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Publishers are losing ground with younger audiences as creators, video, and platform-native content reshape how news is discovered and trusted. The post Why We Need To Talk About Young People appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Treasury yields swung wildly after a soft jobs report as oil's surge added a new complication for the Fed, raising concerns about the rate path ahead, according to the head of correspondent business development at AD Mortgage. View the full article

OpenAI has begun testing ads in ChatGPT for a limited set of U.S. users, with placements clearly labeled as sponsored. The platform’s internal economics suggest it’ll be available to everyone sooner rather than later. When it does, advertisers will have access to a rare new channel for demand capture. But advertisers should enter this space with their eyes wide open. For ChatGPT advertising to be successful, consumer behavior will need to change. And even if it does, ChatGPT won’t expand the advertising market. It’ll redistribute it. Why ChatGPT is moving into ads The fact that ads have arrived on ChatGPT should come as no surprise. By some estimates, a large language model (LLM) query costs 10 times as much as a traditional search query. With 2.5 billion prompts every day, ChatGPT’s expenses add up quickly. What’s different isn’t the business model shift itself. It’s the data environment. Users have spent years feeding personal information, questions, and ideas into ChatGPT. In many ways, the platform knows more about its users than any comparable advertising tool. The big question now is how ChatGPT will harness this data to target users. Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with ChatGPT could become a new demand-capture channel Advertising historically relied on generating demand: repeating a message enough times that buyers eventually acted. Search changed that by meeting buyers at the moment of intent. ChatGPT has the potential to follow the search model, but with more context. It’s easy to envision a scenario where someone asks which security camera will work with their existing system. The platform already knows everything about the user’s security system, so it delivers the correct answer and a link to purchase. When this happens, ChatGPT will be the first new demand-capture channel to emerge since Google launched pay-per-click ads nearly two decades ago. But right now, there are a few significant barriers preventing this from happening. For starters, most current AI queries lack purchase intent. Instead, they’re mostly informational: lists of Super Bowl halftime performers, storm-preparation tips, and workout routines. Compare that with existing platforms like Amazon and Google, which have spent decades training users to search with intent. Even when users do shop through AI, there’s an attribution problem: consumers often use ChatGPT for research, then complete the purchase on Amazon, Google, or directly on a brand site. That breaks clean conversion tracking and makes “proof” harder than “impact.” These challenges aren’t impossible to overcome. Google went through the same process early on as it transitioned from a homework tool to a shopping platform. But it took time. ChatGPT will also need time to train consumers to use AI for shopping. So expect to see ChatGPT begin running commercials designed to train consumers to move from research queries to purchase-oriented ones. While the possibility of a genuinely new demand-capture advertising platform is undeniably exciting, be realistic about its true potential. Dig deeper: OpenAI quietly lays groundwork for ads in ChatGPT Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Market share reality check AI can do many things exceptionally well, but it won’t expand the advertising pie. ChatGPT ads won’t suddenly introduce a surge of new consumers into the market. Ecommerce purchases will continue to grow at the same rate regardless of which new advertising platforms come online. Instead, ChatGPT will capture a portion of the existing advertising share from Google, Meta, and Amazon. Consequently, advertiser budgets will likely shift rather than grow significantly. ChatGPT’s largest competitors won’t give up market share without a fight. Google, in particular, has its own AI platform, Gemini, and an existing group of active advertisers it can draw from. These are powerful competitive headwinds for ChatGPT, which is recruiting its first group of advertisers from scratch. Competition will be fierce among AI platforms as they race to reach profitability, and market consolidation seems inevitable. But even in that environment, ChatGPT has an opportunity to do something other platforms can’t. The differentiator: Hyper-personalization AI queries already lean heavily toward information gathering. Users employ these tools to help them plan everything from vacations to workout routines to tough conversations with their bosses. Taken together, AI platforms can learn more about individual users’ tastes and preferences than any other tool. This capability unlocks hyper-personalization at scale. Knowing everything that it does, AI can return perfectly tailored results with a one-click purchase option. Google and Amazon can’t match this capability because they still rely on users searching for particular specs, product names, or model numbers to deliver results. There’s risk here. Hyper-personalization can feel invasive. Some users will opt out entirely, just as some consumers avoid always-on devices in their homes. Meta ran into this dynamic years ago as public backlash forced changes in targeting and data practices. This is where the distinction between demand capture and demand generation matters. Demand capture advertising generally feels less intrusive because it’s tied to a user’s explicit request. Most consumers will appreciate getting exactly what they ask for when they want it. But they’ll likely revolt if highly personalized and unsolicited ads start following them around the web. If AI platforms can maintain that boundary, the convenience of hyper-personalization will ultimately win out for most users. Dig deeper: ChatGPT ads collapse the wall between SEO and paid media What you should do now While OpenAI has already begun reaching out to select advertisers, it could be a year before we begin seeing widespread advertising on ChatGPT or other AI platforms. However, you should be prepared to move whenever that moment arrives. So watch for official communications from OpenAI about ChatGPT advertising and, when possible, sign up for platform notifications. In the meantime, you can make these few practical moves: Align internally on measurement expectations: If the channel starts as research-heavy, last-click ROAS may understate performance. Build room for assisted conversions and incrementality. Pressure-test mobile UX and checkout friction: Demand capture punishes slow experiences. If AI shortens the path to purchase, your site has to close quickly. Plan conservative early tests: Being an early adopter carries risk (immature controls, evolving placements), but it also creates an edge: faster learning on a genuinely new demand-capture surface. New demand-capture channels don’t come along often. ChatGPT advertising could become one of them, but the winners won’t be the brands that rush in blindly. They’ll be the ones who enter with a clear thesis, realistic measurement, and a strategy built around trust. View the full article

Oil prices spiked near $120 per barrel before falling back Monday as the Iran war intensified, threatening production and shipping in the Middle East and pummeling financial markets. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, surged to $119.50 per barrel early in the day but later was trading near $106 per barrel, up 14%, before the opening bell. West Texas Intermediate, the light, sweet crude oil produced in the United States, soared above $119.48 per barrel but fell back closer to $103. The war’s toll on civilian targets grew as Bahrain accused Iran of striking a desalination plant vital to drinking water supplies. Bahrain’s national oil company declared force majeure for its shipments after an Iranian attack set its refinery complex ablaze. The legal declaration releases the company of contractual obligations because of extraordinary circumstances. Oil depots in Tehran smoldered following overnight strikes by Israel. Oil prices have surged as the war, now in its second week, ensnares countries and places that are critical to the production and movement of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf. Prices moderated after the Financial Times reported that some members of the Group of Seven industrial nations were considering releases of strategic oil reserves to alleviate pressure on the markets. French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that “the use of strategic reserves is an envisaged option.” He said G7 leaders could meet this week to coordinate a response to climbing energy prices. France currently holds the rotating presidency of the G7 group. Separately, finance ministers from the G7 nations are meeting Monday by video conference to discuss the repercussions from the war. On Saturday, President Donald The President downplayed the idea of turning to America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, saying U.S. supplies were ample and prices would soon fall. Roughly 15 million barrels of crude oil — about 20% of the world’s oil — typically are shipped every day through the Strait of Hormuz, according to independent research firm Rystad Energy. The threat of Iranian missile and drone attacks has all but stopped tankers carrying oil and gas from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Iran from traveling through the strait, which is bordered in the north by Iran. Iraq, Kuwait and the UAE have cut oil production as storage tanks fill due to the reduced ability to export crude. Iran, Israel and the United States also have attacked oil and gas facilities since the war started, worsening supply concerns. The surge in costs for oil and natural gas is pushing fuel prices higher, cascading through other industries and jolting Asian economies that are especially vulnerable due to the region’s heavy reliance on imports from the Middle East. Iran exports roughly 1.6 million barrels of oil a day, mostly to China, which has called for an immediate end to the fighting. Beijing may need to look elsewhere for supply if Iran’s exports are disrupted, another factor that could increase energy prices. “All parties have their responsibility to ensure stable and smooth energy supplies,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said in a briefing Monday. “China will take necessary measures to safeguard its own energy security.” South Korean President Lee Jae Myung warned Monday of strict penalties for refiners and gas stations caught hoarding or colluding on prices, saying it would be wise to find alternatives to supplies that must travel through the Strait of Hormuz. Across Southeast Asia, the spike in prices has led to long lines outside filling stations. “Higher oil and gas prices will affect everyone and our economy,” said Le Van Tu, who was waiting outside a gas station in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi. “All activities, including those using petrol based transportation will be affected.” South Korea’s Kospi tumbled 6% to 5,251.87. The last time Brent and U.S. crude futures traded near the current level was in 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine. Higher energy costs push inflation higher, straining household budgets and denting the consumer spending that is a main driver of many big economies. Those worries have spilled into financial markets, pulling share prices sharply lower. In the U.S., the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline rose to $3.48 as of early Monday, up nearly 50 cents from a week earlier, according to AAA motor club. Diesel, used heavily in shipping, sold for about $4.66 a gallon, a weekly increase of more than 80 cents. The price of natural gas in the U.S. also has climbed during the war, though not by as much as oil. It was selling for about $3.34 per 1,000 cubic feet early Monday. That’s up from Friday’s closing price of $3.19. This story has been corrected to show that the Israel-U.S. attacks on Iran started Feb. 28, not March 1. Kurtenbach reported from Bangkok. Associated Press journalist John Leicester contributed from Paris. —Alex Veiga and Elaine Kurtenbach, AP business writers View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Outdoor security cameras have become common, but the ones that balance good video quality with simple setup still tend to cost a fair bit. That’s why this deal is worth a look. Right now, a two-pack of Arlo Essential Spotlight Cameras is $151.29 at Woot, compared with $259.99 on Amazon for the same bundle. If you have Amazon Prime, you’ll get free standard shipping; otherwise, shipping costs $6. Woot doesn’t ship to Alaska, Hawaii, PO Boxes, or APO addresses. The deal is scheduled to run for a week, though it could end earlier if the cameras sell out. Physically, the cameras are small and designed for outdoor use, with an IP65 weather-resistant body that can handle rain and dust. They run on a rechargeable battery rated for up to six months, although the exact lifespan depends on how often motion events occur. Also, the battery isn’t removable, so you’ll need to take the whole camera down and bring it inside when it’s time to recharge, notes this PCMag review. Arlo Essential Spotlight Camera $151.29 at Woot $259.99 Save $108.70 Get Deal Get Deal $151.29 at Woot $259.99 Save $108.70 The camera records 1080p video with a 130-degree field of view, which gives you a wide look at driveways, yards, or entryways without needing multiple cameras. Daytime footage looks crisp and detailed, and the camera includes 12× digital zoom if you want to inspect something in the frame more closely. As for its nighttime footage, when motion is detected, a built-in LED spotlight can turn on and light up the scene so the camera records color night video instead of the usual black-and-white view. It also works with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and IFTTT, which means you can view the feed on a smart display or trigger other smart home devices when motion is detected. This camera does not support Apple HomeKit. Motion alerts show up quickly on your phone, and the system can identify people, animals, and vehicles with Arlo’s advanced detection features. The catch is that those smarter alerts and recorded clips require an Arlo Secure subscription. Without it, you still get live viewing and basic alerts, but saved video and some detection tools are locked behind a monthly plan starting at $7.99 per month for one camera. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods 4 Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $119.00 (List Price $179.00) Samsung Galaxy S26 512GB + $100 Amazon Gift Card (Black) — $899.99 (List Price $1,099.99) Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 AI Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds + $20 Amazon Gift Card — $179.99 (List Price $199.99) Google Pixel 10a 128GB 6.3" Unlocked Smartphone + $100 Gift Card — $499.00 (List Price $599.00) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $329.00 (List Price $349.00) Apple Watch Series 11 [GPS 46mm] Smartwatch with Jet Black Aluminum Case with Black Sport Band - M/L. Sleep Score, Fitness Tracker, Health Monitoring, Always-On Display, Water Resistant — $329.00 (List Price $429.00) Amazon Fire TV Soundbar — $99.99 (List Price $119.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

Shares in Hims & Hers Health (NYSE: HIMS) are soaring this morning after an unconfirmed report that the telehealth company is entering into a deal with Novo Nordisk A/S (NYSE: NVO) to sell its popular GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, including Wegovy. The rumored deal is as surprising as Hims & Hers’s surging stock price this morning, especially considering that just last month, Novo was threatening to sue the telehealth provider. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Late on Friday, Bloomberg reported that Hims & Hers has reached an agreement with the Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk to sell Novo’s weight-loss drugs, including the popular GLP-1 pill Wegovy. According to the publication, which cited an anonymous source, the news could be publicly announced as soon as today. Fast Company has reached out to Hims & Hers and Novo Nordisk for comment. The reported partnership between the two firms would be a stunning reversal in their relationship, which, as recently as last month, was highly acrimonious. Their feud stems from an announcement in early February that Hims & Hers would sell a compounded version of Novo’s Wegovy weight-loss pill at a third of the price Novo sells it for. Hims & Hers said its compounded version would sell for $49 per month, before rising to $99. Novo sells its Wegovy for $149 per month. While Novo Nordisk owns the patent to Wegovy, Hims & Hers sought to get around this by offering not a generic version of the drug but a compounded one. Compounded drugs are ones that are nearly identical copies of a drug. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sometimes allows pharmacists to create compounded versions of drugs when the name-brand version is a short supply, as was the case with many GLP-1 drugs in 2024 and 2025. However, by the middle of 2025, the GLP-1 shortage was largely resolved, and compounding pharmacies were ordered to stop making their compounded versions of the drugs. Regardless, in February, Hims & Hers announced it would sell its own GLP-1 drug made from semaglutide, the same active ingredient in Wegovy. This led to fierce backlash from Novo Nordisk, which threatened to sue Hims & Hers. The FDA similarly threatened to take action against the telehealth company. As a result, shortly after announcing its Wegovy knockoff, Hims & Hers said it would no longer release its own version. Given the contentious nature of this ordeal, few thought Hims & Hers and Novo Nordisk would ever play nice together in the future. But according to Bloomberg’s report, that’s just what the two companies are planning to do now. Why is Novo playing nice with Hims now? While Novo and Hims & Hers did briefly have an agreement to sell the Danish company’s branded Wegovy on its platform in 2025, that deal fell through in less than two months. Few expected the two companies to work together again. Yet, if Bloomberg’s report is accurate, they now are. But why? The most likely reason is that Novo Nordisk wants to expand the market for Wegovy, and the fastest way to do that is to have the medication available for purchase in as many places and on as many platforms as possible. Wegovy isn’t the only weight-loss drug available, and it risks being overshadowed by the accelerating adoption of other drugs. As Hims & Hers becomes increasingly popular among consumers as a source for their medications, Novo has likely concluded that the platform’s rising popularity is worth setting aside old hostilities to help Wegovy capture as much market share as possible. How are HIMS and NVO share prices reacting? The share price of Hims & Hers is skyrocketing on the report that the telehealth firm has reached a new deal with Novo Nordisk. As of the time of this writing, in premarket trading, HIMS stock is up nearly 45% to $22.77. On Friday, HIMS stock closed at $15.74. Unfortunately for Novo Nordisk investors, the rumored partnership has had a relatively negligible impact on NVO stock. As of the time of this writing, NVO shares are up about half a percent to $38.79 in premarket. Before this morning’s premarket boost, HIMS stock was down over 51% year to date. This means that if the HIMS gains hold, the stock could earn back most of its 2026 losses in just one trading session. As for Novo Nordisk, the company’s stock price is also down significantly year to date. As of Friday’s close at $38.58, NVO shares had lost nearly 25% of their value since 2026 began. View the full article

Discover how AI visibility to eligibility marketing is reshaping strategies in fast-changing digital advertising. The post How AI Is Reshaping Who Gets Recommended: Marketing In The Eligibility Era appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Logitech may be known for keyboards, webcams, and gaming gear, but CEO Hanneke Faber is going beyond AI-first. She explains how she’s leading the hardware brand through an AI shift, approaching it as a leadership challenge, not just a tech one. Faber also shares lessons from competitive diving and navigating ever-shifting global tariffs. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. Logitech is known by many people for its computer mouse. “The mouse built this house,” I think you said once, a nice nod to Disney. But in recent months, the conversation about Logitech has been around AI, the cutting edge of technology. It’s kind of a neat trick for a business with a reputation for a not-necessarily-sexy piece of hardware. Well, of course, we do think that mice are very sexy. But that aside, we’re not just a place that builds mice. In the age of AI, hardware is definitely sexy again. AI needs hands, needs eyes, needs ears. So that’s where we come in, and we’re building AI-enabled products at scale, which is exciting. You spoke at a Fortune conference last fall. There was a lot of attention around adding an AI agent to your board of directors. Any progress with that? Yes. I wouldn’t say we have an actual AI agent that’s formally a board member, but we’re using AI very fundamentally in our board meetings and in the preparation for our board meetings. I think we’re lucky. My board members are AI-savvy, all of them. We offered them the same training that we offer to all of our employees. And in preparation for our board meetings, we run the materials through an AI gem that we’ve built. So you get really great feedback, actually, from an AI board member up front. And that helps shape the discussion when we go into the meeting. And this is your proprietary agent. You’re not sending this out into the world so that Anthropic or OpenAI or someone else can sort of peek in on it? No. That obviously wouldn’t be smart because the data that’s in there is very confidential. So yes, it’s proprietary. How much do you consider yourself a technologist? Your background is largely in consumer products at Unilever and Procter & Gamble. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. A little over two years ago, I was selling mayonnaise, literally. So it is a different industry, but there are also a lot of things that you learn in consumer goods, and I also spent time in retail, that is very applicable here. In the end, we sell products for people, for users. So understanding that consumer, that customer, starting from there and designing products that will delight that user is critically important. And that’s no different whether you’re selling mayonnaise and ice cream or mice and cameras. Now, when you came on board, it was clear that Logitech needed a bit of a turnaround. Is that something that particularly appealed to you? I’ve heard from others that sometimes that’s where the opportunities are for a first-time CEO role. Yes. And I think the waters were troubled, but not deeply troubled. It’s just that we had come off that COVID sugar high. Therefore, eight quarters in a row, the business had declined. So confidence was low and things were hard when I came in, but it was clear to me from the start that it wasn’t a foundational issue. The guts were good. It just needed a little bit of a refresh and a reinjection of energy and strategy, honestly. And that’s what we’ve done. So we’re now on our eighth quarter of top- and bottom-line growth. And you just had to dive in, I guess. That’s my dad joke, because you were an accomplished diver in your youth, a seven-time Dutch national champion. Is that right? That’s right. Back in the Stone Age. No, it’s very impressive. Is leading a new business in a new industry like trying a new dive? I do often say, when people ask what you learn from your sporting days, that diving especially is a sport where you have to take risks. So you’re up on a 10-meter platform, 33 feet in the air, and you have to do flips and turns, and it is really scary. And it’s always scary. It’s not just scary the first time. Every time, it’s kind of scary. So when people ask me, “Was this a scary move? Are you scared to present? Are you scared to do a podcast? Are you scared to move industries?” I’m like, “You know what? A back two-and-a-half off the 10-meter, that is scary.” Compared with that, very few other things are truly scary. As you describe it, it sounds like you kind of have to get used to being scared when you’re jumping off that board because, as you say, it’s scary every time. Is that the same way in business, that you just have to get used to the uncertainty, the instability, whatever’s going to happen next? Yes, I think that’s a great insight. Some people say it’s not a marathon, or it’s a series of sprints, or something. But yes, it’s a series of new situations where you don’t always know what to expect that can be a little scary. And I think you have to find a way to enjoy that to keep going. Not to overdo this analogy, but just as you’re implementing your new plans at Logitech, which by all indications are working, you’re hit with a new challenge when the The President tariffs come down. It’s like being scared on the next dive, I guess. Something like 40% of your products for the U.S. market were made in China. Was there a moment you remember hearing about tariffs where you were like, “Oh no, not this”? It was certainly a tough day, Liberation Day, April 1, 2025. For almost everyone in our industry, we produce our products around the world, but not necessarily in the United States, and the United States is a big market for us. But we quickly figured out that we actually were in a position of competitive strength. Only 30% of our business is in the United States. Seventy percent of our business is not, so it was not affected by tariffs. We have a very diverse manufacturing footprint, and this is all my predecessor’s work. I take zero credit for that. Yes, 40% came from China, but we also make in five other countries. So we were able to move things around, and by the end of the calendar year, only 10% of our products for the U.S. came from China. We have a strong brand, which gives you loyalty and gives you some pricing power, and we needed that. You raised prices pretty quickly, by around 10%. And I don’t like raising prices, but in this case, it absolutely was the responsible thing to do. And if you decide you’re going to do it, I always think it’s better to rip the Band-Aid off right away. So we did it very quickly. I think that gave us the advantage that by the time the holiday season came around, in October and November, we were through the pricing pain, and that was really important. Taking pricing, especially in consumer markets, just takes a while. You have to convince customers that’s the right thing to do and get it reflected on the shelf. Again, I thought that was a competitive advantage. So when the bigger bulk of your consumer revenue was coming through, people had sort of accepted it by then. Exactly. How much do you worry about new The President-related disruptions? At the World Economic Forum last month, I saw The President said that the former Swiss president rubbed him the wrong way as an explanation for tariffs on Switzerland, which is where Logitech is registered, right? I don’t lose a lot of sleep over it. It’s a really dynamic world. I often say to my team, “Today is the slowest day of the rest of your lives.” And there is a lot happening, not just in the U.S. and with the U.S. administration. There’s a lot happening around the world. So we roll with the punches. Of course, we do risk assessments, and we think through what could happen and how we mitigate that. Manufacturing diversification is a critical part of that. It just makes us more resilient when we don’t manufacture in one place. So we absolutely look at what might happen around the world and how we mitigate that, but we can’t lose sleep over that every day because then we wouldn’t be doing our jobs. View the full article

SEO professionals don’t agree on much. But over the past decade, we’ve come together around the conviction that Google has abused its dominant position, that it systematically favors its own products over better alternatives, and that something must be done to create fairer competition in search. In 2022, the European Union passed the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a sweeping regulation designed to curb the power of tech giants. It came into force in March 2024. Industry groups celebrated. Trade publications ran optimistic headlines about a new era of digital fairness. In 2024, I wrote that it was “a much-needed piece of legislation.” Two years in, the evidence is clear: The DMA will do more harm than good. Well-documented abuses The Digital Markets Act arose from understandable frustrations with well-documented abuses. Google spent years ranking its own shopping service at the top of search results while systematically burying competitors like Foundem and Kelkoo on page four, where nobody would ever find them. The company’s internal documents, uncovered by EU investigators, revealed that Google Shopping “simply doesn’t work” on its merits, so Google gave it an algorithmic boost unavailable to anyone else. The travel industry watched as Google Flights consumed the market share of innovative startups like Hipmunk, which had offered genuinely better user experiences by showing total trip costs, including baggage fees and connections. Hoteliers saw Google Hotels siphon away direct bookings. Local businesses watched as Google prioritized its local pack over organic results. The pattern was unmistakable: Google identified lucrative verticals, launched competing products, then used its search monopoly to guarantee their success. These weren’t competitive advantages but unfair tactics, and the EU was right to identify them as such. It took over 10 years to fine Google £2.1 billion for the shopping search abuse alone. The DMA was supposed to fix this by setting clear rules upfront, forcing gatekeepers to treat all services equally before abuses could take root. For those of us who had watched clients lose traffic to Google’s vertical search engines despite having superior content, the promise was intoxicating: Finally, algorithmic neutrality. Finally, fair competition based on content quality rather than corporate ownership. Finally, a chance for the next generation of search-dependent businesses to compete. Dig deeper: EU puts Google’s AI and search data under DMA spotlight Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with What users actually experience Yet, two years into implementation, the reality looks nothing like the promise. The most comprehensive assessment comes from Nextrade Group, which surveyed 5,000 European consumers across twenty member states in mid-2025. The findings? Two-thirds of respondents reported needing more clicks or more complex search queries to find what they need online. Among frequent searchers, precisely the users most valuable to our clients, 61% said searches now take up to 50% longer than before the DMA. Forty-two percent of frequent travelers reported that flight and hotel searches had worsened significantly. More than 40% said they would actually pay to restore the functionality they had before March 2024. When users are willing to pay for something they previously received for free, regulation has failed catastrophically. The European Centre for International Political Economy conducted a separate survey of 3,500 consumers across Central and Eastern Europe and found similar results. Eighty percent had never heard of the DMA, it solved problems they didn’t know existed, yet 39% reported that routine online tasks had become more cumbersome since early 2024. Why does it matter? As SEO professionals, we must confront this truth: Users preferred the integrated Google experience we spent years complaining about. Before the DMA, searching for “hotels in Paris” displayed an interactive map with photos, ratings, real-time availability, and prices — all accessible without leaving the search results page. That integration has been dismantled because Google Search and Google Maps are designated as separate core platform services, and their seamless cooperation constitutes prohibited self-preferencing. Users must now click through to separate services, repeat their searches, and lose context. Regulators call this fair competition. Users call it a worse internet. The business impact: Worse metrics across the board The business metrics support what consumers report feeling. Following the DMA’s implementation, click-through rates on Google Hotel Ads decreased by 30% in affected European regions compared to unaffected markets. Direct bookings through Google Hotel Ads fell by 36%. This is all despite theoretically fairer visibility in search results. These are businesses losing revenue because the mechanism connecting searchers to services has been deliberately degraded. Meanwhile, Google’s search monopoly remains entirely intact. The company still processes over 90% of European search queries. The difference is that now the search experience delivers measurably worse results for users and measurably worse outcomes for businesses paying for visibility. The enforcement problem: Fines don’t work The DMA requires Google to treat competing vertical search services (flight comparison sites, hotel booking engines, shopping aggregators) with the same prominence as its own offerings. In response, Google tested a version of its hotel search that removed maps, removed structured listings with photos and availability, and displayed only 10 blue links. Users hated it. Hotels saw a traffic crater. Google documented the catastrophic user satisfaction scores and presented them to the Commission as evidence that integration serves user needs, not just Google’s interests. The Commission found itself in an impossible position: Force Google to maintain the worst experience in the name of fairness, or acknowledge that some integrations genuinely benefit users even when they advantage Google’s products. Google responded to preliminary findings of non-compliance by making incremental adjustments that preserve the substance of its advantage, while creating just enough ambiguity about whether it’s following the rules. When the Commission objects to one implementation, Google proposes another that differs in form but not effect. This process can continue indefinitely because the underlying problem, Google’s monopoly in search, remains untouched. For a company with annual revenues exceeding $300 billion, regulatory fines are simply a cost of doing business. The Commission fined Google €2.4 billion for shopping search abuses and breaking antitrust rules. The company paid and continued operating largely as before. It will do the same with DMA fines. The uncomfortable reality is that you can’t regulate a monopoly into behaving competitively. You can only break the monopoly itself. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. The speed problem: Regulation can’t keep pace The European Commission must monitor 23 core platform services across seven gatekeepers, while each company releases updates continuously: Algorithms change daily Features launch weekly Product roadmaps evolve quarterly By the time the Commission identifies a potential violation, conducts workshops with stakeholders, issues preliminary findings, allows the company to respond, and publishes a final decision (a process taking 12-18 months), the underlying technology and business models have moved on. Google launched AI Overviews in Europe one week after receiving preliminary findings of non-compliance for self-preferencing in traditional search. The company essentially announced that, while regulators debate whether Google Flights should rank above Kayak, Google is moving to a fundamentally different search results page where AI-generated summaries replace links entirely. The DMA contemplated regulating 2024’s search landscape. Google is already building 2027’s. What should regulators do instead? While I’m not a regulator, I have been doing SEO for 15 years. In my opinion, regulators should redouble efforts to address actual structural monopolies rather than impose rules on how platforms must operate. The DMA tries to regulate platform behavior while leaving monopoly power intact. This is like trying to stop water from flowing downhill by prescribing which route it must take. The water will find another path, and everyone gets wet in the process. If Google’s dominance in search truly stifles competition, perhaps the solution isn’t to regulate how it displays results but to break its monopoly altogether. The United States has considered requiring Google to divest Chrome; such structural remedies might succeed where behavioral rules have failed. If the concern is that Google leverages search dominance to advantage its advertising business, separate the two. If the worry is that controlling both the search algorithm and the content (YouTube, Google News, Google Shopping) creates irresolvable conflicts of interest, then require differentiation. These actions would be slower, more legally complex, and more politically difficult than passing the DMA. They would also actually work. In short, regulators should focus on creating conditions for competition rather than micromanaging every product decision. That means enabling genuine data portability so users can switch services easily, taking their search history and preferences with them. This also means using traditional antitrust enforcement aggressively for the largest abuses, like Google systematically burying competitors on page four, exclusive deals that lock out rivals, and acquisitions designed to eliminate nascent threats. The geopolitical reality The DMA’s first two years have demonstrated that ex-ante rules are no faster — investigations still take 12-18 months — and far less effective than traditional enforcement. The geopolitical consequences threaten to undermine European interests far beyond digital markets. In December 2025, the The President administration threatened retaliation against the EU for what it characterized as discriminatory targeting of American technology companies. The Office of the United States Trade Representative explicitly named European companies, including Spotify, Siemens, SAP and DHL, as potential targets for new restrictions. From Washington’s perspective, the DMA looks less like competition policy and more like industrial policy disguised as regulation. Whether that characterization is fair matters less than the political reality: Brussels finds itself caught between domestic pressure to demonstrate tough enforcement and external pressure that threatens broader trade relationships. Dig deeper: Google outlines risks of exposing its search index, rankings, and live results See the complete picture of your search visibility. Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. Start Free Trial Get started with The wrong solution to a real problem The DMA promised to enable the next generation of search-dependent businesses. It promised to stop Google from using its search monopoly to advantage its vertical products. It promised fairer competition for hotels, airlines, ecommerce sites, and the entire ecosystem of businesses that depend on organic search traffic. Two years in, Google’s monopoly remains intact, user experience has measurably degraded, business metrics have worsened, and no meaningful new competition has emerged. For those of us who spent years documenting Google’s abuses and advocating for intervention, this failure is spectacular. If regulators can’t find ways to break up long-standing monopolies (now over two decades old for some platforms), what hope is there to address emerging challenges in AI search, voice search, or whatever comes next? Young companies have a right to compete in digital markets. Regulators must create conditions where genuine competition is possible, not regulate away the symptoms of monopoly while leaving its foundations untouched. We were right about the problem. The DMA is simply the wrong solution. View the full article

When leaders think about burnout, they often imagine visible distress, absence, emotional overwhelm or resignation. However, burnout does not always look like struggle. Often, it looks like competence. It looks like the person who always delivers. The one who volunteers to pick up the slack. The one answering work emails while watching their son’s nativity play, so they do not let anybody down. The one who says, “It’s fine, I’ll sort it.” The one who absorbs tension in the room so others do not have to. These people are not on a performance plan or raising red flags. They are not the ones asking for help. They are functioning. And those around them may not see anything wrong. This group is called the ‘Silent Middle’, made up of capable, conscientious professionals who are neither thriving nor in crisis. The Silent Middle sits between high engagement and visible breakdown. They are steady, reliable and productive. They keep organisations moving. And because they keep performing, their strain goes unnoticed. We have mistaken coping for capacity. Just because someone is holding it together does not mean they are well. The cost of coping quietly The Silent Middle rarely disrupts. They adapt. They extend their hours without calling it overwork. They absorb unrealistic deadlines rather than risk being seen as difficult. They manage their reactions so they are perceived as composed, and they soften their opinions to maintain harmony. From a leadership perspective, this can look like resilience. Often, it is masking. Or as I call it, pretending. Pretending is the subtle adjustment people make to fit what their environment rewards. It is presenting calm when you feel stretched, saying yes when you mean ‘not yet’. It is editing your perspective so you remain collaborative rather than inconvenient. It is frequently praised and almost always promoted. The more competent someone appears, the less likely anyone is to ask what it is costing them. Over time, the gap between internal experience and external performance becomes expensive. When people consistently override their own signals to maintain competence, their self-trust erodes. They stop asking, “Is this sustainable?” and start asking, “How long can I keep this up?” The World Health Organization defines burnout as chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. What that definition does not fully capture is sustained incongruence, the daily cost of pretending. When there is a gap between what someone thinks and what they say, what they feel and what they express, the nervous system works harder. Vigilance increases and recovery decreases. Burnout is not driven by workload alone. It is often driven by the strain of holding yourself together. Why high performers are especially vulnerable The Silent Middle often includes high-capability professionals who derive identity from contribution. They are proud of being reliable. This makes them more likely to overcommit, absorb ambiguity and protect others from friction. They become cultural shock absorbers. And here is the important distinction: They continue to perform. Gallup research consistently shows that a majority of employees are not fully engaged, yet most continue to meet expectations. Output can remain stable long after energy begins to decline. Burnout does not immediately reduce productivity. It reduces capacity. Creativity narrows and risk appetite shrinks. Discretionary effort drops and innovation slows. People do what is required, but little beyond it. Leaders look at metrics and see delivery. What they do not see is the quiet loss of imagination, challenge and forward thinking. This is not simply a well-being issue. It is a strategic performance risk. The Silent Middle holds institutional knowledge, relational capital and operational stability. When their engagement thins, productivity does not collapse overnight. It erodes gradually. By the time someone resigns citing burnout, the depletion has often been building for years. What leaders must do differently If the Silent Middle is a cultural issue, the solution will not sit inside a lunch-and-learn well-being session. It sits inside leadership behaviour. It begins with congruence. Most organisations say they value honesty. Far fewer make it safe. When disagreement is subtly penalised or optimism is rewarded over realism, people learn quickly what to edit, and the result is politeness instead of progress. Leaders who want to reduce masking must respond to challenge without defensiveness. They must invite realism and reward those who surface risk early rather than those who quietly compensate. Strength also needs redefining. In many environments, endurance is mistaken for capability. The employee who absorbs the most pressure is often seen as the strongest. But endurance without recovery is not resilience. It is depletion delayed. When leaders model boundaries, realistic pacing and visible recovery, they recalibrate what strength looks like. There is also a structural question. Human beings are cyclical. Energy rises and falls. Capacity expands and contracts. Yet many organisations operate at sustained peak output, quarter after quarter. When linear output is demanded from nonlinear humans, burnout becomes predictable. Sustainable performance requires rhythm, deliberate recovery built into the system rather than left to chance. And then there is self-trust. The Silent Middle often overrides internal signals in order to remain dependable. Over time, misalignment becomes normal. Leaders can shift this by changing the tone of performance conversations. Instead of asking only about results, ask about energy. Instead of asking how quickly something can be delivered, ask what a sustainable pace would look like. These conversations surface strain before it becomes resignation. Finally, value must be decoupled from output. When self-value becomes conditional on performance, people will betray their own limits to stay needed. If contribution is the only currency, exhaustion becomes a badge of honour. Cultures that recognise identity beyond output reduce the need for pretending. The strategic advantage The organisations that will outperform over the next decade will not be those that extract the most hours. They will be those that understand human capacity. They will design cultures where people can perform without pretending, contribute without self-erasure and rest without penalty. The Silent Middle is not fragile. They are capable professionals doing their best in demanding systems. But functioning is not the same as thriving. If competence is the only thing you measure, pretending becomes the safest strategy. And when pretending becomes normal, burnout stops being an exception. It becomes culture. View the full article

The appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei has dashed the US president’s hope of picking Iran’s new leaderView the full article

Alex Heath and Ellis Hamburger interviewed Google's head of Search, Liz Reid, on Google's progression of AI into Search. It felt like a very candid interview that is worth listening to. In short, Liz is still not sure if Gemini and Google Search will ever fully converge or not.View the full article

Google is testing a new widget for the Google Discover feed where you can follow news publishers and/or topics. It is called the "home follow widget."View the full article

Google added "Trending posts & discussions" title under What People Are Saying section within Google Search results. It also has those favicons at the top, which I don't think is new but it is all part of the package.View the full article

There are a number of complaints that the Google Search Console bulk data export to BigQuery is not working. The issue seemed to have started several days ago and is still not working today.View the full article

Google has sent notices to some advertisers asking them to confirm whether their campaigns contain European Union political content. The deadline to confirm is by March 31, 2026.View the full article

If your organic traffic is down but impressions are up, AI is likely citing your content without sending clicks. If both are down, you’re being ignored. Either way, the search behavior your marketing strategy was built on has changed, and waiting for traffic to rebound isn’t a strategy. This is the reality you’re facing in 2026. According to KEO Marketing: 73% of B2B websites saw significant traffic losses between 2024 and 2025, with an average 34% year-over-year decline. The impact isn’t evenly distributed. If your content is primarily informational, you’ve likely been hit harder, with some sectors seeing organic traffic drop 15% to 64% since AI Overviews launched. News publishers are especially exposed, with Google referrals down 33% globally in the 12 months ending November 2025. These aren’t normal fluctuations. They reflect a structural shift in how people find information online, disrupting business models built on website traffic at the foundation. What is driving the shift in organic discovery? Organic clicks are declining for two overlapping reasons. You need to understand both because each requires a different response: Google has engineered zero-click behavior for years through featured snippets and knowledge panels. These SERP features answer queries directly on the results page, so you don’t need to click through to get an answer. Ten years ago, about 25% of searches ended without a click. Today, it’s more than 65%. AI Overviews — now appearing in ~16% of desktop searches and ~41% of mobile searches — have dramatically accelerated this trend. A growing share of users is bypassing traditional search entirely. Nearly 52% of U.S. adults now use AI tools regularly, and about 28% of employed Americans use AI at work. When someone asks ChatGPT or another LLM a question, they usually get an answer without visiting any website. Your content may inform that answer, but you get no traffic and no attribution. What metrics should I consider when measuring AEO? Traditional content marketing KPIs (impressions, clicks, CTR, sessions, bounce rate, and page views) no longer show you how discoverable your brand is. They measure behavior on your site, not how you perform in AI answers that now intercept much of your traffic upstream. Five metrics matter most for AI visibility: Citations in AI responses measure how often your owned content is directly cited when an LLM answers a query. A citation signals three things: your content is relevant, it’s structured so LLMs can parse and retrieve it efficiently, and your domain has enough authority to be trusted. Brand mentions are different from citations. LLMs often mention brands without citing owned content, pulling from review sites, forums, third-party articles, and competitor content. A mention without a citation means the broader web is talking about you, but your content isn’t the source. That distinction helps you decide where to invest. Share of voice compares your citation and mention frequency against competitors across a defined set of category-relevant prompts. Brand sentiment tracks whether AI responses frame you favorably, neutrally, or negatively. AI-influenced traffic measures how much of your traffic comes from LLM referrals. Early data suggests this traffic converts three to five times higher than other sources, making it worth tracking even at low volume. Several tools now let you track these metrics at scale without manually prompting LLMs. They’re worth exploring. But even a simple benchmark — prompting major LLMs with your target queries and tracking where and how you appear — is better than not measuring at all. How should I optimize my content for AEO? Winning visibility in AI search doesn’t require an entirely new content playbook. But it requires retiring practices that no longer work and doubling down on principles that matter more than ever. E-E-A-T remains the foundation Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness were dominant signals in Google SEO before AI Overviews, and they remain dominant in AEO. LLMs prioritize sources that show real expertise and are trusted by other authoritative sources. If you earn citations from credible sites, publish content written by clear subject matter experts, and cover topics with depth and specificity, you’ll consistently outperform content that doesn’t — regardless of how well it’s optimized for other factors. Structure and clarity have become non-negotiable LLMs retrieve content by identifying passages that directly answer questions. If you organize content around clear questions and direct answers, use structured bullet summaries, and avoid dense paragraphs, you’re more retrievable than if you bury answers in narrative prose. This means making your information architecture legible to both human readers and LLM retrieval systems. Adding a Q&A section to existing content — or restructuring posts around clear question-and-answer pairs — is one of the highest-leverage updates you can make right now. Human-written, human-led content has a measurable advantage After Google’s latest core update, mass-produced AI content saw an 87% drop in rankings and citation frequency, and keyword-optimized content fell 63%. LLMs are getting better at detecting AI writing patterns and deprioritizing that content. The pressure you felt in 2025 to produce volume with AI created a quality problem that’s now visible in performance data. The strongest strategy is quality over quantity. If you use AI, use it to draft and edit—not to generate final content. Add a review step to flag generic phrasing or a synthetic tone, whether through AI-detection tools or human editors. Recency matters for AI citation Answer engines look at publication and update dates when choosing sources. A well-structured, authoritative piece from 2022 can be overlooked in favor of an updated version from 2025. Audit your high-traffic pages and hero assets for outdated content, and refresh them with current data and examples. It’s a quick win many teams miss. Pitchy language will not get cited If your content reads as promotional — leading with product claims and brand-forward language — answer engines will often deprioritize it in favor of more objective sources. That doesn’t mean you can’t mention your product or brand. It means you should write about it the way a neutral third party would: acknowledge tradeoffs, provide context, and let the facts make the case. Listicles and comparison articles work especially well here. AI systems respond to structured, objective comparisons—even when one option is clearly favored. Outside of my owned channels, what content performs well in AEO? One clear pattern in how LLMs decide which brands to mention: they look for consensus across multiple sources, not just your content. If you appear only on your own blog, you’ll lose to a brand with fewer owned assets but stronger third-party coverage. That makes your external content ecosystem a strategic priority. Reviews on G2, Capterra, Google, and similar platforms are often used in AI training. User-generated content on Reddit and other forums is heavily indexed. Third-party articles, tutorials, YouTube videos, and newsletter mentions all build the multi-source consensus that gets you cited in AI answers. Content partnerships deserve focused attention. When you sponsor articles or newsletter placements with relevant publications, you do two things: drive referral traffic outside search and earn trusted external citations that boost AI visibility. Newsletter readership is growing as audiences seek curated, human-authored content. YouTube citations are especially strong and increasing, and ChatGPT shows a documented preference for citing authoritative video creators. The goal isn’t to manufacture mentions. It’s to tell a consistent story about your brand across credible external sources so LLMs encounter that story repeatedly. Consistency across partners, review platforms, and third-party content compounds your AI share of voice. How do I build landing pages that convert traffic better? With organic traffic down 30% or more, the visitors who reach your site are more valuable and more intentional than in past years. That makes conversion optimization on key landing pages more important. The principle is simple: one offer, one message, minimal copy. Each landing page should have a single call to action and a single argument. If you have multiple conversion goals, create multiple landing pages — not one page trying to do everything. Your header should capture the full value proposition. Supporting points should be brief. A visitor should understand the offer and act without scrolling. This differs from blog and thought leadership content, which should be detailed, well sourced, and structured for LLM retrieval. The two serve different purposes and require different standards. Conversion-focused landing pages aren’t the place for nuance or extended prose. The takeaway The traffic decline isn’t a temporary setback that will correct itself. Users are getting answers from AI instead of clicking through to websites, and that behavior will intensify. A content strategy built only around ranking for clicks is no longer enough. What replaces it is a dual mandate: optimize to be cited by answer engines and build the external brand presence that gives LLMs reason to mention you consistently. These goals align with what you should’ve been doing all along — publishing clear, authoritative, well-structured content grounded in real expertise. The brands that will win in AI-driven discovery are the ones doing the fundamentals well: building real credibility, earning trusted external mentions, and writing for readers instead of algorithms. That was always the right approach. AI search has simply made it mandatory. Written by Tim Burke and Lauren Yanez View the full article

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. In today’s business environment, uncertainty is the new norm: 70% of current CEOs surveyed by management consulting firm AlixPartners say their companies face high levels of disruption. To lead through such terrain, boards and recruiters searching for future CEOs need to focus less on a candidate’s résumé and start asking whether an executive has the capacity to be agile. “When you’re working on CEO succession, with the clients we serve, there’s less of a debate about whether people are qualified,” says David Lange, a managing director and member of Russell Reynolds Associates’s (RRA) Global Board & CEO Advisory Practice. “It’s much more about: ‘Can they scale; can they adapt; can they evolve?’” Measuring pivot potential RRA has developed a methodology for measuring what it describes as a “leader’s dynamic quality to continue evolving and leading through change.” The firm does so through its Leadership Portrait, an assessment model it has been refining over the last 26 years. The portrait endeavors to quantify factors such as curiosity, drive, resilience, and social intelligence. It more recently has sought to measure “potential realization” by evaluating an executive’s values, desire to have an impact, and self-awareness of their strengths and limitations. Indeed, Margot McShane, co-lead of RRA’s Global Board & CEO Advisory Practice, notes that a leader’s willingness to say, “I don’t know,” and seek answers from their team is an asset in a rapidly changing business environment. “We think some self-doubt with a CEO can be a very helpful thing, because it keeps them curious and aware of blind spots which can derail them and organizations,” she says. Evaluating candidates on potential realization can lead boards to consider and anoint candidates who might have been passed over in a previous era. In an insight report on its Leadership Portrait, RRA shared the example of a client that passed over its chief operating officer (COO) and elevated its chief financial officer (CFO) to CEO. What the former CFO lacked in traditional operating experience, he made up for in a leadership portrait that showed he had courage, the potential to learn, and the ability to navigate risk. RRA says under the new CEO, the company’s stock price increased 60% over two years. Meanwhile, the traditional CFO skill set—including mastery of financial data to make airtight decisions—may not necessarily signal agility. “That is no longer actually as important as the ability to make sense fast,” Lange says. Measurement’s impact One unknown: whether this uncertain environment will make directors impatient with new CEOs. In an interview for Stanford Business School’s View From the Top speaker series, former Walmart CEO Doug McMillon—whose 12-year tenure at the retail giant is widely considered a success because of how he embraced technology and led the company through the pandemic—confessed that when he first became CEO he was repeatedly told that he took too long to make decisions. “As the years went, that stopped being on my [reviews] because I think I got more confident and more self-aware that sometimes decisions just needed to be made,” he said. Interestingly, McMillon’s statement welcoming his successor John Furner highlighted a few traits that suggest the new CEO’s potential realization. “His curiosity and digital acumen combined with a deep commitment to our people and culture will enable him to take us to the next level,” McMillon said. I asked RRA’s McShane if there are things aspiring CEOs can do to increase their chances of getting the top job, given that boards are now looking for candidates who display values, impact, and self-awareness. “Don’t think about what your next job is; think about what your last job would be—and what [you] need to do, personally and professionally, to make that happen,” she says. “What we know about any CEO candidate is that they have to own their ambition.” How do you measure agility? CEOs need to be agile, but so do team members. Are there agility indicators you seek when hiring? How do you know if they can realize their potential? I’d like to hear your thoughts. Send me an email at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Read more: leadership acumen Adapting to change is the most critical professional skill today How to drive business agility and accelerate growth The CEO pipeline is running dry View the full article

You know Graza—or, at least, you’ve probably seen its squeeze bottles of extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) on grocery store shelves. They’re green, opaque to protect the contents, and sold in two variations: Sizzle, for cooking, and Drizzle, for finishing. Since the brand launched its direct-to-consumer site in 2021, it’s become a staple of the olive oil aisle. With national distribution across stores like Whole Foods, Kroger, and Costco, its squeeze bottles (sometimes accompanied by its beer-can refills) are sold in more than 28,000 stores. It has also been making small excursions into other parts of the store, with Ithaca using Graza oil for a co-branded hummus. But now Graza is planting its flag in the condiment aisle with three new mayonnaise variants: Original, Fancy, and Garlic Aioli—all of which are available in plastic squeeze bottles and glass jars. It started rolling out to Whole Foods locations and other retailers in January. Though company cofounder and CEO Andrew Benin acknowledges that “in some situations, you shouldn’t reinvent the wheel,” Graza still wanted to make its mark. Its mayo is the first commercial mayonnaise made with 100% unrefined oils, and he said he wanted the Garlic Aioli to taste “like your Spanish mother-in-law’s aioli.” (Considering Benin has a Spanish mother-in-law, he’s a relatively trustworthy source on that one.) As when Graza broke into the olive oil category, its launch of a mayo amid booming demand for condiments will be an uphill battle for the company. But Benin relishes the opportunity to make his mark—again. “Olive oil was exciting to us because there’s so much longevity to it—we’re a part of a really big whole with a lot of history,” he says. “We feel the same way about mayonnaise.” Mayo the Graza way Because of the popularity of its original two olive oils, last year Graza introduced a high-heat variant made of pomace oil (the pulp remnants of an EVOO pressing). “We had a lot of pressure to expand,” Benin says, adding that he was slow to settle on an expansion because things like vinegar or salt “weren’t actually connected to olive oil.” That’s where mayo—which is made of up to 65% oil—felt like a natural way to use its existing product in a new way. Graza’s classic mayo uses a combination of its EVOO and pomace oil, while Fancy and Garlic varieties use 100% EVOO. For each iteration of the products, Benin says Graza got input from condiment experts and Graza employees. Each new version was set up in the kitchen of Graza’s Domino Park office in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, with a sheet of paper for notes and a pile of spoons (plus a bowl for the dirty ones). “If you think about all the small adjustments we made, all the formulas, I think we tasted mayo over 20,000 times in this office,” Benin says. “A lot of mayo, a lot of full bellies being, like, ‘I don’t want lunch because I think I just had mayo for lunch.’” Though the products satisfied Graza employees, they now have to cut the mustard with consumers who are currently inundated with condiments, especially mayo. The condiment craze Graza’s mayo faces competition that includes not just legacy giants like Kraft and Unilever’s Best Foods and Hellmann’s, but also a growing slate of celeb-backed products. Last year, actor Glen Powell launched his Walmart condiment line Smash Kitchen, which features an organic mayo. And chef-influencer Molly Baz’s brand Ayoh Mayo—with retro-inspired branding that rivals Graza’s in its distinctiveness—rolled out nationwide at Target in January, after having launched online in 2024. The surge in brands is responding to a larger boom in consumer demand, according to Claire Dinhut, a former TV producer and an author whose Instagram @condimentclaire focuses on sauces. She says the “Mayo-sance” got its start during the early days of the pandemic. “Especially during lockdown, people’s outing of the day was going to the grocery store,” Dinhut says, adding that people were looking for simple ways to spice up their home cooking. That was beneficial to the condiments retail market. In 2020, McCormick—a global sauce manufacturer of staples like Frank’s RedHot, Cholula, and French’s mustard—saw a 5% rise in sales over the previous year, driven by growth in consumer purchases. Since then, demand hasn’t slowed down, and neither has growth. The global condiments market is projected to grow from $106.37 billion in 2026 to $176.53 billion by 2034. The U.S. market alone is projected to reach $32.84 billion by 2032. The prospect of Graza shaving off even a little bit of the mayo giants’ sales means big money, and the brand is benefitting from a swing in consumer sentiment from “mayo hate” in the 2010s to a renewed ardor. “It was apparently cool to hate mayo for some reason,” Dinhut says. “But I think the same thing has happened with butter. It’s anything that maybe has a little bit more fat content or is a little bit heartier—people have preconceived notions about them, and it’s cool to not like that thing.” But now, the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement—and broad consumer interest in less processed products (whole milk and all)—could help Graza pull in customers from its more processed rivals. “So many brands are coming out with condiments, and I think they’re a really easy way to make that brand’s taste resonate through other people’s dishes and cooking,” Dinhut says. “I think it’s really smart from a brand perspective.” Playing to its strength Though Graza’s mayo comes with claims of being unrefined, its success will also rely on its recognizable packaging and branding. CEO Benin hopes that using its recognizable brand will help do with mayo what it did for oil. “We’ve been trying to get more people to understand that Graza is much more about what’s inside its packaging than the outside,” he says. Graza’s mayonnaise packaging sticks true to the OG bright and playful style, reminiscent of its olive oil. The containers feature a joyful olive and egg duo (or a smiling garlic bulb on the aioli package). The labels feature an illustrated olive, and the lids of its glass jars have a repeating olive and vine motif. For as much as Benin doesn’t want Graza to be known simply for its packaging innovation, the company’s branding is one of its strongest assets. With the mayo, as with the olive oil, its packaging is something of a Trojan horse to get people to look at it, and then to try it. He knows he probably won’t convert the most fervent mayonnaise haters, but he’s hoping to intrigue mayo apologists enough to try Graza’s version. “We get excited when there’s this big pool that we can plug into and say, ‘How are we going to make it better? How are we going to stand out? Where can we do things the Graza way?’” Benin says. View the full article

In the past few years, while navigating the streets of San Francisco, bus and trolley operators have documented a growing presence on the city’s streets: Waymo robotaxis, often devoid of any front-seat human driver, causing problems. Sometimes, they report the cars for signs of an illegal maneuver, like when in September, a driver operating the city’s 45 electric bus noticed a Waymo trying to pass on double solid yellow lines at Stockton and Columbus, an intersection along its route. Or for a near miss—like, when, last December, a Waymo was caught by a city light rail train’s video camera making a dangerous left turn at “high speed.” Very often, transit operators flag a stalled robotaxi, or several, blocking a public street. Clearing the vehicle might require a transportation official to reach out to a Waymo call center, or even the cops, for help. This process, which involves the city’s Traffic Management Center (TMC), can take as long as an hour to resolve. Back in 2024, the city’s MTA even created a new dedicated dispatch category to log these reports: “Driverless Car Incident.” The sight of a stalled Waymo isn’t new. But a TMC database, obtained by Fast Company via a public records request, suggests that reports of problematic robotaxis are being filed more often, and that the procedure for handling stalled vehicles is not yet seamless. Fixing the robotaxi blockage can involve waiting for a remote Waymo assistance team helping the vehicle’s AI get moving again, a transit dispatcher complaining to a Waymo call center, or even a cop taking control of the vehicle themselves and driving it away. When the smart city goes dark Last December, Waymo and the city’s approach to this problem was pushed to the brink when a partial blackout in San Francisco knocked out city traffic lights—and left Waymos across the city in a confused standstill and government officials on hold with the company’s call center in the middle of an emergency. Concern that Waymos can disrupt public services came up again recently, after one of the robotaxis was recorded briefly blocking an ambulance in the aftermath of the Austin mass shooting. “In recent years we implemented new reporting mechanisms for our operators to report incidents that involve driverless vehicles,” the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Authority tells Fast Company. “By doing so, we’re adapting to the evolving landscape in San Francisco and making sure that we can provide the best service possible for our customers.” “Waymo is committed to continuous improvement,” Lety Cavalcante, who serves as Waymo’s director of operations and head of its operators center, tells Fast Company. “We established even closer communication with San Francisco emergency officials, and are developing additional capabilities to facilitate smoother interactions between our operations and transit workers when on-road issues arise.” The company says it’s also implemented changes to ensure that both first responders and transit operators are prioritized when they call Waymo for help. Still, Waymo disputes the descriptions of some of the events described in documents, and says the public transit operators’ reports are not a useful way of characterizing how their vehicles actually behave on the road. In regards to the first case—the robotaxi that allegedly passed on solid yellow—Waymo said its car was actually waiting behind the bus while it picked up passengers, and that the car was slowly trying to pass around the left side of the bus. Before the car was actually next to the bus, the public transit vehicle began to move, and the Waymo returned to its original lane. In regards to the second incident—the dangerous left turn near a train—Waymo says the train was in an opposing lane and the car was about 100 feet away. Of course, the promise of self-driving cars is that they’re supposed to be safer than human drivers. Indeed, some of the issues documented in the database, like Waymos allegedly cutting off buses, or parking in areas reserved for public transit, are infractions that humans also commit, and possibly far more often. Research suggests that autonomous cars can outperform human drivers, and are even less likely to be involved in serious accidents. Waymo says it’s reduced serious crashes, airbag deployments, and collisions involving pedestrians. (It was also spotlighted as one of Fast Company‘s Most Innovative Companies last year.) But self-driving cars are also a different sort of beast: They are powered via AI, deployed as a coordinated fleet that’s monitored by a single company. And they’re growing evermore popular: Waymo, which raised $16 billion earlier this year, is now successfully operating across the U.S., including in Phoenix, Arizona, and Atlanta. Meanwhile, competing AV companies like Tesla and Zoox are also operating, though they all remain far behind Waymo in San Francisco: Tesla vehicles don’t operate without human drivers yet, and Zoox only has a small number of cars on the road. Waymo’s success has made the once-futuristic idea of autonomous vehicles relatively commonplace in cities. But next-generation cars also introduce next-generation traffic jams. Which means interactions that once felt surreal—“honking at a driverless car makes me feel insane,” as one constituent, in an email obtained through a public records request, recently wrote to the San Francisco MTA—are poised to become a routine, and increasingly consequential, part of everyday life. Waymo’s trolleycar problem Waymo acknowledges its self-driving cars sometimes cause issues for public transit operators. This is where the company’s event response team, which Waymo describes as a specialized subunit within a larger remote assistance team, comes in: First responders and transit operators have access to a hotline number that reaches this team. That team is then supposed to help get a vehicle moving again, which might involve having Waymo personnel come physically drive the car away. Waymo says that, at the request of law enforcement, police officers and other first responders also have the ability to manually take over its robotaxis. On the ground, resolving these issues, and getting public transit moving again, can sometimes take a while, according to an analysis of the data obtained by Fast Company. The city’s Traffic Management Center (TMC), which receives calls about roadway obstructions from public transit operators, can take about 20 minutes, on average, and haven’t significantly improved between 2024 and 2025, according to an analysis by Mary Cummings, an engineering professor who studies autonomous vehicles at Carnegie Mellon University. In busy cities, delays can slow down dozens of public transit riders, and other cars, too. The TMC database shows complaints of blocked vehicles date back to at least 2023. The SF MTA has, for years, flagged its concerns about hazardous “unplanned stops,” including to the California Public Utilities Commission, the state’s main autonomous vehicle regulator. In 2024, the MTA began tracking a new dispatch category called “Driverless Car Incident.” That decision was made a few months after Waymo started pulling its precautionary safety drivers from its cars, and truly driverless service began, an official at the MTA tells Fast Company. It was at that point, they say, that the transportation agency started seeing the real challenges introduced by AVs. “Robotaxis impose burdens on other road users that are not there with human drivers,” argues Philip Kooperman, another engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon. “Now, maybe the benefits outweigh the burdens, but you have to recognize the burdens are being posed.” City streets are chaotic places, and Waymos are only a tiny fraction of the problems that get reported to San Francisco’s traffic control center. Also, incidents involving Waymos aren’t always the fault of Waymo. The reports appear to reflect preliminary descriptions, and aren’t the results of full investigations. Still, they reveal what can be a convoluted workflow. When public transit drivers encounter a Waymo problem, they report it to the city’s traffic control center, an SF MTA official explains. Traffic controllers can then contact Waymo’s call center for the event response team, which may help guide the vehicle away remotely or dispatch an employee to move it manually. But, in the case of a delay, or if they’ve had difficulty reaching Waymo, they may also call a first responder. Several of the reports include complaints about the quality of the Waymo call center. “Waymo contacted and was ZERO help,” noted one complaint, which came after a public transit operator reported a robotaxi blocking the street in both directions. “Waymo was attempted but kept being routed to a call center that was no help,” noted another report, which came at an intersection where traffic signals needed to be reset. Several reports discuss cops getting involved. This is not something police should be involved in, but sometimes the situation requires it, the San Francisco MTA official says. One report references a separate Waymo call center number that reaches an enterprise support team. Waymo did not explain why the number was referenced in the report, but says it’s for a team that supports it for Waymo test drivers—not first responders or transit operators. For now, Waymo transit operators are supposed to contact the same first responder number that police use, though it’s working on creating a separate hotline for transit operators and government officials. The San Francisco Police Department, which is referenced repeatedly in the document, did not respond to a request for comment. Blackout blues On December 20 of last year, a circuit breaker at an indoor substation operated by California utility provider, PG&E ignited, sparking a fire that knocked out power across much of San Francisco. This mass outage caused serious problems for the city’s Waymo fleet. When Waymos encountered the temporarily disabled traffic lights, many stalled, waiting for confirmations from the company’s remote assistance team. In some areas, squads of robotaxis sat with their hazard lights flashing, clogging streets, according to footage later uploaded online. Some incidents were reported to the Traffic Management Center, including one trolleybus driver who was blocked by four stalled Waymos. The city’s traffic control office contacted Waymo support but was unable to resolve the situation, the report noted, and a city inspector eventually showed up to clear the scene. Overall, there were more than 42 reported incidents involving autonomous vehicles between 2 p.m. and midnight on the day of the blackout, according to a city filing viewed by Fast Company. Firefighters also needed to move a robotaxi blocking them from the very substation fire that originally caused the blackout. One Waymo delayed an ambulance by 40 minutes, the city says. There were other problems: The Department of Emergency Management, the city’s 911 service, did try to engage Waymo, but the company was unresponsive, a city official tells Fast Company. Eventually, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie both called and texted Tekedra Mawakana, co-CEO of the company, about the issue. In the messages, which were viewed by Fast Company, he flagged all the locations where the cars had caused problems, which she subsequently thumbs up. “All cars are pulled over or actively headed back to base,” she later wrote. “Trips are done—no hailing.” The issues continued even after service was suspended, the filing states. Ultimately, the city’s 911 service placed more than 31 calls to Waymo’s first responder hotline and spent more than two hours and 36 minutes of call time trying to contact the company. “While we cannot document this in detail, a large majority of this time was spent on hold; one SFDEM staff person remained on the Waymo first responder hotline for 53 minutes—most of that time on hold,” noted the city. Though many were resolved quickly, Waymo has said that there were ultimately more than 1,500 stoppage events during the blackout. Pete Wilson, president of TWU Local 250A, which represents the city’s transit workers, said robotaxis repeatedly stalled when traffic lights failed, causing them to stack up and block streets, buses, and rail lines. “During the blackout they did not know what to do when the stop lights went out, so they just stopped,” he tells Fast Company. “Then another Waymo would come and pull up next to the first one and stop.” Relying on the mayor to text a company’s CEO is not a great emergency response plan, and other municipalities don’t necessarily have leaders as connected to Big Tech as Lurie. Waymo has since promised to be more responsive in future emergencies, a city official told Fast Company, and the Department of Emergency Management says it’s since had “productive” conversations with the company. The wait time experienced by emergency dispatchers was unacceptable, Waymo told Fast Company, and the company plans to improve its emergency operations. “We’re encouraged by our recent preparedness performance demonstrated during subsequent power outages, city-wide protests, and other large scale events in San Francisco, including the Super Bowl,” adds Cavalcante, from the company. Waymo says it’s briefed a bevy of agencies, as well as the Governor’s office, since the blackout, and says it will deploy dedicated incident management personnel on site in the future. Communication overload As Waymo explains it, when the company’s robotaxis encounter trouble or a confusing situation, they’re supposed to seek confirmation from a team of remote assistant agents staffed by humans. But, as first reported by Fast Company, the December blackout highlighted a gap in defenses: When communications networks and systems are overwhelmed—which often happens during emergencies—vehicles can’t quickly connect to the remote teams that help the cars’ software navigate confusing situations. There can also be challenges with reaching the specific team that helps first responders. The company tells Fast Company that it’s making improvements to the Waymo Driver that will enable more decisive and efficient navigation during future events. Still, the emergency has raised questions about who should pick up the slack when a Waymo stalls, whether it’s confused by a troubling intersection, and blocking a bus, or because it can’t make out the traffic lights during a blackout. Critically, Waymo maintains that its cars are autonomous, so even when the remote assistant agents are called into help, they are simply advising the car, and not remotely driving the vehicle. Some lawmakers have raised concerns that some of these workers are based in the Philippines. Several people affiliated with Waymo are mentioned by name in the MTA reports, but Waymo did not comment on where, specifically, they were based. Waymo says that employees on the event response team, which interfaces directly with first responders, are based in the U.S. The California DMV is currently developing regulations for remote drivers and remote assistance, a spokesperson says, and the agency is still engaging AV manufacturers on emergency response. In the aftermath of that blackout, the San Francisco MTA has urged the California Public Utilities Commission, which serves as the main regulator of the technology in the state, to consider how autonomous vehicle providers approach disaster preparedness, especially in a case of “fleet-wide failure.” Terrie Prosper, a spokesperson for the California Public Utilities Commission, says the agency “continues to gather information from Waymo related to the power outage in San Francisco.” The SF County Transportation Authority has called for more transparency into the frequency of AV stoppages, but has since deferred conversations to Bilal Mahmood, a San Francisco city supervisor. Mahmood, for his part, recently compared the robotaxis to the carriage from Cinderella. “Just like in the fairy tale, we can now see that those carriages can turn into pumpkins at the drop of a hat,” he said during his introductory remarks at a city hearing focused on the blackout’s impact on AVs. There, Mary Ellen Caroll, the head of the city’s emergency response office, said she remains concerned about the impact of Waymos on first responders who have to remove vehicles, and about what might happen in a future emergency, including a cyber outage. Offshore remote control The public still doesn’t know how often Waymos block traffic. While Waymo publicly reports a range of data to the California Public Utilities Commission, the company reports stoppage data, along with other trip detail data, to the agency confidentially. At a public hearing in January, an attorney representing the company claimed that the stoppage data could inadvertently reveal data about “fleet utilization” and, if shared publicly, could reveal trade secrets. Indeed, the numbers obtained by Fast Company only tell part of the story. It’s possible that some public transit operators don’t even file these reports. These operators are a minority of the drivers on San Francisco streets. When asked whether it seemed like Waymo cared about the impact its vehicles might have on public transit, the official at the San Francisco MTA said it was difficult to tell. They recalled a social media post from a while back, which saw customers on the phone with Waymo—reporting on their car inferring with public transit—and receiving remarkable service. But it’s hard to tell if that’s the norm, the official tells Fast Company, since that’s data the city just doesn’t have. Waymo did not tell Fast Company how often its cars stall or block transit, but said its robotaxis have completed 40 million miles of autonomous driving throughout the three years covered by the TMC reports. There’s little the SF MTA can do to change this workflow, the city agency says. “California law gives permitting authority over AVs to the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC),” the transportation agency tells Fast Company in a statement. “San Francisco does not regulate AVs or set conditions on their operations – either day to day or in relation to disaster and emergency response.” Still, Waymo behavior is a big enough problem that, inside the San Francisco MTA—which maintains oversight of the city’s streets—even staffers sometimes grumble about them. In one December email obtained via public records request, Ricardo Olea, a city traffic engineer, remarked on one recent email, complaining that Waymos had been stopping in a no-stopping lane. “[N]ot a good place to block traffic,” wrote Olea. “The bigger problem is that Waymo has decided that the NO STOPPING signs don’t apply to them, so who knows what other bad places they stop at.” View the full article

Version 4.6 of Yoast Duplicate Post is here, and it’s all about making your editing experience feel more natural in WordPress’s Block Editor, and making sure “Rewrite & Republish” works reliably every time you need it. A more modern editing experience Everything where you’d expect it. The Duplicate Post controls now sit in the Block Editor’s sidebar, right alongside WordPress’s own settings, no more hunting around. If you’re still on the Classic Editor, nothing changes for you. Buttons that look the part. The “Copy to a new draft” and “Rewrite & Republish” actions are now proper bordered buttons, consistent with the rest of the WordPress interface. Cleaner, clearer, and easier to use. Built for the future. Under the hood improvements ensure Duplicate Post stays stable and compatible as WordPress continues to evolve, so you don’t have to think about it. Yoast Duplicate Post has always been about reliability. While the plugin has served millions of you faithfully since our last release, we’re excited to bring you version 4.6. This update is packed with long-awaited fixes and thoughtful interface refinements that ensure the plugin stays modern, stable, and ready for the future of WordPress. Enrico Battocchi – Plugin team lead and creator of Duplicate Post More reliable “Rewrite & Republish” workflows Your posts won’t get stuck. If something goes wrong mid-process, like a redirect being interrupted, the plugin now handles it gracefully and cleans up automatically. Your content will never be left in a stuck state. Attachments copied completely. All attachment metadata, including captions and descriptions, is fully preserved when you duplicate a post. Nothing gets left behind. International & security improvements The right words, in your language. Buttons and notices in the Block Editor are now correctly translated across all languages, with none of the behind-the-scenes errors that some locales were seeing. Consistent styling, always. Buttons display correctly regardless of your admin configuration, including when the WordPress admin bar is turned off. Version 4.6 is available now. As always, we recommend testing in a staging environment before updating your live site. The post New: Yoast Duplicate Post 4.6 appeared first on Yoast. View the full article

On March 21, 2006, founder Jack Dorsey set up his “twttr”: Since then, some of the most important, world-changing moments have unfolded on Twitter in real-time for all to see, react to, and engage with. A lot has changed since those early days, including the platform’s name. When Elon Musk officially acquired Twitter on October 27, 2022, for $44 billion, he renamed it X. Almost four years later, people are still calling the platform Twitter, so, in this article, we’ll jump around between the two names or use both. just setting up my twttr — jack (@jack) March 21, 2006 If you’re new to X, or feel like you’re no longer sure how to use Twitter after all the changes, this article has you covered with everything you need to know. Jump to a section: Why use Twitter/X? How to set up your Twitter account Optimize your Twitter/X profile Build your Twitter/X marketing strategy How to post on Twitter/X Create content for your Twitter/X account Popular X features to use in your social media marketing Best practices to grow your following Feeling confident that you now know how to use Twitter/X? Your quick guide to Twitter/X terminology FAQ about how to use Twitter More Twitter/X resources Why use Twitter/X?You might have heard that X isn’t what it (and by “it”, I mean Twitter) used to be — and in some ways, that’s true. The platform has changed a lot. But it’s far from irrelevant. X still sees around 557 million active users per month, which is more than competing platforms like Bluesky (41 million) and Threads (400 million). In other words, the audience is still very much there. And, according to our research, they’re highly engaged. X has always been the place where conversations happen in real time. News breaks, trends start, and industry debates unfold. If you want to be part of the conversation, X is still one of the fastest-moving platforms around. Here are some other reasons why people are on X: It’s still one of the best platforms for visibilityUnlike some platforms that prioritize content from people you already follow, X makes it easier for your posts to reach beyond your immediate audience. A thoughtful reply in the right thread can get you in front of thousands of people, or a well-timed post about a trending topic can spark meaningful engagement. It’s evolving beyond short postsWhen he acquired the platform, Elon Musk’s vision was to evolve the social networking site into a broader “everything app,” encompassing much more than simple messaging and tweeting. Some of the new features include different account types (we’ll get into those later), longer posts, enhanced video sharing, and limited (but developing) digital transactions and possibly e-commerce functionalities. It’s a strong platform for personal brandsIf you’re building a personal brand, X offers something unique: proximity. You can: Reply directly to industry leadersJoin public conversations with decision-makersBuild credibility by consistently sharing insights in your nicheAnd because posts move quickly, you can experiment often. The feedback loop is fast, which makes it a great platform for learning what resonates. Twitter/X is not for everyone — and that’s OKX isn’t the most visual platform. It’s not built around highly curated feeds. And it can feel noisy at times. But if you enjoy conversation, commentary, sharp insights, and real-time interaction, X still offers a lot of value. The key is understanding what it does best and using it intentionally. So, is X on your list? In the next section, we’ll look at how to set up your account for success from day one. How to set up your Twitter account OK, X marks the spot. Now, it’s time to set up your account. Before you do so, it’s helpful to have an idea of which kind of account will work best for you. Should I use a personal or professional account on X?If you’re using X to grow a brand, build an audience, or market a business, using a professional account instead of a personal account is usually the smart move. It’s free, and you can switch back at any time. A personal account works well if you’re posting casually, engaging in conversations, or simply exploring the platform. You still get access to core features like posts, threads, replies, and polls.A professional account unlocks business-focused features. You can add a category label to your profile, access profile spotlight options (such as linking to a newsletter), and — if eligible — showcase products through a shop module. In short: If you’re building something on X, go pro. If you’re just participating socially, a personal account is perfectly fine. Which Twitter/X subscription tier is right for me?One of the biggest changes on X in recent years is that the platform now offers four major account tiers: FreeBasicPremiumPremium+Each tier comes with different features — and, as we’ve discovered, different levels of visibility. More on this in a few. Comparing different X subscription optionsThe free account If you’re just getting started, the free tier is still a solid option. You can: Post up to 280 charactersShare images and videosBuild an audienceJoin conversationsFor many casual users or early-stage creators, this is more than enough to test the waters and see whether X is a good fit. If your goal is to learn the platform, experiment with your voice, and engage consistently, you don’t need to pay to do that. X Premium If you’re serious about growth, X Premium is where things start to get interesting. Premium includes: The ability to post longer contentPost editingA verification checkmarkFewer adsPotential favor with the algorithmA recent study by Buffer’s data scientist, Julian Winternheimer, found that Premium accounts get around 10x more reach per post than regular accounts. Buffer’s own Tami Oladipo tested the impact of upgrading and saw a noticeable shift. After subscribing to X Premium, she published less frequently, but her reach and engagement stayed steady. In other words, performance didn’t dip with lower output. “X Premium immediately seems like a great fit for anyone looking to grow an engaged audience, especially if your content is primarily text-driven,” she said. “Features like editing and the ability to make longer form content are invaluable for maintaining quality and depth in content. Some of my best-performing posts were longer, and they did pretty well.” That’s an important takeaway. If your strategy relies on thoughtful threads, nuanced takes, or educational content, the ability to go long can make a real difference. Basic and Premium+ Basic and Premium+ sit on either side of Premium in terms of features and pricing. Basic offers some enhancements over the free tier, but without full verification benefitsPremium+ typically includes the highest level of ad reduction and additional prioritization in replies and searchSo, which one should you choose? Here’s a simple way to think about it. For creators and business owners who rely on X for visibility, Premium or Premium+ may feel like an investment in distribution. For casual users, it may not be necessary. Exploring or posting occasionally? Free is fine.Building a personal brand or growing an audience? Premium is worth considering.Using X as a core marketing channel? Premium or Premium+ may give you an edge.Also remember that you don’t have to decide forever. You can start free, learn the platform, and upgrade later if you feel limited. So even if you’re not quite sure which account or subscription you need just yet, we can go ahead and get set up. How to set up Twitter/X on mobileDownload and open the app. Click on Continue with Google (to sign in with Google) or Create Account.Add your details.You’ll be sent a verification code via SMS or email, depending on your preference.Verify using the code, set up your password, and hit Sign up.Add a profile picture.Create a username.Set your notification and contact preferences.Follow one or more accounts.You’re in. How to set up Twitter/X on desktopHead over to x.com and click on Continue with Google (to sign in with Google) or Create Account.Add your details.You’ll be sent a verification code via SMS or email, depending on your preference.Verify using the code, set up your password, and hit Sign up.Add a profile picture.Create a username.Choose some topics that interest you.Follow one or more accounts.You’re ready to explore.Optimize your Twitter/X profileBefore you post a single update, take 10 minutes to set up your profile properly. Think of it as your digital storefront — when someone clicks through from a post, this is what convinces them to follow (or not). Here’s how to make sure your profile works for you. Upload a profile pictureYour profile picture may be small in size, but it makes a big first impression. If someone sees your reply in a busy thread, your profile photo is often the first thing they notice. Use a high-quality, well-lit headshot or your brand logo. The recommended size is 400 pixels x 400 pixels. A few quick tips: Faces tend to build trust faster than logos (especially for creators and founders)Keep it simple — avoid busy backgroundsMake sure it’s clearly visible in a small circle⚡Find yourself constantly Googling the right image sizes for different platforms? Here’s an up-to-date list of all the image specs you’ll need for the major social media networks. Add a cover photo Your cover photo is valuable real estate. Because your bio is limited to 160 characters, your header image can help tell the rest of your story. Consider using it to: Highlight what you doShowcase your product or workShare social proof (like “Helping 10K+ creators grow”)Add a bold call-to-action (CTA)Keep the design clean and easy to read on mobile, as most people will visit your profile on their phone. Write your bio You’ve only got 160 characters, so make them count. A strong bio answers three simple questions: Who are you?What do you do?Why should someone follow you?Keep it clear, not clever. You can tag brands you’ve worked with (when relevant) to add credibility — just don’t overdo it. If you’re stuck, try this formula: I help [specific audience] achieve [specific result] using [your method]. Add your website or Buffer Start PageYou only get one link in your bio, so if you have multiple things to share (like a newsletter, YouTube channel, and services page), a link-in-bio tool can help. Buffer’s Start Page is a free option that lets you create a simple landing page with multiple links. On your Start Page, you might include: Your latest workYour main websiteA lead magnetOther social profilesBooking linksThe goal is simple: Make it easy for people to take the next step. Pinned tweetIf someone new visits your profile, your pinned post is your first impression. Think of it as your highlight reel. If someone only reads one thing on your profile, make sure it represents you well. You could pin: Your most engaging tweet or threadA “Start here” introduction postA summary of what you shareA big win or announcementFollow relevant accountsWho you follow matters more than most people realize. A few things to keep in mind: Follow people in your nicheEngage with accounts that inspire or educate youAvoid following spam or inactive accounts.Also, pay attention to your follower-to-following ratio. While it’s not everything, new visitors often glance at it. If you have 500 followers and follow 50K accounts, it can send the wrong signal. It may suggest you’re following people simply to get a follow back — even if that’s not your intention. Instead of mass-following, focus on building real connections. Here’s a great X profile example from Neil Patel: Build your Twitter/X marketing strategyPosting randomly on X and hoping something goes viral isn’t much of a strategy. Growth on X comes from knowing why you’re showing up, who you’re speaking to, and how you’ll measure progress. Here’s a simple three-step process to build your X marketing strategy: Step 1. Set clear and measurable goalsStart with the big question: Why are you on X? Do you want to grow your audience and build authority in your niche? Drive traffic to your website? Generate leads? Support customer service? Once you know the answer, you need to set metrics to measure that you’re on track — think of them as your KPIs (key performance indicators). For example: If your goal is brand awareness, you’ll focus on impressions, reach, and profile visitsIf your goal is community building, you’ll track replies, reposts, and engagement rateIf your goal is website traffic, link clicks and conversions become your priorityKeep your goals specific and measurable. Instead of “grow our presence on X,” aim to “increase profile visits by 25% in three months” or “gain 1,000 relevant followers this quarter.” Step 2. Create a content plan On X, consistency builds familiarity, and familiarity builds trust. A content plan outlines: What you’ll post (content pillars)How often you’ll postWhen you’ll postThe formats you’ll useStart by defining three to five content pillars. For example: Educational threadsIndustry commentaryBehind-the-scenes updatesCustomer stories or case studiesCurated resourcesThis prevents the “What should I post today?” scramble and helps you build a recognizable voice. Next, decide on a cadence you can keep up with. That might be: One to two posts per dayThree to five posts per weekOne in-depth thread per week plus shorter daily postsThe key is sustainability. Posting consistently for six months beats posting 10 times a day for two weeks and burning out. To stay organized, use a social media management tool like Buffer to plan and schedule your X posts in advance. With Buffer, you can: Schedule posts across multiple platformsVisualize your content calendarCollaborate with your teamRefine copy with AITrack performance in one dashboardStep 3. Engage intentionallyX is built for conversation. If you’re posting and ghosting, you’re missing the biggest growth lever on the platform. Replies, quote posts, and thoughtful interactions often drive more visibility than standalone posts. Build engagement into your strategy by: Replying to comments on your posts (one of Buffer's latest studies shows it can boost engagement by 8% on X)Starting conversations with questionsEngaging with creators and brands in your nicheParticipating in relevant trending discussions (when they align with your brand)Pro tip: You can use Buffer’s Community to respond to replies in one place, track sentiment, and make sure nothing slips through the cracks. Strategy sorted? If so, you’re ready to go. The next section covers how to post on Twitter. How to post on Twitter/X Whether you’re on desktop or on your mobile, it’s pretty straightforward to post to X. Here’s how. How to post to X on desktopOpen X.You can post directly at the top of the page, or choose the Post button on the left to create your content in a pop-up window.You can use the little buttons at the bottom to add images, GIFs, polls, or emojis. You can also choose to schedule your post for a later time and use Grok as an AI Assistant. Add your content, and hit Post. Simple as that.How to post to X on mobileOpen your X app.Click on the + button.Choose Post from the options.Add your content and tap the blue Post button.Note: Native scheduling isn’t available in the standard Twitter/X mobile app. If you need to schedule Tweets from your phone, you can use a third-party social media management tool like Buffer. Create X-cellent content for your Twitter/X accountNow that your profile is set up and you know how to post, it’s time to focus on what everyone’s here for: the engaging content you’re about to create. Let’s walk through a few practical ways to create posts that spark conversation, build visibility, and help you grow on X. What is the best content format on Twitter/X?Our analysis of the best content for major social media platforms found that text-based posts receive the most engagement on X (30% more engagement than videos, 37% more than pictures, 53% more than link posts, and 113% more than retweets). While there is certainly a place for video on X (the runner-up), it is fundamentally a text-first platform. Your real-time news, hot takes, and punchy one-liners are most welcome. That said, if you have videos or photos that add depth and context to your content, go ahead and post those too. At the end of the day, the best content format is the one that works best for you. Pro tip: Keep an eye on your analytics to identify patterns over time and see what content formats perform best. 💡Stumped on what to tweet? Here are 30+ ideas for your next post.Should I include links in my posts?According to our data, it’s a hard no, unless you’re in the Premium tier. Posts with links perform significantly worse than other content types: Since March 2025, link posts from non-Premium accounts have seen dramatically reduced visibility, with median engagement rates hovering at 0% (again, you read that right). This means that newsletters, product pages, and blog posts shared directly in the timeline aren’t getting the same results as they once did on Twitter. Pro tip: Instead of leading with a link, lead with value: share the insight, spark conversation, and make the link a secondary step (for example, placing it in a reply or directing people to your bio). Be smart about hashtagsX has put the record straight: Using multiple hashtags can get you penalized by the algorithm. That said, hashtags still help categorize your posts and make them discoverable in search, so here’s how to use them well: Stick to one or two hashtags max. Choose keywords that genuinely describe your post.Don’t use spaces or punctuation (#SocialMediaTips works. #Social Media Tips doesn’t)Place them naturallyType a hashtag into the search bar to see how active and relevant it is before using itPopular X features to use in your social media marketing X offers more than just posts and replies — it’s packed with features that can help you grow, connect, and even convert. Here are some of the most useful X tools to incorporate into your social media marketing strategy. Feed customizationYour feed is the stream of posts you see when you log in. Here, you can toggle between For You and Following. The For You feed is algorithm-driven and surfaces content based on your activity, which makes it great for discovering trends and conversations in your niche.The Following feed shows posts in chronological order from accounts you follow, which is helpful for staying close to peers, customers, or competitors. SpacesSpaces are live audio conversations hosted on X. They’re powerful for thought leadership, community building, product launches, or live Q&As. You can invite speakers, bring listeners on stage, and record your sessions for replay. Pro tip: This is great content for repurposing, so turn one conversation into a bank of content. CommunityCommunities are topic-based groups within X where people share posts around a specific interest. Posting in relevant Communities can help your content reach a more targeted audience, especially if you’re building authority in a niche. Twitter ListsLists let you create curated feeds of specific accounts. Marketers often use lists to monitor competitors, industry leaders, customers, or media contacts without cluttering their main feed. In my opinion, it’s one of the most underrated research and engagement tools on the platform. PollsPolls are simple, interactive posts that allow followers to vote on predefined options. They’re excellent for sparking engagement, gathering quick insights, validating ideas, or encouraging low-friction interaction, especially when you’re testing messaging or content themes. Long-form posts (Premium feature)Premium users can publish longer posts beyond the standard character limit — a lot longer. While standard accounts only get 280 characters, Premium accounts can go up to 25K characters. This can be useful for deeper storytelling or thought leadership without needing a full thread. ThreadsIf you don’t have a Premium account, one workaround for longer content is to use threads. Threads are a series of connected posts that expand on a single idea. They’re ideal for storytelling, teaching, sharing frameworks, or breaking down complex topics step by step. Here’s an example from Buffer’s Twitter account: Buffer is built by a fully remote global team, and we bring everyone together once a year for a working retreat. Our expected budget for our April retreat is $332,127.74. It’s not a small expense, but we’re big on investing in our team. Here’s why it’s worth it: — Buffer (@buffer) March 17, 2025 Digital transactions and ecommerceX is gradually expanding into ecommerce. Features like the profile shop allow eligible businesses with a professional account to showcase products directly on their profile, while product drops help build anticipation around upcoming launches with reminder notifications. Combined with creator monetization tools like subscriptions and paid content, X is evolving from a traffic-driving platform into a potential conversion touchpoint. Creator subscriptions Creator subscriptions are available to eligible creators who want to monetize their audience directly on X. This feature allows you to offer exclusive content — such as subscriber-only posts, replies, or Spaces — in exchange for a monthly fee. You don’t need a separate creator account type to use subscriptions, but you do need to meet X’s eligibility requirements and typically be on a paid tier. Best practices to grow your followingGrowing on X doesn’t happen overnight — but with the right habits, good things happen. Here are a few practical, proven best practices to help you build momentum and attract the right audience. 📈Here are nine tried-and-tested strategies to help you grow on X.Join trending hashtags and topicsTo find what’s trending, click on the Explore page and click the Trending tab. You can explore trending hashtags in your region, or select different categories from the Global Trending menu. Post consistentlyIf you want to grow on X, consistency matters more than almost anything else. The algorithm tends to favor recency and active participation, so showing up regularly gives your content more chances to be seen. If you can manage it, a sustainable sweet spot is around three to five posts per day, spaced out over time. That doesn’t mean churning out content for the sake of it. It means staying present in the conversation with a mix of original posts, thoughtful replies, and occasional reshares. Pro tip: If that sounds like a lot, a simple content calendar and scheduling tool can make it far more manageable — helping you stay consistent without burning out. Schedule your tweets in advanceShowing up consistently takes planning, especially when you consider that the X/Twitter algorithm loves fresh content and rewards accounts that post regularly. Scheduling your tweets helps with that. It lets you create your best content when it works for you, then automatically publish it when your audience is online and scrolling. You get to stay visible and consistent without being glued to your phone all day. That's a win-win in my books. CALLOUT: Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to schedule your tweets, both on the platform and using Buffer. Post at the best timeAlthough X no longer has a chronological feed, the times you post still seem to affect the performance of your content. Our analysis of more than 1 million tweets found that the best time to post on X is 9 a.m. on Wednesday. The next best times to post are Tuesday at 8 a.m., followed by Monday at 8 a.m. In general, tweeting during mid-morning every weekday tends to yield solid engagement. Overall, the best time to post is when your audience is online and engaged. While this general data provides a helpful starting point, it’s not one-size-fits-all. The real insight lives in your own context. For example, a B2B founder sharing insights on startup growth might see stronger engagement early in the morning on weekdays, when their audience is commuting or catching up on industry news. On the other hand, a gaming creator could find their posts gain more traction late at night or over the weekend, when their community is actively playing and scrolling between sessions. Monitor your analyticsEvery post on X tells a story in the data. Behind every impression, reply, repost, and follow is a clue about what resonates and why. These metrics reveal patterns in attention, timing, and momentum. Over time, they show you what sparks conversation, what builds credibility, and what quietly falls flat. For creators, marketers, and small business owners, that clarity can shape not just what you post next, but how you approach your entire strategy. Use your analytics to: Look for patterns across post impressions to see which ones perform betterUse audience insights to check if you’re reaching the right peopleIdentify what’s driving follower growthCompare your average tweet performance for this month with the previous month to see if your performance has improvedIdentify patterns that show you which kinds of posts drive the most engagementEvaluate engagement rate over time CALLOUT: Here are 7 ways to use Twitter analytics to help you make smarter decisions and grow your following. Actively engage with your audience On X, replying to comments won’t magically double your reach, but it does make a difference. Our research found that creators who replied to comments saw about an 8% lift in engagement. What’s more compelling is how consistent that pattern was: more than half the accounts we analyzed performed above their own baseline when they engaged back, regardless of account tier or shifting visibility rules. Here’s something fascinating I found out when X open-sourced parts of its algorithm: Not all engagement carries the same weight. A reply you respond to can be weighted up to 75× more than a like — and a like alone barely moves the needle. What does that mean in practice? Posting and ghosting doesn’t just stall relationships; it can limit your reach significantly. Pro tip: If you want your content to travel further, prioritize real conversations. Set aside time to respond to thoughtful replies, answer questions, and join conversations under your own posts. 💡We built the Community hub in Buffer for this exact reason: One calm inbox to reply to all your comments and stay on top of conversations, without getting buried in notifications. Feeling confident that you now know how to use Twitter/X?I hope this guide has given you a clear, practical starting point — and maybe even a few ideas you’re excited to test. Like any platform, growth on X comes down to showing up consistently, sharing ideas that spark conversation, and staying engaged with your audience. You don’t need to do everything at once. Start small, experiment, learn from what works, and build from there. And if staying consistent feels like the hardest part, having the right tools can make a real difference. Planning, scheduling, and analyzing your posts in one place can free you up to focus on what matters most: Creating content your audience cares about. Create your free Buffer account. Your quick guide to Twitter/X terminologyPost: The official term for what used to be called a tweet. Posts can include text, images, videos, GIFs, polls, and links. Repost: The equivalent of a retweet. A repost shares someone else’s post with your followers. Quote: Short for “quote post.” This lets you repost someone else’s content while adding your own commentary. Reply: A response to someone else’s post. Replies create threaded conversations. Thread: A series of connected posts from the same account, usually used to share longer thoughts or storytelling. Handle: Your username, preceded by the “@” symbol (e.g., @buffer). Display name: The name that appears at the top of your profile. This can differ from your handle. Feed: The stream of posts you see when you log in. This can be sorted by For You or Following. For You: An algorithmically curated feed that surfaces posts based on your activity and interests. Following: A chronological feed showing posts only from accounts you follow. Blue check: A verification badge available through X Premium subscriptions. Pinned post: A post fixed to the top of your profile. Like: A quick way to show appreciation for a post. Mention: Tagging another account using their handle (e.g., @username). Trending: Topics or hashtags gaining rapid traction across the platform. FAQ about how to use TwitterHow do beginners use Twitter/X?If you’re brand new, start simple. Set up your profile with a clear photo, short bio, and link, then follow a handful of people in your industry. Spend a few days observing how others post, what gets engagement, and how conversations unfold. When you’re ready, share a short post introducing yourself or offering a helpful insight. You don’t need a viral thread on day one — consistency and curiosity will take you further than perfection. How often should I post on Twitter/X?There’s no magic number, but most growth-focused accounts benefit from posting multiple times per week — and often multiple times per day. X moves quickly, so showing up regularly helps you stay visible. A sustainable starting point is three to five posts per day, spaced out over time, mixing original posts with replies and reshares. The key is choosing a cadence you can maintain. What should I post on Twitter/X?The best content on X is clear, concise, and conversational. Educational tips, industry commentary, behind-the-scenes updates, lessons learned, and thoughtful replies all perform well. If you’re stuck, answer common questions your audience asks or share a quick takeaway from something you’re learning. Do hashtags help on Twitter/X?Hashtags can help categorize your posts and improve discoverability in search, but more isn’t better. In fact, using too many can hurt performance. Stick to one or two relevant hashtags, and use them intentionally. If the keyword fits naturally into your sentence, even better. Should I include links in my posts?You can, but be strategic. Posts with links often see lower engagement, especially from non-Premium accounts. A better approach is to lead with value — share the key insight in the post itself — and make the link a secondary step, such as placing it in a reply or directing people to your bio. How do I get more followers on Twitter/X?Growing on X is less about hacks and more about habits. Post consistently, engage in conversations, reply to comments, and contribute thoughtfully to discussions in your niche. A single helpful reply in the right thread can introduce you to hundreds — sometimes thousands — of new people. Is Twitter good for business?It can be, especially if your business benefits from conversation, thought leadership, or real-time engagement. X is particularly strong for personal brands, founders, consultants, SaaS companies, and media-driven businesses. Do I need X Premium to grow?Not necessarily. You can absolutely grow on a free account by posting consistently and engaging intentionally. That said, Premium tiers offer additional features like longer posts, editing, and potential visibility advantages. Start with your goals, test the platform, and upgrade only if the additional tools support your strategy. More Twitter/X resources The Best Time to Post on Twitter/X: Based on Data from 1 Million PostsDo Posts with Links Affect Content Performance on X?Does X Premium Really Boost Your Reach? An Analysis of 18M+ PostsHow to Schedule Tweets: When to Post, What to Use, and How to Do It RightWe Analyzed 1.7M Posts from X, Threads, and Bluesky: Here’s What We LearnedHow to Get Your First 1,000 Followers Across All Major Social Media Platforms: The Ultimate GuideAds on X (Formerly Twitter) Are an Untapped Opportunity. Here’s How to Make the Most of ThemView the full article

Issey Miyake’s latest design is a pair of sunglasses inspired by the art of pottery. The glasses, called “Uroko,” are part of Miyake‘s Spring Summer 2026 collection, Dancing Texture. Rather than the typical two-lens structure, they feature eight separate lenses that curve around the temples like a trippy optical illusion. While the design itself reads futuristic, the texture of the frames is almost organic—like a relic of an ancient advanced society. They’re set to debut on Miyake’s website in mid-March for $680. Each piece of the Dancing Texture collection, which includes structured garments alongside billowing, patterned textiles, pulls inspiration from the work of the late potter Kamoda Shōji, who’s considered to be one of Japan’s most influential ceramic artists of the 20th century. The Uroko glasses are not only based on a common motif found in Kamoda’s work, but also mimic the finishing process of his clay pottery, making each pair a one-of-one. A combination of 3D printing and Japanese craftsmanship Kamoda, who died in 1983, rose to national popularity in the 1970s thanks to his approach to pottery that blended attention to Japan’s ceramic history and his own innovative concepts. He used local clay from the small town of Tōno, which was typically used for roof tiling, making it unusually rough. Instead of relying on a potter’s wheel, he preferred to hand-coil the clay, which meant a distinctly labor-intensive process. Per a 2022 exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, every one of Kamoda’s pieces was designed to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing. To capture that ethos of texture, function, and aesthetics, Miyake’s team started with a design that’s an ode to one of Kamoda’s signature patterns. The Uroko’s eight lenses are a reference to a swath of finely detailed scales, which Kamoda often returned to in his ceramic work, frequently as an intricate web that would cover an entire vase or bowl. Miyake’s team created a custom 3D-printed template for the frames, which includes two lens spaces for the eyes and six more spaces that circle around to the ears. Given the unusual shapes of the glasses, mass-produced lenses were out of the question. Instead, Miyake’s team designed lenses with a specially engineered concave cut to fit within the compact frame. “Each lens is cut into a scale-like shape so that it fits precisely into its corresponding frame,” a brand spokesperson explains. “Because the frames are small and uniquely shaped, we went through many rounds of prototyping to refine the lens geometry. Through this process, we developed a lens shape that can be fitted seamlessly into the frame without any gaps.” Once the lenses were finished, craftsmen on Miyake’s design team assembled each component by hand. As a final detail, they hand-finished the frames, purposefully accentuating their textured surfaces to reveal subtle variations in the 3D-printed material. This step, like the glazing of a series of ceramics, ensures that no two pairs of glasses are the same—and makes any imperfections an intentional part of the design. View the full article

John Mueller from Google said you can block a complete TLD, top-level-domain, using the link disavow tool. He said it is not something Google documents because “Given how big of a hammer it is, I don’t know if it’s something we should really suggest in the docs.” How does it work. All you need to do is use the syntax “domain:abc” in the disavow file. John posted this one Bluesky saying: “If you’re sure that it’s what you want to do, you can use “domain:abc” in the disavow file. Keep in mind that you can’t carve out specific domains if you like some, but if you find the TLD is almost only annoying spammers, it’ll save you time.” He later added: “Given how big of a hammer it is, I don’t know if it’s something we should really suggest in the docs. I’m sure all TLDs have some good sites.” Why we care. If there is on TLD that is concerning to you, sure, you can go ahead and disavow the whole TLD. But it might be better to be more selective of how you use the disavow file and don’t just block TLDs at a whole. For more on the disavow link file, see this help document. View the full article

Borrowers or lenders could use the prediction markets as a hedging tool, although experts noted the lack of trading volume as cause for caution. View the full article