, Koho, Foodee (co-founder) and many more. Tedman is mainly focused on tech-startups and hence invests in the new start-ups of the tech domain.

Ryan Holmes

Growing up in a small farm in Vernon which didn’t even have electricity, Holmes really surprised the entire world with his passion-driven a successful career. Holmes started programming from a very young age and also won a programming contest in fifth grade. His first business was founding a paintball field which was followed by opening a pizza restaurant called Growlies in Vernon. But, this definitely wasn’t the aim of his life.

Holmes sold his restaurant in 1999 and moved to Vancouver and learned web development which helped him found his digital media agency, Invoke. And, it was in this agency where Hootsuite tool was built by the employees of Invoke to help the businesses to manage social media platforms for marketing. The product was built in 2008, and it detached from the parent company in 2009 after the Series A funding round.

History and Success of Hootsuite

In 2008, Hootsuite was launched as a tool on behalf of the company, Invoke, and it named the product as BrightKit. Initially, when the product was launched it helped a user to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single interface. The user interface appeared in the form of a dashboard from where one can manage all the accounts.

In November 2009, the company expanded its management for Facebook and LinkedIn as well. In December 2009, Holmes raised a funding of $1.9 million from the Series A funding round, which led Hootsuite to establish as an independent company. The investors included Blumberg Capital, Hearst Interactive Media, Geoff Entress and Leo Group LLC. By the end of 2010, the company witnessed a major success, i.e., 1 million users. The figure becomes twice in the next year, along with raising $3 million in the capital. In 2011, the company also acquired TwapperKeeper and Geotoko.

2012 was a big year for Hootsuite, as it raised $20 million from VC Omers Ventures, acquired Seesmic (one of its competitors) and reached five million users. After this fund, the company’s net worth rounded up to $200 million. In early 2013, the users of Hootsuite already reached 7 million, and in August 2013, the company raised $165 million in Series B funding. In the same year, Holmes was named one of the most powerful people of Vancouver, with Hootsuite’s growth curve not showing any downfall anytime soon.

In 2014, Canadian Startup Awards, Hootsuite was named Employer of the year 2013 with users hitting the buzzer of 10 million. In this year, the company raised around $60 million and acquired Zeetl. By 2015, Hootsuite became a billion-dollar company with more than 1,000 employees. The next year, the company made a few more acquisitions, and in 2017, it crossed 15 million users.

Currently, the company’s headquarters is based in Vancouver, Canada, and it has offices in 13 locations around the world.