5 in 10 of millennials have ordered food or visited a restaurant after seeing it on TikTok

Nowadays, everything goes viral within seconds after being uploaded on social media. The same is the case with restaurants and their foods. After getting promoted or simply receiving good reviews from influencers on TikTok, people start coming to that particular restaurant, and their business flourishes in this way.

TikTok is highly beneficial for all businesses, and these days’ restaurateurs are making use of it in a good way. The marketing agencies that specifically cover the food and restaurant business said that more than thousands of people prefer food if they have seen it doing rounds on social media. Among those agencies include MGH, Utz, and 16 Handles.

These days’ people are more interested in getting to know the reviews of the food beforehand rather than visiting the place themselves. Because influencers are doing that for them, whether it is Generation Z or millennials, they prefer ordering food after seeing the video on TikTok. Millennials are more likely to order the food they see online as compared to Gen Z.

MGH reported that 38% of people are traveling a long distance from their homes to try TikTok-recommended food. 28%, on the other hand, are spending half of their pay on trying new foods.

MGH media marketer director Ryan Goff said that TikTok has taken the world of food by storm. People used to ignore such apps at first, but now a majority of people are getting influenced by the app. They prefer food, fashion, and other stuff shown in the 20-minute reel on TikTok. TikTok has changed the mindset of people and influenced their every move. For instance, where to spend their weekend and where to spend their money.

Many companies have decided to take advantage of TikTok’s marketing strategy. Food and beverages are promoting their brand on social media. For example, Taco Bell has created a video on TikTok to spread the news that they are bringing back their Mexican pizza. The clip alone gets 57 million views in one day. TikTok not just promotes the brand but also brings more revenue to the restaurant.

Moreover, people have started consuming stuff that has been shown on TikTok. TikTok's rise to prominence as a search engine has contributed a great deal in promoting restaurant names. People of all ages are searching for nearby best restaurants on their apps to grab a bite. They have grown dependent on the app’s review. Other than that, TikTok is trying to test a new feature that will enable people to find restaurants easily in their vicinity.

Also, instacart integrations allow people to make a shopping list if they want to make the same dish at home. It has become accessible for people to find the food of their taste easily by just seeing a video online.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

26% of US Young Adults Now Get News from TikTok

TikTok’s rise to prominence has been quite a sight to behold, but the social media platform has managed to turn into a lot more than just a simple hub for content with all things having been considered and taken into account. According to a study that was just published by the Pew Research Center, adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are now getting much of their news updates from TikTok because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up helping them stay well informed about current events.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that about 26% of US adults who are between the ages of 18 and 29 receive their news from TikTok based on the findings in this report. That has increased from 18% in 2021, which itself was double that of 2020 when only 9% of US adults in the same demographic got their news content from this social media platform.

Interestingly, adults over the age of 30 are starting to take TikTok more seriously as a news source as well. Back in 2020, only 2% of adults between the ages of 30 and 49 got their news from TikTok, but this year it is being reported that this proportion has increased to 10%. In spite of the fact that this is the case, the overall numbers for TikTok hover at around 10%, and that means that it is not as popular of a news source as Twitter or even Facebook.

This indicates that TikTok has an uphill battle if it wants to become a more popular source of news than might have been the case otherwise. The trends are definitely interesting, and as the current generation of young adults grows older the trends will continue to develop. However, at this time TikTok’s value as a news source is somewhat limited, though the potential possibilities of the future are exciting to say the least and they might further alter the paradigm of industries that are related to news and content.

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Telegram CEO Says New App Store Rules Are Ruining Lives And Crushing Entrepreneurship Chances

The CEO of Telegram is speaking out boldly against Apple’s new rules at the App Store.

Pavel Durov was quick to shed light on how changes in terms of in-app purchases were really taking a toll on the lives of others. He used the terms crushing dreams and ruining entrepreneurship as the company opts to take a 30% commission on various in-app purchases from developers making more than $1 million in revenue a year.

He found that to be unfair as such talented professionals really work hard and it was just not fair to grab a hold of their profits because it felt the need to do so.

The statements were reflected across his channel on Telegram where Apple recently informed the app that it can’t allow its creators to utilize third-party means to conduct payments for sales. That’s a huge blow to the messaging platform as it’s known to give greater access to more channels or separate posts via such means as a paywall instead of the usual in-app systems for making purchases via Apple.

As you can probably imagine, Apple was not happy to see the app’s creators gain more money through its efforts without the additional 30% tax while Telegram was stated to have zero choices but to turn off all of its paid posts seen on Apple’s apps.

Durov likened the behavior to monopoly and abuse at the expense of others in the market who are working hard to gain fruitful benefits via its efforts. Hence, people’s efforts are going to waste and the way they should be treated is beyond insane as a new clause for Apple’s commission is unfair.

Now, the Telegram CEO is calling on regulators located in places like India, the European Union, and more as they needed to take stricter action against such behavior before it got late.

Using third-party systems versus the traditional one laid out by Apple makes sense on Telegram as they got 100% of the profits that were provided by subscribers which is wonderful news.

But seeing Apple get upset over creators not providing a share of the commission laid out by the tech giant, they were left with zero choices but to disable all types of iOS paid posts.

Apple’s monopoly was outlined to be worth a trillion dollars and its leading position bring out its worst side where people are struggling with a tax that it calls out to be the biggest ever witnessed in terms of VAT by the government.

Telegram really wants to get to the bottom of the matter and it hopes regulators will overlook matters and find a solution that bypasses such unfair terms in Apple’s ecosystem.

The relationship observed between Apple and Telegram in the recent past has been nothing less than disappointment. In August of this year, the CEO was very adamant to claim that Apple really painted an obscure image of the rules and regulations seen on the App Store.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Google’s Group Chats On The Messaging App Makes Way For RCS-Based End-End Encryption

Google is paving the way to a more secure messaging connection by adding RCS E2E to its group chats across the texting platform.

Moreover, this is seen as a huge advancement in terms of the regular MMS group texts that arise unencrypted and hence pose a threat to users.

At the same time, the introduction of this new advancement will pave the way for RCS standards to come up to speed with the usual Signal protocol that apps like WhatsApp and Signal use.

Reports seen on Reddit outlined how Google is ready for a global launch so that the offering can be more widespread and accessible to all users. As recently seen by several people on Google Messages subreddit, Google Messages is working hard to introduce this endeavor across various RCS Groups.

Examples have proven that the feature is failing as viewers can’t open up texts. Moreover, a generic statement pops up claiming how E2E is yet to go live for everyone in the group and how texts can’t be seen as they’re encrypted.

So right now, things are being deemed more complicated than ever for group chats as they don’t only comprise Google Messages but also a few entailing Samsung texts. The latter is also seen showing support for RCS.

When you dig down deep further, Redditors realized that the Messages application of Google had the feature already enabled.

It was confirmed through the evaluation of Phenotype Flags which outline how E2E encryption gets enabled for some people out there. For now, it’s not quite clear which variant of Messages this happens to be at the moment. So experts do feel the platform needs to revert back to the original as unencrypted messaging as this would help stop anyone from being excluded from a chat.

The fact that subreddit and Messages comprise enthusiasts, we can predict that a lot of such people are utilizing beta versions of the chatting platforms and that in turn causes such behavior to arise in the first place.

At the start, Google made huge promises to bring ahead E2E via group chats that are encrypted to Google Messages when the Google 2022 I/O. Here, all of the one-on-one texts get encrypted. So you do end up seeing which chats are getting the feature and which are not. This is seen by the lock that pops up near the screen displaying delivered messages at a recent time.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

The blood oxygen sensor in the Apple watch is as reliable as the one on any medical grade device

Two years ago, tech giant Apple released its Apple Watch with a built-in blood oxygen sensor. According to the latest report, this sensor is as reliable as the one available in oximeters used in healthcare facilities.

The study, carried out by researchers was added to the Digital Health Journal. The main idea behind this was to compare the blood oxygen sensor reliability with an official oximeter.

To perform the comparison, twenty-four healthy individuals were asked to participate. Every individual had a series 6 watch strapped to their left hand and an oximeter attached to the middle finger of the same hand. The device used for this was the Radical 7 Masimo.

The readings were collected at every 30-second interval and consisted of three stages. The first stage, named the stabilization stage, lasted for two minutes. In this stage, the individuals breathed in the surrounding air, followed by a desaturation stage in which they inhaled the gas mixture with low O2, which resulted in a low blood oxygen level. And then the final stage, termed the stabilization stage, is which individuals take the surrounding air again to bring their blood oxygen level back to normal. All these readings were taken with both the Apple Watch and Radical 7, simultaneously.

The contrast between the two devices, namely the Series 6 watch and the oximeter, for the six percent oxygen level was expected to be ninety to a hundred percent, and for the 8% blood oxygen level, recordings were expected to be no greater than ninety percent.

The unfairness between the two gadgets was found to be 0.00% at all intervals. The results of the test confirmed that the series 6 watch can be trusted with blood oxygen levels.

The feature made its debut on the same watch, and since then, every other Apple watch following series 6, which includes series 7 and 8, and the Ultra, all have this sensor as a built-in feature. Even though it’s a big achievement for the company, they still didn’t advertise much about this feature, which would show Apple challenging the official medical devices. This is why, in the later series, the company didn’t highlight any adjustments made to this sensor.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

The smartphone market was at its lowest in the third quarter due to the global economic crisis

As global economic tension gets tighter, the aftereffects are visible in several aspects. Recently, Counterpoint pointed out the 12% downfall in YOY mobile phone shipments. The report was based on the third quarter of the ongoing year.

According to the market monitor of Counterpoint, in the third quarter, the shipment of such devices went down to almost 301 million units. Even though tech giants Apple and Samsung were the only two companies in the second quarter who managed to recover the loss in the second quarter, the third quarter couldn’t be saved by them.

Harmeet Singh Wali, the senior analyst at Counterpoint, shared his views while focusing on the entire dynamics of this market. According to Harmeet, global politics, including the ongoing Russia war, China, and the United States having a standoff, has already caused problems. With such conditions already leading to an economic crisis, the national currency's getting weak further fueled the crisis and made things worse than ever. He further added that while phones from the middle and lower end experienced declines in shipments, tech giant Apple was the only company that successfully managed to maintain its growth during the third quarter.

Samsung, on the other hand, saw a decline in demand for devices, including their latest flip and foldable handsets, despite experiencing high demand in Q3 of the current year. Unfortunately, the shipping industry fell by 8% in the year-over-year report. For Chinese smartphone manufacturers, things didn’t go quite well as they couldn’t make much larger sales. However, with tech giants leaving Russia as soon as the war started, Chinese smartphones helped their parent company cover the loss.

With all eyes on Apple's latest iPhone 14, analysts anticipate that it will aid in the return of overall mobile shipments to normal. Though the stats may not reach the level observed in previous years, analysts are still positive that upcoming years will be focusing on shipment growth. Before COVID-19, smartphone shipments were at 400 million units, but the trend has continued to decline.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Amid Economic Uncertainty, Advertising Sales Suffered a Rapid Break Down

Data shows, advertising sales and revenues are suffering a constant breakdown for the past few months.

Ad revenues play a vital role in the sales of any media industry. These are the net sales generated by advertising the company's relevant products, services, and promotional messages. According to a report, one of the largest media market capturers, Google, earns 200 billion dollars annually through advertising revenue.

According to the latest reports, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, suffered a significant breakdown in advertisement sales, surprising the whole world. Alphabet is a product and service-providing company that hosts services for Maps, Gmail, Google Cloud, YouTube, and many more. The breakdown in the company's ad sales is an alarming situation for all direct and indirect competitors.

Google is one of the largest media owners, with an annual advertisement sale of 200 billion dollars. Recently, in 90 days, Google's ad sales turned down to 3%. The following figures are by far the lowest since 2009. With the following facts & figures, Google is heading towards alarming situations.

The major reason for the ad sales slowdown is the globalized economic uncertainty. Due to the economic crisis, advertisers have minimized their budgets for advertising, resulting in a decline in growth. The recent report also highlights that the US faced a fall of 5% in ad expenditures.

The economic recession has badly affected all types of media and their businesses. According to a source, year-over-year growth in advertising expenses in the US in the digital media sector was 24% in Q1 of 2022. Whereas, in Q2 and Q3, it dropped down to 10% and 5% respectively.

Besides this, all media growth was also affected inadequately. In the first quarter of 2022, the growth was reported at 14%. Meanwhile, it declined to 2% and -6% in the second and third quarters respectively. The television media industry also faced a rapid breakdown. In Q1 of 2022, the ad expenses growth was 2%. Meanwhile, it abruptly shifted to -9% and -23% in other quarters of the year.

To conclude, economic uncertainty played a vital role in the advertising department of major organizations. After the COVID outbreak, it is the second time that the US is facing a decline in ad sales. Besides this, advertising expenses were also affected by this outbreak. Now, organizations and certain departments have high hopes to cover losses with different strategies in the coming time.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World