Today's News

Thousands of WordPress Sites Disabled by Legal Spa …

Consumers Will Buy More Gifts For Themselves This …

LinkedIn Axes “Top Voice” Badges Because AI

Amazon Prime Video’s Ad Push Pays Off

Even Simple GBP Changes Might Trigger a Re-Check

Meta Fined $101 Million for Password Leak

Instagram Adds a Reels ‘Signature Sound’

Thousands of WordPress Sites Disabled by Legal Spat

A legal dispute over a trademark has crippled thousands of WordPress sites around the world.

WordPress has blocked WP Engine, a company that hosts WordPress sites, from accessing its repository. This means any web site that uses WP Engine as its hosting provider can no longer add plugins or themes.

And worse, it means they can’t update them either in case there’s a security patch.

The decision was made by Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, who accused WP Engine of trademark infringement and demanded tens of millions of dollars in licensing fees.

Earlier in the month, he penned a sharply worded blog post, pointing out that WP Engine disables some features that come standard with WordPress, only to charge for their own versions of the same feature.

He called WP Engine “a cancer to WordPress.”

Workarounds Coming?

For its part, WP Engine has posted a workaround for its customers, allowing them to manually install and update plugins and themes. The company says it’s also trying to develop a fix for the issue.

Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, has misused his control of WordPress to interfere with WP Engine customers’ access to WordPress.org, asserting that he did so because WP Engine filed litigation against . This simply is not true. Our Cease &… x.com/i/web/status/1…

— WP Engine (@wpengine)
10:11 AM • Sep 26, 2024

Reaction Overwhelmingly Negative

But if Mullenweg thought the WordPress community, with its long-standing culture of open-sourced code and community involvement, would back his move, it was a grave miscalculation.

Core contributors — volunteer programmers, essentially — are speaking out against Mullenweg's actions, saying they were not consulted and do not support the ban.

Many in the tech community are also criticizing Mullenweg's decision, calling it an abuse of power. Technology writer Robert Scoble called the decision “universally hated in tech,” and many others have echoed his sentiment.

The ban has also raised concerns about the precedent it may set for trademark infringement.

This is a fast-moving story and we’ll update it next week.

Consumers Will Buy More Gifts For Themselves This Season

More data about how people plan to shop this holiday season, to help you in your planning.

According to a new JLL forecast, most people who shop during the holidays plan to buy a gift for themselves this year.

In fact, 83% of shoppers say they will do so, up from 76% last year. The top items on their lists are shoes and clothing, electronics, and accessories.

Holiday Budgets Are Increasing

Shoppers expect to spend $1,261 on gifts, food, decorations, and experiences this year. This is almost a 32% increase from last year!

However, less of their budget will go to gifts — 46% compared to 55% in 2023.

Where They’ll Buy

Most shoppers will use more than one way to shop this holiday season:

ONLINE 71% will buy online for home delivery

STORES 58% will shop at stores outside of malls

MALLS Nearly 60% will shop at stores in enclosed malls

Retail Responding with Earlier Deals

Many large retailers are introducing deals earlier than usual. Amazon, Target, and Walmart are all having sales events in early October. This is likely a response to consumers starting their holiday shopping early, with 65% of shoppers between 30 and 44 beginning by Halloween.

The data comes from JLL’s holiday shopping report which polled more than 1,000 American consumers.

LinkedIn Axes “Top Voice” Badges Because AI

Last year, LinkedIn introduced something it called Top Voice badges for Collaborative Articles.

Those were articles, posted by other members, which LinkedIn would then elevate to the Feed and ask other people to add their own thoughts to it. If your thoughts got a lot of engagement, you’d get a little “Top Voice” badge added to your profile.

Why the Change?

But now, they’re dropping the badge. And AI could be to blame.

The problem is that AI selected which article to push out as the invitation for comment. Then, others were likely using AI to write their comments. Trained on its own platform’s engagement data, the code likely knew how to write comments that would generate lots of feedback, and at some point you have to wonder: Are the humans even involved here?

So now, LinkedIn has announced it is getting rid of its “Top Voice” badges.

What's Next?

The badges will start disappearing on October 8th, and will be completely gone by December 7th.

LinkedIn says it wants users to keep contributing to Collaborative Articles, saying it can help them show their expertise, expand their network, and help others.

But without the badges, users may not be as interested in responding.

Amazon Prime Video’s Ad Push Pays Off

Amazon is basking in success with its decision to introduce ads to Prime Video.

The company says it’s exceeded its goal of $1.8 billion in ad-spending commitments for the coming year.

Ad Revenue Growth

This is a big deal for a company that only started showing ads on Prime Video nine months ago. For comparison, Netflix only got a few hundred million dollars in ad spending commitments after introducing ads in 2022.

Amazon's Ad Strategy

Amazon is betting big on streaming TV to keep its ad revenue growth going. The company wants to capture a bigger share of TV ad budgets as they shift to streaming services.

To do this, Amazon is investing heavily in live sports rights, including a $1 billion per year deal to broadcast Thursday Night Football.

Why Advertisers Like Amazon

Ad executives say Amazon is appealing because it offers a one-stop shop for advertisers.

Amazon's services, including Prime Video, Twitch, and Freevee, reach a huge audience of 175 million monthly viewers in the US.

The company's data on its own users is also a big selling point, allowing marketers to target ads to viewers who can then buy products on Amazon.

Even Simple GBP Changes Might Trigger a Re-Check

Google Business Profiles is getting stricter.

Some marketers reported this week even small changes to your profile can now trigger a re-verification process.

This includes changes to your business categories or phone numbers.

And it doesn't seem to matter if you make changes manually or through the API.

Either way, you might have to go through the verification process again. This can be a hassle, especially if you're just trying to keep your profile up to date, so make those edits carefully.

Meta Fined $101 Million for Password Leak

Meta has been fined $101 million for storing hundreds of millions of its user’s passwords unencrypted — in plain text.

The company first discovered the mistake in 2019. At the time, Meta said it would notify affected users, but stressed that the passwords were only exposed internally. (In a hilarious bit of corporate double-speak, that announcement was titled “Keeping Passwords Secure”.)

Passwords Normally Protected

Online services typically store passwords in an encrypted format to prevent misuse if those files are taken. Meta normally uses industry-standard techniques like hashing and salting to protect passwords.

It's unclear why this didn't happen for many Facebook and Instagram users.

Investigation Finds Breach of GDPR

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) led a five-year investigation into the incident. The DPC found that Meta broke EU data protection laws by failing to notify them of the breach and not taking proper steps to protect user passwords.

The DPC shared its decision with other EU authorities, who didn't object to the fine.

Meta hasn't commented on the decision.

Instagram Adds a Reels ‘Signature Sound’

McDonalds has “I’m Lovin’ It.” T-Mobile has those little chimes. Now, Instagram Reels is getting a sonic signature of its own.

Soon, at the end of every Reel which is downloaded from the app, you’ll get a brief credit screen and this sound:

Instagram post by @design

Instagram's Creative Audio and Brand teams say they tested lots of different sounds to find one that fits with every Reel. They wanted a sound that's “punctuated, but imperfect” to reflect the idea that everyday creativity doesn't have to be perfect.

It also, apparently, doesn’t have to be unique. Honouring Reels’ long-living tradition of stealing ideas from TikTok, this whole sonic signature at the end of a downloaded video is ripped right out of TikTok’s playbook.

The only real question is: Why did it take Instagram so long?

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