Ruiqi Chen

TikTok is a step nearer to a U.S. ban, just as the video-sharing app’s social commerce bet has started to bear fruit. A U.S. appeals court upheld a federal law on Friday that mandates that TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance must sell its stake in the popular social media app to a government-approved buyer by Jan. 19 or face a national ban. The court decision raises the stakes of TikTok’s social commerce ambitions in the U.S. It could all come crashing down if the app is banned in January. As a result, brands, sellers and agencies would lose a vital source of revenue. “We’ve witnessed businesses go from generating $100 in sales on TikTok Shop to $100,000 in just 30 to 60 days,” said Ana Barrett, director of social commerce at marketing agency LiveCraft. “This isn’t an isolated trend; creators have achieved incredible milestones, such as generating over $2 million in sales within just a few hours during live shopping events.” Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/e9pf_CD5 Thanks so much to Ana Barrett, Nicole R. and Mindy Yang for speaking with me for this one. #ecommerce #tiktok #tiktokshop #liveshopping #socialcommerce

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New: A federal judge told Google to brace for an order requiring significant changes to its Play Store, saying “We’re going to tear the barriers down." This follows a jury's verdict in December that Google illegally wielded monopoly power over the markets for Android app distribution and in-app payments Here's what Epic Games wants from Google: ✅ Give third-party app stores access to the Play Store and its vast catalog of apps for six years, so that these stores can fairly compete. ✅ Third party app stores, such as Epic’s own storefront, should be allowed on Android devices without facing barriers or delays from Google. ✅ Android users who originally downloaded an app through Google Play should be able to access the same app through a different store, a process it refers to as “library porting.” ✅ App developers should have the freedom to offer in-app purchases using payment systems of their choice, without being subjected to Google’s fees and restrictions. Should he grant these remedies, U.S. Judge James Donato will have to decide how long to give Google to make thee changes. Epic's expert estimates that it should take 3 months. Interestingly, Google's lawyers and product managers pointed to the recent CrowdStrike fiasco to ask for more time: "We all just lived through CrowdStrike where someone made a mistake in a piece of software and it had a big effect," Google's attorney Glenn Pomerantz said. "The reason Google hasn’t made those mistakes isn’t because they have the smartest people in the world, but because they do it carefully." Donato didn't seem to find this terribly compelling. "You know what their managers say? 'Do it faster,'" he said. "And they do it." Full coverage of the drama Law.com. Heather Nevitt Greg Andrews

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Will you opt out from Meta using your post data to train its AI models? Notifications are due to go out this week, with scraping starting in October. A few more details below:

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Former employees posting videos of themselves being laid off on TikTok have found community support and possible referrals to new opportunities. But the attention these videos are receiving also come with  legal and reputational risks—not just for the former employees, but also for the companies conducting the layoffs. For former employees, one of the biggest legal concerns is that these kinds of videos could violate the privacy of the individuals laying them off. Some employers also include conditions in contracts or in their employee handbooks restricting employees from making disparaging remarks about the company, which they could face legal consequences for violating. But even if the videos do violate state laws or company agreements, this doesn’t mean that employers can pursue legal claims against former staffers without risking their reputation. Employers should be aware of these types of social media trends, which “take on a life of their own,” said Rick Gordon, chair of the labor and employment practice at Akerman LLP. “Companies should expect that every time they’re terminating someone, that interaction could end up on TikTok or YouTube. They need to be conducting themselves as if it’s going to go viral, because it might.” Parker Purifoy and I spoke to experts and attorneys Linn Freedman, Molly A. Arranz, Rick Gordon, and Aaron Holt on the risks employers and employees should consider with regard to these videos. Read our story for Bloomberg Law here:

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The Spotify Wrapped trend is getting weird. It's not just for music now, but coffee, groceries, dating, and more, as more companies gather data on customers and generate year-in-review reports back to them. I wrote about how 'wrap-ification' is taking over our lives. Companies want us to share the results, almost celebrating how much of our data they have, giving them free advertising. https://lnkd.in/eJg2gjEF

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Meta surpassed analyst expectations in its second-quarter earnings report released Wednesday. Its revenue hit $39 billion, a 22% increase over the same period last year. Wall Street analysts had expected just over $38 billion. Meanwhile, the company said it expects infrastructure costs — such as the money it's plowing into building its artificial intelligence capabilities — to be a "significant driver of expense growth." It's expecting to spend at least $35 billion to $37 billion this year — an increase from its last estimate. It kept its maximum spend estimate at $40 billion for the year, and it plans to keep spending in 2025, too. Read why investors don't seem to mind in Business Insider https://lnkd.in/eQuHjxYP

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Community is the new Creator Economy ✍ Wrote about how content creators, once focused on widening their reach, now see value in smaller, focused communities as a way to navigate algorithms and content overload. TL;DR: This is Creator Economy's community era Story out in today's edition of The Economic Times. Ft. inputs and insights from Animesh Mishra, Anushree Jain, Fardeen Shaikh, Aanam M R Chashmawala, Vanika Sangtani Link here: https://lnkd.in/dVBY3zhj

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Amazon Prime members just got an improved perk: free membership in Grubhub+, the delivery service's subscription tier, which usually costs $9.99 monthly. That means Prime members can get Grubhub deliveries of $12 or more for free, pay lower service fees and get other benefits. Amazon customers can also now make Grubhub+ orders directly on Amazon.com and the Amazon Shopping app. You can still use the Grubhub app, too, but connect your Prime account to it. And through June 2, Prime members can save $5 on a Grubhub+ delivery of $25 or more. Learn more in my story: https://lnkd.in/ezXeKtTE

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Rough day for Snap. When the social media company reported second-quarter earnings on Thursday, it provided third-quarter revenue guidance between $1.335 billion and $1.375 billion, or $1.355 billion in the middle of the range. Analysts were expecting $1.36 billion. Snap had the tough challenge of following Meta, which reported its latest earnings on Wednesday and revealed a better-than-expected forecast for the current period. Investors cheered and Meta shares jumped over 5%. With companies like Meta, Snap, Google and Pinterest all reporting their quarterly earnings over the past two weeks, we now wait to see how Reddit will perform next week to help us better understand the current online advertising market. So far, the digital advertising year-over-year growth rates for the second quarter look like this: Meta: 22% Amazon: 20% Google Advertising: 11% YouTube ads: 13% Microsoft: 19% Snap: 16% Pinterest: 21% Spotify: 20% https://lnkd.in/gSuzvVsE

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A bunch of thoughts on the Kamala & Trump social media / content campaigns: 1. I’m very curious to hear analysis of the role of social advertising in the aftermath of this election, and what is deemed effective vs. ineffective social, or which candidate's social presence was just a result of that candidate's platform, demeanor, & policies. 2. The Kamala social campaign was widely championed by social media professionals for its flash, trend plays like Brat, and use of creators. There were so many articles and tweets and LinkedIn posts calling it brilliant. I thought it fantastic out of the gate—likability for a Democrat candidate was incredibly important coming off of Biden's troubles—but I do think it ultimately lacked substance. Lots of memes and shitposting, not enough messaging as far as what to believe in. Part of me puts that on the social team. We're in this era where Charlie XCX ties and Coconut Tree memes are the flavor of young professionals in our industry—great for engagement, not historically great for encouraging consumers (or in this case, voters) to take action. I think a lot of the social content targeted the young idealistic voters who were already gonna show up to the polls. Now, is that because the social team favored that type of content? Or is it because the overall campaign didn't give them enough to work with, substance wise? It's the most truncated Presidential campaign in history, coming up with concrete policy that quickly is tough, then building messaging is tougher. I'd totally buy it if the social team said "hey, we weren't given enough by the overall campaign, so we went with trends & flashy Gen Z moves." 3. So let's talk about Trump's social. As loud and brash as always. Tons of ridiculousness towards the end, like the garbage truck and the McDonald's stunt. But from a marketing standpoint, what his team did very well was what they always do: branding. Make America Great Again. Project 2025. One-liners that stick in your head & arm his faithful with messaging to advocate for him. On the left, Obama's Hope worked wonderfully, but Kamala didn't have anything close to as brand-able. I really believe that made it hard for Kamala's faithful to advocate for her. Trump won the storytelling social content battle by a long-shot, and a big reason was podcasts. It's tough to type, but his content had more "depth." That 3 hour sitdown with Rogan mattered. He did wayyyy more to articulate his stances in long-form. On the other side, we react to his insane clips, but there's a lot of content out there that Republicans really believe in. 4. Way, way, way too much of the Kamala campaign focused on beating Trump instead of giving us reasons to believe in Kamala. No one thing won or lost this election, but examining the social strategy of both sides is vital & should be deeply considered. And if you choose to comment on this post, I hope we can be civil about it—I'm just gonna delete anything too charged.

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While remote work and out-of-footprint hiring became popularized in Big Law during the pandemic, the pendulum has now swung back - for the most part - to in-office mandates and hybrid working arrangements. Check out my article on the topic in The American Lawyer: https://lnkd.in/ez84yF99

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This week on Decoder I sat down with Anthropic's new chief product officer Mike Krieger to discuss his journey from cofounding Instagram and Artifact to now working for one of the hottest AI companies in the industry. Anthropic has billions in funding from some of the biggest names in tech, primarily Amazon, to develop Claude, the name of both its industry-leading AI model and a chatbot that competes with ChatGPT. At the same time, Anthropic has an intense safety culture that’s distinct among the big AI firms of today. The company is notable for employing some people who legitimately worry AI might destroy mankind, and I wanted to know all about how that tension plays out in product design. I was a big fan of Artifact, too, so I wanted to know more about Mike's decision to shut it down as well as the decision to sell the underlying tech to Yahoo. Then I wanted to know why he decided to join Anthropic and work in AI, an industry with a lot of investment but very few consumer products to justify it. What’s this all for? What products does Mike see in the future that make all the AI turmoil worth it, and how is he thinking about building them? Check out a clip from the conversation below that's all about where Anthropic sources training data, a contentious topic in the AI industry, and read and listen to the full interview on The Verge: https://lnkd.in/eiJBr7se

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With a potential TikTok ban looming, what does this all mean for users, and how can you prepare? I joined Yahoo Finance this morning to discuss what could be next for the popular app, and why the sale of TikTok to a US entity would alter the experience. Full segment here: https://lnkd.in/ggu-6Vyr #TikTok #TikTokban #SupremeCourt #tech #technews

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𝗣𝘆𝗿𝗲𝘅 𝗢𝗯𝘀𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝘀. 𝗔𝗜 𝗙𝗮𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗝𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗚𝗼𝘁 𝗖𝗼𝗼𝗹𝗲𝗿 I’ll admit, my sister-in-law is 𝘰𝘣𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥 with Pyrex. She has a collection worth thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of dollars. Who knew a casserole dish could be such a hot commodity? And look, I get it—Pyrex is 𝘤𝘰𝘰𝘭. But is it 𝘈𝘐-𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘪𝘯𝘨-𝘵𝘩𝘦-𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 cool? Ehh, not quite. Now, what I do think is cool—scratch that, 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘥-𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨—is Corning’s transformation from kitchen staple to AI powerhouse. You see, thanks to William Patalon III’s latest article, I found out that the company behind your grandma's favorite dishware is now positioning itself to ride the AI wave like a pro surfer. Yup, Corning has gone from 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗰𝗸 to 𝗦𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗜 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗰𝗸, and the market hasn't even caught on yet. Turns out Corning’s been flexing its muscles in the optical fiber and display tech game for years. And with their new AI-driven 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗦𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱, they’re looking to add $3 billion in annual sales by 2026. That’s right—Corning is gearing up to power AI data centers and the Internet of Things, leaving casserole dishes in the dust. So while my sister-in-law is on the hunt for her next vintage Pyrex gem, I’ll be keeping an eye on Corning’s next-gen innovations—and maybe picking up some shares along the way. Catch William Patalon’s full breakdown of Corning’s AI game plan here: https://lnkd.in/gvCvny7h. #AIRevolution #TechStocks #Innovation #ArtificialIntelligence #Investing

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Understanding the #problem is only the first step. Admitting it openly is equally crucial—it’s half of the #solution. It is key to: Reassess goals and #strategies Encourage open #dialogue Be open to new #ideas & #change

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Some takeaways from Reddit, Inc.'s Q3 earnings. Toplines: - Strong 56% yoy increase in ad revenue to $315.1m, driven by SME/performance investment. - Total revenue up 68% to $348.4m. - Profitability reached for the first time. - Daily active users grew 47% to 97.2m. The high growth figures come from a relatively low base in terms of revenues, ad revenues, and daily active users compared to many of its social media rivals. Snap, which also reported earnings last night, for example has revenues >3x Reddit's and users >4x (albeit more modest, but still impressive, revenue (+15%) and user growth (+9%)). In Reddit's earnings call, CEO Steve Huffman discussed that search will be an area of “focused investment” as the company heads into 2025, with a long-term strategy for monetisation. A huge number of Reddit users/web users use Google Search to read Reddit posts, because Reddit communities arguably provide more reliable answers to many queries, especially product recommendations. Huffman wants to lean into this by improving Reddit's own search capabilities, with the eventual goal of monetization presumably through search advertising once the consumer search product is improved. Read the full analysis on The Media Leader UK: https://lnkd.in/eb9VEnVw

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The Humane AI Pin has launched, crashed, and burned, with founders already looking to sell the company just one month after launch Despite raising $230 million from big investors like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and attaining a $1 billion valuation right before launch, the company only did a reported $7 million in sales, stemming from some harsh reviews of its poor functionality, bad battery life, and $700 price tag paired with a $24 a month subscription. New reporting from The New York Times outlines exactly how the company got to the point of launching a dead-on-arrival product, much of which goes back to the company’s “positive” culture and reports that its founders would disregard warnings about the AI Pin’s performance (the story even says one employee was fired for questioning if the product would be ready for launch). In the wake of these failings, Humane still wants to cling to that pre-launch valuation. The NYT report says, that roughly a week after the reviews came out, Humane started talking to HP, the computer and printer company, about selling itself for more than $1 billion. Read more on Humane’s potential next steps below via Ars Technica: https://trib.al/p8inKse

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LinkedIn is not a place for politics. Ok, but: When fact-checking is being removed from Meta--the biggest social conglomerate--to appease the new US president, it’s impossible not to bring it up. Zuckerberg said, “The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.” Ok, but prioritizing free speech that only benefits certain parties. In addition to ending fact-checking, Meta is also making changes to its hateful conduct policy, which will break down protections for LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and other marginalized groups. According to The Guardian, the changes suggest: • It may now be possible to compare women to household objects or property and to compare people to faeces, filth, bacteria, viruses, diseases and primitives. • It should also be possible now to say transgender people “do not exist”. • Allegations of mental illness or abnormality are now allowed when based on gender or sexual orientation. • A specific injunction against calling transgender or non-binary people “it” has been deleted. Welp. So, if you care enough, is it time to quit Meta’s platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Threads? Well, it’s a bit difficult when Meta has a monopoly over the social space. Especially if you’re a business that relies on social media to attract customers. Are LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Tumblr the only platforms that are safe from political involvement…for now? 

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