Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 02/09 – Twitter Blue Breaks The Character Barrier

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Feel free to tweet your manifestos now as Twitter Blue subscribers can tweet up to 4,000 characters. Is the Fediverse failing or doing just fine, thank you very much? Is the SEC about to put the kibosh on crypto staking? Forget eggs, the real inflation is in triple A video game titles. And if the whole web becomes bot content, what do we train the bots on? Sponsors: Podcast Guru App (Listener Ad!) Links: Now Twitter Blue subscribers can write 4,000-character tweets (The Verge) Watch out, TweetDeck users—Elon Musk is about to ruin your Twitter experience (TechRadar) Lazy Reporters Claiming Fediverse Is ‘Slumping,’ Despite Massive Increase In Usage (TechDirt) Coinbase CEO Armstrong Decries Rumors of Possible US SEC Ban on Crypto Staking (Bloomberg) Meta Completes Acquisition of VR Fitness Company Within (CNET) Nintendo’s Zelda Price Hike Opens Door for More Expensive Games (Bloomberg) Google Stadia had less than 10% market share among cloud gaming services (9to5Google) Google confirms AI-generated content isn’t against Search guidelines (9to5Google) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Techmeme right home for Thursday, February 9th, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough today. Feel free to tweet your manifestos now as Twitter blue subscribers can tweet up to 4,000 characters.

Is the Fediverse failing or doing just fine? Thank you very much. Is the SEC about to put the kibosh on crypto staking? Forget eggs. The real inflation is in AAA video game titles. And if the whole web becomes bot content, what do we train the bots on? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. What's that famous quip? We were promised flying cars, and instead we got 140 characters.

Well, I don't know if the transitive property works here, but maybe check your driveway to see if somebody painted a landing pad on there, because Twitter is letting U.S. Twitter Blue Subscribers tweet up to 4,000 characters. In timelines, the longer tweets will be capped at 280 characters and have an option to show more, quoting the verge. Currently, there are a few limitations to the feature besides the big one, that it's behind a paywall, if your tweet is over the standard 280 characters, you can't save it as a draft or schedule it for later. However, most other normal features should work as usual. You can add hashtags or pictures, and non-blue subscribers will still be able to interact with the posts as normal. Blue subscribers will also be getting the ability to

quote, retweet and reply with 4,000 characters, so I'm looking forward to people coming into my mentions with massive essays. There are other signs that the feature was rolled out relatively quickly. A Verge staffer who tried it out found that the app kicks you to a web view after you write over 280 characters. Elon Musk has been promising longer tweets for a while now, saying that the company was also working on introducing the ability to add formatting to the posts, such as bolding words or changing the font size. This isn't the first time Twitter has expanded the length of posts on its site. The current 280 character limit was introduced in 2017, replacing the previous limit of 140 characters, end quote. Now, this news follows on the heels

of a flurry of rumors that tweet deck access is going behind the blue paywall, quoting tech radar. The leak comes from Twitter user at 512 by 512, a coder reverse engineered, the mechanics of Elon Musk's Twitter 2.0. More specifically, the user was able to locate a line of text within TweetDek's website code, which read, Welcome to TweetDec, a feature of Twitter Blue. People, myself included, are understandably angry about this. TweetDeck is an extremely popular application for many Twitter users, especially those managing professional or brand accounts. Since its third-party release in 2008, and purchased by Twitter for $40 million in 2011, it has consistently ranked as one of the most used Twitter clients outside the main app. According to AtTwit

Twitter takeover, an account that posts news related to the social media platform, a newly refurbished version of tweet deck will become available soon, most likely locked behind the ad-free subscription tier of Twitter Blue, end quote. There were also widespread reports of a Twitter outage last night that seems to have been resolved at least at the time of this writing. Sticking with the Twitter beat a bit, I'm not sure what to make of the whole Fedaverse right now, basically the decentralized alternative to Twitter and social media general. that Mastodon is a huge part of. We had those numbers yesterday that suggested that Mastodon

was sort of seeing its initial user surge ebb. And yet, according to data from the Federation, active users on decentralized social networks are up from around 600,000 to around 2.6 million in just the last few months, challenging claims about a failing Fedaverse. Quoting TechDirt. There's been this weird series of articles lately trying to frame the rapid growth of the Fedaverse, mainly Macedon, as somehow now failing. It started last month with the Guardian's Josh Nicholas leaping in with a provocative headline. Elon Musk drove more than a million people to Macedon, but many aren't sticking around, and now Wired has a similar article by Amanda Hoover, declaring the Macedon bump is now a slump. The issue, according to both articles, is that because

a ton of people signed up to check out Macedon in November and December as Elon Musk began his program of musking up Twitter, and not all of them decided to stick around, that proves the site is a failure, except that's wrong on so many levels. Any site getting a big influx of users is going to have some number of them choose not to engage, especially something that's new and different. But if you look at the actual retention rate for the Fediverse, it's astoundingly high. Looking at sites that track actual usage of the Fediverse, we see that it went up quite a lot in November and December, and while it's dipped in January, it's still way above where it was pre-Musk takeover. Also, it's worth noting that these stats apply to the entire Fediverse and not just Mastodon.

While it's common to talk about Mastodon, the 1.4 million number that people discuss is just those on Mastodon based on Mastodon's own stats. But many users move on to compatible platforms that don't end up in that count like Plaroma, pixel fed, Miskie, Kalkki, and the like. So the numbers here show a topping off of active users around 4 million, and it currently being around 2.6 million, way, way above the around 600,000. before Musk's takeover. Either way, actual usage of the Fediverse continues to increase month by month, including through January, meaning that while some people signed up and never used it,

those who are using it are using it more and more. These are the kinds of things you'd think a journalist would cover in these articles, but they're taking the lazy way out and simply looking at the top line number of how many people checked in once or twice and then didn't stick around while ignoring just how much the platform continues to grow and thrive, end quote. Speaking of rumors and such, Brian Armstrong says Coinbase has heard what he calls rumors that the SEC wants to, quote, get rid of crypto staking for retail investors, which he thinks would be a terrible path, quoting Bloomberg. I hope that that's not the case, as I believe it would be a terrible path for the U.S. if that was allowed to happen. He tweeted on Wednesday while arguing that the practice

of staking is, quote, a really important innovation, end quote. The SEC declined to comment on Armstrong's tweets. The agency has repeatedly said that most digital tokens are securities that should be subject to its rules. Chair Gary Gensler has previously indicated that staking could fall under the regulator's purview. Armstrong argued that staking is not a security. Staking involves earning rewards by locking up coins to help order transactions on various blockchains such as Ethereum. Coinbase, Cracken, and other crypto exchanges have waded into staking products to diversify revenues. The firms let users stake coins without needing specialist computer equipment, nor having a minimum amount of 32 ether, and take a cut of the rewards.

Staking on Ethereum can earn yields of about 6%. Coinbase has flagged the progress of its staking services to shareholders. Last August, Coinbase disclosed that it's being probed by the SEC over its staking programs. The exchange is the second largest depositor of staked ether, according to tracker EtherScan, end quote. I want to make sure that this is noted so that people are aware the news isn't all running in the same direction. Meta says that it has completed its acquisition of Within, which was originally announced in October of 2021, after a U.S. judge denied the FTC's request to stop the deal. Quoting CNET.

As the VR headset race heats up in 2023, Meta has been slowly acquiring many of the bigger developers in the field. Now it finally has a fitness platform that it's been trying to acquire for, two years. Meta announced Wednesday that it closed on the acquisition of Within, maker of the subscription fitness app Supernatural. Meta originally announced its intent to acquire the developer back in 2021. The Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint to stop the deal last year on grounds of meta building a, quote, virtual reality empire, but it was reported last week that Meta had won approval for the acquisition. Supernatural pairs with smartwatches to measure heart rate and uses video scans of trainers overlaid in game-like training settings to create workouts that can feel like

a VR version of Peloton. Fitness has been a major interest of meta for the future of its VR and AR platforms, along with subscription services. Supernatural looks like a building block to fill both needs. CNET's Joan Slossman has given it several in-depth tests over the last few years. The bigger question is whether meta enables Supernatural to work across other VR headsets and platforms and whether the app, as it currently exists, will change significantly now that it's officially part of meta, end quote. Yesterday's Nintendo Direct event gave us another trailer and official details on the release of that new Zelda game, which, believe me, was big, big news in this house. I was able to rouse the kids out of bed this morning

merely by telling them that we could watch a YouTube analysis of the trailer. But, interesting thing here, I believe we've done stories about how the gaming industry is hoping to raise the default price of A-list gaming titles, right? Well, The Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom, will cost $69.99. when it's released in the U.S. on May 12th, $10 more than the previous Zelda game and $10 more than what Nintendo and other publishers usually charge for their headline titles. Quoting Bloomberg. The move, which matches premium pricing by console rivals Sony and Microsoft may presage wider increases as it helps normalize the greater upfront cost. Game studios across the world, including Nintendo's home Japanese market, have been desperate to hike prices as the expense of producing

games has ratcheted up with higher player expectations for quality and content, but none were willing to do so first. Nintendo's decision with the new Zelda is likely to be welcomed by its peers. The mood is there, especially outside Japan, to raise software prices. Kauai Techmo Holdings Chief Financial Officer Kanjuro Asano said at a January 30th earnings briefing, but his company didn't, quote, want to be the first to raise the price, he added. Capcom CFO, Kenchichi Nomura, and Greene Inc. Senior Vice President Yuda Meda expressed similar sentiments when discussing their most recent quarterly results. Both see a widely shared desire within the industry to raise prices in order to offset increased headcount and spending to create new content.

A Nintendo spokesman confirmed the new Zelda game will be the most expensive first-party title from the company other than deluxe editions with extras thrown in. The company will continue to set prices appropriate for each game, he said. If there is one game that allows Nintendo to test the waters, it's this one. Tokyo-based industry analyst Serkan Toto said on Thursday, the $10 price increase will not only cancel out lost purchases from users who skip the game, but indeed lead to larger overall sales, end quote. The earlier Breath of the Wild installment in the Zelda franchise was the Switch's

signature launch title and helped the console succeed. Nintendo had sold 29 million copies of the game and 123 million. switch consoles at the end of 2022, end quote. Since we're on the subject of gaming, a sort of bonus fallout from the whole Microsoft Activision thing has popped up on my radar. The UK's CMA has given us an interesting peek inside the state of the cloud gaming market. Basically, according to the data revealed, Xbox controls 60 to 70% of the global cloud gaming market as of last year. PlayStation had 10 to 20% and Stadia maybe had 5%.

Quoting 9 to 5 Google. Publicly, Google has remained silent about how many users Stadia had, but these new statistics show that Google's streaming option failed to make a sizable dent in the market. While 2021 saw Stadia maintain somewhere between 5 and 10% of the cloud gaming market,

Google's market share dropped to between 0% to 5% in 2022. Importantly, the 2022 statistics for Google Stadia only represent from January to July, which means the drop in market chair was not caused by the announcement of Stadia's shutdown. Throughout its findings, the CMA points to Google Stadia as an example of how even a company with a strong foundation of cloud infrastructure and compelling features failed due to a lack of content. By that token, allowing Microsoft to acquire the numerous properties of Activision Blizzard could make it more

difficult for a cloud gaming service to offer a competitive game library. Looking at the broader cloud gaming market in 2021, Sony's cloud streaming service at the time called PlayStation Now, was the market leader, garnering between 30 to 40% of monthly players. Within a year's time, Microsoft dominated the cloud gaming market with 60 to 70% of monthly players. It's possible this was affected by the introduction of Fortnite to Xbox GamePass streaming, which is currently one of the only ways to play the popular Battle Royale game from mobile devices. In a similar shift to PlayStation, Nvidia G-Gforce now dropped from a strong 20 to 30% share down to 10% to 20%. Meanwhile, Amazon Luna had roughly the same amount of active users in 2022 as Google Stadia, end quote.

Finally, today I was interviewed by Canadian radio yesterday about all this AI stuff, and they were very keen on getting into the idea that we might have a new search wars brewing. Is Bing going to supplant Google now? Is this a new Coke versus Pepsi thing? And while I tried to make the point that there's a larger story here, I agree that the search angle is interesting too. But also, consider, consider is the way we've thought conceptually about search about to change radically? Bing versus Google might be too narrow a framing device. On top of that, there's this side angle to the side angle of the search angle. Think about the SEO industry. I mean, I've been trying to rank websites highly in Google for over 20 years now, and that entire time, we were always fighting against websites that either scraped content or auto-generated zombie content. So just for a second, consider whither the SEO industry with this new AI revolution.

Quoting 9 to 5 Google. AI is set to change the game in some big ways in the near future, and AI generated content is one of the more controversial elements. Now, Google is broaching the subject, confirming explicitly that AI generated content isn't against its search guidelines. In a new post to the Google Search Central blog, Google clarifies its stance on AI-generated content, and how search treats that content. short version is that Google search guidelines don't directly ban AI generated content. Rather,

Google will reward, quote, high-quality content however it is produced. The company defines high-quality content based on expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or eat. While Google won't penalize AI-generated content directly, it does say that using AI to create content that carries the, quote, primary purpose of manipulating ranking and search results is still a violation of policy, but that not all use of automation is considered spam. In direct response to the question of why Google search doesn't ban AI generated content, Google said, quote, automation has long been used in publishing to create useful content. AI can assist with and generate useful content in exciting new ways, end quote.

Google's stance here seems quite reasonable, but is also walking a dangerous line. Despite the company's warnings that using AI as an inexpensive, easy way that game search engine rankings won't benefit, the simple fact is that there are plenty of bad actors who will ignore this and throw enough content at the wall to find success anyway. When Google first hinted that AI-generated content wouldn't be penalized, some of those bad actors were effectively frothing at the mouth with excitement. And on top of that, there's also the worry that AI-generated content will have an effect on the chatbot experiences coming to Google Search and Bing, as we mentioned yesterday, end quote. Yeah, that leads to a couple of really wild thoughts.

Aside from the new chatbot competition, potentially killing traditional Google search as a product by out-competing it, what if the flood of AI content hastens the demise of traditional web search by basically burying the web under a deluge of bot-generated content? And then extrapolate on that by going one step further. The bots are trained to sound like us by reading what we've put on the web, right? So what if the web just becomes a bunch of bot stuff? Would there be some sort of recursive thing that would happen if the bots increasingly got trained on their own bot drivel? Might that lower the quality of the bot? Would the way to build a better large language model eventually require you to fastidiously carve out the bot content like so much noise in the machine?

might the bots themselves hamper the development of the bots? Nothing for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.