Google Announces List Of Winners For This Year’s Best Apps On The Play Store

It’s December and that means the year is coming to an end.

Therefore, it’s time that we sit down and reflect on moments that really stood out. And that’s exactly why tech giant Google is going public with its list of award winners for best apps at the Play Store.

From games and products to gadgets, apps, and more - the company really had a lot to consider in terms of what people loved. And a month after we saw it open up the voting for this year’s Users’ Choice Category, it’s time for Google to unveil who rose above all others.

In a fashion that we observed last year, Google really split down its own list of awards, and that included a list of categories for Users’ Choice and various sections. A separate degree of honor and respect was provided to every app on an individual level.

Stans: This game is the best#GooglePlayBestOf 2022: But actually

You can view these Best of titles in the US Play Store. To discover local winners in your area, please visit: https://t.co/WW21XPJ1eE pic.twitter.com/4wuivQCyqF

— Google Play (@GooglePlay) November 30, 2022

And the category is…inspirational ✨ You can view these Best of titles in the US Play Store. To discover local winners in your area, please visit: https://t.co/WW21XPJ1eE pic.twitter.com/EdLi400Deo

— Google Play (@GooglePlay) November 30, 2022

Coming down to the apps theme, it was ‘Dream By Wombo’ that really outshone all others and stole the top spot. The reason being is very simple. This was the year to celebrate AI artwork and the download count for Dream proved just that and more. We saw the app gather a staggering 10 million downloads, moments after it was launched in the year 2022.

Moving on to the category of games, it was the Apex Legends Mobile that turned out to be the winner. The adaptation of this popular endeavor meant it was going to convert to smartphones without ever thinking about losing out on things that makes it special. Yes, there were quite a few bugs but today, it’s thriving bigger and better on Android than ever.

We have to mention that users’ reviews continue to depict that there is still some ground that needs to be made up in terms of a great many crashes taking place. Without much luck, we may soon be seeing stability updates regarding Apex.

But when you actually come to think of it, Users’ Choice is really what matters in this scenario. BeReal was seen taking the top spot in the world of applications. And the fact that it’s not new on Android as it’s been there for three years, it’s only now that people are really getting to know more and more about the app as it enters the public eye for the year 2022.

For BeReal, this slow launch managed to work out well in its favor. But now, the real question is if such questions would continue in the next year but by the looks of it, users appear to be very content.

Last but not, it was time to unveil the winner for the category of games. And no surprises here as the Apex Legend Mobiles cinched the top spot. So don’t forget to jump in if you want to without any sort of excuse.

Google was even seen giving out awards to an array of subcategories like apps and games. You can see them all on the Play Store’s pages.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Elon Musk Sets Up New Plans For Twitter While Keeping Its Paid Verification On Hold

Musk has mentioned to the world that he’s on the verge of launching his Twitter files that would focus on how much free speech is suppressed by this social media app.

The Twitter Chief says it’s high time the world knew the reality of the matter and what really took place. Moreover, he failed to outline any specifics about it and is yet to mention what sort of suppression he’s talking about. But it’s definitely something that has some people wondering what it could possibly be.

Twitter has been busy removing accounts and taking down information requests and now, this seems to be a new strategy employed to make others realize that what you see is not always what you get and every story has a background to it.

The new tweet that was published on Monday comes after a massive tirade aimed against Apple which mentioned that it would be pausing advertising on the app, despite being one of the platform’s biggest advertisers for this year.

He even directly hit back at Apple by asking if they were against his free speech mission as that is what it currently looks like. For that, he opted to strike the firm’s CEO and asked for an explanation.

The huge string of tweets is a clear indication of Twitter’s war with Apple and Musk thinks that free speech can’t be lost in the US as that would mean tyranny lies ahead. For a while now, the Tesla CEO has been promoting free speech and that’s despite experts trying to question his moves.

In other news for the world of Twitter, Elon Musk has been seen delaying the app’s paid verification and there is a very good reason behind that. You will not find it as in-app purchases for the iOS device because the company wants to dodge an expensive bullet which is Apple getting its 30% cut for sales made through the app store.

When the blue subscription plan was first released, we saw it coming forward on the iOS app but now that Apple is not keen on being an advertiser for Twitter, Musk does not feel the need to pay its due share. He wants to do everything and anything that would avoid taking this route for Apple’s fees.

Signups for this project have been paused for a while now, thanks to a series of impersonators arising on the platform. Therefore, a relaunch has been planned for Tuesday with verification through phone numbers and also a one-cent rise in price from $7.99 to $8. Other than that, the blue subscription might not be getting a whole lot of changes anytime soon.

But over a month’s time, we saw Elon Musk go full throttle with his tweets that are aimed against Apple. He has since then been calling out the platform’s store cut and a 30% internet tax that was not fair and was not needed.

For now, Apple is yet to publicly acknowledge tweets fired by Elon Musk. But there is news about outsiders speculating that huge firing sprees and little to no accountability for content moderation could be a major reason.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Analysts Semiconductor Revenue to Decline by 3.6% in 2023

Semiconductors have been seeing a lot of ups and downs ever since the pandemic. The pandemic itself choked up supply lines, but matters were made even worse by manufacturing issues and political unrest in China as well as further problems that occurred in Taiwan. Such issues becoming prevalent in the two biggest semiconductor manufacturing hubs was sure to create shockwaves, and that is almost exactly how things have played out.

The revenue that companies received from semiconductors reached $595 billion in 2021, which increased by 4% to $618 billion in 2022. Previous predictions suggested that semiconductor revenues would continue to grow in 2023, ostensibly reaching $623 billion by the end of that year. In spite of the fact that this is the case, newer analysis has revealed that the growth rate will actually be in the negatives, and that could make industry recovery take much longer than might have been the case otherwise.

The newest predictions from Gartner indicate that semiconductor revenues are going to see a 3.6% decline in 2023. This will erase almost all of the progress that was made this year, with the current projection estimating around $596 billion in revenue. That is just $1 billion more than the numbers seen in 2021, and the short term outlook seems quite dire with all things having been considered and taken into account.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that memory demand has been seeing a huge decline. Inventories are overflowing, customers are demanding reduced prices, and all in all demand is expected to take a 16% hit in 2023 given all these factors.

Some consumers will rejoice because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making their devices cheaper in 2023. However, companies might refuse to decrease prices and instead keep them stable by opting against raising them as they normally do. We will have to see how the events of next year play out, and we might see a vastly different industry by the time 2023 draws to a close.

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Here Are the Biggest Social Media Trends in 2022

Social media platforms have been undergoing a massive shift in the status quo that has been brought about by numerous shakeups including the launch and huge success of TikTok as well as Elon Musk’s recent acquisition of Twitter. This impacts a wide range of things, not the least of which is the world of social media marketing with all things having been considered and taken into account. Emplifi recently put out the latest iteration of their Social Media Report, and it revealed some useful insights about the state of social media.

One of the biggest revelations in this report was that social media ad spends has seen a 16% increase year over year. Last year, brands spent an average of $4,827 on social media marketing, and this has gone up by 16% to reach $5,622 in the second quarter of 2022. However, the only major sector that has consistently been upping its social media marketing spend is the retail sector, which means that other niches are less enthused about social media marketing these days.

It will be interesting to see if the growth rate continues over the holiday season because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up revealing whether or not the effects of inflation would be strongly felt. Another recession may be on the cards, and that might prevent a lot of brands from investing in social media marketing.

The showdown between Instagram and TikTok was also front and center in this report. Instagram is winning out in the post interaction category, with the median range of interactions on Instagram superseding that of TikTok and the gap is only continuing to grow. The second quarter of 2022 saw TikTok outperforming Instagram in this metric, so Instagram’s reversal of its fortunes is definitely a signal that the battle has not quite ended yet.

TikTok is still managing to hold its own, though. Median engagement rate is still in TikTok’s favor, so while Instagram provides more views and reach, brands might be able to get much more user engagement from TikTok even though the view count might be somewhat lower than might have been the case otherwise.

TikTok is also doing a great job at growing the follower counts of its participating brands. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that TikTok is currently seeing a massive growth rate in the number of followers that it can provide, with a 200% increase being the most concrete sign that we can provide. Instagram, meanwhile, is seeing next to no follower growth which suggests that it has reached a saturation point that TikTok is also hurtling towards.

The click through rate that most brands are receiving from their ad campaigns have been seeing an unfortunate decline, however. The downward trend is noticeable in almost every single region and across most industries. Africa was the worst effected, with the click through rate in this region plummeting 30% YoY. It now sits at 12.9% which is a far cry from the 18.4% that ads targeting this region managed to receive back in the third quarter of 2021.

Brands would also do well to look into their response times. While Twitter was the platform where brands were the best at responding quickly, they were more likely to respond to comments that they received on Instagram posts. The median response time on Twitter is twice as fast as that on Facebook. However, Facebook Messenger is an excellent resource for responding to customer complaints and queries with an average response rate of 70% which is far better than the 40% that was seen for Twitter. Finding a balance between the two may be the key that helps brands maximize their social advertising benefits.

Take a look at the infographic below for more insights:

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Giphy Crowns Zendaya As The Top GIF For 2022

The popularity surrounding Zendaya is definitely a point worth pondering.

Recently, Giphy was quick to announce how the popular celeb was crowned as the top Gif for this year. She reportedly would now need to move these Emmy Awards that she got for her work on the famous HBO channel called Euphoria to make space for today’s new accolade which shouldn’t be taken lightly.

via GIPHY

But others who were similarly honored included the likes of SpongeBob Square Pants with great emphasis on the Giphy Clip outlining the lead character’s great bond with Patrick Star. He was this year’s top Clip and was seen on the famous GIF discovery platform too.

Next, we saw Facebook reaching an agreement to take on the Giphy for a startling $315 million in May 2020. But that’s when the Competition and Markets Authority from the UK forced Meta to sell off Giphy in the month of October.

They felt the combination of these firms would go on to limit the choices linked to social media and even cause a dramatic fall in innovation when it came down to display advertising on a national level.

The methodology behind this entire list was then explained in detail via a blog post that arose on Tuesday. Giphy was seen chronicling top content on the site for a number of years. And since cultural trends may end up shifting with celebs changing with the passing of time, the list always turns out to be super emotional in that part of the world or in that particular year.

So data calculations for the most popular GIF began last year. There were plenty of metrics that needed to be calculated to consider the content reigning supreme in 2022. Moreover, a lot of the emphasis was even put upon the likes of daily searches.

As a whole, it paved the way for the most insightful content overviews that derived popularity through the likes of cultural and emotional spikes. This was in comparison to those terms constantly used when carrying out a search and hence it didn’t need to be trending.

With this method in the works, they’re super confident that it’s not only giving a diverse array of content but the best representation of GIFs that could be used in the year.

The company’s most viewed partner was the National Football League. On the other hand, the app’s Personality of the Year award went to Drew Barrymore.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Google And YouTube Announce $13 Million Grant For International Fact-Checking Network

The term fact-checking is not a minor issue in the world of publishing. Today’s day and age call for stricter measures to be imposed considering the great number of imposters out there and the huge rates of fake news being published each second.

It’s almost as if users are distrusting the media because you never know who is right and who is not.

Both social media giants Google and YouTube have set out a $13 million grant that is directed to the International Fact-Checking Network. The goal is to launch a non-profit initiative in the name of the Global Fact Check Fund. Therefore, it would benefit the network as it entails 135 fact-checking firms arising from 65 different nations. And that covers nearly 80 different languages. The fund would be functional by next year.

The tech giants claim the entire goal here is to allow fact-checkers to understand more about scaling operations that currently exist or even launch a series of new ones that uplift information. They even uplift various sources and reduce the great harms linked to both misinformation and disinformation seen around the globe.

As mentioned previously, there are a number of benefits that publishers may end up benefiting from. For starters, this includes fact-checks conducted via independent firms on the Google Search Results page.

Next up, there are fact checks conducted on YouTube’s panels that would appear at the topmost region of search results for all sorts of questions on a particular claim. Lastly, you’re dealing with fact-check explorer searches seen among 150,000 different reliable publishers.

In addition to that, we saw the authors mention that after a certain news story breaks, a panel would appear on the results page for YouTube where certain questions can be asked and that shows which stories are developing via news sources that follow content policies linked to Google News.

Critics hope this effort should assist with periodicals and stop spreading embarrassing errors because this isn’t required. Similarly, defamatory mistakes are also being called out as having no room on these platforms.

In addition to that, we may soon witness grantees utilizing funds to add new types of technologies that expand or develop various digital footprints. It can optimize tools used for verification too and even build up the capacity to allow for better audience engagement through different means. This includes audio, podcasts, and even video.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

UK Makes Major Changes To Its Online Safety Bill That Could Penalize Tech Giants Who Fail To Block Controversial Content

So many apps on social media may soon be paying the price if they fail to oblige to the pledge made in relation to the Online Safety Bill.

The news comes as plenty of changes are carried forward in the bill that demand big tech platforms block all sorts of content that’s racist and sexist. Moreover, it’s like seeing a huge number of fines being outlined thanks to the British Government that opted to make such changes on Monday.

With this new approach kickstarting, many companies like Twitter and even Facebook might give users a chance to avoid displaying content that’s harmful but isn't actually committing a crime or an offense of some sort. This includes topics arising in the field of racism, eating disorders, or even misogyny.

The regulator overlooking such endeavors has been outlined as Ofcom, which would now be given the authority to penalize huge firms for breaches made in the act. Just last year, we saw Meta put up revenues worth $118 billion.

Thankfully, the act did drop off one offense linked to harmful communication after getting plenty of criticism from conservative members about how it was hurting feelings.

So many ministers have ended up scrapping such provisions linked to legal material that’s also harmful at the same time. Such content is controversial but is not committing any major crime. Instead, it’s allowing apps to force the right terms on its users.

In case the content being put forward by apps fails to align with the guidelines mentioned like the theme of abuse, then Ofcom can adequately deal with them through hefty fines.

On the other hand, another major change seen in this bill has to do with digital platforms offering people various ways through which they can avoid the promotion of harmful content on the app. Despite it being legal, content moderation needs to be given attention and users need to be provided with warning screens.

Content that comes under this includes the likes of abuse, racism, disability, intimacy, gender reassignment, and even sexual orientation.

If a firm wishes to remove content or ban users, it would need to clearly pen down in writing a justification for the act, and then users would be given the chance to appeal such a decision made against them.

The bill is all set to return to the UK Parliament by December 5 after it received a temporary pause.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World