iTWire - Apps

Google pulls standalone Pay app in US

2024-02-27T10:12:53+11:00

Tech giant Alphabet has pulled its standalone Google Pay app from the US, advising users that it would no longer be available from 4 June onwards.

In a blog post, Joris van Mens, the group product manager of Google Pay, said the app was being withdrawn "to simplify the app experience" as Google Wallet was 'the primary place for people to securely store payment cards used for tap and pay in stores".

No direct mention was made of the take-up of the standalone app in the US. In the past, when Google products have been pulled from the market, it has generally been due to lack of users.

However, Van Mens said: "You can continue to access the most popular features — tapping to pay in stores and managing payment methods — right from Google Wallet, which is used five times more than the Google Pay app in the US."

{loadposition sam08}Google regularly pulls apps from public use. This has become so frequent that a developer named Cody Ogden has set up a dedicated website called the Google Graveyard listing all of the withdrawn products.

Van Mens added: "For over a decade, we’ve helped people around the world make simple and secure digital payments powered by Google Pay — whether they’re making purchases online or in physical stores.

"Today, millions of people in over 180 countries use Google Pay to securely check out when shopping with their favorite retailers on desktop using ChromeOS, macOS and Windows PC, from Android and iOS apps, and in stores.

"Android users can easily save, find and use their Google Pay payments methods on the go with Google Wallet."

But from 4 June, "you will no longer be able to send, request or receive money from others through the US version of the Google Pay app", he said.

Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger require the most data from users

2023-11-07T10:36:09+11:00

The Meta family of apps—Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger—request the most data from smartphone users, according to research from data centre company TRG Datacenters.

The apps require access to 14 separata data permissions, such as personal location, media files, browser history, and more.

The Meta policy is the same on all three of their apps.

TRG Datacenters says personal online data is increasingly less secure. Citing data from Statista, there were 6.1 million data breaches in 2022 with over 700 million private files from individuals and businesses leaking online.

{loadposition kenn}

Apps installed on smartphones syphon personal data to function. Research has shown that the average smartphone user has over 80 apps installed on their device at any given moment.

Upon downloading these apps, users allow access to their personal data through “permissions,” which can range from basic information—such as an email or a phone number—right the way through to taking financial information.

Which app is most invasive?
To find out which popular smartphone app is the most invasive with personal data, TRG Datacenters analysed both the iOS and Google Play app stores, finding the top 100 apps by downloads and establishing which required the most permissions to function.

Second to Meta’s family of apps are LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instacart all request 12 data points from users.

These apps do not request health and fitness data from users, and professional social media service LinkedIn also does not request access to browsing history.

Of the top 20 iOS apps by quantity of permissions, 45% (or 9/20) want access to 11 data permissions, with apps such as Google and Amazon Shopping being significantly less invasive than that of the Meta family.

TikTok, the most popular app by downloads on the iOS store, also requests only 11 permissions, 3 fewer than that of rival social media sites Facebook and Instagram.

On average, the number of permissions required for the top 20 iOS apps is just over 11 (11.35 specifically).

Similarly to iOS, the Meta apps of Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger once again feature as the apps in the top 100 that require the most permissions to fully function.

The less data-heavy version of Facebook, called Facebook Lite, still needs the same level of data access as the standard version.

The search giant Google has 13 permissions requested on the Google Play Store, two more than the iOS app version. Likewise, X (previously known as Twitter) needs just seven permissions on iOS, and yet on the Google Play platform it needs 11.

On average, the number of permissions required for the top 20 Google Play Store apps is almost 12 (11.70), showing that apps registered on the Google Play store have a higher average data access requirement than that of iOS.

“The level of data we allow smartphone apps to access about our daily lives is remarkable. With roughly 85% of the world’s population owning an internet-enabled smartphone, and each device containing an average of 80 apps, the quantity of data available to marketers and hackers alike is huge,” said TRG Datacenters chief technical officer Chris Hinkle.

“We fully recommend restricting just how many permissions each app uses. While apps may function better with certain features enabled, your data security must take priority.”

Snap joins AEC to encourage Australians to vote in referendum

2023-08-22T09:33:09+10:00

American multimedia firm Snap has partnered with the Australian Electoral Commission to encourage Australians to vote in the upcoming referendum on including a Voice for First Nations people in the Constitution.

In a statement, the company's Australian operation said the referendum campaign was now live on Snapchat and would provide learning experiences for users.

The company said it would use an educational AR Lens to help users test their knowledge about referendums.

It said: "The Lens is also designed to be shared with friends to encourage their Snapchat connections to participate and learn more about how their answer matters on voting day.

{loadposition sam08}"Additionally, there will be a mass Snap message going out to all Australian Snapchatters on voting day, encouraging everyone to get down to the polling booths, and share with their friends and family, once they’ve voted."

Snap managing director ANZ Tony Keusgen said: “Millions of young Australians use Snapchat every day, none of whom would ever have taken part in a referendum before.

"Snapchat is about connecting and communicating with people you know in real life, and this campaign is designed to be shared with your mates on the platform. Alongside the AEC, we want to spark conversations with friends and family ensuring every answer matters."

AEC spokesperson Evan Ekin-Smyth said of the partnership, “Working with Snapchat is the perfect partnership to engage with young Australians, who are new to voting in a referendum, in a fun and creative way.

"Together with Snap we’re looking forward to making voting in the referendum easy to understand and follow, encouraging everyone to participate.”

No date has as yet been announced for the referendum, but it is likely to be held in October, with the 14th said to be a likely date.

Threads daily active users down by half, digital data firm says

2023-07-19T10:39:24+10:00

After a stunning start, the number of daily active users on Mark Zuckerberg's new social media app Threads has fallen by more than 50%, the digital data firm Similarweb claims.

In a blog post on Monday, Similarweb's David Carr said the drop of daily active users had been from 49 million to 23.6 million.

After Threads was launched on 6 July, it attracted more than 30 million users in its first 24 hours. That grew to 100 million within a few days, at a time when Twitter was facing serious setbacks.

But the enthusiasm was somewhat tempered when Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said in an interview that Threads would not be doing anything to encourage posts on politics and hard news - the main topics of interest to former Twitter users.

Carr said most of the number he had quoted [given below] were from Android users as it was easier to track users on this platform. Statistics about users on iOS would follow, he added.

He offered the following observations:

"On its best day, 7 July, Threads had more than 49 million daily active users on Android, worldwide, according to Similarweb estimates. That’s about 45% of the usage of Twitter, which had more than 109 million active Android users that day.

"By Friday, 14 July, Threads was down to 23.6 million active users, or about 22% of Twitter’s audience.

"Usage in the US, which saw the most activity, peaked at about 21 minutes of engagement with the app on 7 July. By 14 July, that was down to a little over six minutes.

"In the first two full days that Threads was generally available, Thursday and Friday, Web traffic to twitter.com was down 5% compared with the corresponding days in the previous week. Although traffic bounced back, for the most recent seven days of data, it’s still down 11% year-over-year.

"On the days of peak interest in Threads, Twitter’s Daily active users on Android, worldwide, were virtually unchanged, but time spent was down 4.3% – perhaps because some users were off trying Threads. Even with that drop, however, the average total time spent on Twitter was about 25 minutes."

Instagram boss says politics, hard news not a priority for Threads

2023-07-08T08:00:48+10:00

All the eager beavers who jumped on the Threads bandwagon may find that they have joined a train which is more puff than substance.

Facebook's parent company Meta announced on Thursday Australian time that Threads was meant to share text updates and join public conversations.

Instagram boss Adam Mosseri told Alex Heath of The Verge in a conversation on Threads that the new app would not be doing anything to encourage posts on politics and hard news.

In a post, he wrote: "Politics and hard news are important, I don't want to imply otherwise. But my take is, from a platform's perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue they might drive is not worth the scrutiny, negativity (let's be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.

{loadposition sam08}"There are more than enough amazing communities — sports, music, fashion, beauty, entertainment etc — to make a vibrant platform without needing to get into politics or hard news."

On Friday, more than 30 million people were reported to have joined Threads. As iTWire pointed out, the mob who signed up to Mark Zuckerberg's latest toy, appeared to be unaffected by the fact that one _had_ to have an Instagram account to join. Additionally, nobody can leave Threads without also losing their Instagram account.

"The goal isn't to replace Twitter," Mosseri told Heath. "The goal is to create a public square for communities on Instagram that never really embraced Twitter and for communities on Twitter (and other platforms) that are interested in a less angry place for conversations, but not all of Twitter.

"Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads — they have on Instagram as well to some extent — but we're not going to do anything to encourage those verticals.

Mosseri later said while Threads would not “discourage or down-rank news or politics”, it would not "court" them, something which Facebook has done in the past.

Meta's Twitter clone launches, immediately censors anyone with unapproved thoughts https://t.co/oex9gmux4K
— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) July 6, 2023

The reaction on Twitter to Mosseri's post was uniformly critical. Matthew Cushman, an adjunct math professor at Hunter College in New York City, said: "This attitude explains a lot about Facebook and why it's so utterly bland now.

"Their draconian moderation policy discourages sharing anything but insipid nonsense. Politics is important actually. It's misinformation that is bad, and sorting it out takes effort (therefore money)."

Well-known American journalist Glenn Greenwald said: "Corporate media's relentless censorship demands have made Big Tech companies conclude that it's not worth the misery, cost and accusations to host news reporting political discourse online. They destroyed one of the primary promises of the early Internet."

For the moment, it's all Threads with Twitter now a pariah

2023-07-07T10:14:35+10:00

Meta's new social media app Threads has signed up more than 30 million users in its first 24 hours, proving that yesterday's tech villain can become today's hero.

It was not so long ago that Mark Zuckerberg was under fire over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and was questioned in Congress about the siphoning off of data.

But now it is Elon Musk, him of Tesla and SpaceX fame, who is the villain, with many people expressing happiness that Threads appears to be shaping as a challenger to Twitter.

Why bother? Threads has no chronological feed - the one thing that makes Twitter so valuable to all of us. This misses so hard. https://t.co/sXsWQSgSfZ
— Nandini Jammi (@nandoodles) July 6, 2023

These are early days and while Musk has not exactly endeared himself to people by inviting back right-wing elements that were banned from Twitter and touting his commitment to free speech, he has done plenty to affect the site's performance.

{loadposition sam08}Twitter has lost a good number of its staff and things are often in a state of disarray. Musk started limiting views a few days back, and has also made changes to the blue tick verification scheme, making it a paid option.

The Threads crowd, who appear to have stars in their eyes, appear to be unaffected by the fact that one _has_ to have an Instagram account to join Threads. Additionally, nobody can leave Threads without also losing their Instagram account.

The data that will be sucked up by Threads is the same as that sucked up by other social media sites. Google, for example, has just announced that it considers all material published on the Web as fair game for its AI engine.

The content on Threads is similar to that on Twitter, with narcissistic and marketing posts dominating. Musk has threatened to sue Zuckerberg for allegedly copying Twitter. Zuckerberg says he will only think of monetisation once he sees a path to a billion users.

For the moment, it all seems to be going well. But then these things have an awful way of turning around and biting one on the backside.

Zuckerberg launches Threads to lock horns with ailing Twitter

2023-07-06T11:54:53+10:00

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has announced the launch of Threads, an app built by the Instagram team, for sharing text updates and joining public conversations.

A statement from Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook, said people could log in to Threads using their Instagram accounts. Posts could be up to 500 characters and include links, photos and videos with a limit of five minutes.

The statement said the app was being rolled out in more than 100 countries for both iOS and Android devices, and that it would be made compatible with ActivityPub, the open social networking protocol established by the World Wide Web Consortium.

This would make Threads inter-operable with other apps built using the same protocol.

{loadposition sam08}The announcement comes as Twitter is going through some convulsions, with owner Elon Musk's latest unpopular announcement being a limit on how many tweets the different classes of users could view each day.

"Everyone who is under 16 (or under 18 in certain countries) will be defaulted into a private profile when they join Threads," the announcement said.

"You can choose to follow the same accounts you do on Instagram, and find more people who care about the same things you do. The core accessibility features available on Instagram today, such as screen reader support and AI-generated image descriptions, are also enabled on Threads."

Mobile app launched to help migrants, refugees resume careers

2023-07-05T09:54:04+10:00

Settlement agency AMES Australia has released a new mobile app to help migrants and refugees from non-English speaking backgrounds resume their professional careers after they settle Down Under.

A statement from AMES said MyAMES Chat had been officially launched by Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Minister Andrew Giles.

MyAMES Chat functions as a coaching tool and aids migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds to improve their speech, language, and professional skills .

The app also personalises a user’s learning experience and aids in the mastery of workplace language, Australian idioms and job interview techniques.

{loadposition sam08}Feedback on pronunciation and word choices is also offered with advice on vocabulary and presentation skills.

AMES Australia chief executive Cath Scarth said: “The app affords added flexibility to newly arrived migrants and refugees studying English. They can study in their own time and at their own pace.

GetMee Founder Balendran Thavarajah, Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, AMES Australia chief executive Cath Scarth, app user and medical scientist Dr Mujibur Rahman and app user and product developer Anh Nguyen. Supplied

“It augments the support they get from the AMES Australia Skilled Professional Migrant Program teachers and it will also help them acquire digital skills.

“The app is an extension of work we have been doing over many years in supporting newly arrived migrants and refugees re-establish their professional careers in Australia.

“We’ve all heard the stories of migrant and refugee surgeons, engineers and architects driving taxis. MyAMES Chat is one response to this egregious waste of talent.”

Giles said: “We want everyone who comes to Australia to be able to realise their ambitions and to take up fulfilling and meaningful places in our society, and this app supports that idea.”

IT company GetMee, founded by Sri Lankan refugee Balendran Thavarajah, developed the app.

Said Thavarajah: “My experience as a refugee has made it a passion of mine to help people travelling the same journey I did. That’s why we created the app.

AMES student and app user Anh Nguyen, a product developer from Vietnam, said: “The app has been really helpful. It’s helped me understand the idioms used in Australia. It has taught me about the language of the workplace and it has given me more confidence in my search for a job.”

Dr Mujibur Rahman, a medical scientist from Bangladesh, said he had found the app very useful.

“The app has been very useful to me. It means I can work on improving my English at times that are convenient for me. It has helped me with the pronunciation of difficult words and it has given me insights into the job market here in Australia,” Dr Rahman said.

Meta set to launch Twitter rival Threads this week

2023-07-04T18:52:03+10:00

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is set to launch a rival to Twitter with the name Threads on Thursday, even as the Elon Musk-owned app is hit by fresh turmoil.

The Threads app, which will be connected to Instagram, has already appeared in the Apple App store but is yet to land in Google's Play Store.

The app is being plugged as a place “where communities come together to discuss everything from the topics you care about today to what'll be trending tomorrow”.

The promotional material also says: “Whatever it is you’re interested in, you can follow and connect directly with your favourite creators and others who love the same things – or build a loyal following of your own to share your ideas, opinions and creativity with the world."

{loadposition sam08}Twitter, which has been in one form of strife or another from the time Musk bought the site in October last year, started limiting the number of tweets that different classes of users could view.

A screenshot of the website for Threads where a countdown is in progress.

The initial limits placed were: verified accounts can read 6000 posts per day; unverified accounts can read 600 posts a day; and new unverified accounts are limited to 300 a day.

Musk claimed this had been done in order "to address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation".

Later, he tweeted that these had been increased to 10,000, 1000 and 500 respectively for the three classes of users.

Now to 10k, 1k & 0.5k
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023

Twitter has lost many of its users after Musk completed his purchase of what is called the bird site for US$44 billion.

His loosening of rules around the kind of language that can be used on Twitter and reinstating many accounts which had been banned have not gone down well with many regulars.

But many who have left and joined Mastodon have expressed issues with the level of difficulty they face in using that site.

Foreigners visiting China can now use WeChat Pay and Alipay

2023-07-04T10:46:31+10:00

Chinese online pay services WeChat Pay and Alipay can now be used by tourists, with Tencent Holdings and Ant group facilitating the use by foreigners who visit China.

The South China Morning Post reported that from July, tourists would be able to use Visa and other international cards to pay for taxi rides, meals and tickets to tourist attractions.

WeChat Pay and Alipay are the two dominant mobile payment services in the Middle Kingdom but the use of foreign bank cards was, until now, not allowed by the government.

Royal Chen Qiru, vice-president of Tencent Financial Technology, told the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions on 28 June: “Tencent has been working hard to provide greater access to China’s online and offline merchants for overseas visitors under the guidance of relevant regulatory bodies and policies.

{loadposition sam08}Alipay was the first to announce the opening of online payments to tourists, with its owner, Ant, an affiliate of the Alibaba Group Holding, saying that visitors could use Mastercard credit or debit cards.

The SCMP, which is owned by Alibaba, said overseas bank cards issued by Visa, Diners Club International and Discover, could also be used with Alipay.

The report said more than 911 million Chinese used online payment services in December 2022, accounting for about 85% of the Internet population, citing the China Internet Network Information Centre.