Zuckerberg says WhatsApp business chat will drive sales sooner than metaverse

Reuters

Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told employees on Thursday that WhatsApp and Messenger would drive the company’s next wave of sales growth, as he sought to assuage concerns about Meta’s finances after its first mass layoffs.

Zuckerberg, addressing pointed questions at a company-wide meeting a week after Meta said it would lay off 11,000 workers, described the pair of messaging apps as being “very early in monetizing” compared to its advertising juggernauts Facebook and Instagram, according to remarks heard by Reuters.

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Here’s How Bad a Twitter Mega-Breach Would Be

Wired

IN THE WEEKS since Elon Musk was forced to complete his acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion, the social network has been in a state of dramatic upheaval. Musk laid off more than half its workforce and fired more via public tweets. Digital infrastructure went on the fritz. And today, a reported 75 percent of staff refused to sign a pledge to work “long hours at high intensity,” ostensibly triggering their resignations. It’s now unclear who still works at Twitter.

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EU Targets Apple Pay’s Exclusive Access to iPhone NFC Chip

PYMNTS

Since the launch of the iPhone 6, all subsequent models of Apple’s smartphone have enabled contactless payments with the Apple Pay mobile wallet using near field communication (NFC) technology.

And unlike users of Android phones, iPhone users have no alternative options if they want to make NFC payments, as the terms of Apple’s developer agreement forbid third parties from using the iPhone’s NFC chip in such a way.

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How can China build a circular economy for mobile phones?

World Economic Forum

China is a large producer, exporter and consumer of mobile phones. In 2020, it produced 1.47 billion mobile phones. China also generates approximately 300-500 million used phones every year, but only the estimated 5.2% of them have entered identified recovery channels. Also, the circular supply chain of resources is not fully matched. There are no large-scale supportive markets for renewable resources, so it’s hard for manufacturers to find traceable, quality and renewable materials in China.

Discarded mobile phones usually flow to different companies and are either resold or reused. In some cases, their parts, components, and materials are recycled, but only a very small percentage of them are finally treated by qualified companies.

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Mobile gaming’s surprising slump is dragging down the game market

Protocol

Mobile game revenue will decline for the first time in history this year, market research firm Newzoo now says in a revised outlook for the 2022 global games market. While the whole game industry is expected to contract by 4.3% — another first since Newzoo began tracking the market in 2007 — the company is predicting a 6.4% decline in mobile game spending on top of a 4.2% decline in console game spending.

Back In May, Newzoo was forecasting a year of growth for the game industry, with its outlook predicting more than $200 billion in global games industry spending thanks to a nearly 6% increase in the mobile gaming sector to a $103.5 billion.

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Why privacy-safe mobile ad partners are crucial in the new world of data regulation

The Drum

From shopping and socializing to work and entertainment, our day-to-day activities are increasingly fulfilled online. The pandemic has only accelerated the growth and influence of the digital economy, and with it our online footprints have become deeper and more valuable than ever. For marketers, consumer data plays an essential role in improving the efficacy of online advertising campaigns, but it’s also a highly sensitive topic. Misuse of consumer insights can pose a major privacy risk and a whole host of legal implications that marketers need to be aware of.

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Digital Banking Didn’t Kill Bank Branches—But Chatbots Will

Forbes

Predictions of the death—or at least, decline—of bank branches have been around for a while. In 2012, well-known fintech futurist Brett King published Branch Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Case for the Death of Branch Banking, and even before that, in 2011, Forbes published an article titled Who Needs Bank Branches? with the description, “Good-bye, tellers. Hello, mobile apps.”

The predictions haven’t come true, however. The number of branches has declined over the past 10 years—from 85,000 in 2012 to 72,000 in 2022, an annual decline of just 1.7%. But make no mistake, bank branches are far from dead.

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Google’s Privacy Sandbox is coming to Android

Digiday

Privacy requirements are fundamentally altering the marketing industry with the ad tech landscape the primary front for this change.

Apple sounded the starter gun, and where it goes Google must follow.

The iPhone manufacturer’s iOS restrictions have shredded the mobile marketing orthodoxy with household names including Facebook and Snapchat among its casualties, and now similar changes are coming to Android.

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Could IoT and reliable mobile coverage be the antidote to climate change?

Mobile News

In September 2020, in New York’s Union Square, the bright orange letters of the then new climate clock counted down the critical time window remaining for humanity to take action and save the world from climate chaos.

Amidst all the despair, advances in IoT are offering a glimmer of hope because by fortuitous timing its heyday has arrived and could be the silver bullet needed to address climate change challenges once and for all. Interconnected devices (the crux of IoT) empower both businesses and individuals to lower their carbon footprint by giving them an easy means to measure the effectiveness of their existing energy management systems and take decisive action in line.

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