Technology
After the election, Bluesky is witnessing an exodus of dissatisfied X users
X, formerly Twitter, is now not “digital city market– once promised that it might be so. In the wake of the US presidential election results, a wave of users dissatisfied with the app’s latest direction are moving to a rival app, Bluesky.
Decentralized social media platform Bluesky continues to grow with over 9 million users from September to 14.6+ million as of Tuesday, with the last spike occurring over the weekend as US users fled X.
The exodus briefly placed Bluesky as the No. 2 iPhone app in the U.S. App Store on Monday, down from No. 27 the day after the election. Today it has dropped barely to third place, behind Threads Meta and ChatGPT.
It is also value being attentive to the rate of registration of recent users. Yesterday, many sockets reported that Bluesky added over 700,000 users in the last week, bringing its total to 14.5 million. A day later, the number is over 14.6 million, meaning around 100,000 users join each day.
Bluesky downloads in the U.S. are up 933% year-to-date, while X downloads are up 48%, in line with app analytics firm Appfigures. Appfigures also noted that Bluesky downloads on November 10 increased by 624% in comparison with November 1.
what’s more, According to Bluesky CEO Jay Graber says engagement at Bluesky is typically higher than at X – and that is not a recent trend. While X still has that number because many users abandon but don’t delete their X accounts, Bluesky tends to have the next percentage of “posters” — those that are actively engaging quite than lurking, Graber says.
“We have… a higher percentage of posters than most social media sites that operate according to the 90-9-1 pattern: lurkers-commenters-posters. We didn’t go below ~30% of posters,” she noted in Bluesky post on Tuesday. For newbies, she recommends posting on relevant channels, commenting on others’ posts, finding friends (those you follow who in turn follow you) and using hashtags to extend engagement together with your own content.
The shift in user adoption follows changes lon Musk has made since purchasing the company formerly referred to as Twitter in the fall of 2022. The Telsa and SpaceX executive originally promised to show his $44 billion acquisition right into a free speech platform where everyone’s voice could be heard. Instead, Musk used the app to promote right-wing views, campaign for TrumpAND stop at the next rate than before Data from X’s own transparency report.
While Musk can have once believed that Twitter favored the left, he has not turned the app right into a neutral platform. In fact, research found that Musk’s right-wing political posts appeared in X users’ feeds, even when users didn’t follow him or engage along with his content.
With his 204 million followersthe platform gives Musk incredible reach to advertise his own political opinions and support Trump.
Of course, some fear that Bluesky itself will develop into a partisan platform if it is flooded by liberals leaving X. However, the nature of the way this platform is built doesn’t allow it to be guided by the political opinions of its owner. In addition to the standard blocking and reporting features, Bluesky allows users to create their very own algorithms and custom channels, and subscribe to their very own moderation services to personalize the app to their liking. If the Bluesky app and moderation decisions don’t fit your needs, people will give you the option to run the social software on their very own servers, little just like Mastodon, an open source X competitor (although Bluesky uses a distinct protocol, AT protocolas an alternative of Mastodon and Threads’ ActivePub.)
Interest in Bluesky has been growing for a while, and never only because of its infrastructure and architecture. Bluesky has benefited from other increases before, corresponding to when X was banned in Brazil and when Threads handled moderation issues, for instance. However, this latest increase indicates that increasingly more left-leaning users are deciding to stop using X. Without the combative, back-and-forth political chat that Twitter is famous for, its future as a “global marketplace” becomes increasingly uncertain.
Technology
Apple faces a $3.8 billion U.K. damages claim over its “iCloud monopoly.”
British consumer rights group ‘Which?’ files an antitrust lawsuit against Apple on behalf of roughly 40 million users of its iCloud cloud storage service.
The class motion lawsuitwhich is searching for £3 billion in damages (about $3.8 billion at current exchange rates), claims Apple broke competition rules by giving preferential treatment to its own cloud storage service and effectively forcing people to pay for iCloud after a “fraud ” prices.
“iOS has a monopoly and control over Apple’s operating systems, and it’s Apple’s responsibility not to make use of this dominance to realize an unfair advantage in related markets, resembling the cloud storage market. But that is exactly what happened,” the corporate wrote in a press release announcing the filing of the claim with the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT).
The lawsuit alleges that Apple encourages users of its devices to join iCloud for photo storage and other data storage purposes, while making it difficult for consumers to make use of alternative storage providers – including by stopping them from storing or creating all of their data. Back up your phone data to a third-party provider.
“iOS users will have to pay for the service when photos, notes, messages and other data exceed the free 5GB limit,” he noted.
The lawsuit also accuses Apple of overcharging British consumers for iCloud subscriptions as a consequence of a lack of competition. “Apple has increased the price of iCloud for UK consumers by 20% to 29% across all storage tiers in 2023.” – it said, adding that it was searching for compensation from all affected Apple customers and estimating that individual consumers could owe a mean of £70 (about $90), depending on how long they’ve been paying Apple for iCloud services.
An analogous lawsuit – arguing that Apple has unlawfully monopolized the cloud storage market – has been filed within the US in Marchand stays pending after the corporate didn’t throw it.
UK consumers agreed
A UK claim is made on an opt-out basis for UK based consumers who qualify for inclusion. Consumers who live outside the UK and consider they’re eligible must actively conform to participate.
Spokesman Tommy Handley told us that eligible Apple customers include “anyone who ‘acquired’ iCloud services, including non-paying users, within nine years of the Consumer Rights Act coming into force on October 1, 2015.”
Handley also confirmed that the £3 billion compensation figure takes under consideration potential cancellations, duplicates and mortality.
It is a not-for-profit organization, however the litigation is being funded by Litigation Capital Management (LCM), a major global litigation financier, which it says is committed to bringing the case to fruition.
At the identical time, it calls on Apple to settle the claim without having to go to court – offering refunds to consumers and making iOS available to offer users with a “real choice” of cloud services.
Commenting in a statement, Which chief executive Anabel Hoult said: “By making this claim, Which? shows large corporations like Apple that they can’t cheat British consumers without facing consequences. Taking this legal motion means we may help consumers get the redress they deserve, discourage similar behavior in the long run and create a higher, more competitive market.”
Assuming Apple doesn’t seek an out-of-court settlement, the subsequent stage of the dispute will rely on whether the CAT grants Which permission to act as a collective representative of consumers and allows the claim to be heard on a collective basis.
In recent years, there was a rise within the number of sophistication motion lawsuits against Big Tech following a wave of antitrust enforcement on either side of the Atlantic that continues to yield incomplete results and business impact.
In the UK, Apple was also the goal of a class motion lawsuit brought last 12 months on behalf of developers over App Store fees.
Also last 12 months, a separate lawsuit within the UK was filed against Apple and Amazon, accusing them of price collusion.
Technology
Lyten buys battery production assets from beleaguered Northvolt
Silicon Valley battery startup Lyten announced today that it’s acquiring manufacturing assets from Northvolt, a cash-strapped Swedish battery maker.
As a part of the deal, Northvolt is selling manufacturing equipment the corporate inherited through its 2021 acquisition of Cuberg, one other battery startup. Lyten may also take over the lease of the old Cuberg manufacturing facility in San Leandro, California. Lyten will invest $20 million next yr to expand its San Leandro facilities and existing operations in San Jose.
Neither Lyten nor Northvolt immediately responded to questions on the financial terms of the deal.
Unlike many other battery manufacturers, Lyten doesn’t use nickel, cobalt, manganese and even iron in its cathode materials. Instead, it uses low cost and abundant sulfur mixed with a graphene matrix. The anode side doesn’t use graphite, a surface-facing material export restrictions from China. The company claims that this mix creates cells which have the next energy density than nickel-manganese-cobalt cells, but are cheaper to provide than inexpensive lithium iron phosphate.
Northvolt has been having problems currently. The company struggled to ramp up production of lithium-ion batteries and failed to satisfy a big order from BMW, prompting the automaker to cancel a €2 billion contract.
To get monetary savings, the corporate announced in August that it could achieve this snapshot research and development on the Cuberg plant, shedding almost 200 employees. Then in September it said it was shedding a further 1,600 staff, or about 20% of its workforce, and that it had halted two planned factory expansions.
It is unclear whether cost cutting and the Lyten deal can be enough to assist Northvolt survive the approaching yr. Last week, Bloomberg reported that Northvolt needs to lift almost $1 billion to present itself some respiration room; According to reports, the corporate’s operations generate costs of roughly $100 million monthly.
While Northvolt is slipping, Lyten appears to be growing.
The San Jose-based startup plans to begin constructing a factory in Nevada next yr with a planned capability of 10 gigawatt hours. Once accomplished, the $1 billion facility will produce lithium-sulfur batteries for micro-mobility vehicles reminiscent of scooters and electric bicycles, and for defense and space applications reminiscent of drones and satellites. The company expects to come back online in 2027.
Lyten’s purchase of Northvolt’s Cuberg assets gives it equipment and space to provide as much as 200 megawatt-hours of lithium-sulfur batteries within the Bay Area. This should provide the corporate with some revenue while it prepares a bigger factory in Nevada.
According to PitchBook, Lyten has raised $476 million up to now at a $1.17 billion valuation, which incorporates a $200 million round that closed last yr.
Technology
Klarna is kicking off its US IPO plans with a confidential filing with the SEC
Swedish buy now, pay later (BNPL) start-up. Klarna is on its method to becoming a public company. Fintech he said on Wednesday announced the confidential filing of a draft registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The announcement of the stock exchange listing, long in the making, comes amid a dearth of initial public offerings (IPOs) in the technology sector. Klarna’s European status only adds to the excitement of today’s news.
Founded in 2005, Klarna is certainly one of several players on the market BNPL a space enabling customers to buy goods with a guarantee of an interest-free loan. After launching in the US in 2015, Klarna achieved a lofty valuation of over $45 billion by 2021, a figure that quickly declined by 85% to $6.5 billion attributable to “market corrections.”
However, Klarna’s valuation recently increased to $14.6 billionbased on reports, after one investor increased his stake.
We still don’t know the way many shares will likely be offered or what the IPO price range will likely be, but today’s announcement paves the way for Klarna to go public, likely in the first half of 2025.
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