Mr Branding
"Mr Branding" is a blog based on RSS for everything related to website branding and website design, it collects its posts from many sites in order to facilitate the updating to the latest technology.
To suggest any source, please contact me: Taha.baba@consultant.com
Monday, April 7, 2025
Gen Z Interest in Influencers Drops 5% but Buying Power Remains Strong
The report said that in today's times, anybody can be a social media star. If you want to become a social media influencer, all you need is to make entertaining content that can engage the users. If the content goes viral and resonates with the audience, the influencers gain followers and fans. Despite people slowly losing interest in influencers, they are still interested in making purchases after recommendations of influencers.
45% of the social media users in the survey admitted that they are likely to purchase something if it is recommended by an influencer on social media. The survey also found that there is no one favorite influencer of social media users, as they liked multiple influencers at once.
Read next: 68% to Increase Social Spend in 2025, 63% Say GenAI Will Shape Consumer Behavior
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World
The Hidden Health Cost of Convenience: Are Delivery Apps Sabotaging Your BMI?
There is no doubt that food delivery apps like Doordash, Ubereats and Deliveroo are more prominent in cities and rural areas and people who are employed are the ones who use these apps the most. This is because they don't want to waste their time shopping, preparing and cooking healthy meals and delivery apps seem the most convenient to them. They can do several other things in the time they save by ordering food online.
This shortcut makes them less active because people who frequently use delivery apps aren't getting any physical exercise by buying or cooking the food themselves. Most delivery foods are also high in calories and contain a lot of sugar, unhealthy oils, starches and salt. In other words, we are spending more time on eating highly processed unhealthy food instead of moving ourselves just so that we can enjoy some time sitting at our favorite place or even during work.
Image: DIW-Aigen
Read next: New Research Offers Groundbreaking Way to Slash Data Center Energy Use and Boost Efficiency
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World
68% to Increase Social Spend in 2025, 63% Say GenAI Will Shape Consumer Behavior
When the marketers were asked what are the most important consumer trends going forward in 2025, 63% answered generative AI, 56% said connected TV/streaming and 51% answered TikTok/social video. 62% of the respondents said that performance driven paid media is an important advertising capability and media investment in current macroeconomic conditions, followed by 50% who said measurement and attribution capabilities and 45% who said brand advertising.
Marketers were also asked how they used generative AI in marketing and they responded with data analysis (47%), market research (38%) and copywriting (32%). The largest areas of concerns marketers are facing in media and marketing initiatives are decline in ability to measure campaign effectiveness on tech platforms and open web (45%), consumer ad avoidance/ad blindness (41%) and poor ability to manage reach and frequency across CTV and digital channels.
Read next:
• The Smartest CEOs in 2025: What It Takes to Be on Top
• The Dark Side of AI Coding: How AI-Generated Code is Opening Doors to Cyberattacks
• Want Better Sleep? Your Late-Night Screen Habits Might Be to Blame, Researchers Warn
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World
Sunday, April 6, 2025
Want Better Sleep? Your Late-Night Screen Habits Might Be to Blame, Researchers Warn
The survey asked the participants and their bedtime activities like watching TV, browsing the internet, checking their social media, and gaming. The results showed that 69% of the participants use social media along with other activities before sleeping and insomnia was identified in those who were experiencing sleep issues for at least three months thrice a week. The researchers also said that even though there is a link between screen use and sleep problems, it isn't the direct cause of it with many insomnia sufferers being prone to use more screens because they cannot sleep. The researchers also put some tips for better sleep like avoiding digital devices before bed and setting a proper routine for the night. The screens we use before bed not only steal an opportunity for sleep from us but also make us avoid sleeping.
Image: DIW-Aigen
Read next:
• Experts Believe that Using Blue Light Glasses Cannot Help You With Your Eye Problems But Adopting Some Simple Habits Can
• 5 Android Apps Which Help Reduce the Harmful Blue Light That Emanates from Smartphones
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World
The Dark Side of AI Coding: How AI-Generated Code is Opening Doors to Cyberattacks
Now the question is how is AI writing vulnerable codes and the first issue that arose with Cursor generating a vulnerable code that compromised the security. A security researcher at OX Security, Tomer Katzir Katz, wanted to test whether Cursor could identify and prevent any vulnerabilities in coding that could be dangerous. So he gave Cursor a task to generate a Python server with known vulnerability and the results proved that Cursor failed to not only secure the code but also produced a dangerous code as well. It created a reflected XSS (cross-site scripting) vulnerability without sanitizing it and this could open the doors for hackers to inject their malicious scripts to deface the site or steal sensitive user data.
Then Cursor was asked to create a minimalistic payment API and it again failed in terms of security. There were serious flaws in the code generated by Cursor like no input validation, no encryption, and no authentication checks. This could prove to be extremely dangerous for beginners or developers who generate codes in a rush and this could lead to data breaches and injection attacks because there is no proper security measure in these codes. When Cursor was asked to ignore security best practices to create an upload and hosting server, Cursor easily made the code for it without any hesitation. Even though it gave the warning that ignoring security warnings is not recommended, it still proceeded with the request and generated an unprotected file upload server. When Katz uploaded a malicious PHP reverse shell, the AI-generated server didn't put up any defenses and Katz could immediately gain full access to the server.
The researchers gave another test to Cursor and asked it to create a very simple wiki server without mentioning anything related to security. Cursor generated exactly what was asked but there were still no basic security measures and the wiki server could store user-submitted content without any sanitization and the system was left vulnerable to XSS attacks. The final test was done to see how Cursor handled open-source-licensed and copyrighted material. Cursor was given a snippet and description from the Chess project and was asked to rewrite or improve it. The Cursor generated almost the original code with only some slight modifications and didn't mention the original author or license. This just means that Cursor users should be cautious and shouldn't blindly trust AI-generated content entirely and should quality-test the AI-generated code so any vulnerabilities couldn't be missed.
Image: Anthony Riera / Unsplash
Read next:
• Study Finds Public Can Detect AI Content Easily, But Acceptance Depends on Context and Purpose
• The Smartest CEOs in 2025: What It Takes to Be on Top
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World
Saturday, April 5, 2025
The Smartest CEOs in 2025: What It Takes to Be on Top
People often wonder what it takes to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Of course, these CEOs need to be smart, and many boast an Ivy League education and other post-graduate degrees. Others, such as Mark Zuckerberg, manage to drop out of school and still become the CEO of Meta, one of the most celebrated American tech companies.
So clearly, most CEOs have other characteristics that go far beyond a diploma. According to a study by Preply that analyzed the dialogue of over 100 American CEOs, top CEOs are leaders who can communicate with their stakeholders, employees, and consumers. Without being able to emotionally connect with people and focus on their customers, these CEOs would never have made it to the top.
The Most Intelligent CEOs
Managing massive businesses requires a specific skill set. For many of these companies, intelligence is an important aspect of being a leader, and the best leaders are those who can communicate that intelligence through their use of language. To measure this, a study done by Preply analyzed the language used by men and women at the forefront of their industries. Researchers looked for indicators like sentence sophistication and critical thinking skills to make their judgments.
Coming in first is Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, followed by Jim Taiclet of Lockheed Martin and Demis Hassabis of DeepMind. These three CEOs scored the highest out of 25 CEOs, meaning that they tend to communicate intelligently. Whether it’s through the clarity of their sentences or the specific word choices they make, these CEOs have what it takes to communicate their vision to their company and employees, leading their business to success.
Name (Company) | Score |
---|---|
Jensen Huang (NVIDIA) | 81.25 |
Jim Taiclet (Lockheed Martin) | 80.87 |
Demis Hassabis (DeepMind) | 80.77 |
Vincent Roche (Analog Devices) | 80.6 |
Matt Murphy (Marvell Technology Group) | 78.43 |
Reed Hastings (Netflix) | 77.33 |
Joseph Dominguez (Constellation Energy) | 76.7 |
Stephen A. Schwarzman (Blackstone Group) | 76.37 |
Robert B. Ford (Abbott Laboratories) | 76.1 |
Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz) | 75.5 |
Patrick Collison (Stripe) | 75.43 |
Sam Altman (OpenAI) | 75.17 |
Shantanu Narayen (Adobe) | 75.17 |
Robert A. Bradway (Amgen) | 74.37 |
Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase) | 74.25 |
Satya Nadella (Microsoft) | 74.17 |
Sanjay Mehrotra (Micron Technology) | 74 |
Elon Musk (Tesla) | 73.83 |
Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway) | 73.83 |
Daniel O'Day (Gilead Sciences) | 73.5 |
Arvind Krishna (IBM) | 73.5 |
Reshma Kewalramani (Vertex Pharmaceuticals) | 73.27 |
Greg Peters (Netflix) | 73.2 |
Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, Greylock Partners) | 73.17 |
Dario Amodei (Anthropic) | 73 |
Bob Iger (Walt Disney) | 73 |
Henry R. Kravis (KKR & Co.) | 72.83 |
Tim Cook (Apple) | 72.67 |
Kevin Murphy (Publix) | 72.5 |
Sundar Pichai (Alphabet, Google) | 72.43 |
Over half of the CEOs analyzed belong to the technology or financial industry. As technology advances, CEOs of companies in the tech industry must be able to adapt to the evolution of their teams’ needs and customers’ demands to progress and effectively convey their vision. Likewise, those in the financial sector must be able to clearly communicate with both employees and customers. It seems leaders in these industries have made effective communication a priority, resulting in their success in both this study and the real world.
The Advantage of Emotional Intelligence
While it certainly takes brains to lead a company along the likes of JP Morgan Chase or Meta, clear and effective communication alone is not a silver bullet to success. The type of communication leaders utilize is key, especially in terms of how leaders are connecting with their employees and customers. This requires adaptable communication and a good degree of self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
By using “I” when talking about emotions or thoughts, people exude a greater degree of emotional intelligence, and after looking at the amount of times these CEOs made “I” statements, the top spots for this category were Bill McDermott of ServiceNow, Brian Sikes of Cargill, and Carol B. Tome of UPS.
Using “I” statements doesn’t just convey emotional intelligence. These statements also reflect ownership and initiative. By using “I” statements, CEOs can take the lead, assuming responsibility and accountability, which are important traits when leading a company.
Once again, the financial sector has an overwhelming majority of companies ranked in the emotional intelligence category. It should come as no surprise that this industry embraces emotional intelligence, as leaders in finance rely on effective communication to emotionally connect with people and establish trusting relationships. When navigating complex changes in financial markets, financial teams need to feel supported when making tough decisions, so emotional intelligence helps CEOs lead and build successful teams.
Creating Cohesive Teams and Positive Customer Relationships
When it comes to team-focused dialogue, CEOs who use the word “we” the most in sentences, the top three CEOs in this category were Christopher Calio of Raytheon Technologies, followed by Brian Niccol of Starbucks and Ramon Laguarta of Pepsico. By using the word “we’, these leaders create a collaborative atmosphere and make the success of their company a team effort.
By far, the most common companies in this category are those focused on retail service. Entities such as Starbucks, Walmart, and McDonald’s consistently rely on working relationships with their customers to retain and increase business. By creating a team culture within their respective stores, they can boost employee retention through engagement and create a blueprint for how employees interact positively with customers.
After all, customers are the cornerstone of business success. The tech and finance CEOs who focus on their customers the most through their frequent customer-focused dialogue were Andy Jassy of Amazon, Sasan Goodarzi of Intuit, and Tricia Griffith of Progressive.
Leading in Today’s Digitized World
Effective communication isn’t just a tool for leadership, it’s a necessary component for CEOs to compete with others in their field. No matter what their IQ score is or what Ivy League school they attended, having effective communication skills is key to success in all industries. CEOs have to be able to convey their vision to stakeholders, employees, and customers.
Leading in today’s digital world means communicating in a way that reaches and impacts your audience, whether it’s the suits in the boardroom, your in-house team, or customers. So company leaders have to adapt to the usage of advanced technology. For example, the long 60-second commercials will no longer resonate with audiences, as attention spans have gotten shorter with apps like TikTok and Instagram.
Print ads also lack the effectiveness they once had, as people pay less attention to newspapers and magazines. Even billboards can blend together as each tries to outdo the other with keywords and colors. To combat this, companies must adapt and learn how to convey their mission effectively to their teams so they can create innovative solutions that continue to attract consumers.
People have changed the way they communicate within our digital world, and companies must do the same. CEOs can start to tackle communicating with stakeholders and consumers by promoting clear communication first within their own company. With the right blend of intelligence, emotional adaptability, and team-focused speech within their dialogue, business leaders can take their companies to new heights.
Read next: AI-Fueled Side Hustles Are Booming: How Entrepreneurs Are Building Businesses in Record Time
by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World
Microsoft Updates Copilot With Exciting New Features That Are More in Line with Alternatives like ChatGPT and Claude
The company just celebrated its 50th anniversary, and that meant a lot of things to look forward to. This includes big plans to host different features that bring it in line with ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. The popular AI assistant will now show support for offerings like customization, deep research, memory, podcast, and camera analysis.
Other than that, the latest Memory variant can keep track of different preferences, the user’s personal details like birthdays, interests, and even advice on how to make it all the more proactive. As per Microsoft, it can even select which data it wants Copilot to recall or opt out as a whole.
The matter is a huge part of the current efforts to transform the assistant into something more personal. As per the software giant, it’s still in the early process of thinking and evaluating. But once that phase is over, it does hope to give a more personalized touch and entail options such as the return of Clippy.
Copilot is more than a simple AI. Every individual gets the chance to uniquely style and blend different attributes that suit every individual separately. So it’s not really just limited to making the AI chatbot more personal to your likes, but also giving it more power.
There’s a new Actions feature that provides AI the chance to roll out tasks through web browsers, similar to how the Operator agent works. We’ve similarly seen Amazon’s newest Nova Act model do the same.
Microsoft shared how that might be used for show ticket bookings, reservations at restaurants, and purchasing products. When you combine this with shopping features, you’ll see Copilot products appear and now can find more sales and discounts.
Copilot Vision first started with the launch of a unique web tool that we found in the year 2004. It’s now undergone a serious expansion to reach Windows and mobile platforms. Through this, the Copilot can see what’s visible on screens across various other platforms and files. In this manner, you can answer queries or interact with content and material at the same time. iOS and Android say that it could discuss anything visible from a phone camera or images seen on camera rolls.
Deep Research shared how Copilot could analyze big documents or sources from the internet for giant projects. The research abilities are getting combined with Bing to power AI replies inside a search engine.
Similar to how other AI offerings work today, this new Copilot could also use studies to produce podcast-themed audio to look for different topics. Meanwhile, the latest Pages feature will allow it to plan notes and research for various documents into a single file.
The software giant says that most of the latest features are launching today in ‘initial files’ and will get even better with time. So we’ll keep an eye on this in the next few weeks and months. The availability varies by feature, the market, and even the app. None of these would be a first, as we’ve seen ChatGPT include memory features in the past year. Then Google Gemini rolled out a vision mode, and now every tech giant wants to make its own personalized AI agent.
Remember, ChatGPT first included memory features in the past year, and then we saw Google Gemini roll out vision modes. After that, every AI firm wished to design more personalized AI agents, but included them altogether. This proves how Microsoft is keen on keeping up with other archrivals in the industry. This is also proof that it wants to get the best returns from its investments done inside OpenAI.
Read next: Study Reveals ChatGPT’s Cognitive Shortcuts and Biases, Questioning AI’s Trustworthiness in Critical Decisions
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World