Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Threads is testing a simpler way for people to nudge their feed in a specific direction without digging through settings or retraining the algorithm long term. The new feature, called Dear Algo, lets users tell Threads what they want to see more or less of for a short period of time. Instead of relying only on likes, follows, and past behavior, you can now directly ask the app to adjust what shows up in your feed. It works by writing a public post that starts with “Dear Algo,” followed by your request. For instance, “Dear Algo, show me more posts about podcasts,” or “Dear Algo, show me fewer posts about spoilers for Heated Rivalry.” After you post it, Threads adju…

Customer retention is more than a buzzword—it is a proven driver of sustainable growth and profitability. Sounds like common sense? Think again. Customer churn is on the rise. Yet, while many organizations recognize the value of keeping customers, far fewer appreciate the full spectrum of losses that arise when performance is merely “good enough.” The hidden costs of unremarkable customer experience—lost profit margins, missed cross-sell opportunities, shorter customer lifespans, fewer referrals, and reduced purchase volumes—can quietly erode the bottom line. These losses are often multiplied by the ripple effects of customer complaints or service failures, which ex…

Twenty years ago, getting promoted to manager was a major milestone. Today it’s a punishment. That’s according to recent research from LinkedIn. In a survey of more than 10,000 LinkedIn users, nearly 7 in 10 said they would leave their job if they had a bad manager. But only 30% said they want to become a people manager within the next few years. So, why the change? Why doesn’t anyone want to be the boss anymore? We could sum up the answer in seven words: Nobody showed them how to lead effectively. The data backs this up. Global consulting firm West Monroe surveyed 500 managers and found that 66% of those received eight hours or less of manager training. O…

Google wants to give people access to its Gemini AI assistant with the blink of an eye: The company has struck a partnership with eyeglasses makers Warby Parker and Gentle Monster to make AI smart glasses, it announced at its Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View Tuesday. These glasses will be powered by Google’s new Android XR platform, and are expected to be released in 2026 at the earliest. To show what Gemini-powered smart glasses can do, Google has also built a limited number of prototype devices in partnership with Samsung. These glasses use a small display in the right lens to show live translations, directions and similar lightweight assistance. The…

Forget a diamond ring, the latest symbol of commitment now comes in the form of wearable tech. The RAW ring, created by the dating app RAW and Queens Tech, allows couples to track each other’s emotions, both good and bad. Coming as a pair—one for you, one for your partner—the rings track the wearer’s heartbeat, use bio-sensors to track their vitals, and detect voice and emotional cues for changes. Think, a digital mood ring, but for someone else’s emotions. “Keep you and your partner’s hearts beating as one. Feel their emotions, share your vibe, and stay connected in ways that go beyond words,” reads a statement on the RAW website. “Marriage evolves, and so does…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. AI pioneer Illia Polosukhin offers a blockchain-flavored open-source enablement platform Illia Polosukhin, who coinvented the Transformer architecture at Google in 2017, is now launching a new company called Near AI. The company will offer services through a blockchain-powered platform that functions as a secure marketplace for open-source AI models and agents. Polosukhin is a strong advocate for transparent, open-source AI models, which he believes are the best way to promote responsib…

Hopefully you never find yourself left behind by a partner while hiking a mountain or abandoned in the woods. If you do, you might be a victim of an “alpine divorce.” The phrase has gained traction on social media in recent weeks following news of a climber’s guilty verdict after he left his girlfriend behind on a hike, where she froze to death on Austria’s highest mountain. The phrase is said to have originated from the 1893 short story An Alpine Divorce by Robert Barr, in which an unhappy husband plots to kill his wife by pushing her off a mountain during a trip to the Swiss Alps. Across platforms like TikTok and X, women have started sharing their own stori…

In any language, silence sounds just about the same. It carries a thunderous kick, though, when it comes from Duolingo, the world’s most popular language-learning app, and its famously irreverent social media presence. Facing heavy backlash online after unveiling its new AI-first policy, Duolingo went dark over the weekend on the social media channels where it cultivated an enormous following with quirky posts. The company even took down all of its posts on TikTok and Instagram, where it has 6.7 and 4.1 million followers, respectively, after both accounts were flooded with negative feedback. After days of silence, the company on Tuesday posted a bizarre video message …

Are you ready for another 140 days of summer vacation? Disney announced today that the long-awaited reboot of its animated hit Phineas and Ferb will be back on June 5 for the start of a 40-episode run across Disney’s linear and streaming platforms. The action picks up the summer after the show’s original run left off, with the kids a year older but not visibly changed—except for an extra orange stripe on Phineas’s trademark T-shirt. Co-creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh are back at the helm. Originally launched on Disney XD in 2008 (after a 2007 “sneak peek”), the animated show—about two inventive stepbrothers on summer vacation, their pet pl…

A private European aerospace company scrubbed its attempt on Monday to launch the first test flight of its orbital launch vehicle from Norway. Unfavorable winds meant that the Spectrum rocket couldn’t be launched from the island of Andøya in northern Norway, Munich-based Isar Aerospace said. The launch is subject to various factors, including weather and safety. The company said it could also conduct the test flight later in the week. Another date hasn’t yet been set. The 28-meter (91-foot) Spectrum is a two-stage launch vehicle designed for small and medium-size satellites. The company has largely ruled out the possibility of the rocket reaching orbit on its first co…

Lidar has long been considered the gold standard of self-driving technology. Most car companies use the technology, alongside cameras, radar, and AI, to fully assess a vehicles’ environment. Except for one notable exception: Tesla. Elon Musk has always had it out for Lidar, calling it a “a crutch,” “a loser’s technology” and “too expensive.” After experimenting with Lidar in early autonomous driving prototypes, Musk went a different direction. He ditched radar from Tesla’s production models in 2021, against the criteria of his own engineers, opting instead for his camera-based AI “Tesla Vision” system, which relies on cameras and AI alone. This has proven to be one o…

Years ago, I asked my born-organized sister how she managed to keep her place looking so nice all the time. She gave me an odd look and replied, “I put things away when I’m done with them.” I’m reminded of this infuriating conversation whenever I read most introductory budgeting advice. Money experts will assure their audience that creating a successful budget is simple. “Just track your income and spending and make sure the second number is lower than the first,” they say, often with a tone that makes it sound like they’re worried about your ability to tie your own shoes. But most people need to know how to do these supposedly simple things. And just as my siste…

CNBC and its sister networks, including USA, Golf Channel, and E!, are spinning off from their former parent company Comcast NBCUniversal to form a new publicly traded company called Versant. As part of the new company, some of the brands in the portfolio have to rebrand to get rid of NBC’s iconic Peacock mark, CNBC included. CNBC’s new logo, which goes live December 13, might take viewers some time to get used to. The financial news network’s new logo was designed in house to easily match the preexisting visual assets it uses on air. The typography of the mark based is on the network’s font, Gotham, and it shows a triangle cutting into the letter N and float…

Interior designer and stylist Jonny Carmack has a “fruit room” in his Danbury, Connecticut, home. Colorful faux produce bedecks every inch, from the cherry-shaped ceiling fixture to a strawberry side table and a bunch of other juicy gems in decorative forms. He’s part of a trend: Love for fresh fruits and vegetables is showing up not just in the kitchen but in imagery throughout the home. Carmack sees it as fun escapism, and “a cause for conversation and celebration.” Design experts say it also reflects a cultural embrace of sustainability and an upbeat connection to nature. “There’s a certain romance to the farmstand — it speaks to the pastoral lifestyle ever…

The woman behind Instacart’s successful IPO, Fidji Simo, is joining OpenAI’s C-suite. On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Simo’s new role as CEO of Applications. She will report directly to him after transitioning out of her current role at Instacart later this year. “In her new role, Fidji will focus on enabling our “traditional” company functions to scale as we enter a next phase of growth,” Altman said in a blog post. “Fidji brings a rare blend of leadership, product and operational expertise, and genuine commitment to ensuring our technology benefits everyone.” Before joining OpenAI’s executive team, Simo served as a member of its board of direct…

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. That means campaigns about anxiety, burnout, depression, and trauma will pop up in schools, offices, billboards, and magazines across the country. But few of those campaigns will mention a force that fuels all of those conditions—a force so normalized, it hides in plain sight. That force is Car Brain. Car Brain is an affliction that causes people to justify or ignore antisocial behavior that involves an automobile. It’s when someone who respects others in nearly every context suddenly becomes selfish, reckless, or even hostile just because a car has become part of the interaction. Once you start looking, you’ll see it everywhere, …

The end of the year is the perfect time to take stock of where you are, what you’re good at, and what you want to develop in the new year. The job market continues to be intense and competitive, so you’re wise to consider hiring trends and how you can best prepare and set yourself apart. There is one skill that tops the list for getting the job, building your career, and becoming indispensable: resilience. Resilience has many forms. At a general level, resilience is about adaptability, flexibility, and responsiveness to multiple situations. But when you consider it through a few lenses, it brings terrific focus to what you must be wicked good at for the brightes…

In early February, the 22-year-old design brand Areaware announced it will close on May 1 citing tariffs and “mounting pressures on the home goods industry” in a letter posted to its Instagram account. “Every product we’ve made has been an act of optimism—a belief that good design can make our world a little better,” the letter said. “Lately though, our world has been making that difficult for us to do.” It’s been a challenging few months for good design brands. In December, Food52, the parent company of Schoolhouse and Dansk, declared bankruptcy; earlier in February, it was stripped for parts and sold at auction. While Areaware and Food52 don’t share the exact same …

Former employees of OpenAI are asking the top law enforcement officers in California and Delaware to stop the company from shifting control of its artificial intelligence technology from a nonprofit charity to a for-profit business. They’re concerned about what happens if the ChatGPT maker fulfills its ambition to build AI that outperforms humans, but is no longer accountable to its public mission to safeguard that technology from causing grievous harms. “Ultimately, I’m worried about who owns and controls this technology once it’s created,” said Page Hedley, a former policy and ethics adviser at OpenAI, in an interview with the Associated Press. Backed by three Nobel …

Robert Bordone is a negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution expert who founded Harvard Law School’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program as well as the Cambridge Negotiation Institute. He was a professor at Harvard for many years and is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Law School. Dr. Joel Salinas is a behavioral neurologist and scientist. He was formerly a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a clinical associate professor of neurology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He was the founded and was chief medical officer at Isaac Health. What’s the big idea? Instead of seeing conflict as a battle to win or a mess to avoid, disagreem…

When artist Adam Pendleton was growing up in Richmond, Virginia, he started his own newspaper that he delivered to the residents at a nursing home in his town. “I wanted to be a creative person functioning in the world,” he says. “I wanted to be an artist.” Over the years, that inclination took various forms: a t-shirt business (which he now laughs that, as a teen, he saw as a fashion line), script-writing, musical theater, original poetry. “I realize now it was very much about having an idea and manifesting it—that is creativity,” says Pendleton, whose growing body of work has continuously redefined contemporary American painting. “In that way, you’re a perpetual pro…

Ambition is one of the most defining forces in human affairs—a psychological engine that propels individuals beyond the realm of survival into the arena of creation, disruption, and transformation, and significantly predicts educational attainment, career success, job performance, and income. At its core, ambition is the refusal to accept the status quo, the internal pressure to stretch personal limits and societal boundaries. In a way, the best way to understand ambition is as the inability to be satisfied with one’s accomplishments. Ambition fuels leadership by pushing individuals to take responsibility, imagine alternatives, and mobilize others toward a vision. Amb…

Is your green my green? Probably not. What appears as pure green to me will likely look a bit yellowish or blueish to you. This is because visual systems vary from person to person. Moreover, an object’s color may appear differently against different backgrounds or under different lighting. These facts might naturally lead you to think that colors are subjective. That, unlike features such as length and temperature, colors are not objective features. Either nothing has a true color, or colors are relative to observers and their viewing conditions. But perceptual variation has misled you. We are philosophers who study colors, objectivity, and science, and we argue …