Social Networks

Twitch’s 2020 traffic boost isn’t tapering. Like many video and social media platforms, the livestreaming service saw a major surge in usage after coronavirus lockdowns kicked in. It closed 2020 with record numbers: a total of 17 billion hours watched over the course of the year (up 83% from the 9 billion watched in 2020). And, according to a new report from analytics firm Sensor Tower, the surge is still…well, surging. In the first quarter of 2021, Twitch’s mobile apps were installed 22 million times–62% more than its 13.6 million installs in Q1 2020. This figure is especially notable because across the whole of 2019, Twitch was installed just (comparatively “just,” to be clear) 34.5 million times. Across 2020, it was installed 80.6 million times, per the report. Many of these installs are coming from the U.S. and India. The States continue to be Twitch’s largest market, Sensor Tower says. The platform saw 17.6 million stateside installs in 2020 (up 91% from 2019), and in the first quarter of 2021, has hit 5 million U.S.-based downloads, up 61% from around 3 million in Q1 2020. India is currently Twitch’s largest area of growth. Indian users installed Twitch 2.2 million times…

Sylvia Johnson, contact tracer and La Vacuna Es Para Nosotros project lead for Garfield County Public Health. Provided A new project of Garfield County Public Health — complete with video, pictures and personal narratives — is aimed at building trust in the push to convince those who may still be hesitant about receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, especially within the Latino community.La Vacuna es Para Nosotros, or “the Vaccine is For Us,” is a photo and video essay project sponsored by Public Health and created by Sylvia Johnson, who has been working as a bilingual contact tracer for the county since last fall.Johnson is a professional videographer and photographer who was born in Latin America and raised in the Roaring Fork Valley.She is also a National Geographic “Explorer,” a program that identifies people around the world who are gifted at raising awareness and helping solve problems through their work.Johnson applied for and got approval for a small National Geographic Rapid Response grant to fund the project.She said the project came about from listening to people’s stories about what it’s been like to live with the pandemic over the past year, and especially from those who had COVID-19.“It was a chance to…

by: Los Angeles Times Posted: May 10, 2021 / 04:21 PM PDT / Updated: May 10, 2021 / 04:21 PM PDT The logo of mobile app “Snapchat” is displayed on a tablet on January 2, 2014 in Paris. (LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP via Getty Images) One of the last things that Carson Bride did before taking his own life was look to his phone for help. The 16-year-old had been receiving anonymous messages for months, according to a federal lawsuit filed Monday in California, through a popular Snapchat app called YOLO. The messages included sexual comments and taunts over specific incidents, like the time he’d fainted in biology class at his Portland, Ore., school. The messages had to be coming from people he knew, but the app’s design made it impossible for him to know who was behind it. If he replied to the taunts, YOLO would automatically make the original message public, revealing his humiliation to the world. His family found him dead on June 23, 2020. The history on his phone showed that he had been searching for “Reveal YOLO Username Online” earlier that morning. Read the full story on LATimes.com.

KOCHI: The High Court has ruled that disciplinary action for remarks against the government and the Chief Minister cannot be upheld at a time when freedom of expression is being celebrated as part of the right to life. Justice Devan Ramachandran said this while approving a petition filed by KSEB cashier PV Ratheesh, a native of Kannur, seeking cancellation of the disciplinary action taken against him for sharing a message against the government and the Chief Minister in a private WhatsApp group. The High Court quashed the proceedings against the petitioner and directed that the period of suspension be treated as duty. KSEB is not a government department but a company. The single bench also asked how disciplinary action could be taken against an official of this institution for making remarks against the government and the Chief Minister through the WhatsApp. The official was suspended from September 29 to December 19, 2016 for the said WhatsApp message. The period of suspension was later calculated as leave. The petitioner then approached the High Court.

For a brief period in early May, Instagram users might have noticed a creepy ad with a blue background that rattled off some rather specific and personal information about them. The Instagram ads varied by user but revealed things such as their location, job title, marital status, interests and even search terms they may have used. It turns out that this was an advertising campaign by rival messaging service Signal, and the company claims that Instagram quickly shut it down. Signal’s ads drew on the information collected by Facebook’s targeted advertising platform, a collection of demographic elements that are usually invisible to the user. The stated purpose of the campaign was to highlight exactly how much personal data Facebook (and its associated subsidiaries) are vacuuming up, making it more stark and visible to the end user that is usually unbothered by the process as it hums along invisibly in the background. However, Facebook claims that Signal never attempted to run the Instagram ads in question and cooked up the whole scheme for publicity; at least one screenshot posted by Signal themselves as evidence indicates that they may be telling the truth. Instagram ads get intensely personal, but were they real?…

On Wednesday, May 12 from 12:30-1:00pm, Koresh Dance Company’s Artistic Director, Roni Koresh, invites you behind-the-scenes to a mid-week look into a company rehearsal. The Koresh dancers have been learning and exploring new material as well as revisiting crowd-favorites in preparation for our 30th Anniversary touring season. Rehearsal will be streaming on Vimeo and Facebook.Vimeo | https://vimeo.com/event/621798 Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/koresh.dance Watch the full series | https://www.koreshdance.org/live-from-koreshKoresh Dance Company was founded in 1991 by Israeli-born choreographer and artistic director Ronen (Roni) Koresh. Known for its engaging performance and technically superb dancers, the company performs critically acclaimed works at its biannual Philadelphia seasons, as well as in touring performances around the country. Koresh has been hailed internationally, touring to destinations including Spain, Turkey, Israel, South Korea, Mexico, and Guatemala. Over the years, Roni has developed a vast repertoire of work that ranges from explosive and passionate to intimate and restrained. The company also presents work by guest choreographers including Ohad Naharin, Robert Battle, Donald Byrd, Itzik Galili, and Paul Selwyn Norton.

Despite Facebook’s repeated assurances that it would address poor workplace conditions for its content moderators, often contractors who spend their days reviewing graphic and violent images posted on the site, little has changed at the company, a former Facebook content moderator said in an interview that aired Monday on “NBC Nightly News.”Josh Sklar, a former Accenture subcontractor based in Austin, Texas, who moderated content for Facebook and Instagram from September 2018 through March, said that working conditions had scarcely improved for content moderators and that they continue to review large quantities of often traumatic posts. Sklar was one of approximately 15,000 people who spend hours a day combing through the dark side of the social network, flagging posts that violate its content policies.“You're reviewing, you know, maybe hundreds of pieces of content a day, and of that content, a really healthy percentage of it is bad stuff,” he said. “I mean, we're talking everything from hate speech, to animal mutilation, to videos of people committing suicide, child pornography.”Sklar said he was assigned to do this for over six hours every day,  » Read More

Shares of Facebook Inc. Cl A FB, -4.11% shed 4.11% to $305.97 Monday, on what proved to be an all-around poor trading session for the stock market, with the NASDAQ Composite Index COMP, -2.55% falling 2.55% to 13,401.86 and Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.10% falling 0.10% to 34,742.82. This was the stock's second consecutive day of losses. Facebook Inc. Cl A closed $25.84 below its 52-week high ($331.81), which the company reached on April 29th. The stock underperformed when compared to some of its competitors Monday, as Microsoft Corp. MSFT, -2.09% fell 2.09% to $247.18, Alphabet Inc. Cl A GOOGL, -2.56% fell 2.56% to $2,291.75, and Twitter Inc. TWTR, -3.68% fell 3.68% to $51.81. Trading volume (24.0 M) eclipsed its 50-day average volume of 20.2 M. Editor's Note: This story was auto-generated by Automated Insights, an automation technology provider, using data from Dow Jones and FactSet. See our market data terms of use.  » Read More

GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Electric scooters in a tree, in the Grand River, at the top of a slide, outside a strip club and, generally, just everywhere but their parking spots.Since October, local comedian Carl Sobel has been documenting misplaced and misparked scooters across Grand Rapids on his aptly-named gr_scootsontheloose Instagram page, juxtaposing pictures of at-large scooters in sometimes odd places and settings with inspirational quotes.“I’m a stand-up comedian, so I’m always trying to find the funny in everything. I just started to see these things in weird spots, like in tall grass, and thought, ‘Someone should keep track of that,’” Sobel said. “I just think it’s funny, but people think I’m a scooter activist now. It’s just this dumb thing I’m pointing out because I think it’s funny. Just bring lightheartedness to the annoyance that they cause.”While the page has gotten good reception, garnering more than 1,300 followers and generating a steady flow of resident submitted pictures, it also highlights an ongoing problem the city is trying to solve: How do we get people to properly park the scooters?The stand-up electric scooters first hit a large swathe of the city by the hundreds in late September as part of…

With the rise of the internet, individuals and businesses have started giving importance to their online presence. Whether you are an entrepreneur or an influencer, you will be recognized and admired by how well you maintain your social media presence. And when it comes to different social media platforms, Instagram becomes the top choice for growing individual and business credibility.Growing the account’s followers and engagement on Instagram was easier a few years ago, but it has become challenging as there are tons of accounts in the race. Thus, you have to look for various tricks like buying Instagram followers and likes to increase your account’s visibility in the app and make it more engaging. In this article, you will come to know more about why you should buy Instagram followers and likes and what its benefits are.Importance of having more Instagram followers and likes:Instagram is one of the popular social media platforms as it contains more than one billion users across the globe. So when you buy Instagram followers, your account becomes more visible to users and business accounts. The same thing happens when you buy Instagram likes as your account reaches people from different corners of the globe.It is not surprising that…