Inside YouTube’s 5-year program to help creators that you’re just now hearing about

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For the past five years, there’s been a cadre of YouTubers working closely with the company to shape the tools and features creators are using. And it’s not until now that YouTube is pulling back the curtain on its findings and on the program itself. YouTube’s Creator in Residence launched in 2016 as a way for a select group of creators to stress test new additions to the platform and give feedback on the user experience directly to engineers, designers, and product managers. Ten creators are handpicked by the Creator in Residence team for six-month terms that include weekly meetings and, at times, team members visiting creators in their homes and studios to see how being a YouTuber affects their lives on and off camera. Renato Verdugo, a user experience researcher at YouTube an co-lead of Creator in Residence, says typical UX research stops after a week or two with a specific focus on workshopping a product, website, or app. “The more time we started spending with creators without a product agenda, the more we learned [about] their everyday life in a way that allows us to better understand the role that the platform plays in a specific creator’s success, in a specific creator’s business,” Verdugo says. “The residency came from the spirit of, how do we spend time with creators beyond one research session? ” Part of the reason the Creator in Residence program stayed under wraps for five years was to ensure that time with creators was as unfiltered as possible. Renato Verdugo [Photo: courtesy of YouTube] “For this to be effective, the creator needs to know that they’re not here to be a spokesperson, that they’re here to be honest and raw,” Verdugo says. “Giving time to work without the public spotlight and [creators not having] people put pressure on them like, ‘You’re talking to YouTube? Can you also raise this other thing?’ It just creates space to breathe.” Verdugo and his team select creators based on who they deem are doing something “unique or cool” and “really creative” with their channels, regardless of the size of their following Read More …

The political TikToks in your feed might be ads in disguise

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There is a lot of political content on TikTok. Much of it has the spontaneous, home-made look of other TikTok content. But looks can be deceiving. Some political TikToks are financed by political influence organizations like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, and, worse, they often give no indication that they are, in essence, paid political ads. That’s the troubling finding of a new study by researchers at Mozilla. “What we found was evidence of paid or material relationships between political influencer influencers on TikTok and political organizations in the U.S. across both sides of the (political) spectrum,” said Mozilla researcher Becca Ricks, who co-authored the report. Mozilla is now calling on TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, to be more transparent about which short videos on its app are posted by influencers receiving funds from political groups. On Thursday, the nonprofit launched a public petition urging TikTok to prioritize ad transparency. “[W]e looked into the metadata of posts on TikTok and found that TikTok does not seem to be monitoring these posts and considering them as advertising,” Geurkink says. Mozilla found more than a dozen TikTok influencers across the political spectrum that have undisclosed paid relationships—or “dark money” arrangements—with various political organizations in the U.S. TikTok has managed to stay mostly out of the discussion of the social media mis/disinformation crisis by proclaiming that it would not sell political ads on its platform. But, Mozilla points out, even though TikTok doesn’t sell political ads via its social platform (as Facebook does), it’s still easy for political organizations to form direct financial arrangements with TikTok influencers to spread a certain point of view Read More …

Amazon’s Halo wearable adds a fresh approach to personalized workouts

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Amazon is getting into personalized fitness with a new feature for Halo, its fitness tracker and app, Called Movement, it measures how a person moves, identifies areas of improvement, and offers up curated exercises. Amazon introduced its Halo fitness tracker at the end of 2020. It was a notable departure from other wearables such as Apple Watch and Fitbit, with features for tracking body fat percentage, body temperature during sleep, and tone of voice. Overall, it focuses on tracking aspects of a person’s health that are simple to understand, such as body fat percentage instead of BMI and a weekly activity score instead of daily one. The new Movement feature is consistent with that approach. Inside Halo’s smartphone app, the Movement assessment directs users to record themselves performing various exercises using their phone’s camera. The test takes roughly five minutes and assesses for 20 potential physical limitations relating to issues such as range of motion and strength. Once complete, it serves up 5-7 routines based on a person’s specific problem areas that will improve exercise form and ultimately mobility. Through the app, users can record every time they do these exercises and track their improvement. What this feature is really about is preventing future injury. The goal of Movement is to build muscle memory around correct movements. Read More …

Amazon’s Halo wearable adds a fresh approach to personalized workouts

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Amazon is getting into personalized fitness with a new feature for Halo, its fitness tracker and app, Called Movement, it measures how a person moves, identifies areas of improvement, and offers up curated exercises. Amazon introduced its Halo fitness tracker at the end of 2020. It was a notable departure from other wearables such as Apple Watch and Fitbit, with features for tracking body fat percentage, body temperature during sleep, and tone of voice. Overall, it focuses on tracking aspects of a person’s health that are simple to understand, such as body fat percentage instead of BMI and a weekly activity score instead of daily one. The new Movement feature is consistent with that approach. Inside Halo’s smartphone app, the Movement assessment directs users to record themselves performing various exercises using their phone’s camera. The test takes roughly five minutes and assesses for 20 potential physical limitations relating to issues such as range of motion and strength. Once complete, it serves up 5-7 routines based on a person’s specific problem areas that will improve exercise form and ultimately mobility. Through the app, users can record every time they do these exercises and track their improvement. What this feature is really about is preventing future injury. The goal of Movement is to build muscle memory around correct movements. When you do a squat, is your back straight or are you tucking your pelvis at the bottom of the squat? Are your knees over toes? The app aims to let you know for sure. [Image: courtesy of Amazon] There are a total of 35 possible corrective exercises—roughly ten minutes or less each. Read More …

The makers of the Instant Pot are now selling another pandemic must-have

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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, air purifiers have become a ubiquitous presence in homes, businesses, and schools. Now, everyone’s favorite kitchen gadget company is launching one, too. That’s right: Instant Pot is selling an air purifier. The decision to get into the air purifying business was entirely inspired by the pandemic. “We felt a deep responsibility to help solve for a major concern facing our customers as the pandemic surged,” said Ben Gadbois, Instant Brands CEO, in a press release. “We knew that a new normal was going to emerge where air quality would matter more than ever. So, over the past year, our teams engineered a revolutionary innovation to improve air quality while still offering an affordable solution for homes, work spaces, dorm rooms, or wherever our Instant families need us.” The Instant purifier comes in two sizes, small and large, and boasts medical-grade HEPA-13 filters and the ability to “remove 99.9% of the virus that causes COVID-19.” The claim is based on testing the purifier against SARS-COV-2 in a 13-cubic-foot laboratory chamber, where the air inside the space passed through the device 10 times. The company does not claim to prevent COVID-19 transmission. The Association of Household Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) independently checked the Instant air purifier’s ability to clean the air: The $130 small air purifier can handle 126 square feet, and the $240 large air purifier can filter up to 388 square feet of space. [Photo: courtesy of Instant Brands] Last year, government agencies suggested indoor air filtration systems could be a good supplement to mask wearing, social distancing, and handwashing against COVID-19. Researchers seem to agree that HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) filters can do a lot to remove small particles from the air, including viruses. Read More …