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While American workers face “forever layoffs” and struggle to find work in today’s tumultuous job market, some are reframing this era of unemployment and finding a silver lining in their personal economic meltdowns. “Laid off in June and the job market is so bad I decided to have a funemployed summer,” one TikTok creator posted earlier this year. Another wrote: “a weekday as a funemployed millennial.” In the video they wake up at 11 a.m. and scroll TikTok for an hour; after breakfast at 1 p.m., they journal, read, think about life, hit the gym, and then call it a day. Some funemployed were laid off. Some quit, lured by voluntary buyout programs. Some simply crave a career break or are in-between jobs. “I got laid off four months ago, y’all wanna know what I learned,” one TikTok creator posted. “Life goes on.” Instead of spending their days poring over job listings or firing out résumés, they’re embracing the time off and using it to travel, pursue a passion project, or simply rest. (At least until the severance pay runs out.) As workers are currently in the thick of end-of-year layoff season, more of them may well find themselves in a funemployment era of their own. Especially as layoff announcements now surpassed 1.1 million this year, the most since 2020 pandemic, consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported Thursday. The concept of a gap year, or a sabbatical, has been around for years, and even the label funemployement is nothing new: Urban Dictionary defines funemployed as “The condition of a person who takes advantage of being out of a job to have the time of their life. I spent all day Tuesday at the pool; funemployment rocks!” Also, when it comes to younger generations, work is less central to their lives and sense of self. Studies have shown that across the board employees are more disengaged than ever. Many are using the extra free time to help pursue passions they may not otherwise have time for, or create social media content to bring in some extra funds. Besides, humor is Gen Z’s go-to defense mechanism. “Question: how can I stay funemployed (from a financial standpoint) forever,” one TikTok creator posted earlier this year. “I swear I’m hardworking but even the thought of going back to a traditional in-office 9-5 starts to suck the soul out of me.” A period of unemployment, while it might hurt financially, is no longer seen as the moral failing it used to be. Résumé gaps no longer carry the same stigma and people can make extra cash through side hustles or gig work while they figure out their next move. It’s worth noting, those posting about funemployment are often young and single, unburdened by the costs of children or a mortgage. Of course, if you’re buoyed by savings, severance pay, or have parents to help you out, you might have the luxury of not having to rush into another job for the sake of a paycheck. The entry-level job market is also the toughest it’s been in years, with only 30% of 2025 graduates finding jobs in their fields. Considering more than 1 in 4 workers without jobs have been unemployed for at least half a year, might as well try to have some fun in the meantime. (Until the mental gymnastics kick in, anyway.) View the full article

The Cold War lasted 45 agonizing years. Daily life in the Soviet Union was a mixture of dread and horror—children taught to report their parents’ whispered doubts, families queuing for hours for bread, dissidents vanishing in the night. November 8, 1989, was just another day of knowing World War III might pop off at any time. But on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. No tanks. No gun battles. No sabotage. Just a peaceful, surreal collapse. The empire fell both slowly and suddenly. Gen Xers and boomers remember the disorienting feeling of watching the impossible happen on evening news broadcasts. With the benefit of hindsight and declassified records now available, we know life under Soviet rule was far worse than Cold War movies or propaganda posters ever revealed. Millions suffered in silence, unable to ask for help because everyone was incentivized to spy on their neighbors. And then, out of nowhere, Germans from east and west Berlin were blaring American rock music from boom boxes, laughing, dancing, and spray-painting graffiti. Strangers took turns smashing apart the physical barrier between despair and hope with whatever they could find—hammers, pickaxes, or bare hands. “Spontaneous acts of high-spirited foolishness,” to quote Sky News. “Utter disbelief and glee.” The lesson history keeps teaching us Just because current circumstances are miserable doesn’t mean they can’t turn around. When you study history, you can’t help but be overwhelmed by how often things get better in the end—and how quickly the transformation can happen once it begins. Cynicism can be tempting for urbanism reformers. They desperately want to break free of status quo regulations and processes that create an antihuman built environment, but it seems hopeless. And yes, the current situation for most Americans is harmful: Anxiety and depression from isolation. Loneliness from neighborhoods designed to keep people apart. Chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancers. Air pollution and noise pollution. Traffic crashes as a leading cause of death. It feels like things have always been this way and always will be. Lack of pedestrian infrastructure, unreliable transit service, subsidized sprawl, ever-expanding arterials—it’s exhausting. Focusing only on the negative without exploring positive outcomes is how cynicism creeps in. “They’re never going to change, because they don’t care about us.” (Whoever “they” happens to be for any given topic—city council, planners, engineers, developers, NIMBYs.) Cynic (noun): a faultfinding critic who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest Cynicism feels like realism, but it’s actually a form of blindness. It prevents you from seeing the change agents working in the background, the small victories accumulating, the institutional momentum slowly, imperceptibly shifting—until suddenly, the wall comes down. The walls will come down The internet is full of inspiring examples of institutional reform, from massive governments to pocket neighborhoods. Change agents work quietly in the background for years, and then suddenly . . . liberation. Just like world history lessons, you can’t hold onto cynicism if you allow yourself to learn about before-and-after stories related to the built environment. There’s too much evidence of reform, too many walls already crumbling, for anyone to hang their head in gloom about the future of planning and design. The people dancing on the Berlin Wall in 1989 didn’t bring it down alone. They were the visible celebration of decades of invisible work—dissidents who wrote forbidden letters, families who maintained hope, officials who made small concessions that accumulated into structural weakness, and a few rogue journalists who told the truth despite the consequences. You might be one of those invisible workers right now. The person who shows up to planning meetings, who writes letters, who builds tactical urbanism projects, who votes for better policy, or who simply talks to friends about what’s possible. The wall you’re pushing against might not fall tomorrow. But if history teaches us anything, it’s that things that seem permanent can collapse with stunning speed once enough pressure accumulates. What feels impossible on a Wednesday becomes reality by Thursday. Things get better in the end. View the full article

Some days, starting feels effortless. A clear challenge or opportunity presents itself, an idea crystallizes, and then contracts into a single coherent thought. Today, frankly? That’s not happening. I’m staring at a pristine white canvas while the cursor mocks me. That uncomfortable space—the blinking cursor, the first messy draft, the false starts—isn’t a nuisance. It’s where creativity lives. Today, the temptation is to skip past all that. With AI, you don’t even need to know where you’re going. The bot can map it out, hand you something good enough. But what does good enough mean if you didn’t wrestle with the idea yourself? A recent MIT Media Lab study, Your Brain on ChatGPT, found that people who wrote without AI showed the strongest and most widespread brain activity, tied to creativity and memory. Essays produced with LLMs, by contrast, were described as flatter and more forgettable. The researchers warn that skipping the messy part of creation may create “cognitive debt”—you get an output, but you don’t actually grow. How to avoid this? Create, restrain, and edit the hell out of where you’ve been. Create: Start Messy, Start Anyway Starting anything new, even if you’ve done it a million times, is one of the great joys of the creative world. Sure, I could fill a blank canvas (or deck, or comp) with tried-and-true things we know work, but the beauty of creativity is that the first version is never, never, the last version. We have to start somewhere so we have something to improve. I see creatives regularly jump right into making slides. Creating templates and parameters to work with that map out all the “must have” components of a complete idea. But when you’re just starting out you don’t need completely connected dots, just a gathering of interesting things that could become the idea. I personally like to read the brief and try to let it go, but keep a literal blank sheet of paper in front of me for the day or a new note on my phone. I jot down the sparks and weird things I come across during the day and keep adding to it while going about my life. In the collection stage it’s about volume and seeing where the energy of ideating takes you. Restrain: Creativity Thrives Within Limits Think of a tight budget like a limited palette. Only have $500? You’ll approach the recycled cardboard canvas way differently than you’ll approach that 10-foot primed beauty with endless oils on hand. Only have two days? You’ll make different choices than if you had two months. No designer available? Better figure out how to do it with words. Great restraint is only going to get harder with so much immediate action at our fingertips. But those who can hold back—who know how to simplify—will reach simple, compelling, and worthwhile ideas faster. Amazon is known for having their teams create fake press releases instead of pitches to help contextualize the details of an idea. A great exercise later in the process when you need to describe what you’re looking to achieve. Lately, I’ve had our teams test how much an idea can scale by writing it up in different voices. How would your favorite podcast host take and run with the idea? Does it still work and how does the tool of only audio change what you have to say? Good marketers shouldn’t fear constraints. Use them strategically. Whether it’s a tighter budget, a shorter timeline, or a smaller format, guardrails force creativity and result in sharper, more memorable work. Edit: The Discipline That Makes Ideas Great Good editing is another great skill of this new age: the ability to cut, to know what’s worth amplifying, and to decide what actually makes the main feed. But editing is harder in an AI-powered world. Like the dopamine loop of social media, LLMs can make every idea feel validated: Here’s your idea! You’re brilliant! The client just doesn’t get it! False confidence is dangerous. The only way to become a strong editor is to put in the work: writing, failing, and listening. Taking feedback not from machines, but from mentors, peers, and audiences. I learned how to develop good ideas by generating a lot of bad ones—and killing most of them. Editing is leadership. Brands and agencies need to create a culture where teams aren’t just encouraged to generate but also to refine. Build space for young creatives to dream wildly, then guide them through the discipline of cutting back to the ideas that truly deserve to live. I got better at editing by getting off the computer and having the conversation with someone else far away from the work and without the material in front of me. What remains? What must be said in a conversation to have it all make sense. If you have it, it’s easy to see what stays. If you find it confusing to even share over conversation the work needs more refinement, and maybe an edit overhaul. I believe the creative work that stands out will be anything that resists skipping to “good enough.” It’ll embrace the blank canvas, lean into the discomfort, and edit ruthlessly until what’s left is not just efficient, but meaningful. View the full article

Lurking on sites like LinkedIn and Indeed, or among your incoming text messages and emails, lies yet another disappointment to dodge in the already lacking job market: fake recruiters. Posing as representatives from top companies, they’ll contact you out of the blue, offering a job so tempting, that 40% of targets ignore the warning signs and move forward with the “interview.” More than half of them, 51%, end up being scammed to give up personal data or money. Those findings came from a survey of more than 1,200 U.S. job seekers published in October by Password Manager. “The prevalence of fake recruiters came to my attention several years ago,” says Gunnar Kallstrom, the cybersecurity expert who conducted survey for the company, which reviews password manager apps. “Since then, the number of fake recruiters has been on the rise . . . posing as recruiters for well-known companies.” Per the survey, those companies include Amazon, Google, FedEx, UPS, Walmart, Apple, and “Facebook” (identified that way instead of by Meta in the survey), in that order of frequency. These scams pose real risks for the job seekers who fall for them. Fake recruiters steal Social Security numbers, bank information, and passwords in a variety of ways, some sneakier, or more sophisticated, than others. The Better Business Bureau’s 2024 Scam Risk Tracker Report puts the median dollar loss at $1,500 for victims—no small sum, especially considering that these people are likely out of work. Not only do they result in material losses; they also put a serious dent in morale for those on the employment hunt. More than half of Password Manager survey respondents said they’re now “less trusting of job opportunities” and “find the process more stressful”—40% say they’ve even let legitimate posts pass them by, too concerned that they’re being tricked again. The trend is a nuisance at best; an active threat at worst. Still, false job recruiters have many tells that job seekers can use to spot them. Enterprises, too, have become increasingly aware of these scammers’ tactics. Representatives from some of the companies that fake recruiters most frequently impersonate told Fast Company exactly what job seekers should watch for to avoid falling victim to these insidious hiring scams. What is the MO of false recruiters? Generally, fake recruiters “operate exactly like a social engineering campaign,” says Kallstrom, “in which their MO is to create a sense of urgency, legitimacy, and promise of reward for their victims.” Those surprise text messages you receive saying your resume caught a recruiter’s eye, but the post they’re hiring for needs to be filled ASAP? Don’t give it a second look. “We simply do not” do anything to “create an undue sense of urgency,” says Brian Ong, vice president of recruiting at Google. He’s heard from Google job candidates and employees about people falsely posing as members of the company’s recruiting team, sending direct messages and emails even to those who haven’t previously applied for jobs at Google. They’ll use emails or websites, Ong adds, that look like they belong to Google, often using the company’s logo. “We’ve also seen situations where these scams are using our name and brand to ask for money or an immediate in-person interview,” says Ong, “Both of which are misrepresentative of our hiring process.” Amazon, meanwhile, has noticed customers reporting an “increase in scammers pretending to be Amazon recruiters in September and October 2025,” says Scott Knapp, the company’s vice president of worldwide buyer risk prevention. These “recruiters” will ask for information like SSNs, bank information, or Amazon account details—all information real recruiters for the company wouldn’t solicit. At Target, No. 9 on Password Manager’s list of most-impersonated companies, the scams tend to focus on “secret shopper” opportunities, per the company’s website. Via emails with subject lines like “job offer” or “influencer opportunities,” scammers will offer free products or cash in exchange for recipients buying items to review online, or for purchasing gift cards and sharing the cards’ information with the false Target reps. Tactics vary based on the type of company scammers are impersonating, adapting to “whatever feels ‘normal’ for that brand,” Kallstrom says. FedEx’s fake delivery job offers will arrive via text: “Urgent hiring need—no interview required,” Kallstrom says, a likely enough assertion since delivery companies tend to bring on seasonal employees for busy times, like holidays, without asking for extensive interviews or experience. For Meta, on the other hand, “since they are a tech company, there may be a fake HR portal, software skills assessments, and fake interviews,” adds Kallstrom, who describes tech company hiring scams as more sophisticated. They may entail full-on skills tests for software engineers that include coding challenges, through which scammers end up downloading malware onto the coder’s computer. The high salaries these fake recruiters offer may also cause applicants to “let their guard down,” Kallstrom says, “because they are enticed by the money.” Across the board, these companies are chosen by scammers because of their name recognition, says Kallstrom: “They make great bait for a potential unsuspecting victim.” How do you spot a recruiter impersonator? “Any request for personal information is likely a sign of a scam,” Google’s Ong says, adding that candidates who’ve applied to Google jobs have already shared information like email addresses and phone numbers. Real recruiters shouldn’t be asking for those—especially not alongside an invitation to a Google Meet or link to a login page where users need to input that information to sign in. Scammer tells will also appear in their own email addresses. Ong says he and his colleagues have seen fake recruiters with “incomplete websites or misspelled emails” along with outreach “from people who do not have Google in their title or email.” Misspellings, poor grammar, and inconsistencies in general could indicate an impersonator. Emails or websites replete with stock photos, too, should warrant a side-eye. As obvious as it may sound, any job opportunity that comes with an ask for payment should be avoided—even if it’s indirect payment, like requesting you purchase a gift card. “Amazon will never ask you to provide payment information, including gift cards (or ‘verification cards,’ as some scammers call them) for products or services,” says Knapp. Ultimately, if you’re unsure whether a job opportunity is a scam, check the company’s website. Companies tend to list their job openings online. Both Google and Amazon representatives point to their companies’ online job boards, where those who’ve received offers to apply for jobs can cross-check that those posts indeed appear on their websites. Job seekers can also do due diligence on the alleged recruiters doing outreach. “Verify the contact by checking the email addresses,” Ong says, “looking up the person online, such as on LinkedIn. And if something does seem suspicious, flag it to the outlet where it was received.” What to do if you’ve been targeted? The first step is to report it. “The more consumers report scams to us, the better our tools get at identifying bad actors so that we can take action against them and protect consumers,” says Knapp, pointing out Amazon’s scams help page where those targeted can report. The company works with consumer groups like the National Cybersecurity Alliance and the Better Business Bureau to create “awareness campaigns” about the latest, most common scams. Amazon also partners with law enforcement “across the globe,” Knapp adds, to hold scammers accountable, having “initiated takedowns of more than 55,000 phishing websites and 12,000 phone numbers being used as part of impersonation schemes” in 2024. A representative from Target says that cybersecurity experts from the company’s Cyber Fusion Center “use advanced tools and training to prevent and address potential threats.” That includes tools developed by the company as part of an open source initiative on GitHub, like one that scans files, such as emails, to detect possible malicious activity. “Anyone can get baited on social media” or “get a text about a job opportunity that’s too good to be true,” says Knapp. “If something seems too good to be true, it likely is an impersonation scam.” View the full article

We talk about time at work as if it’s a fixed resource: something outside of us and something we either “manage well” or “never have enough of.” People genuinely believe the clock is the problem. But the more you look at how the brain processes experience, the less true this becomes. People don’t feel pressured because they have too many tasks. They feel pressured because their brain is constructing time in a way that makes everything feel urgent or impossible to catch up with. Modern neuroscience has been pointing to this for a while. Our experience of time—what feels fast, slow, overwhelming, or “not enough”—is not a reading from an internal stopwatch. It’s a story the brain builds using prediction, memory, emotional state, and identity. In other words: your brain doesn’t observe time. Your brain generates it. Or we can say it another way. The brain predicts time, not measures it. Instead of tracking time objectively, the brain uses patterns and context to estimate how long things take. It relies on memory and sensory information to create a timeline that makes sense. But the problem is that those internal estimates shift dramatically depending on what’s happening inside us. When your system is stable and regulated, your internal sense of time widens. You can think clearly, make decisions from the part of your brain built for problem-solving, and move through your day without constantly feeling behind. In contrast, when you’re stressed or mentally overloaded, the brain speeds everything up. Time “contracts” and you lose the feeling of agency. Minutes disappear and even simple tasks feel rushed. The external calendar hasn’t changed, yet your internal clock has. Stress and emotion distort the experience of time Under stress, the brain becomes hyper-focused on prediction: What might go wrong? What am I missing? What did I forget? What’s next? This pulls attention away from continuous processing and toward threat monitoring, making time feel fragmented and chaotic. Emotion does something similar. When you’re anxious, your internal timeline becomes jumpy and inconsistent. On the other hand, when you’re burdened by unresolved emotional patterns or past loops, the present feels compressed and the future feels far away. This is exactly why whole months can feel like they passed in a blur—and yet individual days felt strangely heavy or stretched. We experience time not as it is, but as our internal state shapes it. Identity plays a bigger role than people think Your identity—who you believe you are right now, and who you believe you should already be—has a direct impact on your sense of time. When there’s a big gap between your current self and the self you think you “should” have become by now, the brain interprets this as lateness. People living with a strained identity often feel they’re constantly running behind, even on days where their workload is reasonable. It creates a quiet pressure underneath everything they do. It is important to acknowledge that this is not laziness or lack of discipline, but a distorted time experience shaped by identity tension. Why two people with the same schedule feel time differently Every leader has seen this but can’t always explain it: two employees with the same deadlines, same workload and even the same tools, yet one remains steady and the other is overwhelmed. From the outside, they look identical, yet from the inside, they’re living in completely different time worlds. One person’s nervous system is regulated enough to let their brain track time coherently. The other is in chronic predictive overdrive, experiencing time as something slippery and unforgiving. Attention shapes the texture of time There’s a reason deep work feels slow and spacious, while days full of interruptions vanish in an instant. That’s because attention gives the brain enough information to build a rich, continuous timeline. Fragmentation does the opposite. When your attention is scattered, time becomes thin. It loses its structure and feels shorter. This isn’t just unpleasant. But it also changes how people remember their workday, how they evaluate their progress, and how capable they feel. When companies unintentionally design days full of micro-interruptions, they are not only lowering productivity—they are altering employees’ subjective experience of time. And people make very different decisions when they feel like time is disappearing. What this means for modern work If time pressure and overwhelm come from internal time distortion rather than external time scarcity, then our conversations about productivity need to shift dramatically. And this doesn’t refer to “better time management.” It is about reducing the internal states that warp how people experience time. Leaders can influence this more than they think by using the following strategies: 1) Reduce unnecessary chronic stressors to keep time perception from becoming distorted beyond usefulness. 2) Protect uninterrupted focus windows as the foundation for coherent time experience. 3) Be intentional with urgency: Constant urgency rewires the brain to live in a compressed and reactive timeline. 4) Offer clear, grounded futures: a stable sense of “where I’m going” helps people feel anchored, instead of feeling constantly behind. The real work is not to fit more tasks into a fixed number of hours, but to help people live in an internal timeline that isn’t distorted by stress and identity pressure. Clock time will always move at the same pace. But the time that determines burnout, clarity, performance, and decision-making is the time your brain is constructing from the inside. Understanding that difference changes everything. View the full article

Move to outvote Hungary this week would indefinitely immobilise Moscow’s sovereign assetsView the full article

Opponents of proposal to increase cap to €10,000 say it would reward tax evaders and illegal businessView the full article

Todd Combs rose from a Florida state university to Berkshire Hathaway before taking the helm of a new $10bn security fundView the full article

The US is pulling in vast amounts of personal information to accelerate its drive to deport 1mn people this yearView the full article

Conservatives returned funds in July from private German bank given ‘in good faith’View the full article

Wave of M&A fuels rally as big pharma groups hunt for blockbusters ahead of patent cliffView the full article

Companies linked to financier owe property moguls £130mn for mortgage on Leconfield HouseView the full article

Chamber of commerce warns that fall of tightly managed Chinese currency risks prompting trade retaliationView the full article

US president says ‘prices are coming down tremendously’ in campaign-style swing through electoral battlegroundView the full article

When managing social media, choosing the right posting app can greatly improve your strategy. Several top contenders offer distinct features customized to various needs. For instance, SocialBee shines in content curation, whereas Pallyy is ideal for Instagram’s visual layout. Other options like Sendible and Metricool provide advanced analytics, ensuring you track performance effectively. Each app comes with its own strengths, so comprehending their unique offerings is essential for making an informed choice. Which one will boost your social media game? Key Takeaways SocialBee offers unique content curation and AI-driven strategy generation, starting at $29/month with a 14-day free trial. Pallyy specializes in visual content scheduling for Instagram and TikTok, with a generous free plan for up to 15 scheduled posts monthly. Sendible is great for agencies, providing scalable scheduling, content creation integrations, and multiple client dashboards for efficient management. Metricool features a drag-and-drop planner and built-in analytics, with a free plan allowing up to 50 posts, ideal for budget users. Agorapulse combines advanced scheduling, a unified inbox for engagement management, and robust analytics, starting with a basic free plan. SocialBee If you’re looking for a reliable social media scheduling tool, SocialBee might be the right fit for you. This platform is highly recommended among social media automation tools because of its formidable content curation and publishing features, supporting major networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. SocialBee offers unique functionalities, such as Content Categories for organized post management and an AI copilot for generating effective social media strategies. Moreover, the post variant feature allows for diverse content presentation. Pricing starts at $29/month, with a 14-day free trial available and a 16% discount for yearly sign-ups. Although it stands out in scheduling and content management, it lacks social listening features, making it less extensive than some best social media posting apps. Pallyy Pallyy stands out as an ideal tool for scheduling visual content, particularly on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. This social media management company offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop scheduling workflow that simplifies content planning. With its Feed Planner, you can maintain a visually appealing Instagram aesthetic, as it allows for easy media uploads and visual organization. Pallyy likewise features a unified social inbox, making it easier to manage interactions across different channels and enhancing user engagement. For individual content creators, the generous free plan includes one social set with up to 15 scheduled posts per month. If you need more advanced features, premium plans start at $25 per month, offering templates, media storage, and an analytics suite to track performance. Sendible Sendible is a scalable social media scheduling tool perfect for both agencies and individuals, making it easy to manage multiple clients and campaigns. With customizable content scheduling, you can tailor your posts to fit your brand and audience as you automate your posting to maintain a steady online presence. Plus, its integrations with platforms like Canva and Pexels streamline content creation, enhancing your overall social media strategy. Scalable for Agencies When managing multiple clients, scalability becomes a crucial aspect of any social media strategy. Sendible shines in this area, making it an ideal choice for a social media management company for small business. With its ability to handle multiple client dashboards and social media accounts from a single platform, you’ll find it highly efficient. The integration with tools for social media managers like Canva and Pexels simplifies content creation, catering to diverse client needs. Furthermore, Sendible’s customizable posts and visual campaign overview streamline your scheduling process. The platform likewise offers social listening and reporting features, allowing you to effectively track performance metrics for your clients. With pricing starting at $29/month and a 14-day free trial, you can easily evaluate its capabilities. Customizable Content Scheduling Customizable content scheduling is a potent feature that improves your ability to engage with audiences across various social media platforms. With Sendible, you can create customized posting schedules for each network, ensuring you post at ideal times for maximum engagement. The platform’s Smart Queues automate social media posting by scheduling posts based on your defined criteria, enhancing visibility and interaction. You can customize messages to fit each platform’s audience, ensuring your content resonates with different users. Furthermore, Sendible provides a content calendar view, visually organizing your scheduled posts for better management. It integrates with various content sources, including RSS feeds and cloud storage, allowing seamless content curation, making it an invaluable tool for your social media management business. Metricool Metricool is a versatile social media posting app that supports a variety of platforms, enabling you to schedule posts on networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn from a single dashboard. It simplifies small business social media management with its drag-and-drop planner, allowing easy scheduling and batch posting. You can start with the free plan, which lets you schedule up to 50 posts, perfect for those on a budget. Moreover, Metricool provides built-in analytics to track post performance and audience engagement, aiding social media automation. It even includes a link shortener and an AI caption writer to improve your content creation. Feature Description Benefit Drag-and-Drop Planner Easy scheduling for multiple posts Streamlined content management Built-in Analytics Track post performance and engagement Informed decision-making Link Shortener Shorten URLs for cleaner posts Improved post effectiveness Free Plan Schedule up to 50 posts Accessible for small businesses AI Caption Writer Generate engaging captions automatically Enhanced content quality Publer Publer stands out with its unlimited scheduling feature on all paid plans, making it perfect for users who regularly manage numerous posts across different social media platforms. You can create and schedule posts individually or in bulk, as the platform likewise suggests ideal posting times based on audience activity. With plans starting at $12 per month and a 14-day free trial, Publer provides an affordable solution for both individuals and businesses looking to improve their social media strategies. Key Features Overview In relation to effective social media management, Publer stands out with its robust set of features designed to streamline your posting process. One of Publer’s key advantages is unlimited scheduling available on all paid plans, allowing you to create and schedule posts individually or in bulk. The platform furthermore suggests the best times to post, enhancing engagement based on your audience’s activity. In addition, you can recycle content automatically, ensuring that high-performing posts are reposted at ideal intervals to maximize reach. Publer supports various social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, making it a versatile social media application for multi-channel marketing. Plus, new users can explore all features with a 14-day free trial before committing. Pricing Plans Breakdown For those looking to optimize their social media management, comprehension of Publer’s pricing plans is important. This social media app offers a free plan that allows you to schedule unlimited posts across all platforms, making it ideal for individuals and small businesses. If you need more advanced features, paid plans start at $12/month and include bulk post creation, suggested best times to post, and content recycling. Plus, you can try any paid plan with a 14-day free trial to assess its capabilities. Publer provides multiple tiered pricing options, catering to various needs, ensuring affordability for users who want to utilize one of the best social media reporting tools to manage their online presence effectively. User Experience Insights How does the user experience with Publer improve social media management? Publer improves your workflow with its user-friendly interface, allowing you to navigate and manage multiple accounts efficiently. With unlimited scheduling on all paid plans, you can create and schedule individual or bulk posts without limitations, making it one of the best social apps for social automation. The platform likewise analyzes your engagement patterns to suggest ideal posting times, ensuring better reach. Plus, the content recycling feature lets you automatically repurpose high-performing posts, maintaining audience interaction without constant content creation. You can even try Publer’s free plan, which requires no credit card and supports up to five social accounts, giving you a risk-free opportunity to explore its capabilities. Agorapulse Agorapulse stands out as a thorough social media management tool that improves collaboration among teams. With its unified inbox, you can manage comments, messages, and mentions across multiple platforms in one place, simplifying your workflow. The advanced scheduling capabilities let you automate post publishing and rescheduling, whereas the visual content calendar improves your planning process. Furthermore, Agorapulse offers robust analytics and reporting features, allowing you to track post performance, audience engagement, and social media ROI using insightful data. Its user-friendly interface and effective social listening features help you monitor brand mentions and competitor activities. For those seeking social media marketing services near me, Agorapulse provides a basic free plan, with paid options starting at $79/month for businesses and agencies managing multiple clients. Buffer Buffer is a highly regarded social media scheduling tool that simplifies managing multiple accounts across various platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. With its user-friendly interface, you can easily handle your automated social media account. Buffer offers a free plan for one user, three accounts, and up to ten queued posts per profile, whereas premium plans start at $15/month, giving you access to advanced features. Feature Details Free Plan 1 user, 3 accounts, 10 posts Analytics Engagement tracking AI Tools Idea generation and drafting Buffer furthermore integrates with Zapier, enhancing your experience with AI tools for social media, streamlining workflows, and optimizing your content sharing processes. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Best App for Social Media Posts? Choosing the best app for social media posts depends on your needs. For robust content scheduling and curation, consider SocialBee or Sendible, both offering user-friendly interfaces and integration options. If you focus on visual content, Pallyy provides an intuitive drag-and-drop feature. Later is excellent for Instagram planning, whereas Buffer surpasses in simplicity for managing multiple accounts. Evaluate pricing and features like free trials to find the right fit for your social media strategy. What Is the Top 10 Social Media Apps? When considering the top 10 social media apps, you’ll find popular options like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, each offering unique features. LinkedIn is crucial for professionals, whereas TikTok caters to a younger audience with engaging video content. Pinterest focuses on visual inspiration, and Reddit nurtures community discussions. Furthermore, platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram provide messaging services. Each app serves different purposes, so evaluate your needs to determine which ones suit you best. Is There an App That Can Post to All Social Media at Once? Yes, there are apps that let you post to all your social media accounts simultaneously. These tools typically offer features like scheduling and content management from a single interface, which saves you time. You can customize posts for each platform, ensuring they meet specific requirements for ideal engagement. Apps like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Agorapulse are popular choices that provide these functionalities, making it easier for you to maintain an active online presence. Is There an App That Controls All Social Media? You won’t find a single app that controls all social media platforms seamlessly. Nonetheless, several tools can manage multiple accounts from one dashboard. Apps like Hootsuite and Buffer allow you to schedule posts, monitor engagement, and analyze performance. As they integrate with major networks like Facebook and Twitter, features vary. It’s crucial to assess your specific needs against the capabilities of each tool to find the best fit for your social media management. Conclusion In conclusion, selecting the right social media posting app can greatly improve your online presence and engagement. Each of the seven apps—SocialBee, Pallyy, Sendible, Metricool, Publer, Agorapulse, and Buffer—offers distinct features customized to different needs, from content curation to analytics and audience interaction. By considering your specific requirements, you can choose an app that effectively streamlines your social media strategy, allowing for better content management and enhanced audience engagement over time. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Best 7 Social Media Posting Apps" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

When managing social media, choosing the right posting app can greatly improve your strategy. Several top contenders offer distinct features customized to various needs. For instance, SocialBee shines in content curation, whereas Pallyy is ideal for Instagram’s visual layout. Other options like Sendible and Metricool provide advanced analytics, ensuring you track performance effectively. Each app comes with its own strengths, so comprehending their unique offerings is essential for making an informed choice. Which one will boost your social media game? Key Takeaways SocialBee offers unique content curation and AI-driven strategy generation, starting at $29/month with a 14-day free trial. Pallyy specializes in visual content scheduling for Instagram and TikTok, with a generous free plan for up to 15 scheduled posts monthly. Sendible is great for agencies, providing scalable scheduling, content creation integrations, and multiple client dashboards for efficient management. Metricool features a drag-and-drop planner and built-in analytics, with a free plan allowing up to 50 posts, ideal for budget users. Agorapulse combines advanced scheduling, a unified inbox for engagement management, and robust analytics, starting with a basic free plan. SocialBee If you’re looking for a reliable social media scheduling tool, SocialBee might be the right fit for you. This platform is highly recommended among social media automation tools because of its formidable content curation and publishing features, supporting major networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. SocialBee offers unique functionalities, such as Content Categories for organized post management and an AI copilot for generating effective social media strategies. Moreover, the post variant feature allows for diverse content presentation. Pricing starts at $29/month, with a 14-day free trial available and a 16% discount for yearly sign-ups. Although it stands out in scheduling and content management, it lacks social listening features, making it less extensive than some best social media posting apps. Pallyy Pallyy stands out as an ideal tool for scheduling visual content, particularly on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. This social media management company offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop scheduling workflow that simplifies content planning. With its Feed Planner, you can maintain a visually appealing Instagram aesthetic, as it allows for easy media uploads and visual organization. Pallyy likewise features a unified social inbox, making it easier to manage interactions across different channels and enhancing user engagement. For individual content creators, the generous free plan includes one social set with up to 15 scheduled posts per month. If you need more advanced features, premium plans start at $25 per month, offering templates, media storage, and an analytics suite to track performance. Sendible Sendible is a scalable social media scheduling tool perfect for both agencies and individuals, making it easy to manage multiple clients and campaigns. With customizable content scheduling, you can tailor your posts to fit your brand and audience as you automate your posting to maintain a steady online presence. Plus, its integrations with platforms like Canva and Pexels streamline content creation, enhancing your overall social media strategy. Scalable for Agencies When managing multiple clients, scalability becomes a crucial aspect of any social media strategy. Sendible shines in this area, making it an ideal choice for a social media management company for small business. With its ability to handle multiple client dashboards and social media accounts from a single platform, you’ll find it highly efficient. The integration with tools for social media managers like Canva and Pexels simplifies content creation, catering to diverse client needs. Furthermore, Sendible’s customizable posts and visual campaign overview streamline your scheduling process. The platform likewise offers social listening and reporting features, allowing you to effectively track performance metrics for your clients. With pricing starting at $29/month and a 14-day free trial, you can easily evaluate its capabilities. Customizable Content Scheduling Customizable content scheduling is a potent feature that improves your ability to engage with audiences across various social media platforms. With Sendible, you can create customized posting schedules for each network, ensuring you post at ideal times for maximum engagement. The platform’s Smart Queues automate social media posting by scheduling posts based on your defined criteria, enhancing visibility and interaction. You can customize messages to fit each platform’s audience, ensuring your content resonates with different users. Furthermore, Sendible provides a content calendar view, visually organizing your scheduled posts for better management. It integrates with various content sources, including RSS feeds and cloud storage, allowing seamless content curation, making it an invaluable tool for your social media management business. Metricool Metricool is a versatile social media posting app that supports a variety of platforms, enabling you to schedule posts on networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn from a single dashboard. It simplifies small business social media management with its drag-and-drop planner, allowing easy scheduling and batch posting. You can start with the free plan, which lets you schedule up to 50 posts, perfect for those on a budget. Moreover, Metricool provides built-in analytics to track post performance and audience engagement, aiding social media automation. It even includes a link shortener and an AI caption writer to improve your content creation. Feature Description Benefit Drag-and-Drop Planner Easy scheduling for multiple posts Streamlined content management Built-in Analytics Track post performance and engagement Informed decision-making Link Shortener Shorten URLs for cleaner posts Improved post effectiveness Free Plan Schedule up to 50 posts Accessible for small businesses AI Caption Writer Generate engaging captions automatically Enhanced content quality Publer Publer stands out with its unlimited scheduling feature on all paid plans, making it perfect for users who regularly manage numerous posts across different social media platforms. You can create and schedule posts individually or in bulk, as the platform likewise suggests ideal posting times based on audience activity. With plans starting at $12 per month and a 14-day free trial, Publer provides an affordable solution for both individuals and businesses looking to improve their social media strategies. Key Features Overview In relation to effective social media management, Publer stands out with its robust set of features designed to streamline your posting process. One of Publer’s key advantages is unlimited scheduling available on all paid plans, allowing you to create and schedule posts individually or in bulk. The platform furthermore suggests the best times to post, enhancing engagement based on your audience’s activity. In addition, you can recycle content automatically, ensuring that high-performing posts are reposted at ideal intervals to maximize reach. Publer supports various social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, making it a versatile social media application for multi-channel marketing. Plus, new users can explore all features with a 14-day free trial before committing. Pricing Plans Breakdown For those looking to optimize their social media management, comprehension of Publer’s pricing plans is important. This social media app offers a free plan that allows you to schedule unlimited posts across all platforms, making it ideal for individuals and small businesses. If you need more advanced features, paid plans start at $12/month and include bulk post creation, suggested best times to post, and content recycling. Plus, you can try any paid plan with a 14-day free trial to assess its capabilities. Publer provides multiple tiered pricing options, catering to various needs, ensuring affordability for users who want to utilize one of the best social media reporting tools to manage their online presence effectively. User Experience Insights How does the user experience with Publer improve social media management? Publer improves your workflow with its user-friendly interface, allowing you to navigate and manage multiple accounts efficiently. With unlimited scheduling on all paid plans, you can create and schedule individual or bulk posts without limitations, making it one of the best social apps for social automation. The platform likewise analyzes your engagement patterns to suggest ideal posting times, ensuring better reach. Plus, the content recycling feature lets you automatically repurpose high-performing posts, maintaining audience interaction without constant content creation. You can even try Publer’s free plan, which requires no credit card and supports up to five social accounts, giving you a risk-free opportunity to explore its capabilities. Agorapulse Agorapulse stands out as a thorough social media management tool that improves collaboration among teams. With its unified inbox, you can manage comments, messages, and mentions across multiple platforms in one place, simplifying your workflow. The advanced scheduling capabilities let you automate post publishing and rescheduling, whereas the visual content calendar improves your planning process. Furthermore, Agorapulse offers robust analytics and reporting features, allowing you to track post performance, audience engagement, and social media ROI using insightful data. Its user-friendly interface and effective social listening features help you monitor brand mentions and competitor activities. For those seeking social media marketing services near me, Agorapulse provides a basic free plan, with paid options starting at $79/month for businesses and agencies managing multiple clients. Buffer Buffer is a highly regarded social media scheduling tool that simplifies managing multiple accounts across various platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. With its user-friendly interface, you can easily handle your automated social media account. Buffer offers a free plan for one user, three accounts, and up to ten queued posts per profile, whereas premium plans start at $15/month, giving you access to advanced features. Feature Details Free Plan 1 user, 3 accounts, 10 posts Analytics Engagement tracking AI Tools Idea generation and drafting Buffer furthermore integrates with Zapier, enhancing your experience with AI tools for social media, streamlining workflows, and optimizing your content sharing processes. Frequently Asked Questions What Is the Best App for Social Media Posts? Choosing the best app for social media posts depends on your needs. For robust content scheduling and curation, consider SocialBee or Sendible, both offering user-friendly interfaces and integration options. If you focus on visual content, Pallyy provides an intuitive drag-and-drop feature. Later is excellent for Instagram planning, whereas Buffer surpasses in simplicity for managing multiple accounts. Evaluate pricing and features like free trials to find the right fit for your social media strategy. What Is the Top 10 Social Media Apps? When considering the top 10 social media apps, you’ll find popular options like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, each offering unique features. LinkedIn is crucial for professionals, whereas TikTok caters to a younger audience with engaging video content. Pinterest focuses on visual inspiration, and Reddit nurtures community discussions. Furthermore, platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram provide messaging services. Each app serves different purposes, so evaluate your needs to determine which ones suit you best. Is There an App That Can Post to All Social Media at Once? Yes, there are apps that let you post to all your social media accounts simultaneously. These tools typically offer features like scheduling and content management from a single interface, which saves you time. You can customize posts for each platform, ensuring they meet specific requirements for ideal engagement. Apps like Buffer, Hootsuite, and Agorapulse are popular choices that provide these functionalities, making it easier for you to maintain an active online presence. Is There an App That Controls All Social Media? You won’t find a single app that controls all social media platforms seamlessly. Nonetheless, several tools can manage multiple accounts from one dashboard. Apps like Hootsuite and Buffer allow you to schedule posts, monitor engagement, and analyze performance. As they integrate with major networks like Facebook and Twitter, features vary. It’s crucial to assess your specific needs against the capabilities of each tool to find the best fit for your social media management. Conclusion In conclusion, selecting the right social media posting app can greatly improve your online presence and engagement. Each of the seven apps—SocialBee, Pallyy, Sendible, Metricool, Publer, Agorapulse, and Buffer—offers distinct features customized to different needs, from content curation to analytics and audience interaction. By considering your specific requirements, you can choose an app that effectively streamlines your social media strategy, allowing for better content management and enhanced audience engagement over time. Image via Google Gemini This article, "Best 7 Social Media Posting Apps" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

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On Wednesday morning, local time, over one million Australian children discovered their social media accounts had vanished. And it may not be long before kids in other countries find themselves in a similar predicament. Under the new law, which was approved late last year, no one under the age of 16 in Australia will be allowed to set up accounts on platforms including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, X, Snapchat, Twitch, and Reddit. Any accounts for people in that age category will be deactivated or removed. The law is meant to protect the mental health of children from the addictive nature of social media. Australia’s law goes three years beyond the de facto minimum age for social media limits in the U.S., where privacy legislation dictates that children under 13 are not supposed to be able to create accounts (though they easily end-run those restrictions). Anika Wells, the country’s communications minister, said those extra years will help children mature more before they take part in social media. “We want children to have childhoods. We want parents to have peace of mind and we want young people—young Australians—to have three more years to learn who they are before platforms assume who they are,” she said earlier this year. The legislation is being watched carefully by other governments, which have struggled with the impact of social media on young minds. If Australian children show improvements in their mental (and physical) health, with reduced reports of depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, and more, the country’s policies could become a blueprint for other nations. Several have already put plans into motion. Denmark, Norway, Malaysia, and the European Parliament have all either announced plans to ban social media access for children, similar to the Australian law, or are in the process of creating new rules. Denmark has gone the furthest, announcing last month that it would ban access to social media for anyone under 15, noting 94% of the children in that country had profiles on at least one social media platform. Under the age of 10, half of all Danish children do. The country has not yet set a date for the ban to begin. “Children and young people have their sleep disrupted, lose their peace and concentration, and experience increasing pressure from digital relationships where adults are not always present,” the Danish ministry for digital affairs said. “This is a development that no parent, teacher or educator can stop alone.” As for the U.S., don’t expect similar legislation anytime soon. The Big Tech lobby is firmly against the policy. And tech leaders, including Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, have a close relationship with Donald The President. Even those whose relationship with The President is contentious are seemingly protected. Last week, when the European Commission hit Elon Musk’s X with nearly $140 million in fines for violating its moderation law, the The President Administration came out swinging. “The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social media. “The days of censoring Americans online are over.” Some U.S. states, including Texas and Florida, have tried to enact bans, but those measures have either failed to pass the state legislatures or have been struck down by courts. Australia’s social media ban, meanwhile, passed with overwhelming support, though some critics warned it would be “too blunt an instrument to address risks effectively.” Social media companies were given a year to beef up their technology to confirm user ages and teens were encouraged to begin weening themselves off of the apps, so the formal ban wouldn’t come as a shock. Teens were even given a checklist to prepare for the shift. View the full article

Few of us are under the illusion that we own the content that we post on Instagram, but we do get a say in how that content is presented—w can choose which photos and videos we share, what captions appear (or don't appear) on each post, as well as whether or not we include where the image was taken or shared from. We might not control the platform, but we do control the content of our posts—unless those posts are found on search engines like Google. As reported by 404 Media, it appears that Instagram is experimenting with AI-generated SEO titles for users' posts—without those users' input or permission. Take this post for example: Author Jeff VanderMeer uploaded a short video of rabbits eating a banana to his Instagram. The video was posted as-is: There was no caption, location tag, or any other public-facing information. It's just a couple of rabbits having a bite. Instagram, however, took it upon itself to add a headline to the post—at least when you stumble upon it on via Google. Rather than display a link featuring Jeff's Instagram handle and some metadata about the video, the Google entry comes back with the following headline: "Meet the Bunny Who Loves Eating Bananas, A Nutritious Snack for..." (the rest of the headline cuts off here). VanderMeer was less than pleased with the discovery. He posted a screenshot of the headline to Bluesky, writing, "now [Instagram] appears to generate titles [and] headlines via AI for stuff I post...to create [clickbait] for [Google] wtf do not like." This was not the only AI-generated headline VanderMeer was roped into. This post from the Groton Public Library in Massachusetts, which advertises VanderMeer's novel Annihilation as the library's December book group pick, was also given the "clickbait" treatment on Google. Just as with VanderMeer's post, the Groton Public Library didn't include any text in its Instagram post—just an image showing off the book. But if you see the post within a Google search, you'll see the following partial headline: "Join Jeff VanderMeer on a Thrilling Beachside Adventure with Mesta..." 404 Media's Emanuel Maiberg says that they've confirmed that Instagram is also generating headlines for other users on the platform, all without permission or knowledge. Meta did not return 404 Media's request for comment. (I have also reached out for comment.) Google, on the other hand, did return 404 Media's messages, and confirmed the headlines are not coming from its AI generators—though it has been using deceptive AI-generated headlines of its own on Google Discover. In fact, the company says its search engine is simply pulling the text from Instagram itself. Maiberg found that these headlines do appear under title tags for Instagram posts when using Google's Rich Result Test tool. When digging through the code, Maiberg also discovered AI-generated descriptions for each post, which could be what Instagram is ultimately using to generate the headlines. Why would Instagram generate AI headlines for posts?I'll update this post if I hear back from Instagram regarding these AI-generated headlines. Until then, I can only speculate on their intended purpose (assuming Instagram is the one generating these headlines in the first place). And the likeliest reason is to boost engagement: Instagram probably wants to increase the visibility of its users' posts in search, which means giving Google more information to work with. If the user doesn't provide their own details about the image, Instagram's AI appears to be filling in the blanks, first generating a description, and from there, sticking a "clicky" headline onto it. The results aren't actually all that appealing, though. Just because Meta AI may be capable of generating headlines, doesn't mean it is good at it, or even that it should—especially when users never consented to this practice in the first place. It'd be one thing if Instagram had an option before you post—something like "Generate a headline for me using Meta AI that will appear in search engines for my post." Most of us would opt out of that, but it'd at least be a choice. However, it appears that Instagram decided that users like VanderMeer weren't capable of writing a headline as clever as "Meet the Bunny Who Loves Eating Bananas." The worst part is, the AI doesn't even accurately describe the posts. That Groton Public Library post was only about a book club meeting featuring VanderMeer's novel, but the headline says "Join Jeff VanderMeer," as if he'd be making an appearance. Not only did Instagram add a headline without VanderMeer's consent, it spread misinformation about his whereabouts. And for what? Some extra engagement on Google? If Instagram wants its posts to appear as headlines on search engines, it should include the actual posters in the conversation. As VanderMeer told 404 Media: "If I post content, I want to be the one contextualizing it, not some third party." View the full article

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We may earn a commission from links on this page. When I hear that a smartwatch company is launching a ring, I assume it’s going to be a smart ring. But Pebble went a different direction, instead creating what’s basically a remote microphone that can work with your phone and other devices. It's available for pre-order for $75, and will sell for $99 after launch. Pebble’s new ring is called the Index 01. It’s got a button you can click and hold, and a microphone that will listen to what you’re saying as you hold the button. The recording is then sent to your phone, where it’s processed on-device. That's it—no heart rate sensor, and no charging dock. The Index 01's specs and functionalityEric Migicovsky, Pebble’s founder, describes using the Index to capture short messages and send instructions to his Pebble watch via his phone. The idea is that you wear the Index on your index finger (get it?) and press the button with your thumb. The ring comes in three colors: matte black with a black button, polished gold with a blue button, and silver with a white button. There is no battery to charge, just a built-in battery that lasts a total of 12 to 15 hours. Migicovsky writes: “On average, I use it 10-20 times per day to record 3-6 second thoughts. That’s up to 2 years of usage.” The ring doesn’t have a speaker and can’t vibrate for notifications; it’s just for input. Communication between the ring and your phone is encrypted, and the voice recordings are processed into text on your phone, without requiring an internet connection. The ring doesn’t talk directly to a Pebble watch, but it can talk to your phone and your phone can then display any output to the watch—for example, displaying the text of a reminder that you set. Who should buy an Index 01 ring?So far, Pebble users don’t seem to be nearly as excited about this product as Migicovsky is. A Reddit thread discussing the announcement has comments like “Cool idea, weird product,” and “Why would I want this if I already have a Pebble that has all the capability to take voice notes?” Migicovsky explains in the company’s blog post that his goal was for the button to be operated with one hand, and gestures on the Pebble weren’t reliable enough. He also emphasizes the fact you don’t need to charge it, while some of the users seem to be more concerned that a device that can't be charged is basically disposable—"manufactured e-waste." After about two years of use (or less, if you make longer recordings), the app will ask if you’d like to order another ring. The ring will cost $75 to pre-order, and $99 at its regular price. There hasn’t been any mention of a discounted rate for a replacement; it sounds like you’re supposed to buy a new $99 ring every two years. The ring’s functionality could be extended in the future. A double click-and-hold could signal the Pebble app to process the data in a different way (perhaps sending it to ChatGPT, Migicovsky suggests) and developers could connect the voice processing in the app to other services like calendar and weather apps. View the full article