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Trump 2.0 and tremors in Taiwan
WhatsApp wins reprieve in India over user data sharing
An Indian tribunal on Thursday suspended restrictions that would have barred WhatsApp from sharing user data with its parent company Meta, delivering a significant victory for Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire in its largest market by users. The ruling by the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal temporarily lifts a five-year ban imposed by India’s antitrust […]
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Neko, the body-scanning startup co-founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek, snaps up $260M at a $1.8B valuation
Stockholm startup Neko Health has made a big bet on consumers wanting to learn about their state of health and how to prevent things going wrong. Now, investors are making a big bet on Neko. The startup has raised a fresh $260 million in funding, a Series B that values Neko at $1.8 billion post-money, […]
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Daniel Ek’s Neko raises $260mn in push to be ‘Apple’ of healthcare
The TikTok outage caused TikTok Shop sales to spike, not sink
In spite of the weekend’s momentary TikTok shutdown, sales on TikTok Shop didn’t miss a beat.
The hours-long TikTok shutdown on Jan. 18 and 19 did not have a negative impact on the platform’s sales over the weekend. In fact, TikTok Shop sales spiked in the days immediately preceding the ban, as well as on the day that the ban was lifted.
On Jan. 19, the day the outage was lifted, total sales volume on TikTok Shop amounted to $32,064,590, according to data shared by the e-commerce data platform Charm — an over $500,000 jump from the total sales figure of $31,429,366 on Jan. 18, and a nearly $5 million week-over-week increase from the total sales of $27,536,680 on Jan. 12. The post-outage spike in sales was on track with a general increase in TikTok Shop activity that began in the lead-up to the potential ban.
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Lad Bible Group CEOs plan for growth: £200m, IP, M&A and more
Publishing businesses like the Lad Bible Group aren’t supposed to be thriving. They depend on ad dollars and platform traffic in an era where brands are skittish about news and platforms barely acknowledge publishers.
And yet, Lad Bible Group, known for its youth-focused content, is defying the odds. Its revenue has tripled in five years, soaring from £30 million in 2020 to £90 million today. Advertising has been the driving force, accounting for 98% of the group’s revenue. Meanwhile, its audience surged 19% in the first nine months of 2024, surpassing half a billion people (503 million).
Digiday sat down with Lad Bible Group CEO Solly Solomou to uncover what’s next for the publishing group, which owns titles such as LADBible, SPORTBible, Betches Media, in the year ahead.
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Assessing the most likely outcomes of Google’s pivotal ad tech antitrust trial
President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term earlier this month. During the inauguration ceremony, a coterie of Big Tech CEOs in prominent positions was prominently featured, and observers interpreted this as a bid to curry favor with the current occupant of the Oval Office.
Among their number was Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who, despite being the lowest profile of the assembled executives, is arguably in the deepest hot water given the host of battles it faces with the Justice Department and could do with a sympathetic ear in the executive branch of the U.S. government.
Examples include the business-critical search case, where it faces the forced sell-off of the Chrome browser, and in addition to this case, which Google lost but is in the process of appealing, is its ongoing ad tech antitrust trial, where a verdict from presiding Judge Leonie Brinkema has been anticipated for weeks. DOJ lawyers are pushing for a forced sell-off of its sell-side ad tech tools. Many expect the ruling to go against Google, prompting (yet another) appeals process, with the looming uncertainty splitting opinion on how best to position oneself for the resulting fallout.
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Havas acquires sports marketing agency in first deal following stock exchange debut
Havas Media Network has kicked off the new year with an acquisition aimed at deepening its sports marketing expertise and diversifying its revenue base.
The media arm of Havas struck a deal to acquire CA Sports, a specialist sponsorship agency based in Spain, and add it to its entertainment-focused Havas Play unit. It’s the first acquisition by the French holding company since it was listed on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange in December, following a spinoff from the Vivendi media empire.
According to Jorge Irizar, CEO of Havas Media Network Spain and global COO of Havas Media Network, it’s the first of 10 acquisitions the media group is targeting over the course of this year, and part of a multi-year process to broaden its business model.
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Media Briefing: TikTok’s U.S. shutdown has little impact on publishers’ traffic and video strategies
This week’s Media Briefing looks at how the TikTok ban impacted publishers’ onsite traffic and social referrals, as well as what companies like CNN, The Daily Mail and The Washington Post are doing with their short-form video efforts in light of the shutdown drama.
- Data shows the TikTok ban in the U.S. didn’t have much of an effect on publishers’ site traffic, and publishers say they will focus efforts on their onsite short-form video strategies going forward.
- Le Monde leaves X, AI companies to face more litigation from publishers, and more.
TikTok aftereffects
TikTok’s shutdown over the weekend was short-lived, and so was its apparent impact on how people spent their time online. Publishers’ site traffic and social referral traffic did not deviate from the norm, and YouTube Shorts received a miniscule uptick in viewership, for example.
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Section 31 Is a Mediocre Action Movie, and an Even Worse Star Trek One
It's a fine excuse to occasionally watch Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh kick things, but Section 31 is otherwise a deeply incurious squandering of Star Trek potential.
The Royal Shakespeare Company is turning Macbeth into a neo-noir game
Macbeth, William Shakespeare’s iconic play, is being reimagined as an interactive video game with a neo-noir vibe — and it’s being developed in part by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The game, titled Lili, is a “screen life thriller video game” where you’ll have access to a modern-day Lady Macbeth’s personal devices, according to a press release.
“Players will be immersed in a stylized, neo-noir vision of modern Iran, where surveillance and authoritarianism are part of daily life,” the release says. “The gameplay will feature a blend of live-action cinema within an interactive game format, giving players the chance to immerse themselves in the world of Lady Macbeth and make choices that influence her destiny.” It sounds kind of like a version of Macbeth inspired by Sam Barlow’s interactive thrillers.
The Royal Shakespeare Company is making the game in collaboration with iNK Stories, a New York-based indie studio and publisher that also made 1979 Revolution: Black Friday. It stars Zar Amir as “Lady Macbeth (Lili),” per the press release.
Lili is set to release “later in 2025.”
Someone bought the domain ‘OGOpenAI’ and redirected it to a Chinese AI lab
A software engineer has bought the website “OGOpenAI.com” and redirected it to DeepSeek, a Chinese AI lab that’s been making waves in the open source AI world lately. Software engineer Ananay Arora tells TechCrunch that he bought the domain name for “less than a Chipotle meal,” and that he plans to sell it for more. […]
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SK Hynix profits beat Samsung’s for first time on AI boom
Apple Watch helped Whole Foods founder give up drinking: ‘It changed my life’
Apple Watch users regularly credit the device with helping save their life during health scares and emergency situations. For the founder of Whole Foods, however, it was insight gained from the that helped him improve his life.
more…Google buys part of HTC’s XR business for $250 million
Google has agreed to acquire a part of HTC’s extended reality (XR) business for $250 million, expanding its push into virtual and augmented reality hardware following the recent launch of its Android XR platform. The deal involves transferring some of the HTC VIVE engineering staff to Google and granting non-exclusive intellectual property rights, according to […]
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LinkedIn accused of using private messages to train AI
What does Trump's executive order mean for TikTok and who might buy it?
Here’s how to turn off each ‘intelligent’ AirPods Pro 2 feature
I love my , but I can’t say the same about every “intelligent” feature Apple has added over the years. If you want to roll with your AirPods Pro as straightforward as possible, these are the features to disable.
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