5/5 (1)

By Alexander Kristiansen

Creating a large userbase for a digital platform is no small task. Building a large audience requires patience and diligence. Continued support is required for a growing population, using user feedback and continues updating of services. New features entice users to stay with the platform, as it can further distinguish itself from the competition. Once you have established a large and thriving userbase, it can be considered valuable. This phenomenon is also known as network effects. One interesting case showing this is that of X (Formerly known as Twitter).

            From humble beginnings in 2006, the company was founded by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. It exploded in popularity, and by 2012 already had 200 million active users (Vanian, 2022). The company was then purchased by Elon Musk in 2022 for $44 billion. This was a very polarizing move for Twitter’s users, as Musk is known for having many controversial opinions and business practices. He promptly changed the name of the company to X (because it’s his favorite letter) and established a paid tier system with blue verification check marks. These controversies were not going unnoticed by X’s competitors, and Meta promptly aimed to take advantage of the situation. Through their already established platform of Instagram, they launched Threads. It was essentially a direct copy of X, large being text based, and having comment chains where the highest upvoted responses would appear on top. Many disenfranchised X users, among others, moved to the competitor, and Threads amassed 100 million users in 5 days (Leigh, 2023). This shattered all records, and Threads was poised to become the new big social media. However, the userbase has dropped by 82%, and now there are only 8 million daily active users (Leigh, 2023). Ultimately, X remains dominant in the segment, showing the power of network effects. Threads was not able to compete in terms of content available on the platform, which is a by-product of having a large community. This content production will only garner more and more users, further established this platforms network dominance. It will take a new platform with some serious innovation to take the throne from X.

Reference:

Leigh, D. (2023). We Asked the Experts: What Happened to Threads?. TechRound. Available from: https://techround.co.uk/news/we-asked-the-experts-what-happened-to-threads/#:~:text=However%2C%20since%20that%20explosive%20start,who%20desired%20a%20desktop%20experience.

Vanian, J (2022). Twitter is now owned by Elon Musk here’s a brief history from the app’s founding in 2006 to the present. NBC. Available from: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/29/a-brief-history-of-twitter-from-its-founding-in-2006-to-musk-takeover.html

5/5 (1)

By: Alexander Kristiansen

Generative AI is one of the most exciting technologies that is currently undergoing heavy development. Sure enough, when this first came around, I thought it was nothing more than a new meme machine. You would be able to create images of funny situations and send them to friends to share. This took another step when some companies began to use generative AI to make videos, and these videos are very realistic. With enough time and care, Generative AI videos were indistinguishable from their real-world counterparts.

The way it works is through compiling huge databases of relevant information and creates patterns and structure until the results closely matches its original subject and it can do this across multiple languages. After Bruce Willis was forced to retire due to being diagnosed with aphasia, he was still able to be in a commercial thanks to an AI firm called Deepcake (Schomer, 2023). This opens many avenues where we could potentially be seeing retired or deceased thespians returning to the big screen. With this also comes some concerns about who owns these imaging rights. This was one of the key issues during the recent SAG-AFTRA and writers strikes. More specifically, the union wanted “a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors’ digital likeness” (Webster, 2023). This stems from the fear that these programs could eventually become complex enough to replace them completely. This is true across many professions, as if a creative endeavor such as acting can be replaced, then more defined and programmed roles are at a risk as well. While there are many fears about how AI will look in the future, one individual is getting ahead of the dangers. Sam Altman, who happens to be the creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform. Wherever Sam goes, he carries a blue backpack with him. Inside this backpack, is his laptop, with some codes. These codes can shut down data centers that would result in the termination of ChatGPT (Manish, 2023). While it is promising to know that we are prepared for the worst, let us hope that it never comes to that.

References

Manish. (2023) Sam Altman’s Nuclear Backpack Holds the Code to Save the World From AI. Mobile App Daily. Available from: https://www.mobileappdaily.com/news/sam-altmans-nuclear-backpack-holds-the-code-to-save-the-world-from-ai

Webster, A (2023) Actors say Hollywood studios want AI replicas – for free, forever. The Verge. Available from: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/13/23794224/sag-aftra-actors-strike-ai-image-rights

Schomer, A (2023). Avatars as actors: Will AI unleash Celebrity ‘Simulation Rights’?. Variety.com.Available from: https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/avatars-as-actors-will-ai-unleash-celeb-simulation-rights-1235583875/