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📲 You might start seeing Instagram comments on Threads soon #News #Insta 🔺 Instagram might roll out a way to share comments on other Instagram posts to Threads, according to Alessandro Paluzzi, who often reverse engineers Meta’s social media apps to find coming features. 🔺 Paluzzi shared an image showing that when commenting on an Instagram post, there could be a new dropdown menu that lets users choose to share the comment only to Instagram or “also share on Threads.” 🔺 Meta has made a few moves to integrate Threads with its other platforms in the past, such as showing Threads posts on Instagram or Facebook (and, later, letting users opt out of that). The Twitter-like short-posting social network also lacks DMs of its own, but users can still receive or send messages through Instagram. 🔺 The bigger effort, of course, is Meta's slow work integrating Threads with the fediverse. The company's moves to do so include being able to actually see replies from the fediverse under their posts, and, more recently, others' posts. 💻 Source 🛡 Powered by V3V Ventures

📲 Meta Expands Instagram Reminder Ads Placed via Its API #News #Insta 🔹 This is handy. Meta has announced an update to its Marketing API which will ensure that those creating Instagram Reminder Ads in third-party apps will have all the same functionality available in Meta Ads Manager. Up till now, the API has not enabled all the same features as Ads Manager, which has been a pain point for many marketers. 🔹 As explained by Meta:

"After consistently hearing feedback about this lack of parity, we are now supporting additional reminder ad features via the Instagram Marketing API as of August 19, 2024. These features include the ability to reach people on Instagram Reels placement with reminder ads, reminding people over the right time period, and adding events to ads optimizing for thruplay or reach."

🔹 So it's not a major change, but it will ensure that people who are running Instagram ads via the API (i.e. third party tools), will be able to create more types of ads and experiences. Reminder Ads can be a valuable re-engagement option, and these new features will ensure that more businesses can make better use of the format. 🔹 They’re not new features, as such, but the expanded API access will ensure that more brands can access them in more ways. It's a handy update, which could make life a little easier for many social media managers. 💻 Source 🛡 Powered by V3V Ventures

💡 Alarming NRR Trends in B2B SaaS: What It Means for the Industry 🖥 Recent data from BenchSights reveals a concerning trend in the B2B SaaS industry: the largest companies are struggling to retain and expand their customer base. Net Revenue Retention (NRR), a crucial metric for both business strategies and investor valuations, has seen a significant decline across the board. ➡️ In a comprehensive analysis of 50 public B2B SaaS companies, not a single one managed to improve their NRR from 2021 to 2023. This universal downturn is unprecedented and signals a shift in the industry landscape. The median NRR drop was a substantial 12%, falling from 121% in 2021 to 108% in 2023. ➡️ Even the best performers in this metric, such as Couchbase and Olo, merely maintained their NRR levels, while others saw dramatic declines. Particularly alarming are the cases of ZoomInfo, Asana, and Snowflake, which experienced NRR drops of 29%, 30%, and 47% respectively. ➡️ These figures paint a sobering picture for the B2B SaaS sector. Companies will likely face increased challenges in meeting their revenue targets, as growth from existing clients becomes more difficult to achieve during economic uncertainties. This trend also helps explain the recent decrease in market multiples for SaaS companies, reflecting investor concerns about future growth prospects. ➡️ For startup founders and investors in the B2B SaaS space, these findings underscore the critical importance of customer retention and expansion strategies. As new customer acquisition becomes more costly and competitive, the ability to grow revenue from existing clients will be a key differentiator for successful companies.

In this evolving environment, founders must focus on delivering continual value to their existing customers, while investors may need to recalibrate their expectations and valuation models. The coming months will likely see a renewed emphasis on customer success initiatives and product enhancements aimed at deepening client relationships and driving expansion revenues.

🟢 However, it's worth noting that this analysis doesn't account for the potential impact of AI technologies, which could reshape the landscape in unexpected ways. As the industry grapples with these challenges, innovative approaches to customer value creation and retention will be more crucial than ever. 💬 Download Metrics 💬 Source #StartupInside 📌 Powered by V3V Ventures

🌐 UK Finance Touts Blockchain's Potential for $14.5T Payments Sector ▶️ UK Finance, the country's finance trade body, has highlighted blockchain technology's potential to revolutionize the nation's $14.5 trillion annual payments industry. This endorsement follows successful experiments with the Regulated Liability Network (RLN), a blockchain-based ledger for central bank digital currencies and tokenized assets. The trade group believes the RLN could support innovation, enable programmable payments, and potentially reduce fraud and failed transaction costs. ℹ️ Experiments conducted with 11 major banks demonstrated the RLN's capacity to efficiently handle various forms of money. Jana Mackintosh, UK Finance's managing director of payments, emphasized the private sector's readiness to invest in commercial bank money's future, calling for partnership with regulators. While noting the UK's flexible legal framework, the trade group stressed the need for further regulatory engagement to fully develop the system's potential. 📌Powered by V3V Ventures

🔥 Bybit Secures Provisional Crypto License in Dubai, Advancing Global Expansion 🖥 Bybit, the world's second-largest crypto exchange by derivatives volume, has obtained a provisional license from Dubai's Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA). This non-operational license allows Bybit to serve both retail and institutional crypto investors in Dubai, marking a significant milestone in the company's global expansion strategy. The move comes two years after Bybit established its headquarters in the city, highlighting Dubai's growing importance as a crypto-friendly hub. 🔍 Helen Liu, Bybit's Chief Operating Officer, emphasized the strategic importance of Dubai's location and policies for cryptocurrency businesses. While working towards a full operational license, Bybit has also renewed its partnership with the Dubai Multi Commodities Crypto Centre (DMCC), transitioning to a key advisory role. Dubai's recent regulatory developments, including allowing licensed virtual asset service providers to operate nationwide, further solidify its position as an emerging global crypto hub.

Bybit's achievement in securing this provisional license underscores the emirate's attractiveness to major crypto firms and its potential to shape the future of the digital asset industry.

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📲 Meta, Snap, and TikTok partner to stop the spread of suicide and self-harm content #News #Insta 🔹 Meta, Snap, and TikTok have founded a new program called Thrive to help stop the spread of graphic content depicting or encouraging self-harm and suicide. Thrive enables participating companies to share "signals" to alert each other of violating content on their platforms. 🔹 Thrive is built in conjunction with the Mental Health Coalition, a charitable organization that says it works to remove the stigma around mental health discussions. Meta says it provides the technical infrastructure behind Thrive that enables "signals to be shared securely." 🔹 It uses the same cross-platform signal sharing tech used in the Lantern program, which is designed to help fight child abuse online. Participating companies can share hashes that match the violating media to signal it to each other. 🔹 Meta says it's already made such content harder to find on its platform but that it's trying to leave room for people to discuss their mental health, suicide, and self-harm stories, as long as they aren't promoting it or providing graphic descriptions. According to Meta's charts, the company takes action on millions of pieces of suicide and self-harm content every quarter. Last quarter, it restored an estimated 25,000 of those posts, most of them after a user appealed. 💻 Source 🛡 Powered by V3V Ventures

📲 Facebook and Instagram are making AI labels less prominent on edited content #News #Insta 🔹 Meta is updating how it labels content on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads that has been edited or manipulated using generative Al. In an updated blog post, Meta announced that its "Al Info" tag will appear within a menu in the top-right corner of images and videos edited with Al - instead of directly beneath the user's name. 🔹 Users can click on the menu to check if Al information is available and read what may have been adjusted. Meta previously applied the "Al Info" tag to all Al-related content — whether it was lightly adjusted in a tool like Photoshop that includes Al features or fully Al-generated from a prompt. The company says the changes are being introduced to "better reflect the extent of AI used" across images and videos on the platforms. 🔹 This label was introduced in July after Meta's previous "Made with Al" label was criticized by creators and photographers for incorrectly tagging real photos they had taken. "We will still display the 'Al info' label for content we detect was generated by an Al tool and share whether the content is labeled because of industry-shared signals or because someone self-disclosed," Meta said in the update, adding that the changes will start rolling out next week. 🔹 The "industry-shared signals" Meta mentions refer to systems like Adobe's C2PA-supported Content Credentials metadata, which can be applied to any content made or edited using its Firefly generative Al tools. Other similar systems exist, such as the SynthID digital watermarks that Google says are applied to content generated by its own Al tools. Meta hasn't disclosed which systems, or how many, it checks for. However, removing tags completely on real images that have been manipulated may also make it harder for users to avoid being misled, especially as generative Al editing tools available on new phones become increasingly convincing. 💻 Source 🛡 Powered by V3V Ventures

📲 Meta fed its AI on almost everything you’ve posted publicly since 2007 #News #Insta 🔹 Meta has confirmed that all public text and photos posted by adult users on Facebook and Instagram since 2007 have been used to train its artificial intelligence models. This revelation came during a local government inquiry into AI adoption, where Meta's global privacy director, Melinda Claybaugh, initially denied the claims but later acknowledged that unless posts were consciously set to private, they could be scraped for AI training purposes. 🔹 Meta's privacy center and blog posts indicate that public content from Facebook and Instagram is utilized to train generative AI models, but the company has been vague about the specifics of its data collection practices. While it stated that non-public posts are not used for this purpose, it did not clarify when data scraping began or how extensive it is. Although users can stop future scraping by changing their privacy settings, this does not remove data that has already been collected. 🔹 The implications of this data use are concerning, especially for users who posted content when they were minors and may not have understood the potential for their posts to be utilized in this way. Claybaugh asserted that Meta does not scrape data from users under 18, but she confirmed that public photos of children could still be collected. Additionally, there was uncertainty regarding whether accounts created by minors would also be subject to scraping. 🔹 In contrast to European users, who can opt out of data scraping due to local privacy regulations, users in Australia and other regions do not currently have this option if they wish to keep their posts public. Claybaugh could not assure that Australian users would receive similar protections in the future. This situation has raised concerns regarding privacy laws and the potential exploitation of children's images on social media platforms, leading to criticism of governmental inaction on privacy issues. 💻 Source 🛡 Powered by V3V Ventures

📲 Instagram Adds Broadcast Channel Replies #News #Insta 🔹 Instagram has updated its Broadcast Channels feature, allowing some creators to enable replies from subscribers, enabling a new layer of interaction within the channel. While the main feed of the Broadcast Channel will still primarily consist of updates from the channel admin, the new reply option allows subscribers to comment on specific messages, fostering a topical discussion without cluttering the main stream. 🔹 This change reflects Instagram's recognition of the increasing engagement happening in direct messages (DMs) rather than in the main feed. By facilitating connections through replies in Broadcast Channels, Instagram aims to keep interactions focused and relevant, allowing fans to discuss specific announcements without needing to move to separate forums. 🔹 As user engagement shifts, with about 50% of content in users' main feeds now coming from AI recommendations rather than the accounts they follow, Instagram is adapting its strategy. The platform is blending elements of TikTok's content discovery with its traditional social networking features, emphasizing the importance of maintaining social connections. 🔹 To enhance user interaction, Instagram continues to introduce new features like Notes and Story comments while expanding the Discussion feature in Broadcast Channels. This strategy aims to maintain engagement and keep users connected with their networks, balancing high-quality content curation with opportunities for communication within the app. 💻 Source 🛡 Powered by V3V Ventures

🌐 August 2024: Eight New Entrants to the Unicorn Club ➡️ August 2024 saw the addition of eight new companies to the Crunchbase Unicorn Board, collectively adding $25 billion in value. Six of these new unicorns are based in the U.S., with one each from China and India. ➡️ The most notable entrant was Huawei's smart car subsidiary, Yinwang Smart Technology, valued at $16 billion. This represents the second-largest valuation for a newly minted unicorn in 2024, surpassed only by xAI's $24 billion valuation in May. 🖥 Key sectors represented in this month's unicorn cohort include: ➖ Transportation: Yinwang Smart Technology (China) and Ather Energy (India) ➖ Web3: Story Protocol (U.S.) ➖ AI: Codeium and DevRev (both U.S.) ➖ Privacy and Security: Kiteworks (U.S.) ➖ AgTech: Agrovision (U.S.) ➖ Real Estate: EliseAI (U.S.) 🔹 Of particular interest is World Labs, an AI startup founded by Fei-Fei Li, which reached unicorn status in July with a $1 billion valuation mere months after its founding. ➡️ For venture capitalists, these developments indicate continued strong appetite for innovative, high-growth companies across diverse sectors. The emergence of unicorns in fields ranging from AI and Web3 to AgTech and transportation suggests a broad spectrum of investment opportunities.

As 2024 progresses, these new unicorns may represent potential high-value exit opportunities. The rapid ascent of companies like World Labs also highlights the accelerated growth trajectories possible in the current market, particularly in the AI sector.

🔗 Source #VentureStats 🛡 Powered by V3V Ventures