25th FEBRUARY 2021
- WhatsApp Completed 12 Years: Handles Over 1 Billion Calls Each Day
WhatsApp popular messaging app, on Thursday, announced that it has completed 12 years. Announcing its 12th-anniversary milestone, the Facebook-owned company revealed that it handles more than one billion calls each day. Through a tweet posted on Thursday, WhatsApp announced the completion of 12 years. The tweet talked about some of the previously announced statistics, including the user base of more than two billion monthly active users that send 100 billion messages. However, it also mentioned that the app, known for its instant messaging experience, connects more than one billion calls on a daily basis.
WhatsApp debuted back in February 2009 and was initially designed to allow sharing of statuses between its users. It, however, expanded and evolved to become a full-fledged messaging solution and eventually started to replace traditional voice and video calls. The app additionally allows users to make payments and send stickers. It has also recently been criticized for its updated privacy policy scheduled to be implemented on May 15. WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook in February 2014. The acquisition by the social media giant has helped the messaging app to scale further. However, it also raised questions on WhatsApp's privacy and how it is sharing user data with Facebook and its subsidiaries. WhatsApp, however, claims in its latest tweet that it would continue to be committed to user privacy with end-to-end encryption.
- Govt Released Guidelines for OTT and Social Media
The Central Government of India on Thursday released a set of new guidelines to regulate social media, online streaming, and digital content platforms as it plans to introduce a change in legislation to assert more control over powerful Big Tech companies. “We have not framed any new law. We have framed these rules under the existing IT Act,” MeITY minister Ravi Shankar Prasad during a press conference announcing these rules. The new Information Technology (Guidelines for Intermediaries and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 prescribes, for the first time, how digital news organisations, social media, and OTT platforms will be regulated by the Indian Government.
The Rules will come in effect from the date of their publication in the gazette, except for the additional due diligence for significant social media intermediaries, which shall come in effect three months after publication of these Rules. The government wants social media companies to possess a mechanism to address complaints from users. It wants social media intermediaries to have Chief Compliance Officer, Nodal Contact Person, and Resident Grievance Officer. All these officers have to be residents of India. The rules also call for tracking of the ‘first originator’ of a message and apply to a significant social media intermediary. It also wants the significant social media intermediary to have a physical contact address in India published on its website or mobile app or both. The government is also asking OTT platforms and digital news media to self-regulate and wants a mechanism for addressing any grievances.
- Xiaomi To Open 3 New Manufacturing Plants in India.
Xiaomi has enlisted three original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to boost its supply of smartphones and smart televisions (TVs) in India. The Chinese major will now have three additional plants to feed local demand that has grown rapidly after the lockdown in mid-2020. In an interview, Manu Jain, Xiaomi’s India head and global vice president, said 99% of its smartphones and 100% of its televisions sold in India will now be manufactured in the country. One of the two mobile manufacturing plants is already up and running, Jain said. The company has partnered with DBG India, which is operating the plant in Haryana.
The second plant will be set up by Chinese electronics maker BYD in Tamil Nadu. Maintaining plants in both north and south India will keep the company better positioned to tackle possible lockdowns on either side of the country. The new television manufacturing plant is being set up in Telangana by Radiant, a Hyderabad-based TV manufacturer. Xiaomi also has two other mobile manufacturing plants in Tamil Nadu, run by Foxconn and Flex, and a TV manufacturing plant in Andhra Pradesh, run by Dixon Technologies. The company also plans to start manufacturing camera modules in India from 2021.
- Airtel Entered Advertising Business by Launching AdTech Platform Airtel Ads.
Bharti Airtel Ltd on Wednesday launched Airtel Ads, an advertising platform, the telecom operator said in a statement. The Airtel Ads platform will enable brands to curate consent-based and safe campaigns for subscribers of the telco, it said. Airtel has more than 320 million customers across businesses—mobile, direct-to-home (DTH) and homes. Airtel Ads has so far enabled campaigns for more than 100 brands across categories, including fast-moving consumer goods, banking, financial services, and insurance, digital startups, among others. Early advertisers include PepsiCo, Zomato, CRED, Tata AIG, Lenskart, Apollo 247, Cars24, Gameskraft, Vahan, Harley Davidson.
Adarsh Nair, Chief Product Officer, Bharti Airtel said the investment to develop this AdTech platform was minuscule as Airtel has been developing its core businesses, and such digital assets are being mounted on them. He did not share the investment amount. Airtel’s data research and analytics will help identify and connect target customers to brands selling products or making offers on the platform. Airtel Ads allows brands to produce high engagement and high impact campaigns to the most relevant customer cohorts. This also means Airtel customers receive only the most relevant brand offerings and not unwanted spam, the telecom operator said.
- Zoom Adding Automatic Closed Captioning for All Free Accounts.
Video conferencing platform Zoom is planning to roll out support for automatic closed captions for free account holders as part of the company’s efforts to make the video conferencing service more accessible. Zoom announced that the automatic closed captions feature will arrive to all users this fall. If you are a free account holder who wants to try out the feature beforehand, Zoom is allowing users to manually request access to the Live Transcription feature via a Google Form that can be found in Zoom’s official announcement.
Automatic transcriptions aren’t an entirely new Zoom feature. The service has previously offered AI-powered live transcription for all its paid accounts. But now the feature will become available to the millions of people that rely on Zoom’s services for free. Zoom support page notes that its Live Transcription feature is currently exclusively available in English. The new feature heats up the competition even further as other video conferencing software like Google Meet also have automatic closed captions as a feature. Some of the accessibility features that have been added to the service are the ability to pin and spotlight interpreters on a call, as well as adding screen reader support. They also launched a Studio Effects feature that allows users to include filters to their faces during live video streams.
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