Would Instagram really be the same
without the “Like” button? asked
Mariel Padilla in The New York
Times. We may soon find out: The
Facebook-owned, photocentric social
network began testing that change
in Canada this spring and recently
expanded the experiment to six more
countries, hiding the public count of
likes and video views to make the
experience “less competitive, less pres-
surized, and more personal.” Users can
still see how many likes they received
on their own posts, but there won’t
be a public tally to measure your achievement. One category of
Instagram users is exempt from the change, said Cara Waters in
The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia): businesses and adver-
tisers, who pay to promote their products and posts in the Ins-
tagram app. They’ll still have visible likes, a signal to users that
a post is popular and clickworthy. In effect, “the ‘like economy’
becomes a premium product for businesses.”If Instagram does drop like counts, professional influencers will
need to change their tactics, said Megan Graham in CNBC .com.
They’ll have a tougher time convincing companies that they are
worth a sponsorship. “Marketers will still be able to look at an
influencer’s follower count, but that metric doesn’t mean much
in the way of showing how ‘engaged’ a user’s audience is.” Thiscould force influencers to produce higher-
quality content—compelling enough that
it will actually drive viewers to make a
purchase. Brands will rely more on tools
that can “determine whether clicking
from an Instagram post converts to an
actual sale, or whether the consumer ac-
tually goes to buy that product.”Sorry, I’m not buying that Instagram’s
motive for hiding likes is “to protect
their users from vanity metrics,” said
Dakota Shane in Inc. “The move is
clearly meant to increase advertising dol-
lars by killing off the Instagram influencer marketing industry,”
and perhaps to appease advertisers by making content posts
more engaging. It actually makes sound business sense: Insta-
gram doesn’t get a cut from the influencer industry, so it wants
to “entice brands to allocate budget to Instagram ads instead.”Let’s say you give Instagram the benefit of the doubt—it does
seem to be undertaking this test “for a good cause,” said Rae
Witte in The Wall Street Journal. But this could backfire. A
like helps users “determine the quality of a post,” with “the
most photogenic cream rising to the top.” Losing that won’t
solve Insta gram’s problems with cyberbullying and competitive
consumption. But it will make it harder to discover new things,
“removing the heart of the platform.”Social media: Instagram tries dropping the scoreboard
Getty, screenshotDon’t get ripped off on Nextdoor
Nextdoor, an app intended to connect home-
owners and renters to their communities, has
become a favorite platform for scammers, said
Nicole Nguyen in BuzzFeed.com. The service,
which enables “neighbors to chitchat about
everything from lost keys at the local park to
a sassy Bengal cat terrorizing the cul-de-sac’s
pets,” also breeds “a false sense of security.”
Scammers love that it reveals who in the area
might need a particular service—and where
they live—by sharing users’ full names and
addresses by default. One Colorado woman
hired contractors who had been reviewed by
multiple users on Nextdoor. After paying an
$11,800 deposit, however, “she never saw
them again.” Nextdoor’s local feel works to
scammers’ advantage; many users assume that
“because these are people in your immediate
community, they must be trustworthy.”China’s video game surveillance
U.S. video game companies are building tools
for China to track how much time minors
spend online—and kick out those who play
too much, said James Cutchin in the Los
Angeles Times. China is in the midst of video
game addiction panic, and the government
has demanded that game companies developsystems to banish kids who play more than
two hours a day. Riot Games added an “anti-
addiction system” to the Chinese version of its
hit League of Legends to comply with China’s
new rules. But “data privacy advocates say
that for Americans to participate in the cre-
ation of these tools represents the crossing of a
concerning new threshold.” China plans a na-
tional “social credit system,” which will assign
citizens a score incorporating personal habits
such as online behavior—and potentially cut
scores for time spent playing video games.Google’s Pixel 3a notches a win
Google’s Pixel 3a phone is proving to be a hit,
said Nick Statt in TheVerge.com. While the
company does not release sales figures, CEO
Sundar Pichai credited the new smartphone
with helping to buoy the company’s strong
second-quarter earnings, saying that Pixel
sales had doubled from the year before. That’s
significant, given “that Google has had a lot
of trouble selling the Pixel 3,” its precursor.
The Pixel 3a is relatively affordable—starting
at $399—and received reviews comparing it
favorably with other flagship phones without
any major trade-offs. It also benefited from
arriving “at a time with little to no other
major product launches to compete with.”Bytes: What’s new in tech
Sony is developing a pocket-size
air conditioner to keep you cool in
the heat, said Marc Bain in Qz.com.
Called Reon Pocket, the device is
small enough to slide “into the
upper back pocket of a specially
designed T-shirt,” where it is then
controlled with a smartphone app.
One downside: The battery lasts
only about 90 minutes, so the
device is really designed to be used
only while “moving between air-
conditioned or heated areas, such
as during the commute.” Sony is
currently crowdfunding the con-
cept, but it is not the only company
working on “temperature-regulating
clothing.” The French fashion label
Courrèges debuted “coats with
built-in heaters” a few years ago,
and the U.S. Army “is experiment-
ing with conductive fabrics that can
generate heat in extreme cold.”Innovation of the week
20 NEWS Technology
Is a meal better if it gets more Instagram likes?