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Axios is an against-the-grain success story: a five-year-old media startup, backed by venture capital, that succeeded journalistically and financially. Which is why it has been able to sell itself for more than $500 million to Cox Enterprises. But there’s something else unusual about Axios, at least compared to most media companies: It owes a significant amount of its success to Meta and other tech giants. That’s because Meta, Alphabet, and other Big Tech companies looking to repair or burnish their reputation have been pouring ad money into Axios and other digital publishers that focus on Washington, DC. That group includes Politico and Punchbowl News, a startup that focuses on Congress. Publications that would like to be in that group include Puck, the subscription news startup, and Semafor, the publication Ben Smith and Justin Smith will launch this fall. Tech companies aren’t the only players in the so-called “corporate social responsibility” ad market that has been around for years. If you’ve ever watched a Sunday news show like Meet the Press,  » Read More

Nearly two decades after Facebook’s inception and astronomical rise, the Silicon Valley staple is changing course in an effort to preserve its top spot in the digital landscape as it faces new headwinds. Meta is shifting to adapt to a changing climate for tech with product updates and a focus on virtual reality. But the company is facing a battle on all fronts as it vies to maintain its status — working to convince consumers and investors to embrace CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the company’s future while confronting a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) intent on mitigating Meta’s market power, increasing competition from platforms such as TikTok, industry changes impeding ad revenue and the looming threat of a recession. Zuckerberg told investors at the end of July the company is focused on riding two “major technological waves” — artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse.  The focus on AI is leading to more short-term changes, including updates to push recommended content on Instagram and Facebook. The focus on the metaverse is part of a more long term initiative the company is continuing to invest in.   » Read More

August 8, 2022 12.57 Europe/London By Chris DziadulPhoto: Adam Kliczek, http://zatrzymujeczas.plPoland’s TVN Warner Bros. Discovery had a total of almost 12 million subscribers on Facebook and Instagram in the first half of this year. Of these, 8.4 million were on the former and 3.2 million on the latter. In H1, the broadcaster’s profiles on Facebook and 22 Instagram accounts generated a total of over 113 million views of video content.TVN Warner Bros. Discovery notes that the involvement of users is also constantly growing. Sotrender’s research indicates that in the first half of the year, the average Interactivity Index (INI) – a measure of Facebook engagement – amounted to almost 6.5 million interactions.Meanwhile, the Instagram engagement index – Activity Index – in the same period remained high at almost 6.5 million interactions per month.The most-watched content on Facebook appeared on the websites of TTV, Eurosport Polska and ToTeraz.Instagram users liked the videos available on the TVN24,  » Read More

We send out headlines each week day of the latest Chattanooga news.  Our news headlines have links that take you to the stories with a click. We also send out special emails if there is a highly significant local news story breaking so you will be aware of it quickly. To be added to the email headline list, just email us at news@chattanoogan.com. In addition, like us on Facebook and Twitter and get our news sent to you "in real time." Our Internet newspaper allows us to post stories very quickly – there is no need to wait for a press run or for carriers to deliver the paper. It is always free to read all the articles on Chattanoogan.com. Click on the links below and be sure to "like" us on Facebook and "follow" us on Twitter. With the feeds, you will be able to catch up on the local news as it happens.   » Read More

By Raffi BergBBC NewsImage source, Steven GrieveImage caption, Lamb Island is a place of natural beauty, as well as myths and legendsWhen Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the swashbuckling literary classic Treasure Island, it is said, he drew inspiration from visits he paid as a child to the island of Fidra, one of a string of three rocky outcrops in the Firth of Forth off Scotland's North Berwick coast. The young Stevenson was unaware of the myths, legends and mysteries reputedly harboured by another island, just over a mile (1.9km) to the east. Known as Lamb, it has attracted scant attention save from kayakers, occasional birdwatchers and wildlife volunteers. But it could yet turn out to be a real treasure island of its own. At least, that's the possibility dangled by its colourful, charismatic and controversial owner, the world's most famous spoon bender and legendary "psychic" Uri Geller. Now, 13 years after he bought it, Geller, a master of the grand gesture, has decided to elevate Lamb's status from a private Scottish island to that of a country,  » Read More

It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.That bitter aphorism has been part of American parlance for at least a century. Now it has gotten a powerful empirical boost. A team of researchers led by Harvard’s Raj Chetty used data from 72.2 million Facebook accounts to analyze how likely people at the bottom of the ladder are to have friendships with people near the top. What they discovered wasn’t entirely surprising:People with higher incomes have a lot of higher-income friends, while those with lower incomes mostly socialize with each other. And that effect seems to be particularly strong at the top.If you are in the top 10 percent by socioeconomic status (which social scientists abbreviate as “SES”), then on average a third of your Facebook friends will also be in the top 10 percent. Meanwhile, the bottom half of the distribution will provide maybe 1 in 6 of your friends.Some of this is obviously an artifact of our educational sorting system: If you went to Harvard Law School,  » Read More

In 2020, when the pandemic was going strong, billionaire Marc Andreessen turned heads by publishing an essay on his company website titled “It’s Time to Build.”  “I expect this essay to be the target of criticism,” he wrote while expressing a mindset that has come to be called YIMBY, for “yes in my backyard.” “You see it in housing and the physical footprint of our cities,” he wrote. “We can’t build nearly enough housing in our cities with surging economic potential — which results in crazily skyrocketing housing prices in places like San Francisco, making it nearly impossible for regular people to move in and take the jobs of the future.” Then he expressed dissatisfaction with the state of urban architecture. “We should have gleaming skyscrapers and spectacular living environments in all our best cities at levels way beyond what we have now; where are they?” Andreessen also lives in Atherton, California, America’s richest town, which has held the title of the most expensive ZIP code in the U.S. for five consecutive years,  » Read More

Facebook has agreed to a $90 million settlement stemming from a lawsuit accusing it of tracking users across other websites, and now people can file claims if they believe they were impacted. The plaintiffs in the case, Davis v. Facebook, claim the social-media giant was aware it violated privacy, communications and wiretap laws by tracking logged-out users, in breach of its own contract.In 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that Facebook profiting from the sale of users' data constituted a breach of privacy that caused economic harm. When the Supreme Court declined to review the case, settlement negotiations began. In June, a district court in California gave preliminary approval for the $90 million payout.Read on to find out what the class action lawsuit is all about, whether you're eligible for a payout and how much recipients could receive (and when).What is Facebook accused of in the class action suit?The plaintiffs allege that Facebook tracked people's activities on outside websites, even when they were signed out of their Facebook accounts,  » Read More

If you buy something from an Eater link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics policy. As a flying winemaker at Domaine Dujac in Burgundy, France, along with Snowden Vineyards and Ashes + Diamonds in Napa Valley, star international winemaker Diana Snowden Seysses is acutely aware of her carbon footprint. Each year she travels on five trans-Atlantic flights between the vineyards where she makes wine. She got a climate change wake-up call in 2017 when St. Helena vineyard temperatures reached 120 degrees on Labor Day, and the Napa Valley erupted in flames weeks later. The extreme heat changed the vines so the fruit stopped developing sugars. “I felt like throwing up,” she recalls. “I felt like fine wine’s days are numbered.” Her love of wine, which she calls “one of many doors to transcendence,” inspired her to figure out what she could do to decrease the greenhouse gases created by the wine industry. Now, Snowden Seysses is launching a new wine brand to test whether refilling wine bottles on a large scale is a viable way to slow the effects of climate change.  » Read More

Sitting in front of a computer screen, I'm typing messages to a new chatbot created by Facebook parent company Meta.We talk about pizza, politics and even social media."What do you think about Facebook?" I ask."Not crazy about facebook.. Seems like everyone spends more time on facebook than they do talking face-to-face anymore," the bot replies. Oh, the irony.Called BlenderBot 3, the artificial intelligence-powered bot is designed to improve its conversational skills and safety by conversing with humans. Meta is publicly releasing the chatbot on Friday as part of an AI research project. US adults can converse with Meta's new chatbot about mostly any topic on this public website. The AI uses searches of the internet, as well as memories of its conversations, to compose its messages.BlenderBot provides its thoughts about Facebook.  Screenshot by Queenie Wong/CNET Chatbots are software that can mimic human conversations using text or audio. They are often used in voice assistants or for customer service.  » Read More