Hey Pulse fam 👋 Behrouz here. I’m back again with another Pulse to help you catch up on this week’s news, some new useful apps and tools — and tricks, and some of the features that are coming to your favourite platforms and much more!
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This Week in the News
Facebook’s transparency, cryptocurrency adoption, and a lot of DDoS attacks [link]
Elon Musk’s Tesla Bot, OnlyFans’ fans in distress, and Twitter’s new stuff [link]
Facebook’s transparency, virtual meetings, and crypto in Japan [link]
Tech companies’ policies against Taliban, Google’s getting rid of Pixel chargers, and no more magnetic stripes [link]
T-Mobile hack, Huawei’s alleged pressure, and Twitter walking back on stuff [link]
🩳 a gift for you.
Worth Your Attention
🧵 Benedict Evans on OnlyFans…
Consumers spent $6bn on Onyfans last year. If the payment industry won't or can't support that, this is another arbitrage opportunity, like it or not. Is there a payment tech that doesn't have centralised gatekeepers, and uses a bearer model to address fraud?🧵 Chris Dixon on blockchains and app stores
Chart of the Week
The Top 10 Countries Ranked by TikTok Users in 2021
TikTok user growth will slow significantly from its pandemic-induced peak in 2020 but remain above 30% in the app’s top 10 growth countries in 2021.
Read more on eMarketer.
& more stats
Social media ad spend is expected to grow by 25% YoY to reach $137 billion, overtaking that of paid search, which is estimated to total $135 billion (up 19% YoY) [link]
US consumers used an ~46 apps each month in the H1 2021 [link]
More than 1 in 4 young adults report recently using BNPL (Buy Now Pay Later) to make a purchase [link]
Tools & Apps
Windows 98: load up Windows 98 in your browser…
sheep.exe 😂
YikYak: anonymously connect with everyone within 5 miles. [iOS]
it died in 2017; it’s now back! — currently only available on iOS in the US; android and other regions are coming soon…
Twitter Video Downloader: A Telegram bot for downloading videos from Twitter
don’t infringe copyrights and stuff… i’m not responsible for what you do with this.
Quick Tips
When promoting your YouTube channel, add this to the end of your URL. It’ll prompt subscription confirmation. Like this: ?sub_confrimation=1
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAxuAiOaYKEPh39o11T3pJg?sub_confirmation=1
When sharing links to Twitter accounts or Twitter actions, try URLs with “intent”
https://twitter.com/intent/[action & parameters]
to follow:
https://twitter.com/intent/follow?screen_name=perspectiveix
to retweet (with a tweet’s ID):
https://twitter.com/intent/retweet?tweet_id=1429421120273494017
to like:
https://twitter.com/intent/like?tweet_id=1429421120273494017
to reply to a tweet:
https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?in_reply_to=1429421120273494017
these URLs prompt a specific action — and make things easier…
Spotted
Instagram is working on the Cookies privacy section [link]
Instagram is working on an in-chat search feature [link]
Instagram is working on a redesigned and more detailed post insights screen [link]
Instagram is working to show how many times a Reel has been shared in Direct [link]
Twitter is working on recorded Spaces [link]
Twitter is working on showing profile category label for Business/Creator accounts [link]
Twitter is working on Topics for Twitter Spaces [link]
Twitter is working on the ability to create tweets for Super Followers [link]
Microsoft is working on the "Arctic Solitude" theme for Outlook mobile [link]
Microsoft is working on a setting to change the user's picture displayed in the Outlook app [link]
🐦 Tweets of the Week
Fun Stuff
and now we’re done for this week
see you next week!