Facebook has said it will start testing ads on Instagram Reels, a short video offering, in India and other markets as it looks to help brands better engage with relevant audiences.

In July last year, Instagram had unveiled its new format ‘Reels’ in India that allows users to create and share short videos.

Reels and other short video platforms have seen strong growth userbase and time spent after the Indian government banned a number of apps with Chinese linkages, including popular short video TikTok. The monetisation efforts by Facebook would help the company tap into that opportunity.

In a blogpost on Thursday, Facebook said people are discovering and watching video in diverse formats across its family of apps, each offering distinct viewer and ad experiences.

“Today, we’re announcing new topic targeting options within Facebook In-Stream video, testing of Instagram Reels Ads and other ad experiences in Facebook Stories to help increase opportunities for brands to better engage with relevant audiences,” it added.

The social media giant said Instagram will begin testing Reels ads in India, Brazil, Germany and Australia with tests expanding to more countries in the coming months.

India is among the biggest markets for Facebook. According to government data, there are 53 crore WhatsApp users, 41 crore Facebook users and 21 crore use Instagram.

A recent report by RedSeer had said Indian short-video platforms like ShareChat’s Moj, Dailyhunt’s Josh, MX TakaTak and others have managed to bring back 97 per cent of TikTok’s user base on the back of aggressive marketing and user acquisition by these platforms.

Also, new users onboarded largely come from tier-II cities and beyond.

Facebook said the ads on Reels will be full-screen and immersive, similar to ads in Stories.

The ads can be up to 30 seconds and people can comment, like, view, save, share and skip them.

“Ninety per cent of people follow a business on Instagram, and people are already embracing Reels to discover new creators and businesses.

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American multinational technology conglomerate Microsoft will be releasing a preview version of its upcoming Office 2021 for the Mac and Office LTSC this week.

According to The Verge, while Office LTSC (Long-Term Servicing Channel) will be designed for commercial customers, both versions will be perpetual versions of Office that won’t rely on subscriptions or the cloud.

Microsoft had announced its plans for Office 2021 back in February, and a Windows version as well, which won’t be available in preview, but will be released later this year.

Office 2021 for Mac will support both Apple Silicon and Intel-based Macs and will require at least 4GB of RAM and 10GB of storage space. It’s designed to be a static release of Office, but during the preview, there will be monthly updates that could include new features. Once Office 2021 for Mac is final and released, no new features will be added.

Its current improvements include:

– Line Focus, this feature removes distractions to let Word users move through a document line by line.

– XLOOKUP, an Excel feature that lets you find things in a table or range by row.

– Dynamic array support in Excel, which has new functions for dynamic arrays in spreadsheets.

– Record a slide show with narration in PowerPoint.

As per The Verge’, Microsoft’s Office LTSC variant will also include things like dark mode support, accessibility improvements, and the same Dynamic Arrays and XLOOKUP features found in Excel 2021 for Mac. Office 2021 for Windows will include similar features.

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Audio streaming application Spotify is soon going to launch its podcast subscription service. The platform would be competing with Apple’s newly announced podcast subscription service but it will not charge a fee or take a membership cut like its rival.

As per Variety, the company will be letting content creators keep 100 per cent of the subscription fees. As per sources, Spotify will not take a cut of podcast subscription revenue.

By contrast, Apple will keep up to 30 per cent of podcast subscription fees under its program, which is launching next month. Most creator platforms, including YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Patreon, also take a cut of subscription fees and/or fan payments.

Currently, Spotify doesn’t allow customers to pay for subscriptions through Apple in-app purchases — and Spotify has been a very vocal critic of Apple’s App Store policies, which has included lodging a formal complaint with the European Union alleging anticompetitive behavior. Similarly, you won’t be able to purchase Spotify podcast subscriptions through Apple.

Spotify has said it was going to test paid subscriptions for podcasters to allow them to offer exclusive content to subscribers, officially announcing that during its February ‘Stream On’ event. But it has not yet provided details on how that will work.

It is worth noting that Spotify has been expanding its podcast platform by signing major deals with personalities like the Obamas, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, and most recently, Bruce Springsteen.

It has also signed podcast deals with Warner Bros, Hollywood producer Chernin, and Archie Comics.

Meanwhile, in conjunction with Spotify’s podcast subscription rollout, Facebook plans to launch an integrated version of Spotify’s audio player, a service called ‘Project Boombox’.

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When Megan Thee Stallion took off her bright orange mask and walked onstage to accept her Grammy on March 14, she fought back tears and thanked God, her mother, and her managers for helping her become the first female rapper to win the award for best new artist in two decades. But the rapper, whose real name is Megan Pete, made no mention of another entity that helped turn her song Savage into a No. 1 hit: the mobile app TikTok.

TikTok, a social network where people post short videos, often set to music, has become this generation’s hit machine. Like many TikTok sensations, Savage appeared to bubble up spontaneously from the enthusiasm of its users, who choreographed their own dances for the song, introducing it to other fans who watched those videos tens of millions of times. That mysterious formula for success on TikTok has turned the app into the most important new social media platform in years-which in turn thrust it into the center of a major geopolitical dispute.

But the success of Savage didn’t come out of nowhere. It resulted from a savvy marketing campaign, where TikTok’s management analyzed user data and advised Pete’s label on how to promote her, eventually landing on the infectious hit as the best vehicle to do so. Social media has always been less spontaneous than it appears, but from its inception, TikTok has been even more controlled than competing apps. Company executives help determine which videos go viral, which clips appear on the pages of personalized recommendations, and which trends spill out from the app to flood the rest of the world.

TikTok’s hold on American culture began with Alex Zhu, who started Musical.ly, the lip-syncing app that turned into what we now know as TikTok. Zhu grew up in China and studied civil engineering at Zhejiang University. He went to San Francisco to work at global software company SAP SE. On a train ride through Silicon Valley in 2014, Zhu was fascinated by the American teenagers listening to music and shooting video on their phones and decided to create an app that joined the two.

Although tech companies have often clashed with record labels, Zhu’s plan was always to work with the music industry rather than disrupt it. Zhu, 36 at the time, obsessively tracked user behavior, even registering fake accounts to interact with elementary and middle school kids. He personally courted rising stars by calling them and their parents at home and taking their families out to dinner. Zhu, through a company spokesperson, declined to comment.

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With the government looking to divest loss-making steel assets, significant interest from secondary players is most likely this time apart from the anticipated list of large integrated primary steel producers, said industry experts.

Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), Neelachal Ispat Nigam Ltd (NINL), NMDC Integrated Steel Plant (NISP)-Nagarnar, Ferro Scrap Nigam Ltd and three units of Steel Authority of India (SAIL) — Alloy Steels Plant, Durgapur; Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel Plant, Bhadravati; and Salem Steel Plant, Salem — constitute the divestment list. All the three units of SAIL have been loss-making for more than five years.

“Some promoter-driven secondary players could have much bigger interest towards the smaller, really stressed assets put out for divestment, making it a fresh list of buying interest this time,” said Saurabh Bhatnagar, Partner and National Leader, metals and mining at EY India.

Kalyani Steels, Godawari Power & Ispat Ltd and Prakash Industries are some of the secondary steel companies in the domestic market.

ALSO READ: Surge in steel price opens up room for companies to increase rates

“We are keen on expansion and have expressed interest in NINL. If we get it at the right price, our capacity would more than double from the current 0.5 million tonne,” said R K Goyal, managing director of Kalyani Steels.

Kalyani Steels has an integrated facility at Hospet and a secondary unit in Pune. It is currently running three mini blast furnaces at its Hospet plant. Its FY20 annual report shows that the company has cash and cash equivalent of Rs 14.8 crore with negligible debt on books. Its net profit margin in FY20 stood at 11.40 per cent from 9.40 per cent in the preceding fiscal. The company’s net worth has also grown over 8 per cent on a year-on-year basis.

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“Consider it a preview” most researchers opine as they highlight how the lockdown has impacted women employment and reversed gains made in recent years. A working paper from Azim Premji University titled “Down and Out? The Gendered Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on India’s Labour Market” highlights that women in India are 7 times more likely to lose work during the national lockdown and 11 times more likely to not return to work after a job loss.

CMIE data, which perhaps is the best indicator to determine job losses, shows a persistent decline in the employment rate for urban women. Before the start of the pandemic, 7.5 per cent of women in urban areas were employed. The number fell to 5 per cent in April and has barely recovered since. Data from February 2021 shows an employment rate of 5.4 per cent.

However, there is a catch. Even before the Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit, employment rates for urban women were falling in the country. From a high of 11.2 per cent in August 2016, the employment rate for urban women had dropped to 6.9 per cent in December 2019. The pandemic, in that case, just accelerated the trend.

Not just India, in January, the US’s National Women’s Law Centre reported that nearly all the jobs lost in the country in December belonged to women. While women lost 156,000 jobs, men gained 16,000 jobs during this period. The study further states that since February 2020 — when the pandemic started spreading across the country — women have accounted for 55 per cent of the total job losses. In 2019, women in the US workforce outnumbered men for the first time since the start of the decade.

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By Stephen Nellis and Chavi Mehta

(Reuters) – Intel Corp on Thursday raised its annual sales outlook on booming demand for personal computers, but its second-quarter profit forecast fell short of analyst expectations as the company spends heavily to get its manufacturing operations back on track and catch up to rivals with faster chips.

Intel shares were down 3.1% to $60.60 in after-hours trading after the results. The company also missed first-quarter expectations in its closely watched data center chip unit.

Intel fumbled new manufacturing technology in recent years, causing it to fall behind rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Nvidia Corp in the race to make faster, smaller chips. Patrick Gelsinger, who returned to Intel as its chief executive earlier this year, said the chipmaker has begun to resolve its manufacturing problems, and in March announced a major expansion plan to build new factories in the United States and Europe.

Intel, which is one of the few remaining companies in the processor chip industry that both designs and manufactures its own chips, has said it has been able to beat out rivals during a global chip shortage by operating its own factories. But the company said shortfalls of other third-party components needed to build complete computers could hold back its sales this year.

Intel said its PC chip business had sales of $10.6 billion in the first quarter, ahead of analyst expectations of $10.17 billion, according to data from FactSet.

Gelsinger told Reuters following the release of Intel’s earnings that the company exceeded PC chip expectations in part because it was able to finish in its own factories so-called organic substrates, which are materials used to package delicate silicon chips into tougher housings so they can tolerate being put onto circuit boards.

Gelsinger said the changes helped Intel mitigate a global shortage of the substrate materials and “generate millions of units of more supply.”

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As Tesla faces several fatal crashes in the recent past that has put its Autopilot mode in scrutiny, engineers at Consumer Reports engineers have easily tricked a Tesla Model Y to drive on the electric carmakers driver assistance feature, without actually anyone in the drivers seat.

During the drive, Tesla Model Y automatically steered along painted lane lines, but the system did not send out a warning that the driver’s seat was empty.

The engineers tricked Tesla vehicle by placing a small, weighted chain on the steering wheel, to simulate the weight of a driver’s hand, and slid over into the front passenger seat without opening any of the vehicle’s doors, because that would disengage Autopilot, the report said on Thursday.

Using the same steering wheel dial, the engineers reached over and was able to accelerate the vehicle from a full stop.

“In our evaluation, the system not only failed to make sure the driver was paying attention, but it also couldn’t tell if there was a driver there at all,” says Jake Fisher, CR’s senior director of auto testing, who conducted the experiment.

“Tesla is falling behind other automakers like GM and Ford that, on models with advanced driver assist systems, use technology to make sure the driver is looking at the road.”

Last week, two people were killed in a fiery Tesla crash in Texas with no one in the driver’s seat. The fatal crash is under investigation.

Harris County Precinct 4 Constable Mark Herman told Houston television station KPRC 2 that the investigation showed “no one was driving” the fully electric 2019 Tesla when the accident happened.

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Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus’ gaming triggers for Android and iOS smartphones are now available in India for Rs 1,099.

The company hasn’t confirmed that these gaming triggers will be releasing globally, reports The Verge.

These triggers can be clipped around the edge of most smartphones — any Android or iOS device, so long as they’re less than 11.5mm thick with a case on.

If you want to do some mobile gaming but hate touch controls, these could provide a more intuitive, controller-like alternative to tapping on your screen, the report said.

Each trigger appears to have just one shoulder button with an Omron switch that OnePlus CEO Pete Lau says is “pleasingly clicky” to tap.

According to the product page, these triggers are interchangeable and can be fastened to your phone in whatever way is most comfortable to you.

To use them, though, your game of choice needs to allow for deep customisation of its touch controls, to the level of allowing you to move touch-activated zones to where these triggers’ conductive silicon pads clip onto your phone.

According to the report, some publications noticed the gaming triggers being teased during the unveiling of the OnePlus 9 back in late March. However, they are currently available in India on the OnePlus site.

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Indian short form or short video apps have successfully retained 67 per cent of the TikTok-era users, with daily unique active users at 97 per cent of the total number in June 2020, when TikTok was banned in India, a new report by research firm RedSeer Consulting has found.

Indian short video apps have on-boarded 30-35 per cent new users in the past year as a result of increased supplier push and aggressive marketing by platforms, the report, titled ‘Short-form video – The Rise of Made in India digital content’ has found. The study focused on major Indian short video apps, including Josh, Moj, MX Takatak and Roposo, which had a comparatively high level of awareness among the user sets.

“In less than one year since the Tik Tok ban, Indian platforms have shown a strong V-shaped recovery, bouncing back to 100 per cent of pre-ban daily user base. This shows how platforms were able to design the product, execute their plans and market it aggressively in a very short period of time. This is a strong indicator of how the Indian digital ecosystem has matured in the past few years. But the job is far from done. The players still have to reach the global scale and cross-sector benchmarks on engagement and retention which will further grow the monetisation potential for the entire ecosystem,” said Ujjwal Chaudhry, associate partner at RedSeer Consulting.

The report further found that the time spent on the short video apps gradually increased, reaching 55 per cent of that in June 2020, but these apps had more scope to improve their content quality and product experience.

However, RedSeer also found that 75 per cent of the current short-form video users would likely stick to these domestic apps and were unlikely to switch back to Chinese apps even if the ban was lifted.

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