TechBooky

Spotify is testing a new feature that lets users skip audio and video ads, even without being on a paid subscription—The feature, known as "Active Media," will allows users of Spotify"s free, ad-supported service to skip particular ads, with advertisers only paying for completed listens or views. Danielle Lee, Spotify’s global head of partner solutions explained to Adage . “Our hypothesis is if we can use this to fuel our streaming intelligence, and deliver a more personalized experience and a more engaging audience to our advertisers, it will improve the outcomes that we can deliver for brands. Just as we create these personalized experiences like Discover Weekly, and the magic that brings to our consumers, we want to inject that concept into the advertising experience,” According to Spotify , Active Media feature is the "first of its kind globally" and will allow the company to "learn from each interaction" and "deliver a more personalised ad e...

It’s official. Facebook Inc. just had the biggest stock-market drop in American history. Until now, Facebook has appeared to be immune to the litany of scandals its business has generated over the past couple of years, with ever-increasing growth in revenue and users and an unsinkable stock price. On Wednesday, its ability to coast on its years of success finally seemed to give out. On an earnings call with investors, Facebook reported that its revenue grew by 42 percent over the same time last year, reaching $13.2 billion for the quarter—a number that was lower than the $13.3 billion analysts expected. The slight miss may have been what sent Facebook’s stock plunging more than 23 percent after the call in after-hours trading, but more likely it’s what’s going on with some of the social network’s metrics. Facebook"s margin fell to 44 percent in the second quarter from 47 percent a year ago as it spent heavily on security and initiatives to convince ...

Instagram has doubled its user base in the last two years. As announced at a company event the company now has 1 billion users worldwide. This makes Instagram the fourth Facebook-owned application to reach the 1 billion milestone, the prior three being WhatsApp, Messenger and Facebook itself. It in fact is a great achievement for the photo-sharing social media application, knowing that it is only seven years old. Instagram seems to have grown a lot in the last few years. The company has been getting 200 million users on an average for the past two years. This has allowed the photo sharing platfrom to double its user base from June 2016, when it only had 500 million users. The company has got 200 million users more from September 2017, when it was 800 million users. To give you some perspective, the company only had 40 million users in 2012, when it was acquired by Facebook. Instagram launched on October 6, 2010, and was only available on iPhone. Two years later, it was rolled out onto ...

As Google is focusing more on news, it"s ramping up its efforts to deliver quality services that would encourage its users not only to try them out but also to keep using them. Now, users can also subscribe to various online publications using their Google account credentials, and Google News will show content from those subscriptions more prominently in search results. Google is giving Google News a re-design that would bring in elements from its Newsstand app and YouTube, according to sources who spoke with Adage . The redesign is expected to debut at Google I/O next week, and the sources say that Google has been in talks with publishers as of late about the impending changes, which will consolidate many Google features into one product. ”There are a lot of Google services where you find news,” a publishing executive said, “and what they’re trying to do is bring it all under one brand.” To offer more features under one umbrella, Google News would reporte...

On stage today at Radio City Music Hall, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki made a revelation: the service gets 1.8 billion logged-in viewers every month. And people who aren"t logged in are not even included-- which means the actual number of people watching YouTube is way higher than we think. Last June, the service had 1.5 billion logged-in watchers. On TVs alone, people are now watching 150 million hours of YouTube every day. The latest figures are yet another sign that YouTube"s reach is staggering, something that Wojcicki wanted to make crystal clear for the audience of advertisers and potential partners at its annual BrandCast event. The CEO announced the milestone at YouTube’s Brandcast presentation to advertisers, alongside some of the year’s most noteworthy successes — like Beyoncé’s record-setting 41 million livestream views at Coachella and the “Despacito” music video passing 5 billion views last month. The company previously announced that i...

Samsung apparently wants to answer to everybody"s dream gadget. Over time, it has reversed its designs and features to suit the trend and keep the customers happy.   However, things have gone sour after the launch of the Samsung S9 as customers are complaining about their screens. It"s just a few weeks after the launch, but that"s not what is more overwhelming. The mobile phone retail price in New Zealand is over $1100!  The spec had undergone a camera tweak and a stylish super-slow-motion video. These features could set the bar for the Samsung S9 to set the bar for other Android phones for 2018. Nevertheless, it"s not as fantastic after all. The Daily Mail reports that official forums are flooded with complaints about "dead spots" on the screen. Some of the complaints read: "Does anyone else have issues with the Galaxy S9 touchscreen? I"ve got a few dead spots on the bottom half of my screen." "Getting a replacement phone shipped but d...