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Google's March core update finished rolling out. Here's what to know about the rollout and when to check your data. The post Google Confirms March 2026 Core Update Is Complete appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Wall Street surged in Wednesday premarket trading as oil prices plunged 16% after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a two-week ceasefire that includes the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Futures for the S&P 500 jumped 2.7% before the opening bell and futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 2.6%. Nasdaq futures soared 3.4%. Benchmark U.S. crude sank $18.43 to $94.52 a barrel, a nearly 16% decline. Brent crude, the international standard dropped $15.54 to $93.73 a barrel. Natural gas futures declined close to 5%. The drops reversed some of the rise in oil prices since the start of the war more than five weeks ago that had effectively blocked passage through the strait that’s a crucial route for global supplies. “Yet the mood remains one of cautious optimism rather than outright celebration,” said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade. “The ceasefire is only two weeks long, and markets will be watching closely to see whether shipping through the Strait of Hormuz normalizes as promised and whether the fragile truce can pave the way for a more durable peace agreement.” Late Tuesday, The President said he was holding off on his threatened attacks on Iranian bridges, power plants and other civilian targets. Iran’s foreign minister said passage through the strait would be allowed for the next two weeks under Iranian military management. But analysts warned against too much optimism. “There is a reason to be optimistic, but it is still too early to tell, because, as you know, after all, it is The President,” said Takashi Hiroki, chief strategist at MONEX. In equities trading, major U.S. airline stocks soared on the steep drop in oil prices. Delta and United jump more than 12% in premarket while American rose 10%. Delta on Wednesday also reported first-quarter sales and profit that came in ahead of Wall Street forecasts and said that demand remained strong with the summer travel season just a few months away. Elsewhere, in Europe France’s CAC 40 added 4.5% by midday, while the German DAX soared nearly 5%. Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 2.9%. In Asia, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 5.4% to finish at 56,308.42. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 jumped 2.6% to 8,951.80. South Korea’s Kospi soared 6.9% to 5,872.34. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng surged 3.1% to 25,893.02, while the Shanghai Composite added 2.7% to 3,995.00. In currency trading, the U.S. dollar fell to 158.39 Japanese yen from 159.52 yen Wednesday. The euro cost $1.1701, up from $1.1597. The dollar usually becomes a safe haven during geopolitical uncertainty, so the ceasefire deal worked to lessen that appeal. Associated Press videographer Mayuko Ono and Writer Jon Gambrell contributed to this report. Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama —Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott, AP Business Writers View the full article

Oil prices tumble following deal between Washington and Tehran to open Strait of HormuzView the full article

Behind the GEO trend is a familiar cycle: new acronym, same tactics, and a market built on fear of falling behind. The post GEO Was Invented On Sand Hill Road appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Hreflang has long been a core mechanism in international SEO, directing users to the right regional version of a page. That approach worked when search engines primarily returned static results. AI-driven synthesis changes that. Instead of returning lists of links, AI systems construct answers. They don’t need, nor want, your perfectly implemented hreflang tags. They aren’t looking for instructions on which page to serve. They’re trying to determine which answer is best supported across sources. Your content has to hold up when the model compares it against everything it’s seen, regardless of language or origin. If it doesn’t, it won’t be used. What hreflang does and doesn’t do We need to address a fundamental misunderstanding of the hreflang attribute. Hreflang has always been a switcher, not a booster. If your brand lacked organic authority in Australia before implementing the tag, adding the en-au attribute wouldn’t magically improve your rankings in Sydney. Its only function was to ensure that if you did rank, the user saw the correct regional version. In AI search, this “you vs. you” dynamic has become a liability. While traditional search still relies on these tags to organize traffic, AI models often bypass them during the synthesis phase. If a brand’s U.S.-based .com site possesses decades of authority, the AI’s internal logic may determine that the U.S. site is the true source of information. Consequently, even when a user in Berlin searches in German, the AI may synthesize an answer based on the U.S. data and simply translate it on the fly, effectively ghosting the brand’s localized German site despite perfectly implemented hreflang tags. 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 The double-blind: Query fan-out vs. entity compression AI models don’t just answer the query you see. They expand it into dozens of hidden checks, comparing sources, validating claims, and pulling in information across languages to see what aligns. ChatGPT often translates and evaluates queries in English even when the user searches in another language, research from Peec AI shows. This reinforces how query fan-out operates across markets. If your local entity doesn’t hold up in that broader comparison, it doesn’t get used. A second issue happens before retrieval even begins. During training, LLMs compress what they see so it can be stored and reused at scale. When multiple regional pages look too similar, they don’t stay separate. They’re folded into a single representation, also known as canonical tokenization. Local details — phone numbers, office locations, and market-specific references — don’t always survive that process. They’re treated as minor variations rather than meaningful signals. By the time the model is asked a question, your local site is often no longer competing. In many cases, it’s already been absorbed into the global one. Dig deeper: What the ‘Global Spanish’ problem means for AI search visibility 7 ways to build AI-first relevancy To compete globally, expand your strategy to include signals that resonate with AI’s data supply chain. 1. Build locally aligned infrastructure Meta tags tell systems what you intend. Infrastructure often tells them what to believe. Datasets like Common Crawl use geographic heuristics, IP location, and domain structure to make sense of content at scale. That happens early in the process, before anything resembling ranking. This means your content may already be placed in a market before the model ever evaluates it. If your regional domains aren’t supported by local infrastructure or delivery, you’re sending mixed signals. Those are hard to recover from later. 2. Break the compression threshold To break the semantic gravity that leads to entity compression, you need what I would call a clear “knowledge delta.” Most global teams fail here because they think localization means translation. It doesn’t. There’s no universally accepted magic number for unique content. From a semantic vector perspective, I speculate that a divergence threshold of at least 20% of the content on a local page must be unique to prevent the model from collapsing your local identity into your global one. To address this, front-load market-specific data, such as regional shipping logistics, local tax identifiers, and native case studies, into the first 30% of your page. This lets you provide the mathematical proof the model needs to cite your local URL as a distinct authority. 3. Anchor your entity in semantic neighborhoods AI models interpret market relevance by looking at the company you keep in the text. Incorporate geographic anchoring by referencing local neighborhoods, regional landmarks, or specific transit hubs (e.g., “located near the Alexanderplatz station” in Berlin). These co-occurrence signals pull your brand’s vector embedding toward the specific local coordinate in the model’s training data, creating a geographic fence that helps the AI disambiguate your local office from your global headquarters. Dig deeper: How to craft an international SEO approach that balances tech, translation and trust Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. 4. Prioritize local link sources The origin of your links is a primary signal of market authority. During the fan-out phase, AI models look for regional consensus. This is one of the areas where traditional link building logic starts to break. It’s not just about getting links. Consider where those links originate, along with their authority and contextual relevance. If your Australian page has backlinks primarily from U.S.-based websites, the model has little evidence that you actually belong in or are relevant to the Australian market. Local sources, including high local trust and location-specific news outlets, change that. Without them, you’re often treated more like a visitor than a participant. 5. Incorporate linguistic and authoritative nuances LLMs pick up on regional language nuances far more than most teams expect. This is where simple translation starts to break down. Unique market- or colloquial-specific terms, formatting, and even small legal references signal whether something actually belongs in a market. Use the terms people in that market actually use — things like “incl. GST,” local identifiers like ABN, and even spelling differences. Without these signals, the page may be technically and linguistically correct, but it won’t register as truly local. 6. Capture the invisible long-tail As mentioned, LLMs often generate multiple incremental queries during their research phase. These invisible queries may focus on local friction points, such as “How does this product comply with [name of local regulation]?” By incorporating local FAQ clusters that address these nuances, you ensure your local URL survives the fan-out check, making your global .com too generic to be cited in a localized answer. Dig deeper: Why AI optimization is just long-tail SEO done right 7. Run AI citation audits Expand your SEO reporting beyond traditional rank tracking. Incorporate AI citation audits by using a local VPN to query the most popular generative engines in your target markets. If the AI consistently pulls from your global .com domain for a local query, it’s a clear signal that your local domain lacks the necessary evidence chain. Identify where this market drift is occurring and reinforce those specific pages with more unique local data and infrastructure signals. 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 new international standard Hreflang and traditional technical signals still shape how search engines organize and deliver content, but they don’t determine what AI systems use. AI models evaluate which sources to use based on evidence of local relevance. Without a distinct presence in each market, they default to the version of your brand they trust most, which often isn’t the one you intended. Translation alone doesn’t establish that presence. Your content needs to demonstrate that it belongs in the market it’s meant to serve. Dig deeper: Multilingual and international SEO: 5 mistakes to watch out for View the full article

Introducing Remix with Rovo and partner agents in Confluence — a new way to instantly transform Confluence pages into charts, prototypes, presentations, and apps The last mile of knowledge Something strange happened over the past decade of work. Teams got incredibly good at creating knowledge — documenting decisions, capturing meeting notes, writing specs. But all that effort exposed a different problem: most of that knowledge never reaches the people who need it, in a format they can actually use. Confluence pages with 1 or more visual element are 18% more likely to be read by a wider audience. This isn’t a search problem. It isn’t an access problem. It’s a format problem. The knowledge exists. It’s just stuck in a form that doesn’t match how the next person needs to consume it. This means manual work: copying from docs into slides, reformatting for different audiences, and losing context, repackaging existing knowledge instead of creating new. We’re introducing two new experiences to close that gap to change how teams get value from work they’ve already created. Remix with Rovo transforms content on any Confluence page into new formats like charts, infographics, and other visuals. Pre-built third party partner agents for Lovable, Replit, and Gamma, turn Confluence content into working prototypes, starter apps, and presentations in those tools without manual copy-pasting or custom integrations. What’s available today Remix with Rovo starts rolling out today in open beta for Confluence Cloud customers with Rovo. At launch, Remix supports — data visualizations, infographics, diagrams, and charts — with more formats coming soon. Out-of-the-box partner agents for Lovable, Replit, and Gamma are in open beta and start rolling out next week. Admins can enable partner agents in Atlassian Administration under Connected Apps, with no custom agent creation or scripting required. Introducing Remix with Rovo Confluence has always been where teams go to create and share knowledge. With Remix, it becomes something more: an adaptive workspace — one where the content itself reshapes to meet the reader, not the other way around. Select any content on a Confluence page and instantly transform it into a visual format optimized for how someone needs to consume it. A data-heavy section becomes a chart. A process description becomes an infographic. A long-form analysis becomes a visual summary. No copy-pasting, no switching tools, no reformatting. Just the boost in understanding that comes from nailing the format. Confluence pages with 1 or more visual element are 18% more likely to be read by a wider audience. Three things make Remix with Rovo fundamentally different from what’s come before: It’s non-destructive. Remix never overwrites your page. Every remix is an extra layer on top of the source, which stays intact as the canonical version — so you get new ways to view the content without creating copies that go stale. It’s opinionated. Remix gives you ready-made format options or a freeform prompt if you already know what you want. Pick a preset (like a chart for numbers or an infographic for a flow), or describe the output in your own words. In both cases, it analyzes the content to propose a strong first version you can tweak. It’s embedded, not separate. Remix views are created and live right on the page. Instead of sending people to a separate deck, report, or tool, the most digestible version of the content sits where they already are. Anyone visiting a Confluence page can turn the source into the version that’s easiest for them to scan, compare, and act on. When the right format lives in a different tool Sometimes the next step isn’t a better chart — it’s a working prototype. A starter app. That’s why we’re also launching out-of-the-box partner agents in Confluence, starting with Lovable, Replit, and Gamma, built on Rovo and powered by MCP. From any Confluence page, invoke a partner agent that carries your content (and context) into a native output in that partner’s tool using Rovo Chat. A product spec becomes a real Lovable application our designer can interact with in minutes. A technical doc becomes a Replit starter app your engineer can fork and extend. Meeting notes become a Gamma presentation your team lead can walk into a room with. And Rovo Skills keep that output linked back to the source page it came from. That linkage runs through the Teamwork Graph, the same layer of work relationships and context, built from over 100 billion data points across Atlassian, that powers agents in Jira and MCP skills for Rovo. When a partner agent carries your content into Lovable or Replit, it doesn’t just carry the text. It carries the context: who created it, what project it belongs to, what decisions it connects to. Enable a partner’s MCP server once and within minutes, teams get a ready-to-use agent in their Rovo directory, pre-configured by the partner, inheriting the permissions and context of your workspace. And because everything routes back through Confluence, work created in an external tool doesn’t disappear into that tool’s silo. It stays anchored to your source of truth. And these partner agents are just the beginning. Go further with MCP skills in Rovo The same foundation that’s powering these Partner agents – MCP – also lets you bring in tools beyond the ones we’ve launched with today. MCP lets any tool connect to Confluence as an AI-aware service. Today that includes Lovable, Replit, and Gamma. But the protocol is open, the server is documented, and any partner can build an agent that works with the knowledge your team already has in Confluence, without waiting for us to build a bespoke integration. To discover MCP‑compatible skills from your favorite apps, and use them with Rovo across Confluence, Jira, and more, visit our gallery of MCP servers and start connecting them to your work today. Check out Rovo MCP skills A different bet about AI in the enterprise This is the second chapter of a platform shift we started in February. Agents in Jira showed what happens when AI joins your team inside the tool where work gets tracked. Today, Remix and partner agents show what happens when AI joins your team inside the tool where knowledge lives. Together, they mark a turn from AI that helps individuals produce faster to AI that helps teams deliver to each other — across tools, across formats, across the last mile. Because the last mile of knowledge isn’t about writing more. It’s about delivering better. See what that looks like in practice Check out our new digital series, Rovo at Work, to see product demos and real-world examples of how Atlassian teams use Remix, Rovo Skills, and Rovo Dev in Jira to transform how they get work done and deliver better outcomes. Watch Rovo at Work The post Your team’s best ideas are trapped in the wrong format. AI just fixed that. appeared first on Work Life by Atlassian. View the full article

Introducing Remix with Rovo and partner agents in Confluence — a new way to instantly transform Confluence pages into charts, prototypes, presentations, and apps The last mile of knowledge Something strange happened over the past decade of work. Teams got incredibly good at creating knowledge — documenting decisions, capturing meeting notes, writing specs. But all that effort exposed a different problem: most of that knowledge never reaches the people who need it, in a format they can actually use. Confluence pages with 1 or more visual element are 18% more likely to be read by a wider audience. This isn’t a search problem. It isn’t an access problem. It’s a format problem. The knowledge exists. It’s just stuck in a form that doesn’t match how the next person needs to consume it. This means manual work: copying from docs into slides, reformatting for different audiences, and losing context, repackaging existing knowledge instead of creating new. We’re introducing two new experiences to close that gap to change how teams get value from work they’ve already created. Remix with Rovo transforms content on any Confluence page into new formats like charts, infographics, and other visuals. Pre-built third party partner agents for Lovable, Replit, and Gamma, turn Confluence content into working prototypes, starter apps, and presentations in those tools without manual copy-pasting or custom integrations. What’s available today Remix with Rovo starts rolling out today in open beta for Confluence Cloud customers with Rovo. At launch, Remix supports — data visualizations, infographics, diagrams, and charts — with more formats coming soon. Out-of-the-box partner agents for Lovable, Replit, and Gamma are in open beta and start rolling out next week. Admins can enable partner agents in Atlassian Administration under Connected Apps, with no custom agent creation or scripting required. Introducing Remix with Rovo Confluence has always been where teams go to create and share knowledge. With Remix, it becomes something more: an adaptive workspace — one where the content itself reshapes to meet the reader, not the other way around. Select any content on a Confluence page and instantly transform it into a visual format optimized for how someone needs to consume it. A data-heavy section becomes a chart. A process description becomes an infographic. A long-form analysis becomes a visual summary. No copy-pasting, no switching tools, no reformatting. Just the boost in understanding that comes from nailing the format. Confluence pages with 1 or more visual element are 18% more likely to be read by a wider audience. Three things make Remix with Rovo fundamentally different from what’s come before: It’s non-destructive. Remix never overwrites your page. Every remix is an extra layer on top of the source, which stays intact as the canonical version — so you get new ways to view the content without creating copies that go stale. It’s opinionated. Remix gives you ready-made format options or a freeform prompt if you already know what you want. Pick a preset (like a chart for numbers or an infographic for a flow), or describe the output in your own words. In both cases, it analyzes the content to propose a strong first version you can tweak. It’s embedded, not separate. Remix views are created and live right on the page. Instead of sending people to a separate deck, report, or tool, the most digestible version of the content sits where they already are. Anyone visiting a Confluence page can turn the source into the version that’s easiest for them to scan, compare, and act on. When the right format lives in a different tool Sometimes the next step isn’t a better chart — it’s a working prototype. A starter app. That’s why we’re also launching out-of-the-box partner agents in Confluence, starting with Lovable, Replit, and Gamma, built on Rovo and powered by MCP. From any Confluence page, invoke a partner agent that carries your content (and context) into a native output in that partner’s tool using Rovo Chat. A product spec becomes a real Lovable application our designer can interact with in minutes. A technical doc becomes a Replit starter app your engineer can fork and extend. Meeting notes become a Gamma presentation your team lead can walk into a room with. And Rovo Skills keep that output linked back to the source page it came from. That linkage runs through the Teamwork Graph, the same layer of work relationships and context, built from over 100 billion data points across Atlassian, that powers agents in Jira and MCP skills for Rovo. When a partner agent carries your content into Lovable or Replit, it doesn’t just carry the text. It carries the context: who created it, what project it belongs to, what decisions it connects to. Enable a partner’s MCP server once and within minutes, teams get a ready-to-use agent in their Rovo directory, pre-configured by the partner, inheriting the permissions and context of your workspace. And because everything routes back through Confluence, work created in an external tool doesn’t disappear into that tool’s silo. It stays anchored to your source of truth. And these partner agents are just the beginning. Go further with MCP skills in Rovo The same foundation that’s powering these Partner agents – MCP – also lets you bring in tools beyond the ones we’ve launched with today. MCP lets any tool connect to Confluence as an AI-aware service. Today that includes Lovable, Replit, and Gamma. But the protocol is open, the server is documented, and any partner can build an agent that works with the knowledge your team already has in Confluence, without waiting for us to build a bespoke integration. To discover MCP‑compatible skills from your favorite apps, and use them with Rovo across Confluence, Jira, and more, visit our gallery of MCP servers and start connecting them to your work today. Check out Rovo MCP skills A different bet about AI in the enterprise This is the second chapter of a platform shift we started in February. Agents in Jira showed what happens when AI joins your team inside the tool where work gets tracked. Today, Remix and partner agents show what happens when AI joins your team inside the tool where knowledge lives. Together, they mark a turn from AI that helps individuals produce faster to AI that helps teams deliver to each other — across tools, across formats, across the last mile. Because the last mile of knowledge isn’t about writing more. It’s about delivering better. See what that looks like in practice Check out our new digital series, Rovo at Work, to see product demos and real-world examples of how Atlassian teams use Remix, Rovo Skills, and Rovo Dev in Jira to transform how they get work done and deliver better outcomes. Watch Rovo at Work The post Your team’s best ideas are trapped in the wrong format. AI just fixed that. appeared first on Work Life by Atlassian. View the full article

Iran, the United States and Israel agreed to a two-week ceasefire, an 11th-hour deal that allowed U.S. President Donald The President to pull back from his threat to unleash a bombing campaign that would destroy Iranian civilization. Hours after the announcement, Iran and Gulf Arab countries reported new attacks Wednesday. It was not clear if the sporadic attacks would be enough to scuttle the deal, which U.S. Vice President JD Vance called “fragile.” Even before the new strikes were reported, much about the deal was unclear as the sides presented vastly different visions of the terms. — Iran said the deal would allow it to formalize its new practice of charging ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, but the terms were not clear, nor was whether ships would feel safe using the crucial transit lane for oil. It also was unclear whether any other country agreed to this condition. — Pakistan, which helped to mediate the deal, and others said fighting would pause in Lebanon, where Israel has launched a ground invasion against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group. Israel said it would not, and strikes hit Beirut on Wednesday. — The fate of Iran’s missile and nuclear programs — the elimination of which were major objectives for the U.S. and Israel in going to war — also remained unclear. The President said the U.S. would work with Iran to remove buried enriched uranium, though Iran did not confirm that. In the streets of Tehran, pro-government demonstrators screamed: “Death to America, death to Israel, death to compromisers!” after the ceasefire announcement and burned American and Israeli flags. The chants underscored the anger animating hard-liners, who have been preparing for what many assumed would be an apocalyptic battle with the United States. The President warned Tuesday that “a whole civilization will die tonight,” if a deal wasn’t reached. Varying reports of ceasefire’s terms The President initially said Iran proposed a “workable” 10-point plan that could help end the war the U.S. launched with Israel on Feb. 28. But when a version in Farsi emerged that indicated Iran would be allowed to continue enriching uranium — which is key to building a nuclear weapon — The President called it fraudulent without elaborating. The President also suggested American warships would be “hangin’ around” the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of all traded oil and natural gas passes in peacetime. That could be a potential flashpoint in days to come. Iran’s demands for ending the war, meanwhile, include a withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region, the lifting of sanctions, and the release of its frozen assets. In his post Wednesday, The President said: “We are, and will be, talking Tariff and Sanctions relief with Iran.” It’s not clear if other Western nations would agree to that – and the other points are likely nonstarters. Pakistan said that talks to hammer out a permanent end to the war could begin in Islamabad as soon as Friday. Israel backed the U.S. ceasefire with Iran, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said early Wednesday that the deal doesn’t cover fighting against Hezbollah. Israel’s military said later that fighting and ground operations continue. Hezbollah has not confirmed if it will abide by the ceasefire, though the group has said it was open to giving mediators a chance to secure an agreement. An official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said the group would not stop firing at Israel unless Israel agreed to do the same. Iran and Oman will collect shipping fees in Strait of Hormuz While Iran could not match the sophistication of U.S. and Israeli weaponry or their dominance in the air, its ability to control the Strait of Hormuz since the war began proved a tremendous strategic advantage: The chokehold roiled the world economy and raised the pressure on The President both at home and abroad to find a way out of the standoff. The ceasefire may formalize that control — and give Iran a new source of revenue. The plan allows for both Iran and Oman to charge fees on ships transiting through the strait, according to a regional official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss negotiations they were directly involved in. The official said Iran would use the money it raised for reconstruction. That would upend decades of precedent treating the strait as an international waterway that was free to transit and will likely not be acceptable to the Gulf Arab states, which also need to rebuild after repeated Iranian attacks targeting their oil fields. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said passage through the strait would be allowed under Iranian military management — further clouding the picture of who would be allowed to transit the waterway. Nevertheless, news of the ceasefire drove oil prices down and pushed stocks up Wednesday. Fate of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs remains unclear U.S.-Israeli strikes have battered Iran and its leadership, but they have not entirely eliminated the threats posed by Tehran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles or its support for regional proxies, like Hezbollah. The U.S. and Israel said addressing those threats was a key justification for going to war. The President said Wednesday that the U.S. would work with Iran to “dig up and remove” enriched uranium that was buried under joint U.S-Israeli strikes in June. He added that none of the material had been touched since. Any retrieval is expected to be an intensive undertaking. There was no confirmation from Iran on that. Tehran insisted for years that its nuclear program was peaceful, although it enriched uranium up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels. Iran referred to its nuclear program differently in two versions of the ceasefire plan that it released. The version in Farsi included the phrase “acceptance of enrichment” for its nuclear program. That phrase was missing in English versions shared by Iranian diplomats with journalists. A senior Israeli official said the United States had coordinated the ceasefire with Israel in advance and said Israel’s government credited “the massive crushing of the regime’s infrastructure” with securing the agreement. Speaking on condition of anonymity because they were discussing private diplomatic conversations, the official said Washington had committed to pressing for the removal of nuclear material and dismantling of Iran’s ballistic missile program. Airstrikes reported in the hours after the deal is announced Shortly after the ceasefire announcement, Bahrain, Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all issued warnings about incoming missiles from Iran. That fire stopped for a time, then hostilities appeared to restart. An oil refinery on Iran’s Lavan Island came under attack, according to Iranian state television. Its report said that firefighters were working to contain the blaze but no one had been hurt. It did not say who launched the attack. The island is home to one of the terminals that Iran uses to export oil and gas. The U.S. military’s Central Command did not respond to questions about the strike. A short time later, the United Arab Emirates’ air defenses fired at an incoming Iranian missile barrage. Kuwait’s military forces, meanwhile, responded to an “extensive wave” of drone attacks. More than 1,900 people had been killed in Iran as of late March, but the government has not updated the war’s toll for days. In Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants, more than 1,500 people have been killed. and 1 million people have been displaced. Eleven Israeli soldiers have died. In Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, more than two dozen people have died, while 23 have been reported dead in Israel, and 13 U.S. service members have been killed. Associated Press writers Edie Lederer, Natalie Melzer, Abby Sewell, and Aamer Madhani contributed to this report. —Bassem Mroue, Jon Gambrell, Samy Magdy and Sam Metz, Associated Press View the full article

Conduit has become an economic lifeline for the kingdom since the near closure of the Strait of HormuzView the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Samsung’s 65-inch S95F OLED TV is now down to $2,199.99 from $2,997.99—just a couple of dollars shy of its lowest tracked price, according to price trackers. That discount makes a difference, but it is still a premium buy. If your budget is tighter, a refurbished unit from Amazon Renewed comes in at $1,926.22. The new unit includes free delivery to your room (you will need to handle setup yourself), and a one-month trial of Xbox Game Pass for new users, which adds some immediate value if you plan to use it for gaming. Samsung 65-Inch S95F OLED TV 4K glare-free smart TV (2025 model) $2,199.99 at Amazon $2,997.99 Save $798.00 Get Deal Get Deal $2,199.99 at Amazon $2,997.99 Save $798.00 OLED TVs are known for deep blacks, but they often look dim in brighter rooms. The S95F pushes past that limitation—it delivers the deep blacks you expect, but it also gets noticeably brighter than older OLED models, so daytime viewing holds up better, notes this PCMag review. The built-in speakers are also better than expected. You get a 4.2.2-channel system that adds some height and depth, so voices come through clearly, and action scenes have more presence than a standard TV setup. It is not a replacement for a full sound system, but it saves you from needing one right away. For gaming, this 4K Smart TV has a 120Hz panel that supports variable refresh rates up to 165Hz, along with AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and G-Sync compatibility, meaning gameplay stays smooth even when frame rates fluctuate. Its input lag is also low enough to feel responsive, whether you are playing at 4K60 or 1080p120, and all four HDMI ports support modern consoles. On the downside, Samsung still does not support Dolby Vision, which some streaming services rely on for their best HDR format. It also sticks with Wi-Fi 5 rather than newer standards, so streaming performance may depend more on how busy your home network is. And while the Tizen OS smart interface covers all the major apps, getting around it can feel a bit cluttered, and settings aren’t always quick to find. Even the remote keeps things minimal to a fault, with no quick input switching. Still, the core experience is strong—you’re still getting a bright, capable OLED that handles both movies and gaming with ease. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods Pro 3 Noise Cancelling Heart Rate Wireless Earbuds — $224.00 (List Price $249.00) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $321.00 (List Price $349.00) Apple Watch Series 11 (GPS, 42mm, S/M Black Sport Band) — $329.00 (List Price $399.00) Fire TV Stick 4K Plus Streaming Player With Remote (2025 Model) — $29.99 (List Price $49.99) Bose TV Speaker — $199.00 (List Price $279.00) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

Shares in Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE: DAL) are on the rise this morning after the company reported its Q1 2026 results. While Delta comfortably beat revenue expectations, the U.S. air carrier also addressed the biggest challenge it is currently facing, rising gas prices, and how it is working to mitigate that challenge. Here’s what you need to know. Delta’s Q1 beats expectations, stock surges On Wednesday, Delta Air Lines announced its Q1 2026 financial results, covering the January through March period. The results, announced before markets opened, showed the company had a strong quarter. The company reported non-GAAP operating revenue of $14.2 billion and an earnings per share (EPS) of $0.64. To put those numbers into greater perspective, Wall Street analysts were expecting Delta to post $14 billion in revenue and an EPS of $0.57, notes CNBC. In other words, Delta handily beat Wall Street expectations. In a bit of fortuitous timing for Delta, the airline reported its latest earnings just hours after the U.S. and Iran agreed to a fragile two-week ceasefire, which will see the Strait of Hormuz, a critical oil shipping route, reopened. That news sent the price of a barrel of oil plunging below the $100 mark for the first time in weeks. It’s particularly good news for airlines like Delta, whose fuel expenditures are among their greatest potential liabilities when it comes to profitability. As a result of Delta’s expectation-beating Q1, combined with investor relief over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, Delta shares surged in premarket trading. At the time of this writing, they are currently up more than 11% to above $73. Delta signals how it will combat rising gas prices But investors might not only be cheering Delta’s earnings and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Many are also likely satisfied with Delta’s game plan for offsetting higher oil and gas prices. Along with announcing its Q1 results, Delta CEO Ed Bastian confirmed that passenger demand remains strong. That’s normally a good thing—an airline generally wants as many customers as possible. But at a time of spiraling oil and gas prices, a strong customer base means airlines need to buy more fuel to move passengers from point A to point B. Paying higher costs can eat into profits. To counteract this potential hit to the company’s bottom line, Bastian said that Delta would take “actions to protect our margins and cash flow.” Those actions include “meaningfully reducing capacity growth, with a downward bias until the fuel environment improves, and moving quickly to recapture higher fuel costs.” To put that in plain English, it means that Delta will likely reduce the number of flights it offers, or cancel some routes altogether. This will make fewer seats available, saving on fuel costs, but that scarcity will mean Delta can charge more for the seats it does offer. And this isn’t the only way Delta plans on combating higher fuel costs. Bastian also said the company will move “quickly to recapture higher fuel costs,” which is basically corporate-speak for passing those increased fuel costs on to customers. Earlier this week, Delta announced it was raising its checked baggage fee by $10, following other airlines that are doing the same. Another way Delta could recoup higher fuel costs from passengers is by adding fuel surcharges to flight prices. DAL stock is once again green for the year Yesterday, Delta’s stock price closed at $65.62 per share, representing a year-to-date loss of around 5.4%. But with today’s double-digit gain, DAL stock is now firmly in the green for the year. And Delta’s isn’t the only airline stock seeing double-digit growth today. In addition to Delta, American Airlines Group Inc. (Nasdaq: AAL) is up 11%, United Airlines Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: UAL) is up 12%, and Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE: LUV) is up nearly 11%, as of the time of this writing in premarket trading. This suggests the primary factor spurring investors to buy into airline stocks this morning is the U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. However, the ceasefire is currently scheduled to last only two weeks if the warring nations cannot reach a final agreement. If the ceasefire expires or, worse, doesn’t hold until then, all the airline stocks getting a boost today could be in for a future beating. View the full article

Strengthen ecommerce visibility by optimizing product feeds for search intent, structured data, and AI-driven discovery. The post Why Product Feeds Shouldn’t Be The Most Ignored SEO System In Ecommerce appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

You’re facing a major shift as familiar manual targeting levers disappear in favor of AI-driven discovery. Platforms’ automated tools are collapsing campaign types, obscuring data, and replacing manual targeting with intent-based algorithms. This is a shift from selection to prediction. You won’t adapt by holding onto old controls — you’ll adapt by learning to engineer the inputs that replace them. Here’s how to make sure you have the tools to stay on top. The end of manual targeting as you knew it You previously relied on granular keyword lists, demographic filters, and custom exclusions to target ideal customers. You told platforms exactly who to target and paid to access that inventory. Now, platforms have eliminated those controls: Google collapsed campaign types into Performance Max, removing keyword-level targeting in favor of “asset groups” and “audience signals” — suggestions, not directives. Meta launched Advantage+, automating demographic and interest targeting so your role shifts from selector to signal provider. Microsoft extended the same model to Bing, confirming this is an industry-wide shift, not a single-platform experiment. Targeting didn’t disappear — it moved inside the platform’s black box. The algorithm now targets based on data within its own ecosystem. Platforms are clear: manual segmentation is gone, and automation is here to stay. The rise of audience engineering If targeting is now internal to the algorithm, your role changes. It’s less about selecting your audience and more about engineering it. From targeting to teaching The distinction is critical. Traditional targeting focused on selecting audiences. Audience engineering focuses on instructing the algorithm through high-quality conversion signals, precise creative, and first-party data. It teaches AI systems who to find and what to optimize for. Here’s how this changes your workflow: In the past, to target CFOs, you might use job title filters and negative keyword lists. With audience engineering, you instead upload high-quality data (e.g., “deal closed” signals) to define a high-value prospect. You also tailor creative to CFO-specific pain points, teaching the AI to reach people who engage with that message. The new competitive discipline If you fight the algorithm and resist this shift, you’ll struggle. If you embrace it, you’ll succeed by optimizing conversion signals, refining creative, and strengthening your data infrastructure. As manual levers disappear, the gap between strong and average performance comes down to signal quality. Audience engineering is what closes that gap. The three levers that now drive targeting You must optimize three critical inputs the AI uses to segment for you: 1. Conversion signal quality Tell the algorithm what matters. If you optimize for cheap, top-of-funnel leads, it will get efficient at finding people who fill out forms but never buy — that’s not what you want. Focus on meaningful business outcomes, not top-of-funnel metrics. Integrate Offline Conversion Imports (OCI) and Conversions API (CAPI) to feed data on final sales, not just initial clicks. With value-based bidding, you teach the algorithm to prioritize users who drive revenue — effectively targeting high-value customers without using demographic checkboxes. 2. Creative as a targeting mechanism In a world without demographic filters, your creative becomes your primary targeting mechanism. The specificity of your message does the filtering. If your creative speaks broadly, the AI shows it broadly. If it speaks to a niche pain point, the AI finds users who resonate with that pain point. Build ad sets around motivations, not product categories. 3. First-party data as competitive moat Your customer lists, CRM data, and engagement signals are the foundation the algorithm learns from. This data replaces third-party signals and becomes a critical competitive advantage. You’re giving the algorithm a cheat sheet to identify your best customers. How this plays out in real campaigns The shift to AI-driven targeting isn’t theoretical. As an agency managing over $215 million in annual paid media spend, we’ve tested this across platforms and validated it with performance data. Here’s what we’ve learned: Advantage+ Audiences in practice A long-time client had a well-established view of its target audience based on years of campaign performance and customer data. Campaigns used manual age caps and layered targeting to protect efficiency. When we transitioned those campaigns to Advantage+ Audiences, manual exclusions were removed, allowing the algorithm to optimize based purely on conversion signals and creative performance. During testing, Meta identified and scaled into an older demographic that had previously received minimal budget. This segment delivered a 37% higher CTR than the campaign average and drove stronger downstream conversion performance. As spend shifted into this audience, conversions came at a lower cost per result while total revenue increased. Broader targeting improved return on ad spend (ROAS) compared to the prior manual strategy. This reflects a broader trend with Advantage+ Audiences. Paired with strong conversion goals, accurate data signals, and high-quality creative, it consistently identifies high-value segments that manual targeting restricts or misses. Microsoft PMax Placement Transparency and Advanced Audience Signal Targeting For another client, we implemented a Microsoft PMax test, using advanced audience targeting and first-party data to reach high-intent prospects across Bing, Outlook, MSN, and the Microsoft Audience Network. With in-platform placement insights, we monitored performance closely and reacted quickly early on. The campaign drove a 10% increase in conversion rate, a 14% decrease in cost per lead, and a 4x increase in form fills in the first month — followed by another 2x the next month. This reinforced a key principle: automation performs best with strategic human oversight. While we fed strong audience signals and conversion data, performance drifted as the system expanded into less efficient placements. With Microsoft support and ongoing monitoring, we excluded underperforming placements and refined targeting without over-constraining the campaign. By letting PMax handle scale and optimization — while maintaining disciplined oversight and guardrails — we preserved efficiency and improved overall performance. The risks nobody is talking enough about Automated targeting is powerful, but not benevolent. It optimizes for the math you give it. Here are pitfalls to avoid. Garbage in, garbage out This is the most important risk. Poorly defined conversion events, incomplete data pipelines, or low-quality first-party data limit performance and train the algorithm on the wrong outcomes. If you feed it noise, it will scale that noise — wasting budget on low-quality traffic. If your goal is too broad or lacks strong quality signals, the algorithm will maximize volume, even when that volume doesn’t drive real business value. The self-reinforcement trap If your seed data is biased, the AI will keep optimizing toward that bias — potentially missing valuable adjacent audiences. This “sampling bias” in training data is a real, underappreciated risk in automated systems. Automation without oversight Platforms have a financial incentive to push broader automation. Without your oversight and willingness to intervene, campaigns can drift from your business goals. “Set it and forget it” fails. You need to monitor campaigns and nudge them back on track when they drift. Creative complacency As targeting automates, creative becomes your primary differentiator. Neglect it and you lose. Build creative that directly answers your audience’s pain points. Stand out. How to put audience engineering into practice So how do you operationalize this? Here are three steps to start engineering your audiences today: Audit conversion events. Review what you’re asking platforms to optimize for. Make sure your signals reflect real business outcomes like revenue. Restructure creative around intent signals. Ask: what does someone need to believe to convert? Let that drive your messaging. Build asset groups around specific barriers or desires to push the AI to find people who hold those beliefs. Set guardrails before you let the algorithm learn. Automation works best within clear boundaries. Define performance thresholds before launch. Monitor for audience drift and intervene when results diverge from your goals. AI is a tool, not a replacement for strategy. The future belongs to audience engineers The era of manual targeting is over, but precision matters more than ever. Audience engineering is your competitive advantage. By teaching algorithms who to target and what matters, you unlock AI’s full potential and win in this evolving landscape. View the full article

In the world of convenience stores, 7-Eleven is undoubtedly the cool kid. Phoebe Bridgers named-dropped the c-store in a song, Lana del Rey has posed in front of its parking lot, and, in Asia, the stores have become a must-visit spot. But is the brand cool enough to wear? People seem to think so. “Nothing could have prepared me for how hard the 7-eleven merch website goes,” Axios congress reporter Andrew Solender said on X this week, sparking a discussion about the brand’s merchandise website. Some of the offerings are straightforward—a white t-shirt with 7-Eleven’s logo—while others look less like corporate swag and more look more like they belong to a hype beast brand. Consider a cream-colored, ’70s-inspired knit sweater featuring a twirly serif typeface reading, “Oh Thank Heaven for 7-Eleven.” And some offerings are just silly, like a series of sold-out inflatable Slurpee costumes. For many, discovering the collection has ignited a sense of irreverent excitement. “I’m going to be flooded out in 7-Eleven merch on St. Marks this summer,” a user added on X, referencing the famous street in Manhattan’s East Village’s that’s popular among young people for outdoor drinking. But many point out that the apparel line is not new. “Omg they’ve been killin it for some time now. Welcome to the club,” A user responded on an X thread. Give me convenience The items belong to 7-Eleven’s 7Collection, an online-exclusive apparel store launched in 2022. The collection initially offered exclusive apparel and accessories inspired by the brand’s famous products like the Big Gulp or the Slurpee, but it has since broadened its scope, tapping into its own cultural currency. “Today, 7Collection is a creative platform for collaboration and cultural connection,” a 7-Eleven spokesperson told Fast Company. “It allows 7-Eleven to participate in the broader lifestyle of its customers, showing up across streetwear, sports, gaming, music, and other passion points in a way that feels authentic to the brand.” With over 83,485 stores across the world, 7-Eleven has a globally recognizable logo, but it’s also become a cultural hotspot—and the brand is leaning into it. “7-Eleven uniquely sits at the intersection of so many lifestyle touchpoints – food, sports, gaming, car culture – and we intentionally design drops that reflect the different ways fans connect with the brand in their own daily lives,” 7-Eleven added. Take a recent collection that dropped last summer as an homage to the chain’s most profitable store in the U.S., the Montauk location, a summer staple for Hamptons regulars during the warm season. “More than a store, it’s a scene and a summer ritual,” Alex Crawford, creative director and head of 7Collection, said on LinkedIn. “People weren’t just shopping at Montauk 7-Eleven. They were documenting it, tagging it, and turning it into cultural currency.” Named “Château Montauk 7-Eleven,” the summer 7Collection was a collaboration with local artist Sean Kinney, featuring the artist’s handwriting and cheeky quotes across caps, t-shirts, keychains, and more. The collection could be spotted during DJ sets at the beach town’s popular club Surf Lodge, and even designer Cynthia Rowley stopped by the store, where the merch was available for a weekend. Drops and designs are a collaborative effort, the company says, with an internal team identifying key cultural opportunities. Then, the team works with Craftwork Design Co, 7Collection’s agency partner, to develop design, production, and content creation. But 7-Eleven isn’t only c-store dabbling in the apparel and accessories game. Circle K sells polos and quarter zips featuring its logo, while Wawa fans have been able to snag tumblers, hoodies, and hats for years. And still, users online can’t hide their exitement. A user said on X, “I just know wearing that 7-Eleven cardigan would give me all the confidence I need.” View the full article

Oil exporters’ union says fees to be paid in cryptocurrency and vessels monitored for weaponsView the full article

In January Google announced a change to how AI Overviews worked where clicking the "Show more" button at the end of an AIO would directly take you into AI Mode. But that was only on mobile. Now it seems Google is testing that functionality, but on desktop...View the full article

An idea that didn’t work for Richard Nixon probably won’t for Donald The PresidentView the full article

Google's Sundar Pichai was on the Cheeky Pint podcast and was asked about the future of Search. He basically laid out a future where Search is Jarvis-like where users will be completing tasks and have "many threads running"...View the full article

Facebook is a new frontier for me. I've been having loads of fun over the past few months experimenting with the shiny new features Facebook has launched to woo creators. Facebook itself may not be all that shiny, but there’s no denying that it's enormous. And for a lot of creators, small business owners, and marketers, it's a great place to find new audiences. I'll be honest, though: even Facebook has over three billion monthly active users, and I'm... not reaching even a teeny tiny fraction of them. My content performance has been hit and miss. So when Buffer's senior data scientist, Julian Winternheimer, dug into over a million Facebook posts as part of his cross-platform comment engagement study, I was really curious to see what he'd find. Could being super on top of replying to comments help me boost my reach? Short answer: Yes! Long answer: Yes, potentially... Let’s unpack that. Posts where creators replied to comments received about 9.5% more reactions than posts where they didn't. That might not sound like a jaw-dropping number — especially compared to the 42% lift Julian found on Threads or the 30% on LinkedIn — but on a platform as mature and broad as Facebook, a consistent single-digit lift across a million posts is nothing to wave away. What I find most interesting about this data is what it reveals beneath the surface. The raw numbers actually suggest the opposite at first glance — and it took some smart statistical analysis to uncover what's really going on. 📊There's more engagement data where this came from! Check out our full State of Social Media Engagement Report 2026. Jump to a section: How we analyzed the data How replying to comments impacts Facebook engagement Why this matters for Facebook How to stay on top of your Facebook comments Putting the 'social' back in social media How we analyzed the dataLet’s get nerdy. Julian pulled around one million Facebook posts that received at least one comment, spanning accounts of all sizes and niches. Rather than comparing big Facebook Pages to small ones (which would tell us very little), he compared each account to its own performance over time. The method — called a fixed-effects regression model — holds constant all the things that make each account different: audience size, niche, location, posting frequency. All of that gets baked into the baseline. So instead of asking "Do Facebook Pages that reply get more engagement than pages that don't?" we're asking: "Does this specific Facebook Page perform better when it replies versus when it doesn't?" He also ran a Z-score analysis as a second check — measuring how far above or below "normal" each post performed for that specific account. Both methods pointed in the same direction, which gives us a lot more confidence in the finding. (If you're interested in the full methodology — and want more charts — you can check Julian's full analysis on his blog.) A few things worth keeping in mind before we get into the numbers: we can't say with absolute certainty that replying causes higher reactions. It's possible that posts that naturally perform well attract more activity, and creators are simply more motivated to reply when there's a buzzing comment section. Julian's dataset also measures reactions specifically (likes, loves, hahas, etc.) rather than total engagement — a deliberate choice to avoid the circularity of including comments in an engagement metric that's testing the effect of comments. That said, the pattern shows up across all six platforms Julian analyzed, with lifts ranging from 5% to 42%. That kind of cross-analysis consistency is something data scientists love to see. It makes the findings that much more convincing. How replying to comments impacts Facebook engagementJulian’s fixed-effects model — covering over 1 million posts across 97,427 Facebook profiles — found that posts with replied-to comments receive approximately 9.5% more reactions on average. The effect is statistically significant (p < 0.001, for the stats-inclined among us). The Z-score analysis backed this up. About 53.8% of Facebook Pages performed better when they replied. In other words, posts with replied-to comments sat slightly above each account's usual performance level, while posts without replied comments hovered right at baseline. That "53.8%" number is worth pausing on. It's a slimmer majority than what Julian found on Instagram (63%) or LinkedIn (83%). Facebook's effect is statistically significant, but it's more modest — which tracks with the platform's broader, more mature engagement patterns. Some fun behind-the-scenes stuff: If we just looked at the raw median numbers, posts without replied-to comments actually have slightly higher median reactions (22) than those with replies (16). On the surface, that seems to contradict everything I just said. But that comparison is misleading — it's mixing together Facebook Pages of wildly different sizes and activity levels. Once Julian controlled for those differences and compared each account to itself, things looked very different (and gave us the numbers I shared above). Why this matters for FacebookFacebook is a different beast compared to newer, more conversation-forward platforms like Threads or LinkedIn. The Facebook algorithm prioritizes what it calls "meaningful interactions" — and comments, particularly back-and-forth exchanges, are one of the strongest signals of that. When you reply to a comment, you're creating a conversation thread that signals to the algorithm that your post is sparking real discussion, not just passive scrolling. There are a few reasons why this likely translates into higher reactions: Extended visibility. Comment threads keep posts active in the feed longer. Every reply is another signal fire to the algorithm that might resurface the post for the commenter's connections — and for anyone else who's previously interacted with your page. Relationship signals. Facebook tracks interaction history between accounts. When you consistently reply to someone's comments, the platform registers that connection and is more likely to show your future posts to them. Over time, these micro-interactions compound. Social proof. An active comment section with replies from the creator or brand signals that there's a real person behind the Page. People are more likely to stop scrolling and react when they see that the creator is actually present in the conversation. The 9.5% lift might feel modest next to Threads' 42%, but context matters. Facebook's sheer scale means that even a small percentage increase in reactions can translate to meaningfully more people seeing and engaging with your content. And unlike some platform-specific tactics, replying to comments is something you can start doing right now with zero additional tools, budget, or strategy overhaul. How to stay on top of your Facebook commentsIf you're managing a Facebook Page alongside other platforms (who isn’t?), keeping up with comments can feel like another full-time job. Here are a few approaches that have helped me keep on top of my comments across Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook: Time block your replies Rather than trying to respond to every single comment (which can quickly become unsustainable as you grow), dedicate two 10-to-15-minute windows each day for comment engagement. Mid-morning and early evening tend to work well — you'll catch comments from both the morning scrollers and the after-work crowd. Prioritize conversations A "thanks!" reply is fine, but it's not what drives the engagement flywheel. Try asking a follow-up question or adding a detail that keeps the thread going. "Great question — have you tried..." or "That's a good point, we actually found that..." are the kinds of replies that tend to generate more activity. Reply while the post is fresh (if you can) Like most platforms, Facebook's algorithm gives early engagement heavy weight. If you can get into the comments within the first couple of hours after posting, you're more likely to spark additional reactions while the post is still being distributed. (This is where posting at times when you're actually available to engage becomes a real strategic advantage.) Use a tool that keeps everything in one place If you're active on Facebook and a couple of other platforms, bouncing between apps to manage comments gets old fast. Buffer's Community tab pulls all your comments across platforms into a single dashboard — and you can reply directly from there without opening Facebook and getting pulled into the feed. It's free for up to three social accounts. There's also a Comment Score feature that tracks your reply consistency over time — think of it like a streak tracker for engagement. It helps turn commenting from something you remember to do sporadically into an actual habit. Putting the 'social' back in social mediaJulian's cross-platform analysis covered millions of posts, and Facebook's 9.5% reaction lift sits at the lower end of the spectrum. But "lower end" doesn't mean it’s not helpful — it’s fitting for a platform where engagement patterns are broader and more varied than on conversation-first networks like Threads. What I keep coming back to with this data — across Facebook and every other platform Julian analyzed — is how refreshingly simple the takeaway is. You don't need to crack some secret code or find a loophole in the algorithm. You're just showing up for the people who showed up for you. The 9.5% lift isn't guaranteed for every Facebook Page (remember, around 54% of profiles in Julian's study saw positive effects), but the odds tilt in your favor if you're willing to put in the time. And on a platform with Facebook's reach, even a modest, consistent boost in reactions can make a real difference over time. For the full breakdown of Julian's findings across all six platforms, check out our cross-platform engagement study. More Facebook resourcesHow the Facebook Algorithm WorksHow to Get More Followers on FacebookHow to Increase Facebook Page EngagementBest Time to Post on FacebookFacebook Marketing for Small BusinessView the full article

The airport is chaos. Lines snake beyond the designated barriers and out the doors as frazzled travelers tug their luggage and scowl at their phones, their grimaced faces even more dramatic in the harsh lighting. I stand in the security queue, sensing the stress emanating from everyone around me like swarms of buzzing flies. A man behind me huffs with dramatic indignation, a couple ahead bickers in hissed whispers “we should have left earlier!”, and someone’s roller bag keeps thwacking my heels. My fists clench as irritation winds me tighter. The security checkpoint seems miles away and my flight is in an hour. I feel myself being sucked into the collective vortex of misery. Then, as we make our first zig in the queue, I catch my partner’s eye and make a split-second decision. I raise my hand for a high five. “Yes!” I exclaim with exaggerated enthusiasm. “One turn closer!” My partner looks momentarily confused, then a half grin lights up his face as he slaps my raised palm. A few people nearby glance over, some with bemused smiles. When we reach the next turn, we were ready. “Turn number TWO!” We announce together, high-fiving with gusto. A woman behind us lets out a chuckle that seems to surprise even herself. By the third turn, a family with a toddler holds up their hands for high fives before we can even offer ours. “We’re on a roll now!” the dad says, grinning. With each zigzag, our celebration grows a little as others join our absurd celebration of incremental progress. Soon, a pocket of genuine laughter has formed in our section of the line, rippling outward like a skipped rock as others catch on to our game. Pressured vs. playful In that moment of travel chaos, we made a choice: instead of facing the frustrating situation with tense resentment (what I now call “The Pressured Way”) we decide to transform it through levity and connection (“The Playful Way”). This simple shift doesn’t change our situation. We are still in the same painfully slow airport security queue. We are still at risk of missing our flight. But it changes what the situation feels like—from stress to humor, from isolation to community, storm cloud to sun break. This choice between The Pressured Way and The Playful Way appears constantly in our lives: during technology crashes, tricky conversations, power struggles, or canceled plans. When challenges arise, we can clench our jaws and white-knuckle our way through—or we can bring imagination, inquiry, and openness to the situation. This choice isn’t just about boosting fun (thought that’s a welcome bonus), it’s about accessing new solutions, deeper camaraderie, and a richer experience of everyday life. Playfulness isn’t one size fits all. While our airport moment involved a social game, you might express your playful side by finding beauty in the terminal architecture, creating backstories for fellow travelers, or scoring the scene with a film soundtrack—turning a mundane wait into the opening of your personal heist movie or Broadway musical. The Pressured Way tightens our vision like horse blinders, while The Playful Way opens our peripheral sight to possibilities we’d otherwise miss entirely. A transformative mindset When I talk about playfulness in adulthood, I’m often met with puzzled looks. “You mean sports?” people ask. Or “Board games with friends?”. “Oh, like, work hard/play hard… partying?” But playfulness runs deeper than scheduled recreation (though that is important). It’s not a leisure activity reserved for weekends or vacations—it’s a mindset that transforms how we experience everything. Playfulness is: — Finding humor and lightness even in tense moments — Navigating situations with genuine questions instead of assumptions — Staying open to possibilities rather than fixating on one “right” way — Experimenting rather than seeking perfection — Bringing an ethos of adventure to difficulties — Reimagining the mundane through reframes and games — Being willing to collaborate rather than control When we move through the world playfully, we remain pliable, ready to adapt, change, and work with whatever comes our way: to navigate obstacles nimbly and alchemize even the most mundane tasks into micro adventures. Playfulness is often dismissed as frivolous — a charming but dispensable quality best left in childhood alongside stuffies and imaginary friends. But watch any child transform a cardboard box into a spaceship or a pile of sticks into a fairy house and — beyond the cute façade — you are witnessing them exercising some of humanity’s most valuable capacities: imagination, adaptation, and ingenuity. The good news? Playfulness is part of us all — it’s standard issue for the human species. Even if you’ve left it in the drawer gathering dust, you can pick up your playfulness again and relearn to use it. I haven’t always been able to find the high-five moments in life’s security lines. There was a time when I was deeply lost in what I now recognize as “The Pressured Way.” Beyond burnout During a particularly intense period building my first company, I found myself alone late one night, pen in hand, making a list titled “Ways I’m Failing RN.” It contained eleven meticulously detailed items—work projects falling behind, leadership shortcomings, fertility struggles, neglected friendships and family relationships—each one a knife twist of self-criticism. At the bottom, almost as an afterthought, I’d written: “Stressing myself out with my stress and inability to emotionally regulate.” I was beyond burnout — overworked and under-played. Night after night, I’d come home, collapse on my apartment floor, and sob until I was empty, unable to see any of the success around me. The brilliantly colored, creative world I’d built felt like it was happening to someone else entirely. The weight of my perfectionism had become so crushing that I couldn’t imagine a way forward. What moved me through this period wasn’t working harder or being more disciplined. It was remembering The Playful Way of life I’d learned as a child, sitting around our kitchen table in Maine with my family, brainstorming wild ideas over dinner. Our kitchen was the beating heart of my childhood home, with its cheerful painted tiles, bright green countertops, and wall jam-packed with family photos. After my brother and I helped our parents serve dinner, the fun began. My words would tumble out in excitement: “Hey, what if we started a kids’ karaoke club?” My parents would exchange a conspiratorial glance. “Now there’s an idea!” Mom would reply, leaning forward. “What would that look like? Where would we host it?” Between bites of penne, my brother would chime in: “We could have themed nights — Disney songs one week, pop hits the next!” My dad would smile, his laughter-creased eyes twinkling. “I love it! Now what would we name it?” Before anyone could answer, his fork was in the air, face lit up with enthusiasm. “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! I know! Kiddieoke!” These kitchen table sessions were boisterously loud, as we built upon each other’s ideas. No idea was too outrageous to explore. We were elementary schoolers doing business brainstorms—and our parents took us seriously and egged us on. Eventually, we’d have to clear the table, do our homework, and return to our daily responsibilities. But in these moments, I learned that any endeavor could be handled with an inquisitive attitude and a spirit of adventure. I was fortunate to have parents who showed me that wonder and whimsy could be woven into all aspects of life. My mom—a social worker, artist, gardener—and my dad—an entrepreneur, engineer, inventor—modeled what it looks like for adults to be playful while simultaneously building businesses, dealing with illness and loss, and nurturing families and communities. My voyage of questioning took a new turn at age 15 when I found my heart fluttering like butterfly wings whenever I was around my best girl friend and realized I wasn’t just attracted to one gender. Growing up Catholic, I learned that boundaries were fixed—lines drawn between right and wrong, holy and profane, approved and forbidden forms of love. But my bisexual heart didn’t fit into hard pews or rigid boxes, it spilled out like vivid stained glass light. Luckily my mom told me that some rules were for bending so I turned to playfulness, curiously exploring and embracing the expansiveness of being queer, rather than fearing it. Carving out play space This current of exploration carried me to New York City, where I co-founded and built Refinery29 from a small style website into one of the most influential digital media brands for women, reaching millions with its distinctive mix of fashion, culture, and boundary-pushing storytelling. Even in boardrooms, I carved out spaces for play—like my apricot-colored office dubbed “The Peach Pit” with its round table that became our magic circle for brainstorms. All the players around the table now were adults, so I had to take some extra measures to get the ideas flowing including doing physical shake breaks and having a lovingly bedazzled Taboo! game buzzer on hand for when anyone got into excessively “serious mode.” Our playful approach led us to create innovative experiences like 29Rooms—a funhouse of culture that reimagined vacant warehouses into kaleidoscopic, artist-made wonderlands where 100,000 adults came through to frolic and fall down imagination rabbit holes in cities across the US. A new chapter In 2021, I found myself ready to begin a new chapter. But leaving the company I’d built over fifteen years was like moving out of a home you’ve loved — even when you’re ready to go, there’s still a bittersweet ache. Add to that the wild adventure of new motherhood and a global pandemic, and I was navigating multiple identity shifts at once. Daunting questions loomed: Who was I beyond the role I was most known for? What kind of parent would I become? What did I want to create next? As I faced these huge transitions, my spirit whispered an answer: experiment! Instead of rushing to figure it all out, I turned my life into a play laboratory. I led cathartic dance parties on Zoom, created public art experiences connecting strangers in parks, took classes in improv and storytelling, and said “yes” to pretty much any foray that sparked curiosity. I dove deep into researching the power of play for our health and happiness, and piles of books stacked up on my desk. My calendar filled up with what I lovingly called “play dates with possibility,” and something magical happened: as I led thousands of people in unlocking their vibrant spirits, I discovered my next chapter — creating spaces for playful, creative practice and shared joy. Playfulness is my power tool and my life preserver across all aspects of my life from parenting to self care to career. It’s how I’ve come up with innovative solutions at work, built meaningful relationships, found purpose during transitions, and made memories in mundane moments. My relationship with playfulness isn’t just about joy—it’s been essential medicine for navigating life with depression, anxiety, and ADHD. I’ve developed my own methods and seen the power of this approach transform not just my own life, but countless others I’ve worked with. And now, I’m on a mission to unlock that magic for you too—to help you dive into that giddy river that flows when we approach life with playfulness. Adapted excerpt from The Playful Way, by Piera Gelardi, and reprinted with permission from HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 2026. View the full article

Over the past few days, new billboards have slowly been popping up along a 130-mile stretch of desert into Indio, California. One features a giant image of a crying face emoji; another is a picture of an unexplained blob; a third shows an edit of the Mona Lisa sipping out of a delicate tea cup. Each of these eye-catching visuals is an advertisement for a performance at this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Coachella 2026 takes place over two weekends: April 10 through 12 and April 17 through 19. And while billboard advertising has been a hallmark of the lead-up to the festival almost since its inception, it’s become increasingly intense in recent years. In a 2025 interview with The New York Times, one executive responsible for renting out the billboard space said, “This year was an absolute explosion.” So far, 2026 is looking similarly promising: Advertisements for Justin Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter, Addison Rae, Katseye, and Karol G have already appeared along the coveted strip of highway. For fans, these physical expressions of artists’ sets serve not just as advertising but also as a preview of where music branding is headed in the year to come. This year’s billboards are all about distinctive fonts, cryptic messaging, and niche aesthetics—and they show that though Coachella may be overrun with influencers, at least its creative direction is alive and well. Attention-grabbing visual choices On this year’s Coachella billboards, font choice is front and center. In years past, artists’ teams have clearly chosen fonts that pair well with their overall message—like, for example, Lil Yachty’s 2024 billboard, which featured the phrase “It took Coachella 8 years to book me” in his own handwriting, or Omar Apollo’s 2022 billboard in the style of a call to action with the bolded phrase, “Heterosexuality can be cured.” In 2026, though, the font choice is the message. Take, for example, one billboard for Katesye: The entire composition is the phrase “Sahara’s Gnarly” on a black background. The image pops because those words are rendered in a gooey, dripping, neon green font that’s a reference to Katseye’s hit song “Gnarly,” which embraces a kind of glitzy, sterilized grossness in its music video (which has been viewed almost 172 million times). One glimpse at this design, and Katseye fans are sure to have an intuitive understanding of what it’s trying to convey—and maybe even an outfit to match. Billboards for KATSEYE’s Coachella debut have been spotted. pic.twitter.com/cNjHfsAHjD — Pop Base (@PopBase) April 1, 2026 Other artists are similarly relying on ultra-specific fonts to capture their aesthetics. Karol G opted for a close-cropped shot of a blinged-out necklace with the word Bichota (a slang term the Colombian singer invented as an equivalent to “boss babe”) in a swirling, feminine script, styled after the cover art of her single of the same name. The French artist Oklou chose an image made entirely out of emoticons to reflect her cyberpunk style. And one of this year’s headliners, Justin Bieber, commissioned a billboard with his album name, SWAG, displayed in a simple serif font on top of a trippy, swirling background, calling to mind the record’s bubbly refrains. Billboard spotted for Oklou ahead of Coachella performance. pic.twitter.com/0OvfPmUwib — Pop Crave (@PopCrave) April 3, 2026 Some of these billboards include small mentions of the artist’s names, like Katseye and Oklou. Others, like those for Justin Bieber and Karol G, rely solely on viewers to make an instant connection between the imagery and their work. These decisions feel like a reflection of how artists today are cultivating their images online: In a post-Brat digital world, where microtrends on TikTok are constantly shifting, every letterform, color choice, and aesthetic throwback helps artists carve out their own recognizable niche. Music has always been about personal identity, and these strong graphic choices emphasize that. In place of universal appeal, the billboards create if-you-know-you-know brand signals for stans, teasers for fans, and, one hopes, online conversation for everyone. When Coachella 2026 attendess can recognize Katseye’s branding based on two gooey green words, all of those creative efforts have done their job. View the full article

In other news, Better Mortgage completed warehouse renewals and Wolters Kluwer provided a new form of access to its digital vault platform for secured parties. View the full article

Facing stagnant sales, Panera Bread is aiming to become one of the restaurant industry’s rare comeback stories. The fast-casual chain’s latest move is the introduction of new “Salad Stuffers,” a fresh spin on one of Panera Bread’s most iconic menu items: the bread bowl. Instead of filling a sourdough bread bowl with soup, however, it’s stuffing a handheld Italian-style roll with salad. The idea sounds simple enough, and yet CEO Paul Carbone says Panera thoroughly tested the innovation before adding it to the menu. A team of chefs and bakers experimented with 20 different breads to find one with the desired “fluffy and soft” texture. Any salad on Panera’s menu, ranging from the chicken caesar to the steakhouse salad, can become a “stuffer.” The new menu item coincides with a broader plan at the fast-casual chain to use around nine ingredients for each salad creation. That’s closer to what competitors like Sweetgreen offer, and also more than the average of five ingredients previously featured in Panera’s salads. The Salad Stuffers were methodically tested in two regional markets over the course of three months, according to Carbone, who was elevated to his chief executive post in March 2025 after serving as interim CEO for three months and chief financial officer prior to that since 2023. “Maybe that’s the CFO in me,” Carbone tells Fast Company. “We test, we learn, we iterate.” A turnaround after cutting too much Panera Bread is in the very early stages of a turnaround effort in the wake of operation errors that Carbone says included making portions smaller and swapping in less-desirable ingredients. Carbone says Panera will invest $100 million more in its company-operated cafés in 2026 compared to last year’s spending levels, funding that will add five hours of extra labor per day to each café, support menu innovation, and boost the quality of the food on the chain’s menu. Franchisees, who account for around 50% of Panera’s system of 2,249 locations, are expected to match that corporate investment. This big spending commitment runs counter to Carbone’s instincts as a CFO, a title he held at Dunkin’ Brands, SharkNinja, and Yeti. When he was CFO at Panera and was presented with the idea of swapping in iceberg lettuce and using less romaine to save some money, Carbone says the decision sounded appealing. But it came at a cost: displeased diners. “As a former CFO, it’s the best investment we’ll make,” Carbone says of the renewed focus on quality. “What we’ve done in the past—degrading quality, smaller portion sizes, labor cuts—it wasn’t working.” A crowded, difficult comeback An attempted turnaround comes amid a choppy climate for restaurant chains, with demand for “slop” lunch bowls sold by competitors including Chipotle, Sweetgreen, and Cava having softened. From January 2024 through September 2025, restaurant and takeout cost increases more than doubled the pace at grocery stores, according to research from consulting giant McKinsey, due to rising labor, rent, and ingredient costs. There are also quite a few restaurant rivals currently attempting turnarounds of their own, including Starbucks and Red Lobster. But they’ve made little progress, and that’s because turning around a large, national chain is incredibly difficult, according to Fred LeFranc, founder and CEO at restaurant consulting firm Results Thru Strategy. “The number of layers from the top down to the store-level employees is pretty large,” LeFranc tells Fast Company, making operational changes tough to implement. Panera, he says, “really broke trust with their loyal customers. It was self-inflicted harm.” In November, Panera announced a new financial target, aiming for systemwide sales to exceed $7 billion by 2028, a tall order given systemwide sales were $6.1 billion and trending downward as of 2024, according to food-service research firm Technomic. Carbone says some early investments are moving the needle in a positive direction. Guest satisfaction scores on service and café cleanliness have improved, as has the likelihood of customers to recommend Panera since the restaurant added extra labor hours, according to Carbone. He also notes that new Frescas and Energy Refresher beverages that debuted in March have outperformed Panera’s internal goals and led to more beverage orders overall, while the chain’s Dubai-style chocolate pistachio cookie, launched alongside the new drinks, has led to an increase in bakery transactions. As for his industry turnaround inspiration, Carbone says the “best one in the industry today is Chili’s,” admitting, “If you had said to me, in five years Chili’s is going to be the hottest brand out there, I would have said, ‘Come on, no way.’” More changes are coming Panera is also testing a new point-based loyalty program in Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Seattle, and in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Based on results, it could roll out nationally as soon as this summer. It’s also trying out larger kiosks to make digital ordering easier and investing in AI for labor scheduling, demand planning, and other solutions that can be adopted at scale internationally. “It’s less about being able to strip out labor and replace it with AI and [more about] how it makes us better and smarter,” Carbone says. This thinking points Carbone back to what he learned when Panera’s business wilted, in part due to a bad bet on lettuce. “Going to 50% iceberg was not in service of the guest,” he says. “[Now] we put everything through the lens of: Is this in service of the guest? And does it make that guest experience better?” “Salad Stuffers” are priced from $8 to $13, depending on the salad choice and the region where they’re purchased. View the full article

The American job market is now filled with so-called ghost jobs —listings for positions that don’t actually exist, from companies that have no intent to hire—wasting not only hours of your time, but also your money, too. According to a comprehensive study by Enhancv, a global AI resume builder, 37% of people looking for jobs are now paying a “ghost tax”—reporting direct out-of-pocket expenses, including travel, childcare, and paid certifications, as a result of chasing phantom listings. The March 2026 study surveyed 1,000 U.S. professionals across all career levels. “When job seekers are losing actual money to engage with a company’s brand, we aren’t just looking at an HR problem, we’re looking at a systemic breakdown of the professional social contract,” Enhancv co-founder Volen Vulkov says. “We are moving toward a low-trust economy where the friction of finding talent will eventually cost more than the ‘free’ data companies are currently trying to extract.” Why are companies posting for a job they don’t intend to fill, at least not in the near future? It turns out corporations are using the posting as a way to both gather competitive intelligence about the application pool, and signal the appearance of growth, the study finds. Other findings include that nearly half, or 47% of candidates have applied for roles they later discovered were non-existent, indicating the tactic is a common strategy now among mainstream corporations. Technology and marketing have highest number of these deceptive listings, with 85.7% of tech workers and 87.5% of marketing professionals reporting ghost jobs. Meanwhile, over 50% of senior professionals, or applicants with over eight years’ experience, report applying and interviewing for ghost jobs. One red flag: seeing a “brand new” job reposted after receiving an automatic rejection, according to 16.1% of those surveyed. Not surprisingly, 12.1% of respondents have completely abandoned major jobs boards, and report a “soul-crushing” cycle of high-effort applications met with crickets. View the full article

David Gamage was out to dinner with his wife and was already a few drinks deep late last year when his phone buzzed. According to the name on the screen, the call was coming from California congressman Ro Khanna. Gamage, a tax law professor at The University of Missouri, was initially skeptical; he’d never spoken with Khanna before. But the outreach also made some sense. The Democratic lawmaker had recently voiced support for a California ballot initiative that Gamage and several other tax scholars coauthored—an initiative that would levy a one-time, 5% tax on California billionaires to help cover public education and cuts to federal healthcare funding in the state. The proposal, which is sponsored by the California health workers union SEIU, had provoked furious backlash, prompting billionaires like Peter Thiel to begin cutting ties in California. Khanna, whose district is in Silicon Valley, had responded to their threats with a decidedly heavy dose of snark on X: “I echo what FDR said with sarcasm of economic royalists when they threatened to leave, ‘I will miss them very much.’” Now, Khanna wanted to dig into the details with Gamage about how the proposal would work in practice. “It was a somewhat surreal experience from my side,” says Gamage, who spent the evening attempting to elucidate the intricacies of complex tax policy over text. The two men followed up with a phone call where Khanna probed even further, expressing his concerns about how the proposal might impact “paper billionaires,” whose wealth is tied up in illiquid stock. The depth of the discussion surprised Gamage. “He has expressed real interest in understanding the mechanics and economics in a way that most politicians don’t,” Gamage says. But that has hardly won Khanna any brownie points with California billionaires, many of whom were once some of his most devoted supporters. Former Google chair Eric Schmidt is among the billionaires backing a new super PAC to oppose the proposal, including by pushing a rival ballot measure to block the wealth tax. Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan and venture capitalist Ron Conway, both Khanna donors in the past, have thrown their weight behind Ethan Agarwal, a tech founder who recently abandoned his longshot race for governor to go after Khanna’s House seat in the California primary. “Khanna has turned his back on the people of CA17,” Tan wrote on X, announcing his support for Agarwal, who previously founded the fitness app Aaptiv, and cofounded the Coterie, a software firm focused on tools for investors. Conway, who once praised Khanna as an advocate “who will be really, really outspoken for tech,” echoed that sentiment in his own post, writing that it’s time for a Silicon Valley congressman “who prioritizes the advancement of technology.” For Khanna, the uproar over the tax proposal is just the latest sign that tech billionaires have lost touch with the average worker in the industry they’ve come to represent. As evidence, he points to the $1.8 million that poured into his reelection campaign from some 30,000 donations last quarter, after he came out in favor of the wealth tax—a significant uptick from the last two quarters of 2025. “The backlash is exaggerated by people who read X,” Khanna tells Fast Company, adding that the billionaires leading the charge against the proposal are “not the future.” “I have the privilege of having support from more innovators, business and technology leaders than almost anyone,” he says. “There are very few billionaires. There are a lot more people in tech.” But in poking some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful people in the eye, Khanna is taking a significant political risk. In some ways, the wealth tax debacle is the predictable outcome of the high-wire act that he has been attempting to pull off since he first came to Congress in 2017. Early on, he established himself as an emissary of the industry hoping to spread what was working in Silicon Valley to other parts of the country. But that message has grown messier as public opinion on Big Tech has soured, and tech billionaires have shifted sharply to the right. Now, as Khanna’s national profile has grown and his name gets tossed around as a possible 2028 presidential contender, it’s become untenable for him to straddle the gap between progressives at the national level and the wealthiest constituents in his own backyard. As Democratic voters—and the politicians courting them—increasingly blame the ultrawealthy for making society less fair, the ultrawealthy are, in turn, testing old loyalties and searching for new champions. With his support for the billionaire tax—and subsequent introduction of a national billionaire tax proposal with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders—Khanna appears to be planting both feet firmly on one side. “My tagline is: If America has been good for you, you need to do good for America,” he says. “America has been good to a lot of these tech billionaires.” The “tech groupie” on the Hill Khanna grew up a long way from Silicon Valley, just outside of Philadelphia in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. At the University of Chicago, where he studied economics, Khanna had a chance encounter with a young Barack Obama, who was running for the Illinois Senate. “My recollection is that he was an exceedingly decent, gracious person, and that there was a lot of buzz around him as the future mayor,” he once told Businessweek, noting that meeting Obama was what got him interested in politics. Years later, after graduating from Yale Law School, Khanna would go on to work briefly for the Commerce Department under President Obama in 2009. Khanna’s first congressional run came in 2014 during a simpler time for tech, when Silicon Valley startups were still broadly viewed as the darlings of the new economy and not the algorithmic engines of a wide range of societal ills. When his opponent’s supporters attempted to paint Khanna—by then a patent lawyer with backing from Peter Thiel and other tech leaders—as a corporate shill, Khanna told The New York Times that he wore the name “tech groupie” as “a badge of honor.” Looking back, Khanna admits to looking at the industry through rose-colored classes. “During the Obama years, many of us had a hope that technology would be democratizing, that technology would help bring about democratic change around the world,” he says. Losing that race, he’s since said, taught him an important lesson about aligning himself too closely with tech. “There are a lot more PTA leaders than tech leaders,” he recently told economist Paul Krugman, referring to advice he got from his then-opponent, former Congressman Mike Honda. Still, when Khanna did take office in 2017—the same year Donald The President took over the White House—it was with a decidedly optimistic message about the need to bring Silicon Valley-style prosperity to The President country. He traveled to Kentucky to meet with displaced coal miners who were learning tech skills and joined JD Vance (then an author and investor) on a bus tour to promote tech investment throughout the Midwest. He later wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he and Vance “shared a deep concern that our country was being ripped apart,” in part due to rising wealth inequality between Silicon Valley and other parts of the U.S. Even as the techlash got underway, Khanna’s positions remained relatively moderate toward tech. He opposed repealing Section 230, the liability shield that internet platforms rely on, and spoke out against “reflexive call[s] to break up companies.” His position on these hot-button issues—and continued financial ties to the industry—kept him one step removed from the anti-tech streak beginning to permeate Congress. Today Khanna argues that he has always been supportive of a billionaire tax, pointing to his endorsement of Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign for president, which hinged on taxing “the 1%.” But he acknowledges that, to the extent he supported these ideas, it was often “theoretical and academic,” not tied to any specific bill or proposal. (Khanna’s spokesperson directed Fast Company to two social media posts to indicate his past support for wealth taxes.) More often, he has advocated for policies that would put more money in low-income people’s pockets—but not explicitly by taking it out of the pockets of billionaires. His 2022 book, Progressive Capitalism, makes fleeting mention of increasing “taxes on corporations and the wealthy” to pay for things like Medicare for All. But the policies he proposes center on going after “tax cheaters” and closing corporate tax loopholes, rather than leveling a new tax on the fewer than 1,000 billionaires in the U.S. At times he seemed to argue for just the opposite, writing in his book that the country shouldn’t “simply favor the redistribution of wealth,” but should focus on expanding opportunity. The key to more widespread prosperity, in other words, was to spur innovation beyond the coasts. To that end, he was a champion of the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act in 2022, which was based in part on a separate bill he cosponsored. The CHIPS Act promised to reinvigorate the U.S. semiconductor industry and received widespread support from the tech sector. (Recent research from the Brookings Institution suggests it has, indeed, begun to deliver on that promise, creating jobs and higher wages in areas with new semiconductor facilities.) “He’s always been focused on taking the strengths of Silicon Valley nationwide,” a Silicon Valley supporter of Khanna’s tells Fast Company. “It caught all of us off guard” None of this made Khanna the likeliest person to support a policy that would so thoroughly infuriate California billionaires, and according to Gamage, Khanna wasn’t involved in drafting the proposal. Gamage and his colleagues initially drew up a version of the wealth tax years ago, but the hurdles of getting such a measure through in Sacramento proved too high. It wasn’t until last year that the SEIU, a prolific sponsor of California propositions, reached out about taking the proposal directly to voters as a ballot measure. The President had already signed H.R. 1, better known as the One Big, Beautiful Bill, into law, which included $30 billion per year in cuts to California Medicaid funding. “We had to find revenue somewhere to deal with these looming cuts,” says SEIU’s chief of staff Suzanne Jimenez. The final text of the proposal was already public when a Democratic member of California’s Assembly, Alex Lee, suggested that SEIU reach out to Khanna for his support, Jimenez says. From that first conversation, it was clear to her that Khanna would be backing the initiative. Still, even she wasn’t expecting him to come out in support quite the way he did. While Jimenez says she was excited to read Khanna’s Christmastime clapback at billionaires threatening to leave the state, that feeling was hardly universal. Even some of those who remain in Khanna’s corner viewed his dismissive attitude as misguided. “It caught all of us off guard,” says the Silicon Valley supporter. The rollout of Khanna’s positioning was “awkward” and “messy” the supporter says, noting his own concerns with the proposal. That includes the fact that the tax applies even to people—like many startup founders—whose net worth on paper may bear little resemblance to their actual wealth. Tan and others, meanwhile, have argued that the proposal would cost people like Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin 50% of their shares in Alphabet because of a provision related to pricing the value of voting shares. Gamage and his colleagues have refuted those claims in detail and told Fast Company they amount to “misinformation.” Still, the looming tax bill has reportedly spooked Page and Brin enough that, in December, the two men collectively terminated or moved dozens of companies out of state. Khanna has since acknowledged that perhaps mixing it up on X was a misstep. But he’s been unapologetic about supporting the proposal because, as he seemed to imply to The San Francisco Chronicle recently, it’s been politically fruitful—or at least, not damaging. “I’ve never been at a more popular place in the district,” he said. Perhaps for that reason, Khanna appears unconcerned about the billionaire-backed primary challenge against him. In interviews, Agarwal has attempted to paint Khanna as a tech turncoat. “He put up this whole thing about being pro-tech and pro-business and pro-growth,” Agarwal told Fast Company. “I don’t know what happened to him.” Sarah Drory, a Khanna spokesperson, has, in turn, charged Agarwal with having a “checkered financial and personal past.” Her comments come amid new reporting on past legal disputes involving Agarwal’s companies and one instance in which Agarwal, by his own admission, was accused of IP infringement after he “downloaded some porn” in a case that was later settled. “I’ve often had a primary challenger,” Khanna says, adding jokingly, “it’s unclear to me who’s going to come in second or third.” Taking on the “Epstein class” The fact is, in 2025 67% of Americans viewed billionaires as making society less fair, an 8% uptick from 2024, according to the Harris poll. Among Democrats, that figure stands at 79%. It should come as no surprise that an ambitious politician with eyes on a 2028 White House run would lean into that messaging. “The message that this is the guy who’s against the billionaires and wants to fund healthcare, I think that’s a good message,” says one California Democratic strategist who is not supportive of the proposal. “I think this is probably a good thing for him, even if it’s not good for the state.” But Khanna has cited other reasons for his hardening stance on wealth, namely the who’s who of billionaires—many of them tech billionaires—whose (at best) chummy relationships with Jeffrey Epstein were documented in the Epstein files. Khanna, along with his Republican colleague Thomas Massie, coauthored the legislation that forced the release of the files, turning them into the faces of the fight. Khanna has since come to refer to the people named in the files as the “Epstein class” and spoken with optimism about carving out a new political lane focused on ending “elite impunity.” Khanna attributes some of the growing animosity from billionaires to his outspokenness on this issue. At the same time, the revelations contained in the files have stirred up his own feelings of fury. “The experience of seeing how those elites operated gave me more of an emotional connection with the frustrations of Americans who felt dispensable as second-class citizens—as some of these women did,” he says. “I have an emotional capacity now to identify with that anger, as opposed to just a philosophical understanding.” Yet Khanna has not turned his back on tech entirely. On April 9, in a well-timed flex of his continued status in certain Silicon Valley circles, he’s scheduled to appear onstage at Stanford University with Nvidia founder Jensen Huang. He has also been working behind the scenes to alleviate concerns about the tax proposal in the Valley. “He’s the only one talking to both the tech billionaires and to the labor leaders,” his Silicon Valley supporter says. Gamage says he’s personally been looped in on a number of emails with California billionaires seeking answers, though he declined to name which ones. Khanna has previously said he would meet with Netflix chair Reed Hastings and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman—both prominent Democratic donors. According to a post Hoffman later shared on LinkedIn, the discussion didn’t change his mind about opposing the proposal, but his support for Khanna at least appeared on solid ground. “[H]e believes (1) that Silicon Valley is a massively important creation of the future, and (2) that he wants to preserve and evolve capitalism through creating a contribution loop from the massively wealthy to helping the rest of the people in the state,” Hoffman wrote of Khanna. Khanna, meanwhile, takes credit for kick-starting a conversation about wealth inequality that has forced even opponents of the California wealth tax to step up with their own alternatives. Investor Vinod Khosla, who has criticized the proposal, recently suggested a federal doubling of capital gains taxes in an interview with Fortune. David Friedberg, an investor and cohost of the All-In podcast, similarly endorsed taxing loans that wealthy people take out against their assets. “Where were these proposals before I spoke out?” Khanna says. For now, Khanna is doubling down. The national bill he cosponsored with Sanders would go even further than California’s, instituting an annual tax on billionaires, rather than a one-time fee. And he’s begun to take a harsher stance on the tech industry writ large, recently endorsing the need “to repeal some of the section 230 immunity.” These moves seem poised to burnish Khanna’s progressive bona fides at a national level. But in distancing himself from the Silicon Valley elite, Khanna finds himself in yet another balancing act—attempting to draw a firm distinction between the ultrawealthy few who have come to define his district and the average voter he hopes will deliver him another term in office come November. View the full article