Mobizet

Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts

Facebook taking pro-active measures: Making amends while lending a helping hand in times of crisis

Facebook has been taking prompt actions in response to the global crisis of coronavirus pandemic.
The company is trying hard to regain public trust, and the measures it is taking are the need of the hour.

With the world crumbling apart, the economy crashing down, millions of people getting sick daily and many succumbing to the disease - hypothetically speaking, the world seems to be going through a major apocalypse! Coronavirus pandemic has hit the planet hard, and every individual is facing the brunt of the extremely distressing situation.

In current times, the powerful role of social media platforms cannot be negated. People are in a lockdown situation. When the coronavirus outbreaks began in January, people started posting all sorts of mythical and falsified information about the disease and social networks like Facebook did not pay much attention to all that initially. This led them to gain mass dis-trust and severe criticism from everywhere.

But this was not the first time. Facebook has been going through a challenging period since the 2016 U.S. election. The company came under massive criticism in not controlling misinformation and propaganda ahead of the election. This resulted in the company to come under blasting radars and get branded for its other numerous scandals.

Facebook failed to learn its lesson and then in March 2018, the company’s reputation got severely affected by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a political firm managed to get access to the data of millions of Facebook users and used it illegally to target ads for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Facebook had to face a whopping $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission.

After these serious failures to protect public data and for its lenient policies, the company faced another blow in 2019 when four separate antitrust investigations launched against it.

However, after going through all this, Facebook seems to have learned its lesson the hard way. To rebuild public trust and as a goodwill gesture, Facebook has taken swift and highly effective actions since February 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic.

Along with other tech firms, Facebook made serious efforts to do content policing, fact-checking of ads, blocking the “overnight sellers” from taking advantage of people’s fears!

Facebook has been showing keen interest in trying to help governments, small businesses, emergency response organizations and its employees in this time of mass distress and chaos.

Recently, the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg said that they want to make sure that they do whatever it takes to help support the public health response. He also praised and personally thanked the people who are doing everything to help the world in this crisis.

Facebook lent its Menlo Park headquarters to World Health Organization, leaders from Amazon, Google, Salesforce and other tech firms to come together and discuss the measures these companies can take to provide solutions for the coronavirus pandemic.

Some of the steps that Facebook has taken in this regard are making sure that everyone has accurate information, and this feat has been carried out through the launch of Coronavirus Information Center on Facebook, directing and connecting people towards accurate information sources, supporting health authorities in the provision of credible information, prompting Instagram to connect people with helpful information, fact-checking and monitoring the content being shared, getting expert health tips from Dr. Fauci, supporting the collaboration of WHO with WhatsApp, banning ads for face masks, hand sanitizers and other stuff that can potentially lead already distressed people to get scammed.

Apart from these efforts, Facebook is supporting global health organizations by allocating $20 million in donations to support COVID-19 relief efforts, and through free ads and a lot more.

It’s not only trying to help the general masses, but it’s also empowering its partners with data and tools. The company has given a $1,000 bonus to 45000 full-time employees to help them with their finances during their work-from-home setup.

Each employee will be able to receive more than their full bonus for the six months because the company has decided to give every employee exceeds expectations performance ratings for half of the year 2020.

The company is also lending support to communities and offering free workplace for companies in need. Facebook has announced a $100 million program to help small businesses that have been hit hard by the pandemic.

Despite doing so much for the people, Facebook itself has seen a downhill road due to this global crisis. Its shares are also going down this year. However, Facebook coming forward with responsible actions for the world has somewhat earned it forgiveness for its past missteps and maybe now it's on the way to mend its reputation in the eyes of the world.

Combating Burnout In The Workplace (infographic)

Burnout is a serious problem that is receiving more attention than ever. When you experience stress, there are two ways to handle it. Either you deal with and release that stress or you hold on to it and it builds up. When a person experiences chronic stress, eventually their stress levels overload and can lead to burnout. In the United States, 51% of workers say they have felt burned out more than once, and 77% of professionals and 84% of Millennials have experienced burnout at some point in their careers. What is burnout and how can we address the burnout epidemic that is sweeping the nation?

Burnout Culture In The U.S. Workplace

64% of American workers say they feel stressed or frustrated at work at least once a week, but this doesn’t mean every one of them is suffering from burnout. In order for normal, day-to-day stress to turn into burnout it would need to build over time. If you experience normal daily stressors like deadlines and failures, chances are you are going to move forward from them relatively easily. But when you start to experience the same frustrations on a regular basis, it becomes harder to move on from them. When stress starts to build it leads to burnout.

During times of stress, your body’s cortisol levels can increase two to five times. When these cortisol levels are sustained for a long period of time it can increase your blood pressure and A1C levels as well as lower your immunity. Over time this can lead to hypertension, type II diabetes, heart disease, depression, and more. There is a real and physical consequence to burnout and prolonged stress, so fighting your stress is crucial for your long-term health and well-being.

Avoiding Chronic Stress And Burnout

In order to effectively deal with stress, it’s important to understand the root of the stress. Identifying stressors can help you put in place ways to deal with it so it doesn’t build up. If you are stressed about too many deadlines, you can ask for accommodations at work to help you better manage them. If you are stressed about interacting with a particular client, you can ask to be reassigned.

If your source of stress is something that is unavoidable in your daily work activities, it is still possible to manage that stress. Start by establishing a routine. Controlling some of the unknowns in your schedule can help you feel better predictability in your day-to-day routine. Prioritize your day so that you are completing the most important tasks first and leaving the least important tasks until last so that if things carry over it’s not something that is going to stress you out.

When you are home from work, ensure you are following a routine, getting enough sleep, exercising, and eating right. Socialize with friends and family, meditate, and know when it’s time to seek out professional help in the form of therapy, yoga, or even medical intervention.

Not getting enough sleep can lead to burnout and burnout can lead to a decreased ability to sleep. Maintaining a routine with good sleep hygiene, including turning off screens at least an hour before bedtime, can go a long way. Physical activity can also help you burn off your excess cortisol levels. After all, they are an artifact from when fight or flight kept humans alive on a daily basis, so it makes sense that exercise can help.

Learn more about burnout and chronic stress as well as how to keep it at bay from the infographic below. Are you ready to learn how to combat burnout in the workplace?

This infographic outlines the science behind burnout and chronic stress as well as how to handle it.

See how long it takes the world’s highest paid YouTubers to earn your annual salary

The top 10 highest earners on YouTube took home a combined $162 million last year alone. It is tricky to fully comprehend just how profitable what in many cases started out as a hobby or side hustle for some of these influencers turned into. So, the team at Sportarly crunched the data and built a cool new tool which tells you exactly how long it would take the world’s highest paid YouTube stars to earn your annual salary. You can try it out here.

Due to the social distancing measures recommended (or in some cases imposed) by governments all over the world, many of us have found ourselves working remotely for the foreseeable future. Many of us will also be looking for ways to generate some extra income with all the free time we now have. If you find yourself doing the same, you should seriously consider creating and monetizing a YouTube channel. We have broken down some the numbers below to help keep you motivated.

Ryan Kaji

8-year-old toy reviewer Ryan Kaji earned an incredible $26 million in 2019 through his incredibly popular YouTube channel, Ryan's World (previously Ryan ToysReview).

After asking his mum why he wasn’t on YouTube, the family set about creating and uploading the review videos in March 2015. Several years and many videos later, Kaji has over 24.4 million subscribers.

With an impressive $26 million pocketed in 2019, it would take him just 21 hours and 18 minutes to earn the median US household income ($63,179).

To understand just how much Kaji is earning from his videos, the Sportarly team compared his earnings to that of the highest paid profession, physicians (according to a Glassdoor study). The median income for a US physician is $193,415 and Kaji would earn this in just 2 days and 16 hours. It would take him just 19 hours and 36 minutes to earn the median salary of a US teacher (the lowest paid profession according to the study), $58,030.

In 2019, he earned:

$2.2 million per month.
$500K per week.
$71.2K per day.
$3K per hour.
$49.47 per minute.
$0.82 per second.

Dude Perfect

With a huge following consisting of 49.9 million YouTube subscribers and over 10 billion video views, it is no surprise that the Dude Perfect gang also topped the Forbes list of highest earners. They have come a long way from light hearted beginnings filming themselves betting sandwiches on basketball trick shots, all the way to a mobile app and even a TV show.

All of this means they have been able to generate a sizeable income from their online fame. At $20 million last year, they only needed to work 1 day and 4 hours to make the median US salary.

It would take them just 3 days and 12 hours to earn the physician’s salary and only 1 day and 2 hours to earn the same amount as the average teacher.

In 2019, they earned:

$1.7 million per month.
$384.6K per week.
$54.8K per day.
$2.3K per hour.
$38.05 per minute.
$0.63 per second.

Anastasia Radzinskaya

Anastasia Radzinskaya (aka Like Nastya) has amassed over 15 million subscribers and more than 5 billion video views after her parents started making funny, sweet videos of them all in 2016. People must be loving them after Anastasia’s online presence helped her and her family earn $18 million in 2019. Closely following the Dude Perfect team, she also earns the median US salary in 1 day and 7 hours.
At just 6 years old, Anastasia is already earning considerably more than 99% of adults each and every year. Compared to the physician, she would have to work just 3 days and 21 hours to earn the same amount. It would take her just 1 day and 4 hours to out-earn the standard US teacher.

In 2019, she earned:

$18 million per year.
$1.5 million per month.
$346.2K per week.
$49.3K per day.
$2.1K per hour.
$34.25 per minute.
$0.57 per second.

Rhett and Link

American comedy duo and childhood friends Rhett and Link turned the comedy style they had developed over the years into a profitable venture when they started posting their content on YouTube. The creative approach these two take pays off and they took home roughly $17.5 million last year. Time to earn the median US income, just 1 day and 7 hours.

Also read: Google and YouTube Introduces New Resource Pages to Help Teachers and Families to Educate Students At Home

Jeffree Star

Jeffree Star is a man of many talents and he has made use of many of them to develop his YouTube following. With an army of 17.6 million followers and over 2 billion video views, anyone with skills surrounding makeup, modelling, singing and/or song writing should seriously consider following suit and setting up a channel of their own. His online success helped him generate $17 million in 2019. It would take him less than 2 days (1 day and 9 hours) to earn the median US income.

Preston

Preston has made a fortune out of his love of video games. His video blogging (and the 12.1 million subscribers it reaches) meant he generated a whopping $14 million last year alone. Earning the equivalent of $26.64 each and every minute, it would take him just 1 day and 14 hours to make the median US household income.

PewDiePie

PewDiePie is a Swedish YouTuber and is another one making a killing off his passion for video games. After starting his video creation career back in 2010, he has gone on to earn himself 103 million subscribers and $13 million in 2019. Broken down, in 2019 he earned:

$1.1 million per month.
$250K per week.
$35.6K per day.
$1.5K per hour.
$24.73 per minute.
$0.41 per second.

He would compete with those earning the median US income in just 1 day and 19 hours.

DanTDM

Daniel Robert Middleton (DanTDM) is yet another influencer who has made a career out of content creation surrounding video games. Since his start on YouTube in 2009, he has learnt a lot and earned a substantial loyal following. Currently sitting at 22.5 million subscribers and over 16 billion video views, he is entertaining an army of fans with his content. His videos helped him earn $12 million last year, making the median US income in just 1 day and 21 hours.

VanossGaming

The research does seem to suggest that video game playing might be one of the most profitable hobbies to use to start generating extra income online. Last on the Forbes list of the highest YouTube earners is VanossGaming. Real name Evan Fong, he began uploading videos in 2011. His consistent efforts have paid off big with earnings of $11.5 million in 2019. He would earn the median US income in a solid 2 days.

If you are considering starting a YouTube channel yourself, you might want to consider toy reviews or something related to video games. Most of those featured needed a few years to build up their followings to the point where they could earn so much and no doubt a lot of work went into this behind the scenes. Still, it just goes to show the potential a passionate side hustle has and the vast sums it could eventually generate.

Read next: These are Top 10 most viewed videos on YouTube (2020)

Coronavirus is Impacting the Social Media Ads We See

Coronavirus is impacting everything these days, and it turns out that even the ads we are seeing on social media are being impacted by the virus in ways that we had not really been able to predict all in all. The reason behind this is that brands are starting to become a lot more responsible in terms of the ads that they are posting, and the fact of the matter is that this is resulting in the visual landscape of social media being altered so that it is pretty much entirely centered around the outbreak of Covid-19 that the world is currently going through.

A study of the ads that are currently being posted has resulted in a lot of imagery that shows people washing their hands and the like. This is probably being done in order to encourage people to start practicing things like proper personal hygiene which at this current point in time may just be the only thing that could potentially end up preventing the virus from having too much of an impact on the world around us.

Also, an interesting thing to note is that ads focusing on human connection as well as proximity are starting to become a lot less prominent as well, and this is because of the fact that social distancing is necessary in order to prevent the spread of the virus to a large extent. Brands are probably focusing on this to make it less likely that people would think about socializing in general.

"Our computer vision AI identified that social distancing is already showing itself in imagery and video, with a 30% drop in the use of “human connection” imagery just on March 12th. Further, we identified a 12% drop in the use of “human connection” imagery between February and March (e.g. shaking hands, holding hands, hugging, kissing, etc.", explained Bridget Johnston in a blog post. Adding further, "There was an 8% drop in the use of “travel” imagery (e.g. world, flights, control towers, airports, airplanes)".

This does tell us a lot about how we often tend to live our lives and feel things based on the visual input that we are getting. Ads influence us a lot more than we realize, so it’s good that brands are taking this pandemic seriously as far as their ads are concerned.

Related: Coronavirus Pandemic – Implications on the World Economy

Buying Fake TikTok Followers Can Be At Cost of Risking Privacy, Says Report

Every other day TikTok turns an ordinary individual into an online celebrity, while many already popular personalities also have moved to the platform to enhance their digital presence.

With the growing popularity of TikTok, many shady players have come forward to help those who are looking for instant virality. The number of vendors can be found online who are selling likes, shares, and followers at a reasonable price to boost your account engagement.

On average, 100 likes are available for US $2 only, and with a minimal amount, you can become from nobody to celebrity. However, it is not yet from where these followers come.

Recently, Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) disclosed the unauthentic profiles and their activity on TikTok. It has not been yet confirmed whether the followers are actual people or bots. There are no display pictures or stolen photos, but only alphanumerical handles with no proper content available on accounts.

Kanishk Karan, research at DFRLab said, the pay-for-engagement industry is growing, not only for TikTok but the fake engagement is an issue faced by all leading social platforms including Facebook and Instagram.

For a long time, online social platforms have been dealing with fake engagements. The companies provide followers for TikTok as well as engagements for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify, Twitch, Soundcloud and even for messaging app, Telegram.

Many social media platforms have taken action and deleted the accounts with fake followers or engagements. Like in 2019, Facebook and Instagram took a bold step by suing four Asian companies that have been selling fake accounts, followers and likes.

TikTok’s community guidelines clearly points out the inauthentic activities are against the rules of the platform. However, on this specific report, ByteDance, TikTok parent company responded neither released any statement so far.

In case, anyone is planning to get the instant TikTok followers should be aware of the fact that they are putting their privacy at risk, says the report by DFRLab. There are around 50 apps on Google Play Store that provide inauthentic engagement services including likes, followers and shares but also ask for access to several features or data on phone.

After installing such apps, they demand many permissions on an Android device. They often ask for access to the contact list of Phone and the permission to modify the content. The privacy policies of many apps are missing and even if they have, they are usually copied from other apps.

Google’s rule demands that Play Store apps and their developers should tell how they collect data and how it is used and shared. So far Google also has not commented on this particular issue.

Also read: To What Extent do Top Tech Companies Track your Online Activities?

There are many scam apps on Play Store and not all deliver as they promise. Many apps claim to offer followers in between one to seven days and during that time, they flood phones with ads. One of the apps asks to share 10 videos on TikTok before it further shares the content. Another app asked to use a certain hashtag to get the likes or another asking to watch a video to show that you are human.

Most apps that tout to increase fake engagement offer little to no results, but one thing that they do amazingly well is snoop on your data with full force and probably sell it to highest bidder.

Pages