Smogdos
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • Home
  • US
  • UK
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Technology
  • Entertainment
  • Health
  • Sports
  • Live Stream
PRICING
SUBSCRIBE
  • Home
  • US
  • UK
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Technology
  • Entertainment
  • Health
  • Sports
  • Live Stream
No Result
View All Result
Smogdos
No Result
View All Result
Home Tech

Why We Want Tech Copycats to Fail

admin by admin
February 20, 2021
Reading Time:6min read
0
Why We Want Tech Copycats to Fail

RELATED POSTS

How One State Managed to Actually Write Rules on Facial Recognition

Want to Buy a Hair-Scrunchie Mask? Great. But Forget About That N95.

Amazon Moves From Film Industry’s Margins to the Mainstream


This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. You can sign up here to receive it weekdays.

One of the things I obsess about is whether our current state of technology is immutable.

Are Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple and other tech giants invincible? Will they forever command a big chunk of our attention and money, shape how economies and labor markets operate and influence what people believe? Or is there room for others?

One way to explore these questions is to look at tech copycats. When we do, I see a glimmer of hope.

This tale starts with TikTok. It’s a rare example of an internet property that became huge and wasn’t owned by one of America’s tech stars. It’s owned by … a very large Chinese internet conglomerate called ByteDance. But that still counts as different.

There are plenty of concerns about TikTok, including what it’s doing with people’s personal information.

But TikTok’s popularity shows that it’s still possible for a fresh-faced internet star to break through.

With any success there are inevitably rip-offs. The technology news outlet The Information recently wrote about one of China’s internet superpowers, Tencent, trying and mostly failing to copy Douyin, ByteDance’s version of TikTok in China.

The efforts included Tencent’s widely used WeChat app requiring people to use the company’s Douyin copycat if they wanted to send virtual cash envelopes, a common practice around Lunar New Year. It’s not clear if WeChat’s arm-twisting worked.

Both YouTube and Instagram (owned by Facebook) have introduced their own TikTok-like apps. My colleagues wrote last year about how much they disliked the Instagram version, Reels. It’s hard to tell how Reels is doing, but it certainly hasn’t taken over the internet yet.

But having a second-class product — maybe even a bad one — doesn’t spell doom. A powerful company can make a product a hit through sheer force of will, a willingness to spend money like crazy and repeated exposure to millions of people.

That’s what Slack, the workplace chat app, said Microsoft was trying to do with its Slack-like software. And that’s what Facebook did with its video-and-photo montage “stories” feature, which was copied from Snapchat.

Sometimes copycats in technology succeed big — just look at Microsoft’s Windows, the iPhone or Facebook’s social network. (Also, sometimes the rip-offs are much better than the original.)

But it doesn’t always work. Tencent’s WeChat is an inescapable force on the Chinese internet, but its popularity hasn’t translated into success for the company’s Douyin clone. For now.

We’ve seen before that big leaps forward in technology can bring down industry titans, like the cellphone pioneer Nokia. But boy, it sure feels like the tech giants today are so entrenched, so good at what they do — and, perhaps, skilled at tilting the game to their advantage — that they simply can’t be beaten.

It would be better for all of us if Big Tech wasn’t an absolute and invulnerable force. I’ll see the wobbles of TikTok’s clones as a sign that it’s still possible for Big Tech to fail.


Facebook can’t admit how Facebook works

Facebook and its WhatsApp chat app got unwanted attention when they rolled out a confusing update to a privacy policy. After thinking it over for a few weeks, the companies are still getting it wrong.

Quick catch up: There was a mini global freakout last month when WhatsApp started notifying people about what appeared to be new steps that forced WhatsApp users to hand over their personal data to Facebook, which owns the app.

WhatsApp didn’t actually change very much, but its communications were awful. And it was a moment for people to consider something they perhaps had not before: Facebook already collects a lot of information from what people do on WhatsApp.

In response to the drama, Facebook and WhatsApp said they would pause and think over people’s criticisms. On Thursday, WhatsApp responded. It was better but still not quite right.

WhatsApp keeps saying what it doesn’t do with people’s personal information — that messages are scrambled so that no one can peer at the contents, and that WhatsApp doesn’t share your phone number with businesses. But WhatsApp still isn’t saying what it does do with people’s personal information.

The plain talk is that Facebook gathers information when people use non-Facebook apps on their phones. The company harvests people’s physical location even when they’re not using Facebook. It keeps track of people you unfriended, all of the websites you visit and your contacts. Many of us understand this, even if we don’t want to acknowledge all of the gory details.

Most of Facebook’s data harvesting applies to WhatsApp, too, although Facebook says that WhatsApp contacts aren’t shared with Facebook.

So why can’t WhatsApp just say all of this?

Here is the fundamental problem, I think: People at Facebook are unwilling to be honest about how Facebook works.

Support authors and subscribe to content

This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.

Login if you have purchased

Subscribe

Gain access to all our Premium contents.
More than 100+ articles.
Subscribe Now

Buy Article

Unlock this article and gain permanent access to read it.
Unlock Now
ShareTweetPin
admin

admin

Related Posts

How One State Managed to Actually Write Rules on Facial Recognition
Tech

How One State Managed to Actually Write Rules on Facial Recognition

February 27, 2021
Want to Buy a Hair-Scrunchie Mask? Great. But Forget About That N95.
Tech

Want to Buy a Hair-Scrunchie Mask? Great. But Forget About That N95.

February 26, 2021
Amazon Moves From Film Industry’s Margins to the Mainstream
Tech

Amazon Moves From Film Industry’s Margins to the Mainstream

February 26, 2021
Facebook Takes a Side, Barring Myanmar Military After Coup
Tech

Facebook Takes a Side, Barring Myanmar Military After Coup

February 26, 2021
What Kind of Plane Am I Flying On?
Tech

What Kind of Plane Am I Flying On?

February 26, 2021
A Critic of Technology Turns Her Gaze Inward
Tech

A Critic of Technology Turns Her Gaze Inward

February 26, 2021
Next Post
Where Biden’s Virus Plan Stands

Where Biden’s Virus Plan Stands

Delays Turn Canada’s Covid Vaccination Optimism Into Anxiety

Delays Turn Canada’s Covid Vaccination Optimism Into Anxiety

Recommended Stories

Democrats Beat Trump in 2020. Now They’re Asking: What Went Wrong?

Democrats Beat Trump in 2020. Now They’re Asking: What Went Wrong?

February 20, 2021
Give Biden a Chance? On Covid Aid, Some Trump Voters Just Might

Give Biden a Chance? On Covid Aid, Some Trump Voters Just Might

February 25, 2021
Katherine Tai Testifies Before the Senate Finance Committee

Katherine Tai Testifies Before the Senate Finance Committee

February 25, 2021

Popular Stories

  • ‘SNL’ tries to pass off anti-Israel hate as humor

    ‘SNL’ tries to pass off anti-Israel hate as humor

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Senate Confirms Linda Thomas-Greenfield AS Biden’s Ambassador to the U.N.

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Watch Full Video: Jerome Powell Testifies on the Economy

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Democrats’ open-borders ideology hurts migrants —and nation

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Australia goes ahead with news content law despite Facebook blackout

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
Smogdos

We bring you the best Premium WordPress Themes that perfect for news, magazine, personal blog, etc. Visit our landing page to see all features & demos.

LEARN MORE »

Recent Posts

  • How One State Managed to Actually Write Rules on Facial Recognition
  • Unity Proves Elusive in Democrats’ Fight for $15
  • CPAC Crowd Cheers Josh Hawley’s Vote Against Election Results

Categories

  • Business
  • Culture
  • Economy
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Opinion
  • Politics
  • Tech
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • World

© 2021 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • US
  • UK
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Technology
  • Entertainment
  • Health
  • Sports
  • Live Stream

© 2021 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Create New Account!

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
Are you sure want to unlock this post?
Unlock left : 0
Are you sure want to cancel subscription?