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Tag: Technology

Facebook Loses Users Plummeting $200BN: CEO Zuckerberg Blames TikTok

Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history. CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes Facebook’s decline in users is likely due to the boom in popularity of the competitor platform TikTok.

Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history in the final quarter of 2021, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes was caused by the TikTok boom.

The social media giant’s devastating earnings report on Wednesday sent Facebook shares plunging more than 20 percent, wiping more than $200 billion off the company’s market cap and erasing $29 billion from Zuckerberg’s net worth.

Facebook reported a drop of nearly 500,000 in daily logins during the last three months of 2021. 

‘People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly,’ Zuckerberg said during an earnings call Wednesday, according to the Washington Post.

Zuckerberg reiterated that Meta – the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – is pushing hard to develop its short-form video Reels in an effort to compete with TikTok.

‘This is why our focus on Reels is so important over the long term,’ he added.

Facebook, which now only has 1.93 billion users logging in each day, also saw its shares plunged more than 20 percent in extended trading on Wednesday after unexpectedly heavy spending on its Metaverse project led to a rare decline in its fourth quarter profit.

Meta saw its stock fall 22.6 percent to $249.90 in after-hours trading, wiping about $200 billion off the company’s market value.

The company heavily invested in its Reality Labs segment – which includes its virtual reality headsets and augmented reality technology – during the final quarter of 2021, accounting for much of the profit decline.

Zuckerberg, who is worth approximately $107 billion, held more than 398 million shares of Meta at the end of 2020, according to Investopedia. Based on his reported holdings, the CEO personally experienced a more than $29 billion loss when the company’s stock fell Wednesday.

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Luxury Brand Prada To Launch First NFT

Prada is releasing its first NFT in partnership with Adidas: a crowd-sourced digital artwork in a Beeple-style collage, in luxury’s newest iteration in the metaverse.

From 24 January, anyone can register to submit a photograph using a specially-designed filter, that will be manipulated, scrambled up, and 40 per cent of the image removed, so as to be anonymised. Three thousand of the individual photographs will be selected by raffle, and minted by Adidas as unique NFTs for free. The individual who submitted the artwork will remain the owner, able to sell their NFT on the secondary market. The selected images will then be combined as tiles into one mass patchwork NFT, designed by digital artist and creative coder Zach Lieberman. That one-of-one NFT will be auctioned online on digital art marketplace SuperRare, and displayed as a large-scale installation in Prada and Adidas flagship stores. The patchwork style is similar to Beeple’s $69 million “Everydays: The First 5000 Days,” which set a record for a digital artwork at Christie’s auction.

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Crowdfunding Platform Kickstarter Moving To Blockchain

For more than a decade, Kickstarter PBC has convinced the public to pay people to follow through on their ideas to build a gadget, make a film or create a piece of art. It was, in some ways, a harbinger of today’s digital economy built around cryptocurrencies, decentralized organizations and NFT art.

On Wednesday, Kickstarter plans to unveil a project that will merge the two worlds. It’s hatching a standalone company to build a crowdfunding system much like Kickstarter’s but based on blockchain technology. When it’s ready, Kickstarter will switch its own website to the new infrastructure, and the new company will make the tools available for anyone to create a competing crowdfunding site.

The new company does not yet have a name. Development is slated to begin in the first quarter of next year, and Kickstarter expects to transition its site to the new protocol sometime in 2022. The change will take place entirely behind the scenes and shouldn’t affect how people use the site, the New York-based company said.

It’s a large, technical undertaking. Embarking on the project was a “big decision,” said co-founder Perry Chen, but it was ultimately an easy one to make because it fits with Kickstarter’s mission, which is “to help bring creative projects to life.”

Chen started Kickstarter with a pair of art-loving friends in 2009, and it was a near-instant hit with cash-strapped go-getters and eventually with celebrities and big companies looking to test consumer demand. The Peloton stationary bike started with a Kickstarter campaign ($307,332 raised), and so did the Oculus VR headset ($2.4 million). Kickstarter helped finance new records from Amanda Palmer ($1.2 million) and the pop group TLC ($430,000) and revived cult classic TV shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000 ($5.8 million) and Veronica Mars ($5.7 million).

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Is Las Vegas The Next Silicon Valley? More Tech Companies Relocating

An influx of tech companies and workers have moved into the valley to find greater opportunities and help diversify our economy.

Throughout the past couple of months and during the pandemic, many companies have looked for more affordable real estate, a better quality of life, and fewer pandemic restrictions.

Arya Bina is the founder of Kobe Digital, and he says that is the main reason why he moved his tech company’s headquarters from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. He says the days of our city only being a destination for gambling, resorts, and entertainment are over.

“There is enough momentum here where it is not like you are going into a place with a completely blank slate,” Bina said. 

Bina says based on his predictions, Vegas will be the next big tech hub. His company is an advertising agency that helps tech industries grow. After being in Southern California for five years, he says he realized he needed a city with more opportunities.

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Donate Cryptocurrency To People In Need With GiveCrypto

GiveCrypto is a nonprofit that distributes cryptocurrency to people living in poverty. By using crypto and blockchain technologies, they put funds directly in the hands of the impoverished and the unbanked.

GiveCrypto connects donors and recipients anywhere in the world. Over the past three years, they have impacted the lives of thousands of individuals and their families via direct crypto transfers.

How It Works

Over one billion people have a smartphone but don’t have access to basic financial services.

At GiveCrypto, they not only identify recipients in need and distribute funds to them. – They also connect those people to a truly open financial system. All it takes is access to the internet.

Crypto democratizes the philanthropic process. They can send cryptocurrency directly to any recipient and that person will receive it instantly. This includes people without bank accounts and those living in places where fiat money is “broken”.

Ready to put your crypto to work for good?

GIVE NOW