Tag: elon musk

Meta Plans to Work on Boosting Retention on Threads After App Loses More Than Half of Its Users

Meta Platforms executives are heavily focused on boosting retention on their new Twitter rival Threads, after the app lost more than half of its users in the weeks following its buzzy launch, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees on Thursday.

Retention of users on the text-based app was better than executives had expected, though it was “not perfect,” said Zuckerberg, speaking at an internal company town hall, the audio of which was heard by Reuters.

“Obviously, if you have more than 100 million people sign up, ideally it would be awesome if all of them or even half of them stuck around. We’re not there yet,” he said.

Zuckerberg said he considered the drop-off “normal” and expected retention to grow as the company adds more features to the app, including a desktop version and search functionality.

Meta is looking at adding more “retention-driving hooks” to entice users to return to the app, like “making sure people who are on the Instagram app can see important Threads,” said Chief Product Officer Chris Cox.

A company spokesperson declined to comment on the meeting.

The executives’ comments came a day after Meta wowed investors with a rosy revenue growth forecast, a sign of a comeback for a company that faced deep scepticism over its hefty spending on the metaverse last year as ad sales plummeted.

The disclosure sent Meta’s shares surging 8 percent on Thursday.

Zuckerberg told employees on the call that he believed the company’s work on the augmented and virtual reality technology that would power the metaverse was “not massively ahead of schedule, but on track.”

Meta, he added, needed to get started investing in that work ahead of rivals such as Apple, Google and Microsoft, given their years of experience building operating systems for existing products.

“That way, we have all the tools ready for when this is ready for prime time,” he said, predicting that mass adoption of metaverse technologies would take place in the 2030s.

Zuckerberg and Cox also highlighted the company’s release of an artificial intelligence model called Llama 2 this month, which it made freely available for commercial use to any developer whose services had fewer than 700 million users.

The model has received more than 150,000 download requests in the week since its release, Cox said.

Responding to a question on the proposed “cage match” against Elon Musk, Zuckerberg said he was “not sure if it’s going to come together.”

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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Elon Musk Says He Intends to Rebrand Twitter, Blue Bird Logo to Be Replaced by an X

Twitter owner Elon Musk on Sunday signalled he would do more to take the social media company in a new direction with a rebranding that will replace its well-known blue bird logo with an X after acknowledging advertisers have been slow to return.

The change, which was not evident on the website on Sunday evening, followed Musk’s recent admission that advertising revenue remains nearly half of what it once was. And Twitter’s cash flow has been negative as a result of that and its heavy debt load.

Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, said on Sunday that the move would further alienate Twitter’s original, and once fiercely loyal, user base.

“On the one hand, you can make the argument he would be getting rid of an iconic brand. On the other hand, he is signalling it is a new day for what was once Twitter and that the company is heading in a different direction with a different user base.”

The billionaire Musk said in a Sunday post he wanted to change Twitter’s logo and polled his millions of followers whether they would favour changing the site’s colour scheme from blue to black. He posted a picture of a stylized X against a black outer space-themed background.

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” he said.

Late Sunday afternoon, Twitter’s new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, tweeted: “It’s an exceptionally rare thing – in life or in business – that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.”

Under Musk’s tumultuous tenure since he bought Twitter in October, the company has changed its business name to X Corp, reflecting the billionaire’s vision to create a “super app” like China’s WeChat.

In April, Twitter’s legacy blue bird logo was temporarily replaced by Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu dog, helping drive a surge in the cryptocurrency’s market value.

The company came under widespread criticism from users and marketing professionals when Musk announced early this month that Twitter would limit how many tweets per day various accounts can read.

The daily limits helped Meta Platforms-owned rival service Threads, which crossed 100 million sign-ups within five days of its July 5 launch.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

Will the Nothing Phone 2 serve as the successor to the Phone 1, or will the two co-exist? We discuss the company’s recently launched handset and more on the latest episode of Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk Optimistic on Fully Autonomous Self-Driving Technology, Humanoid Robots in Factories

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk on Wednesday set new targets for artificial intelligence products including self-driving software and using humanoid robots in factories, though he acknowledged he’s been optimistic before.

The electric vehicle maker is in early talks with a major automaker to license its full self-driving technology, Musk added.

The value of Tesla vehicles would rise in perhaps “the single biggest step change in history” once regulators approved self-driving, he said at an earnings briefing. Musk has also said that Tesla robots, in the pilot phase, could become a huge product. He said they could help out on Tesla’s factory floors as soon as next year, although only about 10 have been built to date.

Rising interest rates and competition from new EV makers have forced Tesla to cut vehicle prices to gain market share, hurting margins.

But Musk said Tesla will keep pushing to expand sales volume at the cost of profit margins, betting on the long-term value from FSD. “Autonomy will make all of these numbers look silly,” he said.

Tesla’s move to license its technology comes after years of failed promises by many to create software that lets cars drive themselves.

The licensing announcement was not surprising, given industry failures, Ark Invest’s Tasha Keeney said on Twitter. “Autonomy is hard, it requires vast amounts of data, and I believe many automakers will fail to achieve it on their own.”

Tesla has completed over 300 million miles in the beta version of FSD, over half of which was in the past quarter, according to an earnings presentation.

But Musk was more cautious than usual.

“People have sort of made fun of me and perhaps quite fairly have made fun of me, my predictions about achieving full self-driving have been optimistic in the past,” he said.

“I’m the boy who cried FSD, but I think we’ll be better than human by the end of this year,” he said. “I’ve been wrong in the past, I may be wrong this time.” 

© Thomson Reuters 2023 

Will the Nothing Phone 2 serve as the successor to the Phone 1, or will the two co-exist? We discuss the company’s recently launched handset and more on the latest episode of Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Twitter Cash Flow Still Negative Because of 50 Percent Drop in Ad Revenue, Heavy Debt: Elon Musk

Twitter’s cash flow remains negative because of a nearly 50 percent drop in advertising revenue and a heavy debt load, Elon Musk said on Saturday, falling short of his expectation in March that Twitter could reach cash flow positive by June.

“Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” Musk said in a tweet replying to suggestions on recapitalization.

This is the latest sign that the aggressive cost-cutting measures since Musk acquired Twitter in October alone are not enough to get Twitter to cash flow positive, and suggests Twitter’s ad revenue may have not recovered as fast as Musk suggested in an interview in April with the BBC that most advertisers had returned to the site.

After laying off thousands of employees and cutting cloud service bills, Musk had said the company reduced its non-debt expenditures to $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 12,300 crore) from a projected $4.5 billion (roughly Rs. 37,000 crore) in 2023. Twitter also faces annual interest payments of about $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 12,300 crore) as a result of the debt it took on in the $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,61,400 crore) deal that turned the company private.

It is unclear what time frame Musk was referring to by the 50 percent drop in ad revenue. He has said Twitter was on track to post $3 billion (roughly Rs. 24,600 crore) in revenue in 2023, down from $5.1 billion (roughly Rs. 41,900 crore) in 2021.

Twitter has been criticized over lax content moderation, followed by an exodus of many advertisers who did not want their ads appearing next to inappropriate content.

Musk’s hiring of Linda Yaccarino, former ad chief at Comcast’s NBCUniversal as CEO, signalled that ad sales are a priority for Twitter even as it works to increase subscription revenue.

Yaccarino started working at Twitter in early June and has told investors Twitter plans to focus on video, creator and commerce partnerships and is in early talks with political and entertainment figures, payments services, and news and media publishers.

On Thursday, Twitter said that select content creators will be eligible to get a part of the ad revenue the company earns in an attempt to draw more content creators to the site.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

Will the Nothing Phone 2 serve as the successor to the Phone 1, or will the two co-exist? We discuss the company’s recently launched handset and more on the latest episode of Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Tesla Rolls Out First Cybertruck After Two-Year Delay: All Details

US automaker Tesla on Saturday announced that its first electric pickup — a slick-looking silver Cybertruck — had rolled off the assembly line at its huge plant near Austin, Texas.

“First Cybertruck built at Giga Texas!” says a tweet from the company, accompanied by a photo of the futuristic vehicle amid a sea of helmeted and yellow-vested Tesla workers.

Elon Musk, who owns both Tesla and Twitter, reposted the tweet with the comment “Congrats Tesla Team.”

Tesla did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment on Saturday.

The company had promised in April that it would be rolling out the first Cybertrucks before the end of the year. 

Plans for the vehicle, with its silvery, tortoise-like shape and unusual angles, were first announced in November 2019.

Its original introduction went awry when Musk urged a Tesla employee to strike one of the prototype’s windows with a hunk of steel to show its solidity. The window broke — drawing a laugh and a curse word from Musk — as did a second window on an ensuing attempt.

Yet within two days, Tesla said it had received nearly 150,000 advance orders.

In May, Musk said the company hoped to build 250,000 of the trucks a year — a number he said could eventually double, given a relatively accessible price tag.

Tesla will be making three models of the Cybertruck, a vehicle that can accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour) in less than three seconds. The basic model will cost $39,900 (roughly Rs. 32,03,700) and offer a 250-mile range between charges; the top-line truck will have twice that range and sell for $69,900 (roughly Rs. 57,41,900).

Will the Nothing Phone 2 serve as the successor to the Phone 1, or will the two co-exist? We discuss the company’s recently launched handset and more on the latest episode of Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Meta’s Threads Emerges as First Real Threat to Twitter as It Racks Up Over 30 Million Users in 18 Hours

Meta‘s Threads racked up more than 30 million sign-ups within about 18 hours of its launch, emerging as the first real threat to Elon Musk-owned Twitter, as it took advantage of its access to billions of Instagram users and a similar look to that of its rival.

Dubbed as the “Twitter-Killer”, Threads was the top free app on Apple’s App Store in the UK and the US on Thursday. Its arrival comes after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Musk have traded barbs for months, even threatening to fight each other in a real-life mixed martial arts cage match in Las Vegas.

“The cage match has started, and Zuckerberg delivered a major blow. In many ways, it’s exactly what you’d expect from Meta: Stellar execution and an easy-to-navigate user interface,” Insider Intelligence principal analyst Jasmine Enberg said.

Numerous competitors to Twitter have sprung up following Musk’s $44 billion (nearly Rs. 3,64,130 crore) purchase of the social media platform last year, which was followed by a series of chaotic decisions that have alienated both users and advertisers. Musk’s latest move involved limiting the number of tweets users can read per day.

Twitter’s stumbles make room for a well-funded competitor like Meta Platforms, analysts and experts said, particularly because of its access to Instagram users and its advertising strength.

“Meta’s release of Threads came at the perfect time to give it a fighting chance to unseat Twitter,” said Niklas Myhr, professor of marketing at Chapman University, referring to the turmoil at Twitter after it limited the number of tweets users can see.

“Threads will be off to a running start as it is built upon the Instagram platform with its massive user base and if users adopt Threads, advertisers will be following closely behind.”

Other competitors have found limited success. Mastodon, another Twitter-like app, has 1.7 million monthly active users, according to its website, while Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey-backed Bluesky has about 265,000 users.

Twitter had 229 million monthly active users in May 2022, according to a statement made before Musk’s buyout.

Threads has certain limitations

While Threads is a standalone app, users can log in using their Instagram credentials, which makes it an easy addition for Instagram’s more than 2 billion monthly active users.

Threads’ launch was clearly a first stab at a service as it currently lacks the bells and whistles of Twitter.

“There should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will,” Zuckerberg said on Threads, where he now has a million followers.

Threads does not have hashtags and keyword search functions, which means users cannot follow real-time events like on Twitter. It also does not yet have a direct messaging function and lacks a desktop version that certain users, such as business organizations, rely on.

Some users including tech reviewer Marques Brownlee posted about the need for a feed that only consists of the people one follows. Users currently have little control over the main feed.

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, who was hired by Musk in May to shore up advertiser confidence, said in tweet on Thursday that “everyone’s voice matters” on the app. “We’re often imitated — but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.”

Currently there are no ads on the Threads app and Zuckerberg said the company would only think about monetization once there was a clear path to 1 billion users.

Existing ad relationships from Instagram and Facebook should help Threads’ revenue, said Pinar Yildirim, associate professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

“Facebook is a less uncertain bet compared to Twitter and a bigger player in the ad market.”

Some analysts said Threads was reminiscent of Meta’s success in integrating crucial features of platforms such as Snapchat and TikTok in the case of Instagram’s Stories and Reels.

At least four brokerages raised their price target on Meta, whose shares have already more than doubled in value this year.

On Thursday, Meta shares were down 0.3 percent amid a broader market selloff, after rising 3 percent on Wednesday ahead of Threads’ launch.

The app is available in over 100 countries, but Bloomberg News reported that it won’t be launched in the European Union as of now as Meta works out how data sharing between the new platform and its Instagram app will be regulated.

© Thomson Reuters 2023 

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Meta’s Twitter-Rival Threads App Said to Skip Launch in EU

Facebook owner Meta‘s new Threads app, meant to rival Twitter, will not be available in the European Union when it launches Thursday because of regulatory concerns, a source close to the company said.

The app is seen as the biggest challenge yet to Twitter since the takeover by Elon Musk sent the social media platform, hugely popular with politicians and celebrities, into chaos.

A source close to Meta said Wednesday that the tech giant was holding back from a Threads release in the EU’s 27 countries as it sought clarity on the bloc’s Digital Markets Act that will come into full force next year.

The DMA is a landmark law that sets strict rules for the internet’s biggest companies in Europe.

One of those regulations prohibits platforms from sharing data across different services. It also restricts companies directing platform users to their own products.

The description of Threads on app stores in the United States indicated that a user’s personal data, including contact and geolocation information, will be collected and used for advertising purposes.

Meta has already run afoul of EU rules for its attempts to use data from WhatsApp to strengthen Instagram and Facebook, something European regulators forbade it from doing.

A spokesman for Ireland’s Data Protection Commission told the Irish Independent that Meta confirmed that it would not be releasing the app in Europe “at this point”.

Ireland is home to Meta’s EU headquarters, and the national regulator is in charge of oversight of the company in Europe.

Contacted by AFP, Meta did not immediately comment. 

Meta was one of seven companies, including Amazon and Apple, that informed the EU on Tuesday that they meet the threshold to come under the new rules when they come into force next year.

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Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino Backs Elon Musk’s Controversial Tweet-Reading Rate Limits: Details

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino on Tuesday tweeted a defense of the temporary cap announced July 1 on the number of tweets users can read in a day, and the company said advertising has been stable in the days since the step that drew heavy criticism from users and marketing professionals.

Yaccarino wrote in her tweet: “when you have a mission like Twitter — you need to make big moves to keep strengthening the platform.” It was her first public comment on the limits announced on Saturday by owner Elon Musk, who said the step was meant to discourage “extreme levels” of data scraping and system manipulation.

In the days since Musk’s announcement, Twitter users posted screenshots showing they were unable to see any tweets, including on the pages of corporate advertisers, after hitting the limit. And marketing professionals said it could undermine Yaccarino’s efforts to attract advertisers.

Twitter said only a small percentage of people using the platform have been affected by the limits.

“To ensure the authenticity of our user base we must take extreme measures to remove spam and bots from our platform,” the company said in a blog post on Tuesday.

The limit took affect soon after Twitter began requiring users to log into an account on the social media platform to view tweets.

Facebook parent Meta Platforms said it plans to launch microblogging app called Threads, a rollout that represents a direct challenge to Twitter which has been heavily criticized since Musk bought the company for $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,37,465 crore) in 2022.

Asked in an email why the CEO did not comment on the move until three days after it was announced, Twitter did not comment but sent Reuters a poop emoji, the company’s standard response to media inquiries.

© Thomson Reuters 2023 

From the Nothing Phone 2 to the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra, several new smartphones are expected to make their debut in July. We discuss all of the most exciting smartphones coming this month and more on the latest episode of Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

 

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