Instagram test turns all video posts into Reels

It looks like Meta truly is making a big push for Reels. Social media consultant Matt Navarra has posted a screenshot on Twitter showing a notice for an experimental Instagram feature that says all video posts would be shared as Reels on the app. If your account is public, that means anyone can discover your video and use your original audio to create their own Reel. Only friends would see your video if your profile is private, but other users can still create a remix with your Reel and download it as part of their remix. The only way to ensure nobody uses your Reel for remixes is to turn the option off in Settings or to disable it for each video you post.

As TechCrunch notes, this move doesn’t come as a surprise when the TikTok-style videos have quickly become a popular format on both Instagram and Facebook. When he revealed the company’s fourth quarterly earnings report for 2021, Mark Zuckerberg said that Reels is now Meta’s fastest growing content format. Meta chief product officer Chris Cox called Reels a “bright point” for the company, as well, in a recent memo shared with employees warning them about “serious times” ahead due to slowing growth. He also said that one of the projects Meta intends to focus on for the second half of 2022 is monetizing Reels as quickly as possible. 

Apparently, time spent viewing the short-form videos has more than doubled since last year, with 80 percent of that growth coming from Facebook. That’s why the company will go as far as to redesign Instagram’s and Facebook’s home pages to better incorporate the short videos. Turning all video posts into Reels would give the company more content to circulate, which in turn would translate to more time viewing videos on the platform and bigger potential ad earnings for when the format is finally monetized. That said, not all experimental Instagram features make it to wide release, and it remains to be seen whether this one will survive the testing phase.

長期育休を希望した男性に上司が投げつけた言葉があまりに酷過ぎて皆に衝撃『ひどい』『許せない』

遠藤隆史@「働く」取材中 @endo_taka4 男性育休9カ月希望、面談で上司が放った許せない言葉　妻は激怒したasahi.com/articles/ASQ6W… 長期間の育休を希望した男性に、面談に応じた上司は耳を疑うような言葉をいくつも言い放ちます。男性の育休をめぐっては、まだまだ理解がない職場も多いとみられます。こんな現状でいい…

Twitch will make it easier for creators to bring guests onto streams

Twitch has announced a new feature for creators who want to include other streamers and even viewers on their broadcasts. Up to five guests can join a stream through Guest Star, which works on both desktop and mobile. If a viewer wants to take part in the discussion or ask a question, they can raise a virtual hand and the creator or a moderator may invite them on. This seems to work in a similar fashion to Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces.

While the feature is akin to Clubhouse, Twitter Spaces, Spotify Live, Discord Stage Channels et al, Twitch can set itself apart from those services. Guest Star supports live video as well as audio — this is Twitch, after all.

The platform says Guest Star is easy for both newcomers and experienced streamers to use and it works with software like OBS and Twitch Studio. However, streamers won’t need to use a third-party app to host a broadcast with other participants.

Until now, bringing guests on to a broadcast has required a bit of a workaround if creators don’t want to simply stream a Zoom, Skype or Discord call. If they prefer to use custom layouts, overlays and branding, it’s possible to include remote video feeds from Skype or a web app. Guest Star should streamline things.

Streamers and their moderators can swiftly remove guests at any time and for any reason. Guests will need a Twitch account, which means they can be reported for violating the platform’s rules. There are some measures in place to help weed out bad actors before they become a guest. Creators and moderators will be able to look at factors like the age of an account, if it’s in good standing and if the user has verified it with a phone number.

Guest Star seems to build on features like Squad Stream, which allows viewers to watch four livestreams simultaneously on the Twitch app or website and jump between those creators’ chats. The new feature is about bringing people together on the same channel. Creators might use Guest Star for podcasts, call-in advice streams and even game shows.

While Twitch is most commonly associated with gaming, talk-style content has long been on the rise on the platform. Just Chatting has been the most popular category since the third quarter of 2020, according to data from Streamlabs and Stream Hatchet. 

Twitch says that, in the first five months of 2022 (compared with the same period in 2020), hours watched in the Just Chatting category grew 151 percent, while revenue for streamers who create that type of content rose by 169 percent. It suggested Guest Star may encourage more creators to try their hand at talk-focused content.

At first, Guest Star will only be available to a small number of hand-picked streamers who already create talk content so that Twitch can get some feedback before a broader rollout. Twitch plans to make the feature available to all creators this fall.

YouTube introduces new tools to battle comment spam and account imitators

YouTube is enacting more measures in its battle to cut down on comment spam and channel impersonation. Creators now have access to a new setting for comments in YouTube Studio. They’ll be able to select an “increase strictness” option. YouTube says this builds on the “hold potentially inappropriate comments for review” setting and will reduce the number of spam and identity abuse comments. It’s a less strict option than requiring manual review for all comments or switching them off completely.

As of July 29th, channels won’t be able to hide their subscriber counts. YouTube says this is a tactic commonly used by those pretending to be behind larger and more established channels. Impersonators often leave comments on other videos to bring people over to their fake page. For instance, someone who sees a comment left by a user named MrḂeast (with a special character in place of the “B”) might click through to that channel to see it has only 100 subscribers, compared with the genuine MrBeast’s 97.7 million subscribers.

YouTube acknowledged that some creators prefer to hide their subscriber count while they’re building up an audience. However, it says this move will make things safer for everyone.

Speaking of phony channels that use special characters to imitate more prominent creators, that strategy will soon be a little less effective. YouTube says it’s reducing the character set that people can use when updating a channel name. It said that bad actors won’t be able to modify their name to ”¥ouⓉube” or some such after the change.

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ races to its conclusion with a spot-on ‘Aliens’ riff

The following article includes significant spoilers for All Those Who Wander.Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has never been ashamed to tip its hat to the stories it’s riffing upon, some more obviously than others. This week’s episode, All Those Who …

安田純平 on Twitter: “「安田純平の謎」「人質ビジネスではと邪推してしまいます」と書いたWILLは「武装組織でなく人質ビジネスの連中による拘束ではないか、という意味だ」と主張したが、「そんなわけねーだろ（要約）」という判決。賠償金は訴訟費用すら賄えない一… https://t.co/dlXv2Ucnk6”

「安田純平の謎」「人質ビジネスではと邪推してしまいます」と書いたWILLは「武装組織でなく人質ビジネスの連中による拘束ではないか、という意味だ」と主張したが、「そんなわけねーだろ（要約）」という判決。賠償金は訴訟費用すら賄えない一… https://t.co/dlXv2Ucnk6

PS Plus games for July include ‘Crash 4’ and ‘Man of Medan’

Sony has revealed the three games that all PlayStation Plus subscribers can snap up in July. They are Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, Man of Medan and Arcadegeddon — a notable leaker once again got all three games spot on.

Crash Bandicoot 4 arrived in 2020 and was the first new mainline Crash game in 12 years. It was pegged as a direct sequel to the original PlayStation 1 trilogy — meaning that it ignored all the PS2 games. Both the PlayStation 4 and PS5 versions will be available, with the latter supporting features like the DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers and haptic feedback.

Man of Medan is the first title in Supermassive’s Dark Pictures Anthology series. It’s an interactive horror game in which your choices determine whether characters live or die. However, we felt it didn’t hold up as strongly as the studio’s previous game, Until Dawn. Man of Medan is hitting PS Plus just after the arrival of Supermassive’s latest game, The Quarry.

Arcadegeddon, meanwhile, is a multiplayer shooter from Illfonic that has both co-operative and player vs. player modes. You’ll search for loot and unlock abilities as you take on the evil Fun Fun Co. megacorp, which is using an arcade for real-world weapons testing.

This is the first time Sony has refreshed the games on the lowest tier of the new-look PS Plus since it revamped the service. The company said it will continue to offer Essential tier users a couple of games a month that they’ll have access to as long as they remain subscribers. Sony will also update the Extra and Premium lineups in the middle of each month.

Crash 4, Man of Medan and Arcadegeddon will be available to claim on July 5th. Until then, you can still add the current batch of PS Plus Essential titles — God of War (2018), Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl — to your library.

Blizzard intends to buy ‘Spellbreak’ studio Proletariat to speed up ‘WoW’ development

It’s a busy spell for Blizzard, with Diablo Immortal, Overwatch 2 and mobile game Warcraft Arclight Rumble all arriving this year. The studio has another major release lined up in the form of World of Warcraft expansion Dragonflight, which is expected to arrive by the end of 2022. To help get WoW expansions out on time and ensure they meet the bar in terms of quality, Blizzard intends to buy Spellbreak studio Proletariat to bolster its ranks of developers, as GamesBeat reports.

The news comes one day after Proletariat announced it will shut down Spellbreak early next year. The free-to-play game is an intriguing take on the battle royale genre, with players using magical powers instead of guns. The game never took off, though. It had an average player count of 166 on Steam over the last month. Apex Legends, on the other hand, has more than a thousand times as many players at any given time on Steam alone.

More than 100 developers from Proletariat may soon be focused on World of Warcraft, though the studio has been working with Blizzard since last month. The Boston-based studio also plans to expand its team.

WoW general manager John Hight has spoken of the difficulties his team has had in hiring to deliver content updates to players more quickly (the publicturmoil at the studio over the last year might have played a role in that). Bringing Proletariat on board should help.

“A big part of caring for our teams is making sure we have the resources to produce experiences our communities will love while giving our teams space to explore even more creative opportunities within their projects,’ Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Ybarra said. “Proletariat is a perfect fit for supporting Blizzard’s mission in bringing high-quality content to our players more often.”

Activision Blizzard is itself in the process of being bought by Microsoft for $68.7 billion. Given the ongoing labor and workplace culture issues at the company, there’s a bit of irony in Blizzard snapping up a studio called Proletariat.

Correction 6/29/22 5:40pm ET: A previous version of this story stated that Blizzard had acquired Proletariat studios. The sale has not been completed and the copy above has been changed to reflect that.

「もう、変なことは紙でやったらいい」ウェブの〝カオス〟守るには？

近年、国内で閉鎖の知らせが続く「ウェブメディア」。海外の縮小トレンドもあり、「バブルが弾けた」「そもそもバブルなどなかった」など、識者の間でもさまざまな意見が出ています。そんな中、自ら「役に立たない」と宣言する無料娯楽サイト『デイリーポータルZ』は今年、運営開始から20周年を迎えました。 かつてのイ…