February 04-2023: Here are 10 things You Need to Know in The Digital Space Right Now

Hello there,

Welcome to my weekly newsletter, where I curate and aggregate social media features updates, tech news, digital trends and insights that happen weekly to keep you updated and informed!

This week much happened since my end of January publication. From ChatGPT reaching 100 million users just two month after launching, YouTube launching the YouTube shorts creator revenue, to Google announcing that they will hold search and AI event on February 8th, 2023. Is the #ChatGPT by OpenAI shaking them?

Here are other major key developments in the social media and digital world that you need to know.

NB: Click on the links if you want to read more about the story.

1. Google’s new policy requiring digital lenders in Kenya to submit proof of license to operate in the East African country took effect on January 31, 2023. Google had given all new and existing apps a grace period of at least 30 days from November?16, 2022 to comply with the changes. You can read more here. According to TechCrunch article, only 22 digital credit providers are licensed in Kenya out of 381.

2. Meta's Q4 Earning report shows that Facebook usage is still growing. Facebook has reached 2 Billion Daily active users, an increase of 4% year-over-year and 2.96B monthly active users an increase of 2% year over-year.

3. 微软 launched Teams Premium with features powered by OpenAI which comes with an intelligent recap feature that automatically generates notes, tasks, highlights of meetings, branded meetings, custom meeting templates, and meeting protections.

4. Instagram?could be working on a subscription plan which includes the blue badge similar to Twitter Blue, the paid version. A reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, recently discovered code snippets indicated a “paid blue badge” and a new subscription product but says Instagram didn't comment about it.

• Instagram’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launch Artifact, a personalized news feed that uses machine learning to understand your interests and will soon let you discuss those articles with friends. It's a kind of?TikTok?for text

5. Twitter?to end free access to its API starting Feb 9th 2023. Not so good news for developers. Now, expect any products using free Twitter API to charge for even basics and social media management and social listening tools to go up. I hope the charges would be cost-friendly. Pssst! I am co-founder of a social listening and digital monitoring tool called Brand Moran and this news is of interest.

In a tweet post Twitter said "Twitter data are among the world’s most powerful data sets. We’re committed to enabling fast & comprehensive access so you can continue to build with us. We’ll be back with more details on what you can expect next week."

Some social media management tools like Buffer and Hootsuite have already responded to their customers about the changes

Our product is still going to work. We don't use the free API-Hootsuite

We're still learning more about these changes, and any impact they could have on Buffer. We're doing everything we can to minimize how this would impact Buffer users. Hopefully we will have more to share soon! - Buffer

• Some good news, for people who create content on Twitter. On Friday 3rd, Elon Musk announced that Twitter will share ad revenue with creators for ads that appear in their reply threads for those with Twitter Blue Verified
• Twitter, shutdown the Co-Tweet feature on 31st January, 2023 that allowed users to co-author a single tweet. The tweet was only available for some users in selected regions like US, Canada and Korea. One of the notable users that used the Co-Tweet feature is former US President Obama and his wife Michelle Obama.

6. TikTok is rolled out a new?strikes-based system?for account suspensions and penalties, as way to curb repeat offenders, as opposed to taking action on each individual case. The existing bans have been temporary bans from posting or commenting, to prevent abuse of our product features while teaching people about our policies in order to reduce future violations.

With the new system "if someone posts content that violates one of our?Community Guidelines, the account will accrue a strike as the content is removed.?If an account meets the threshold of strikes within either a product feature (i.e. Comments, LIVE) or policy (i.e. Bullying and Harassment), it will be permanently banned."?

• Also, the TikTok is still receiving a lot of backlash due to privacy concerns. TikTok has been banned in campus and governments devices in some states in US.
• In recent developments, TikTok CEO, Shou Zi Chew is to testify before US Congress in March over data privacy. Meanwhile, this week TikTok opened a Transparency and Accountability Center in Los Angeles.

7. Interesting, OpenAI launched a tool that attempts to distinguish between human-written and AI-generated text to help mitigate false claims that AI-generated text was written by a human. The tool is not yet perfect as its accuracy rate is 26%.

8. Paypal President and CEO Dan Schulman announced, PayPal to lay off 2,000 employees globally which is about 7% of their total workforce citing challenging macroeconomic environment.

9. LinkedIn is rolling out one-click subscribe URLs and embeddable buttons, to make it easier to guide people to your Newsletter and subscription page. Currently, if you view a profile of a LinkedIn with a newsletter, you will see the one click subscribe button.

10. Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellite internet provider is now available in Nigeria, becoming the first African country to receive service.

If you check on Starlink Map, it shows Starlink will be available in Kenya in Q3, 2023 that's in Kisumu, Nairobi and Mombasa.

The pre orders currently cost $99 which is fully refundable but the service will require an up-front hardware fee of $499. The speeds could be high but costly and entry to Kenya into market, means they will face stiff competition from existing internet providers who are affordable.

Additional Updates

• The Top YouTube earning channel in Kenya is Rus Love in Action at $656,289. has 249K subscribers whereas the Top YouTube Kids earning channel in Kenya is Akili and Me at $239,986. It has 751K subscribers.
• In the world of gaming,?the top YouTube gaming earning channel in Kenya is Samuel Ramogo $144,958 and has 128K subscribers. Read full report

• Here is a chart most loved apps globally 2022 according to time spent, downloads and spending.

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