Twitter leads $100mn funding in vernacular chat app ShareChat
In a bid to create a niche space in the growing regional social networking market in India, Twitter has led the $100 million funding round for ShareChat – the country’s largest vernacular social media platform with nearly 60 million users. “Twitter and ShareChat are aligned on the broader purpose of serving the public conversation, helping the world learn faster and solve common challenges. “This investment will help ShareChat grow and provide the company’s management team access to Twitter’s executives as thought partners,” Manish Maheshwari, Managing Director of Twitter India, said in a statement shared with IANS on Friday. Founded by three IIT-Kanpur graduates, the Bengaluru-based start-up is today valued at over $600 million. ShareChat offers its services in the following languages — Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Odia, Kannada, Assamese, Haryanvi, Rajasthani and Bhojpuri. For Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, there are a lot of opportunities in India. “We love the conversational nature of the society and culture. We’re really excited to make Twitter viable to more and more people in the country,” the Twitter CEO told IANS last year. According to Dorsey, the company launched Twitter Lite (a lighter data-friendly version of the main app) not too long ago, specifically for India, to reach people who don’t have access to hi-speed or costly data. “India remains a top priority market for us and we’re making sure we understand how people use it here so that we can make it better.” When it comes to monetising Twitter and further tapping the Indian market, Dorsey has his focus clear. The latest financing round in ShareChat is aimed at that direction. (IANS)
Are Siri, Alexa making us less polite to fellow humans?
Contrary to popular perception, talking to digital as sistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant have not yet not made users ruder to other people, says a study. “Worried parents and news outlets alike have fretted about how the personification of digital assistants affects our politeness, yet we have found little reason to worry about adults becoming ruder as a result of ordering around Siri or Alexa,” said James Gaskin, Associate Professor of Information Systems at Brigham Young University in the US. “In other words, there is no need for adults to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when using a digital assistant,” Gaskin said. For the study, the researchers asked 274 people if the way they talk to digital assistants is making them less polite. After surveying and observing those people, they found that artificially-intelligent digital assistants are not making adult humans ruder to other people. According to their assessment, digital assistants in their current form are not personified enough by adult users to affect human-to-human interactions. But that may not be the case with children. Parental concerns have already prompted both Google and Amazon to make adjustments to their digital assistants, with both now offering features that thank and compliment children when they make requests politely. In this study, scheduled to be presented at the Americas Conference on Information Systems being held in Cancun, Mexico, the researchers did not study children, but assessed young adults, who generally have already formed their behavioural habits. The researchers believe that if they repeated the study with kids, they would find different results. (IANS)
Apple to unveil new iPhones on September 10: Report
Apple has released the seventh beta of iOS 13 to registered developers and a Brazillian site iHelp BR has found that the iPhone 11 series would be released on September 10. The Brazillian site found an image, named “HoldForRelease”, which has the September 10 date on the calendar of the iOS 13 home screen, hinting at the possible release date of the iPhone 11 series, The Verge reported on Thursday. Notably, this is the same date predicted for Apple’s event based on analysis of when Apple held the event in previous years. The iPhone-maker would launch three iPhone 11 models this year — The D43 (internal name) would replace the iPhone XS Max, the D42 (internal name) would replace the iPhone XS and the N104 (internal name) would replace the iPhone XR, according to news portal 9TO5MAC. According to the report, the new iPhone 11 models replacing the iPhone XS series would have a triple rear camera setup at the back and all three sensors will be placed at the back. Known Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had also earlier suggested that the upcoming iPhone models would be equipped with reverse wireless charging. The iPhone-maker is also expected to bring bigger batteries bundled along with its upcoming 2019 iPhone offerings. This year, Apple’s iPhone XR is expected to feature a 3,110mAh battery which is bigger than 2,942mAh battery that the company added in iPhone XR launched in 2018. (IANS)
Instagram starts allowing users to flag misinformation
Expanding its fact-checking programme, Facebook has started allowing Instagram users to flag false content on the photo-and video-sharing platform. “I’m proud that, starting today, people can let us know if they see posts on Instagram they believe may be false. There’s still more to do to stop the spread of misinformation, more to come,” Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram, said in a tweet on Thursday. According to a report in Poynter.org, while the roll out of the feature has started in the US, it should be available for all international users in about two weeks. Fact checkers will review the posts once users flag content as false. But even if fact checkers flag those content as false, the posts would not be deleted from the platform, said the report. Such posts will be downplayed on “explore” and “hashtag” pages, Stephanie Otway, an Instagram spokesperson, was quoted as saying. To flag false misinformation, users will have to click the three-dot menu at the upper right corner of an Instagram post, and then select “it’s inappropriate” and “false information.” Instagram will use those flags to get a better understanding of misinformation on the platform and to train its Artificial Intelligence to detect false content, Engadget reported. (IANS)