Saturday, January 6, 2024

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Openly Shows Support For Palestine And Muslims, Earns Global Admiration

The CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is making it very clear that despite being an American Jew, he is all support for Muslims, Arab, and Palestinian workers in the world of tech.

The leading tech entrepreneur weighed in his thoughts on what he felt about the current war in Gaza and how it needed to stop. He failed to side with Israel, leaving many stunned with his bold statements on the subject.

It was also interesting for him to represent the voices of millions of suppressed individuals arising from the Muslim and Arab communities, earning him a new form of respect from fans around the globe.

These statements were recently published on the X platform and had plenty of people talking for obvious reasons. Altman mentioned how many are oppressed and therefore cannot even voice their thoughts on social media, fearing the consequences of their actions which he says is alarming.

He also appreciated how many arising from that part of the world continue to openly show him support and respect and for that, he’s always grateful.

But at the same time, he did agree that many Jews in today’s world turn into easy targets for the likes of antisemitism, and that continues to be a leading problem around the globe.


Just one month back, he published through his X account how wrong he was regarding anti-semitism, mainly due to American Left political opinions. He also mentioned how the matter was harder to put into words as the controversies surrounding this subject were immense.

ChatGPT was also a subject of his conversations including how strongly he felt about the AI tool not doing a great job at being fair in terms of showing accurate content alone. He delineated how it was alarming to see Jews as well as Muslims become targets of prejudice and how it needed to stop.

Even posts related to the subject of humor should no longer be targeting members of different races, ethnicities, or religions- he added. All of these remarks came after a certain query arose from one follower who asked the CEO his thoughts on the power of AI and how its influence is causing a rift in society.

This is not the first time that ChatGPT has been slammed by big names. A prominent journalist from Iraq also made it very clear how it was shocking to see the Chatbot make bizarre statements after being given prompts about the Gaza turmoil. “They favor Israel instead of printing the clear picture to the world”- Mona Chalabi added.

Seeing Sam Altman’s statements in defense of Palestinians at a time when the world is seeing the oppression take place daily in Gaza clearly leaves a lasting mark in the minds of fans. They feel someone of this caliber needed to put the truth forward and after this, it’s likely his fan base rising in the Muslim and Arab world would intensify in numbers.

This marks the first time that one leading and high-profile individual in the tech industry has put out their thoughts on the military campaign by Israel and how strongly he condemns the act as innocent loss of life is never acceptable.

But making one side of the world happy might not be taken too positively by the others in the West who continue to support Israel and the brutal acts of violence taking place daily.

Read next: 91 Percent of US Publishers Are Selling User Data Without Consent
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

91 Percent of US Publishers Are Selling User Data Without Consent

The selling of user data without first and foremost obtaining their consent is an extremely troubling problem that doesn’t seem like it will be going away anytime soon. According to a recent report published by Compliant, it turns out that 91% of US publishers are selling user data to third parties without their consent.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that these publishers are all using Consent Management Platforms. In spite of the fact that this is the case, they are still finding ways to deliver user data into the hands of those willing to pay for it. The CEO of Compliant went so far as to say that this is a dangerous situation akin to mass surveillance.

The study involved the analysis of a billion or so impressions which were acquired from around a thousand media campaigns. Such a trend is concerning because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up putting user privacy at risk, and most consumers aren’t all that aware of what’s going on.

Based on the findings presented in this report, it appears that each publisher has around 5 brokers buying data from it on average. The high number of vendors also puts these publishers at an increased risk of data theft with all things having been considered and taken into account.

The study found that 82% of publishers are at a higher risk of data theft than might have been the case otherwise, and it’s all due to the enormous quantity of vendors that they are servicing on a more or less regular basis. Unauthorized tags can be piggybacked on, thereby providing malicious actors yet another avenue through which they can harvest data which can then be sold on the dark web.

The report states that the vast majority of the advertising ecosystem simply isn’t complying with regulations laid out in California’s CCPA. This consumer protection act came with several stipulations, including allowing consumers to delete their data whenever they choose and also have the ability to opt out.


Read next: Can you receive payments from US businesses through Payoneer if you don't have a PayPal account?
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Friday, January 5, 2024

Instagram's Upcoming Profile Collection Feature Will Help You Curate Your World

Instagram is all set to broaden its Collections feature, offering users the ability to share curated posts on their profiles. This move aims to enhance user understanding of individual interests.

As spotted by Alessandro Paluzzi on X, the public Collections option allows visitors to explore a user's curated content within the app. This can serve as a useful tool for showcasing diverse interests such as celebrities, books, or movies, aiding visitors in their decision to "Follow."

Beyond the Feed: Instagram's Next Chapter with Profile Collections
Image: Alessandro Paluzzi / X

This extension follows Instagram's collaborative Collections feature launched in 2023, allowing users to initiate private discussions based on a post. Any chat user can contribute to the collection, fostering more engaging conversations around shared interests.

The new experiment, still in development since September 2023, focuses more on the individual, providing a potential avenue for like-minded users to connect.

While the option may not be ready for an immediate launch, it presents an intriguing opportunity. Brands, if included in profiles, could use it as an additional platform to showcase their products.

However, there's a possibility of it feeling cluttered, an issue Instagram has actively worked to avoid in its design and user experience. The success of this experiment will be revealed when Instagram decides to release the new profile Collections feature.

Read next: Essential Skills That Are Going to Help You Boost Your Income This Year
by Irfan Ahmad via Digital Information World

Thursday, January 4, 2024

How to Prepare your Blockchain Marketing Strategy for 2024

In today’s age of digital transformation, innovative technologies like blockchain, web3 and cryptocurrencies are growing increasingly popular. Studies show that, by 2027, the blockchain industry will be worth a massive $94 billion, growing at a CAGR of 66.2%.

However, as the field continues to expand, so does the number of players. This fast-growing competition is compelling business leaders to invest in marketing campaigns that engage their target audience and draw on what makes their company stand out. The right blockchain marketing strategy is essential when it comes to capturing the attention of the right consumers, investors, and supporters.

So, where do you begin? Here are some of the most important steps involved in building an effective marketing strategy for your blockchain business this year.

Step 1: Understand Your Target Customer

In any industry, understanding your target audience is crucial to marketing success. Learning what kind of consumers will be interested in your product, and how you can address their needs or solve the problems they face, is essential to creating engaging campaigns.

While the market for blockchain is always evolving, studies show that younger generations are typically more interested in this disruptive tech than others. Of course, understanding your target audience goes beyond simply identifying their potential age range.

Building comprehensive customer profiles that outline demographic data (location, age, gender), interests (cryptocurrency, NFTs, etc), and pain points or aspirations will be essential. If your business is relatively new, researching your competitors, drawing information from blockchain-focused forums, and conducting surveys will help you collect relevant personal data.

Certain internet environments, like X (formerly known as Twitter) and Reddit, are particularly popular among web3 enthusiasts. Monitoring and interacting with users on these sites is likely to help you understand what they enjoy and are looking for.

Step 2: Research your Competitors

Researching your competitors isn’t just a good way to gain insights into the kind of audience you may want to reach. Competitive research can help you to understand what kind of challenges blockchain companies face when connecting with their consumers, and which problems you’ll need to solve.

Image: Digital Information World - AIgen

Researching your competitors can also help you detect gaps in your current market, where you might be able to differentiate yourself with new services or solutions. Start by identifying the top competitors in your space – those that offer similar solutions, or target a similar audience.

Next, examine their websites, read through their content to find out what topics they focus on, and evaluate their social media posts. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush can even give you an insight into the kinds of keywords your competitors are targeting.

It can also be helpful to look at reviews and testimonials shared by consumers online, to gain a deeper understanding of what customers like and dislike about other brands.

Step 3: Create SMART Marketing Goals

Once you have a clear understanding of your audience and competitors, the next step is developing goals for your marketing campaigns. SMART goals will act as a compass throughout your campaign, giving you the direction and inspiration you need. SMART goals are:
  • Specific: Don’t just say you want to attract new people to your website, say you want to increase website traffic by 25% in the next 3 months.
  • Measurable: Determine how you’ll measure the success of your campaign. Will you be tracking referrals, engagement, conversions, or something else?
  • Attainable: While your goals can be ambitious, they should also be realistic. Think about what you can reasonably accomplish this year based on your current marketing results.
  • Relevant: Are your goals in line with your overall business targets? For instance, if your overall aim is to become a thought leader in your industry, your marketing goals should help elevate your personal reputation and create credibility.
  • Time-bound: Ensure you have an “end point” in mind for your campaign. Decide when you should see the results you want to achieve from your marketing efforts.

Step 4: Choose Your Marketing Channels

With your goals in place, it’s time to think about where and how you’re going to connect with your audience. In the blockchain world, you can still use traditional marketing channels such as email and traditional search engines (content marketing). However, it’s also important to think about the unique environments frequented by your consumers. As mentioned before, X and Reddit are excellent locations for blockchain marketing campaigns, because they are where many go to find news and discuss trending topics.

You could even experiment with Discord and Telegram, building entire communities around your brand and offering. Plus, it’s worth looking for ways to develop social proof and credibility, by working with influencers on social media channels or partnering with leading publications.

Your chosen marketing channels will be closely aligned with what you know about your customers and their purchasing journey, so review your user profiles carefully.

Step 5: Experiment with Different Ways to Engage your Audience

Now you know which marketing channels you’re going to use, the next stage is deciding how you’re going to engage and activate your target audience. As a blockchain company, you may be heavily focused on educating your audience on this growing space, and demonstrating the potential of what you can do.

However, it’s also important to entertain your followers, and provide consistent value that helps pave the way for ongoing loyalty. Some excellent methods you can consider include:
  • Referral programs: Referral programs are extremely powerful in the blockchain and crypto field. Reward customers every time they introduce a friend, relative, or colleague to your business to keep your community growing.
  • Events: Events like airdrops and bounty campaigns are also very popular in the field. They engage customers by giving them an opportunity to win something, and provide you with valuable content to use in campaigns.
  • Influencer marketing: Working with influencers is another excellent way to improve your chances of success. Look for thought leaders who already have a strong connection with your chosen target audience.

Step 6: Track the Performance of Each Campaign

Finally, measuring the outcomes of your blockchain marketing campaigns is crucial to ensuring you get the best returns on your investments. When you set your goals at the beginning of your strategy, you should have defined clear metrics and KPIs that will offer insights into your success.

For instance, if your goal is to increase community engagement through social media marketing, you might monitor mentions, comments and likes on your posts, new followers, and even referrals or participation in events.

Don’t just check your metrics once or twice, keep a close eye on how they change throughout the duration of your campaign. Consider experimenting with different strategies through A/B testing, exploring different marketing messages or the impact certain channels have on your results. By enabling you to evaluate the success of your past and present marketing campaigns, this data will help you make more informed choices in future.

Getting Started with Blockchain Marketing

The blockchain market is currently exploding, with new innovators entering the landscape all the time. The only way to ensure you can connect with your target audience, facilitate growth, and earn the loyalty of your consumers is to implement the right marketing methodologies.

Use the strategies above to ensure you’re building constant engagement with your customers, and pay close attention to your metrics throughout each campaign. Remember, you can always seek out expert marketers and PR agencies for extra help if you need extra support along the way.

by Web Desk via Digital Information World

Essential Skills That Are Going to Help You Boost Your Income This Year

In modern society, having skills is most important to earn money. If you don’t have some skills, survival in today’s world can become a big challenge. You can get as many degrees as you want but they won’t make you much money if you do not have a few skill sets. There are a lot of basic skills that an average person can learn without any difficulty. Some of them don’t even require a degree.

As earning money should be everyone’s priority in today’s world, there are some high paying skills that will be in demand the most in 2024 and beyond. We are going to talk about the top 8 of them in this article.

Top 8 Skills That Are High in Demand

Following are the top 8 skills that every other person is trying to learn. They help a lot in the long run and help people earn money even when the economy is in crisis.

1- Digital and Social Media Marketing

You all must have heard about digital and search engine optimization on social media platforms. The reason why everyone is hyping it up is because of its high demand and comfortable income. There are different courses available on the internet that you can do on your own. Some are free while some are paid. If you become a professional in digital and content marketing, you can earn more than $70k per year. If you are working under someone, the pay rate can be a little less but still higher than most skills.

Digital Marketers' Annual Income: Breaking Down the Numbers
2- Executive and Virtual Assistant

Being an assistant is more of a skill than a profession. If you are proficient in writing emails and doing scheduling and administrative work, you are nearly an assistant. Use of different software like Primavera is a must if you want to pursue this career. Being a CEO’s assistant can make you earn a lot of money depending on the company you are working for. If it’s a big company, an assistant can even earn between $50K to $90k per year. Virtual assistants also work in a similar way as assistants but they do all of the work online. You can work from home for different organizations and do simple tasks for them.

You can also work as a project manager once you are able to perform all your tasks expertly as an assistant. This skill can help you make more money than an executive assistant.

3- Driving

Driving is undoubtedly a wonderful skill that can also help you earn money. There are many jobs available for semi-truck drivers. You need to have a license to drive a semi truck. The learning process and arrival of the license can take one to two months but can help you a lot. If you don’t like driving for long hours, there are also driving jobs available that let you get home at the end of the day. Apart from driving, being a bus or train conductor and air traffic controller are also making a great sum of money nowadays. The best thing about these skills is that they just require a high school diploma and you are good to work. Driving can make you earn $50k-$70k per year.

4- Tradesperson

Being a tradesperson is highly required in the construction sector. There are different types of diplomas that help you learn manual work in a year. Being a tiler and or plasterer can make you earn more than an electrician or painter. A four year degree isn’t for everyone, so some people can choose a one year program to become a tradesperson of their liking. It can help you earn $40k-$70k per year.

5- Data Analyst

Data Analysis is a vast field and if you are a person with logical and analytical skills, you can become a good data analyst. If you have interest in mathematics and statistics, you can easily learn different programs online. All the basics of data analysis are available online for free. Once you learn the basics, you can immediately start earning $60k-$80k per year.

6- Creative Skills

Creative skills like writing, graphic designing, photography and videography are also required a lot in today’s world. You can apply to different content writing jobs if you are good at writing. There are also a lot of jobs for graphic designers online. With photography and videography skills, you can work part-time as a wedding photographer. If you become very skilled, there is a chance you can earn up to $90,000 per year.

7- E-commerce Skills

Selling products online is also a very in-demand skill. You should know how to engage your customers and ask them to buy your products. There are also a lot of courses on e-commerce too that you can do to seek guidance. There are a lot of jobs in e-commerce like product manager, customer service, marketing and ads-management. Your skills in e-commerce can help make you earn $100k per year, and sometimes even more, if you've gained some experience. It all depends on your skills and products you are trying to sell.

8- Online Tutor

If you have command on certain subjects, you can work as an online tutor. You need to know academic stuff so you can teach students. Many parents look for online tutors so their child can learn a subject he is weak in. You can also prepare students for their college entrance exams. On average, an online tutor can earn $50k-$100k a year depending on the subjects he is teaching. Online tutoring is perfect for people who have degrees but are not able to find relevant jobs in their fields.

Conclusion

Skills are the most important thing individuals can have. Having skills can help you earn money that a simple college degree with no experience cannot. We discussed some of the most prominent skills that are going to help you earn money in 2024.

Read next: Top 10 Best and Worst Cities to Live in if You Are an Expat
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Wednesday, January 3, 2024

CAPTCHAs Need to Go, Here’s Why

CAPTCHAs have been an indispensable part of the internet for so long that it’s hard to think of them as something dispensable. In spite of the fact that this is the case, they might’ve ended up becoming obsolete in the modern age. Nowadays, there are bots that can easily bypass CAPTCHAs. That ends up making them far less useful than might have been the case otherwise, which begs the question: why are they still being used?

According to Elizabeth Lopatto at the Verge, there’s a lot to suggest that they need to become a thing of the past, pointing out numerous problems associated with them.

It is important to note that some CAPTCHAs can be downright frustrating. For example, the Google reCAPTCHA requires you to identify images over and over again. This can be a big headache because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up delaying simple tasks far more than necessary.

CAPTCHAs
Image: DIW

What's more is that these CAPTCHAs can sometimes be impossible to solve. Some of them request you to select images containing bicycles, but the entire thing consists of a single image broken up into several pieces. Does a piece containing the bicycle’s handle count? Technically speaking, none of the pieces actually depict a bicycle in its entirety, yet users are forced to figure it out time and time again.

As if that weren't already enough, some CAPTCHAs feature blurry images that don’t look like much of anything at all. If you factor in people that have issues with focused vision, these problems will become several orders of magnitude worse than they are already.

In this modern day and age, CAPTCHAs seem more like a roadblock than a form of innovation. reCAPTCHAS in particular seem to create more problems than they solve. In the end, there has to be a way to make sure that bots aren’t able to overwhelm the internet, and the tech industry needs to figure it out.

It will be interesting to see if anyone is able to come up with a solution that won’t waste as much time as reCAPTCHAs, since they might make surfing the web a whole lot easier than it is right now.

Read next: Apple’s Share of Premium Smartphone Market Diminished in 2023
by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World

Apple’s Share of Premium Smartphone Market Diminished in 2023

Apple has been the foremost manufacturer and seller of premium smartphone for quite some time now. The multi-trillion dollar tech juggernaut ended 2023 with yet another win, retaining 71% of the market share. In spite of the fact that this is the case, this was a four point decrease from the 75% it held last year with all things having been considered and taken into account.

This seems to suggest that Apple’s previously insurmountable dominance in this arena appears to be fading somewhat. The culprit? Foldable smartphones.

With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Samsung’s share increased to 17% from 16%, Huawei saw an increase from 3% to 5% and Mi doubled its market share to reach 2% in the same period. Galaxy’s flip phones have been giving Apple some stiff competition, but Huawei’s growth may be the result of its Mate 60 Series.

This new line of smartphones has breathed new life into the struggling company. This development is pertinent because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up decreasing Apple’s prominence and giving Huawei more firepower down the line.

Premium smartphones have proven to be uniquely resilient to market pressures. They’ve seen a 6% uptick year over year in 2023, all while other types of smartphones didn’t see all that much of an increase.

Analysts are theorizing that consumers are willing to spend the big bucks on smartphones due to how necessary they tend to be. High end devices last longer than midrange ones, thereby making them a more long term purchase than might have been the case otherwise. There’s also something to be said of the status symbol that smartphones represent. Consumers are looking to splurge in a display of conspicuous consumption, and this is raising the premium smartphone industry to unprecedented heights.

Interestingly, much of this growth is coming from Asia. Based on data provided by Counterpoint, India is the single fastest growing market for smartphones in the world. China is also an immense driver of growth, and Huawei’s win in the region may very well end up putting Apple’s dominance in jeopardy in the near to distant future if the current trends persist.

Apple's 71% share in premium smartphones dipped 4%, challenged by Samsung, Huawei, and the rise of foldable devices.

by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World