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Seven experts offer their insights. By Marc Rosenberg The Rosenberg Practice Management Library Go PRO for members-only access to more Marc Rosenberg. View the full article

Google is enhancing Search ads with AI-powered changes that aim to increase asset flexibility, improve performance, and deliver more relevant ad experiences. Driving the news. Here’s what’s changing: Greater flexibility in RSAs: Google’s AI now assembles and serves headlines, descriptions, and assets dynamically to improve performance. In some cases, Google may omit certain content, like descriptions, if doing so leads to better engagement. New ways to use existing assets: Headlines that weren’t used in RSAs can now appear as sitelinks if they’re predicted to boost performance. Up to two RSA headlines may serve in the space previously reserved for sitelinks, linking to the final URL. This allows advertisers to maximize the impact of their creative assets while improving user experience. Why we care. Google’s AI is now optimizing responsive search ads (RSAs) by finding the best combination of assets to maximize engagement and conversions. Leveraging unused headlines as sitelinks and refining ad combinations in real time should help maximize the impact of your creative assets without extra effort. This update works toward ads remaining relevant to search queries, improving visibility and performance while maintaining control over key messaging elements. Ultimately, it should help advertisers drive more meaningful interactions with potential customers and improve ROI. The big picture. Google said it remains committed to maintaining asset relevance and respecting pinned elements within ads. The combinations report’s purpose is to help advertisers analyze which headlines, descriptions, and assets are appearing most frequently. This global rollout reinforces Google’s effort to make ads more adaptable while ensuring they align with user search intent. Bottom line. Google’s AI-driven ad flexibility could help you reach customers with more relevant, engaging messaging — optimizing performance while streamlining ad creation. View the full article

The risks of a backlash are rising and could galvanise European competitors View the full article

Bloc’s trade commissioner in Washington to seek a compromise with Donald TrumpView the full article

Before he lost his job in a mass firing by the Trump administration last Friday, Nate Vince was the only locksmith for the hundreds of buildings and millions of visitors at Yosemite National Park. “Imagine a city-size place with one locksmith to all those people,” Vince says. “When there’s a car accident and an emergency medical person can’t get into a vehicle, or can’t get into their supplies they need, they would call me.” Now, with the nearest cities hours away, there’s no one who can easily do the same work. He says a coworker who was also fired was the park’s only HVAC technician, handling heating and cooling for every building in the park. At a nearby national monument, he says a friend who was a park ranger was fired despite the fact that he was that park’s only EMT—a first responder who has saved lives. “This is flat-out reckless,” the park ranger, Alex Wild, wrote on Instagram after the elimination of his job. Wild had always had good performance reviews. But like other workers who were fired, he got a form email saying that he had “failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment.” A National Park Service employee is seen as photographers flock to take photos of Firefall at Horsetail Fall in Yosemite National Park, California, United States on February 19, 2025. [Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu/Getty Images] Rethink your vacation plans In Southern California, a worker at a national forest who was fired said that part of their job involved preventing wildfires. “My crew is responsible for so much prevention and post-wildfire cleanup, and at this point it’s almost a guarantee that this forest will have some sort of major wildfire, as it has for the last few years,” the former employee said off the record. Across the country, around 1,000 National Park Service employees were fired on February 14, from staff who run ticket booths to janitors. Another 3,400 workers were fired from the Forest Service. Hundreds of other employees chose to accept the government’s (likely illegal, and unfunded) offer to resign from their job and still get paid for months. The net effect: If you’re planning a vacation to a national park or public lands this spring or summer, the experience might be very different than it was in the past. Bathrooms might be closed or overflowing with trash because there aren’t enough workers to clean them. Trails might fall into disrepair. Some smaller parks may have to shut down entirely. And ecosystems are likely to suffer. Visitors are already seeing changes now. Last weekend, if you tried to go Franklin Falls, part of a national forest in Washington, you would have seen a barricade on the road and a sign saying that the trailhead was closed “due to the large-scale termination of Forest Service employees.” If you tried to visit the Grand Canyon, you would have waited twice as long as usual at the entrance. Cuts on top of cuts The cuts compound challenges that parks had after years of inadequate funding. “Our parks were already stretched thin,” says John Gardner, senior director on budget and appropriations at the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association. Since 2010, he says, staffing in national parks has dropped by 20%, while the number of visitors grew by an average of 16%. (The situation is worse in some parks, like Zion, which has twice as many visitors no additional staff.) Now, Gardner says, “there are positions across the board—from maintenance to resource care to interpretation that have been lost. And that threatens the protection of cultural and natural resources as well as the visiting experience.” Work behind the scenes to manage forests and other ecosystems will suffer. “We’re not the people you see out on the trails leading walks, but we’re the reason that the resources are there for visitors to enjoy,” says Angela Moxley, a botanist who was just fired from her job restoring habitats and studying endangered species at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia. “One of the things I still can’t wrap my head around is that I just had to walk away from all of these projects I was working on,” she says. “There was no time to make any sort of plans to hand over the work or discuss any of it. And there aren’t going to be enough people left anyway to take over the project, anyway.” In November and December, for example, she sowed seeds into wetlands, and had planned to go out next month to see which plants had germinated and determine the next steps to take. “Now I’ll never know,” she says. Like other workers who were fired on Valentine’s Day, she was in a probationary period—she had been in her current role for just under a year, meaning that she didn’t have the same job protections as staff with more tenure. She also got the same email as others, blaming her performance for the firing, despite excellent performance reviews. When Trump took office in January, seasonal Park Service employees also had their job offers rescinded. After pressure, the Department of the Interior said last week that it would reinstate 5,000 of those employees. But Gardner says that it’s an open question how quickly those positions can be filled now; some workers have moved on, and others will question whether they really want the jobs. “I think you’re going to see a lot of people wary of applying, and they’re going to consider other opportunities,” says Gerry Seavo James, a deputy campaign director at the Sierra Club. At some parks where the number of visitors peaks in the spring, onboarding for seasonal visitors typically would have started now. The delays mean that parks likely could be critically understaffed. Trash piles up on the National Mall, which is overseen by the National Park Service, during the 2018 shutdown. [Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images] What will the parks be like? Visitors may have negative experiences, and parks could see serious damage. During the first Trump administration, when a government shutdown in 2018 closed national parks, Joshua Tree National Park was devastated. “People drove around the gates, drove through the desert off-road, and camped in areas that weren’t allowed for camping, including an area that is important for a Native American tribe,” says Curt Sauer, a former superintendent at Joshua Tree. “The trash was immeasurable, and the human defecation around the restrooms, which were closed.” Some of the park’s unique trees were cut down; illegal campfires damaged other parts of the fragile ecosystem. Closed bathrooms in Yosemite National Park, 2018. [Photo: Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images] Slashing jobs at the Park Service and Forest Service—none of which were particularly well-paid—isn’t going to save the government much money. (In fact, hiring outside workers to do the same jobs will probably cost more: Nate Vince notes that he was paid around a third of what he would have made as a locksmith in the “real world.”) Seasonal workers typically earn around $15–19 an hour, and in some cases, that’s covered by visitor fees, not the federal budget. The total budget for the Park Service is less than one-fifteenth of one percent of the federal budget. “There’s nothing efficient in culling the ranks of the Park Service workforce,” says Gardner. “It’s reckless, and it undermines an important economic driver.” Every dollar invested in national parks, he says, returns around $15 in economic activity in nearby communities. A view of Golden Gate Bridge and Presidio as seen from Twin Peaks in San Francisco, 2023. [Photo: Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu/Getty Images] The destruction is the point If saving money isn’t the goal, it’s possible that deliberate destruction is. When parks and public lands can’t function properly, “that, in turn, is going to lead to frustrations by the public, which will just further bolster the argument that these federal land agencies are incapable of doing their jobs, and that the land would be better served by putting them in state or private hands,” says Neal Clark, the wildlands director at the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, a nonprofit that works to protect public lands. The author of Project 2025’s section about the Department of the Interior, William Perry Pendley, has argued in the past that public lands in the West should be privatized. Project 2025 talks about reducing national monuments and environmental protections, and increasing drilling for oil and gas. Trump has talked about building “freedom cities” on public lands. In an executive order on February 19, Trump said he was eliminating the Presidio Trust, which manages the 1,500-acre Presidio National Park in San Francisco; some Trump supporters have suggested that the park should be developed into housing. “I think it’s important to remember the entire public land system is a response to corporate greed and exploitation of what were shared resources,” says Clark. “We’re hearing the same arguments today that were made 100 years ago, and they’re coming from essentially 21st-century robber barons. This is about corporate greed.” Still, national parks and public lands are broadly popular—and some past attempts to change them have failed. (Reagan, for example, wanted to auction off public lands to help with the deficit, but that didn’t happen.) Public pressure on Congress can help, says Gardner. “The most important thing that people can do is reach out to their elected members of Congress,” he says. If you have time, make an extra call to the representatives for districts with parks like Yellowstone, he says—and tell them that you won’t be bringing your tourist dollars unless parks have the staff they need to run properly. View the full article

Fartleks are a well-known and popular running workout—or at least they’re something runners talk about all the time. But how many of us have gone out and said “I’m doing a fartlek today” and actually followed through with it? The original idea is that the workout is unstructured (the name means “speed play”) so it’s hard to plan one. Here’s what you need to know about fartleks, and some guidelines to setting yourself up for a fun and productive one. What counts as a fartlek run? “Fartlek” comes from a Swedish term meaning “speed play,” and it’s usually described as something you just go out and do for funsies. You choose a landmark—say, a mailbox up ahead—and decide to run faster until you get to it. Then you slow down again. Most runners and coaches would agree on that description, but when you try to nail down a definition of the fartlek run, things start to fall apart. If you run fast for one minute and slow for four, is that a fartlek, or just a time-based interval? Can you run fartleks at a specific pace, or just off vibes? I even saw one post on Reddit that claimed it’s not a real farlek if you know how long you’ll be running each segment—you need a coach to blow a whistle when you least expect it. Still, these are some commonalities among the descriptions I’ve read, and we can use them to guide us: A fartlek run includes short segments of faster and slower running. The slower running is still running, usually around your easy pace. So this isn’t a sprint-and-walk situation, more like jog-and-surge. (If you need to walk those recoveries, keep your pace strong and powerful.) Precise paces and times are not required. The faster segments should be short, and the easy segments should be longer. Your cues to speed up and slow down may come from your environment, your training partners, your whims, or a loose plan you had when you set out. A fartlek run should feel harder than an easy run. Why run a fartlek? The benefits of fartlek runs will depend on how you do them. Some fartleks are basically a threshold run, some end up being long runs with some marathon-pace work in the middle, and some are just standard speedwork with a different name. These will all have different benefits. If a coach or written program tells you to do a “fartlek run,” make sure to get clarification on what that’s supposed to mean. Here are some of the reasons commonly given for including fartlek runs in a program: If the runner chooses their own intervals, it can be fun and playful, sort of a mental break from structured training. Since there are no strict pace targets, it can serve as a transition between easy running and introducing more structured speedwork (for example, as you finish your off-season and start training for a race). The variety in the run can make it a little less boring than a standard threshold or long run. You can’t compare your times or paces to what you’ve done previously, since every fartlek is different. This can help if you get anxious about whether you’re “improving” enough. Examples of fartlek runs you can try todaySo we have some guidelines, and we know when and why we might try a fartlek run. With that, you can pretty much put together your own version—but I’d like to give a few examples to start you off. There are no wrong answers, so feel free to add your own! For any of these, plan to start and end your run with at least five to 10 minutes of easy jogging (or however you like to warm up and cool down). The music fartlekYou’ll need a good playlist for this one. (Fortunately, we have a guide from our resident spinning instructor on how to craft a great one.) When the song is slow, jog easy. When the chorus picks up the energy a bit, you can too. And if it hits a big, emotional bridge—you know what to do. You can also do this same idea song by song. Alternate chill songs with higher energy ones, and match that energy to your running speed. Remember, it’s a fartlek, so you can always skip or repeat a song as you see fit. The hill fartlekDo you have a route with some little hills or challenging parts here and there? Jog easy, but when you hit one of those special spots, put on a little extra speed and surge up that hill. Or, if the hills are too steep for that to be realistic, choose flat straightaways or downhills where you can really open it up and get your legs moving. The lightpole fartlekThis one is good for some distance-based guidelines if you run in a place with lightpoles, mailboxes, or some similar repetitive structure. Starting at one pole, run fast until you hit the next one, then jog easy until you pass two or three more. “Haul ass” triggersI love this idea, which came from an old Reddit comment. The redditor says: “I learned about fartlek runs in the US Army, and still to this day I have certain spots in my routes that I consider ‘haul ass’ segments. I also have a rule that if certain songs come up in my play list when set to shuffle, that's sprint mode or skip the song.” This is like a speedwork version of the “run until” challenge. The “haul ass” segments could be a favorite hill or straightaway, as we discussed above, but you could come up with more creative options as well. Here are a few: If you pass a picnic with a boom box blasting, run faster for as long as it’s in earshot. If you see a cute dog or a cool-looking bird, run faster for 30 seconds. And of course, every park runner’s favorite, “pass that person in front of me.” They don’t have to know you think it’s a race. The partner fartlekThis one is like the “pick a mailbox” type of fartlek, but the catch is that you and your running buddy get to take turns. This can be playful, vicious, or anything in between, depending on how you and your buddy get along. (He made me run a real long one? OK, I’ll make him sprint up this hill!) Time-based fartleksSome will say these aren’t true fartleks, but sorry—plenty of people run time-based intervals with loose pace targets and call them fartleks. Here are a few I’ve seen: 1 minute fast/4 minutes easy Pyramid up and down: 1 minute fast, 1 minute easy, then 2 of each, 3 of each, then 2, then 1. Jog easy for a bit before starting the next pyramid. Descending only: 5 minutes fast, 5 easy, then 4, 3, 2, and 1. The treadmill fartlekI’m now realizing that some of my ways to make the treadmill less boring are, in fact, fartleks. My favorite is the simple rule to “change something every quarter-mile.” That could mean an increase in speed, or a decrease in speed. A little bump to the incline. Maybe I just try to get this last quarter-mile over with as fast as possible. Again, make up your own rules. You could do time-based intervals as above, or choose triggers like sprinting for 30 seconds whenever a number 7 comes up on any of the readouts in front of you. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Here are four updates from past letter-writers. 1. Retired coworker keeps coming back to gossip (#3 at the link) Unfortunately, the retired coworker is someone who will take offense at any direct request to be left alone to do work. He would go up and down the hallway talking loudly to other people about how “So-and-So told me to get lost!!!!” and cause even more of a ruckus. My supervisor is often not there to see what is happening, and was not effective in dealing with him before he retired. (Example: He told our supervisor, “I don’t attend meetings because that’s what works for me,” and she let him keep up that behavior.) But the good news is, some of the other people the retired coworker liked to bother also retired, and we got some new upper-level management that he may be a little wary of, so he has not been coming in as often. I still get e-mails from him asking about office gossip, but those are much easier to deal with than his in-person disruptions. I either don’t reply or answer in a bland manner, not contributing to, confirming, or denying any gossip. This has effectively taken his obsession with office gossip off my plate. 2. How do I give notice at a job I’m passionate about? (#5 at the link) I was, in fact, offered the job I was interviewing for. And giving notice was…not without hiccups! I was informed by my new company that in order to be eligible for a year end bonus, I needed to start no later than September 30. I had been explicit throughout the interview process that I wanted to give at least 3 weeks of notice- I really was the lynchpin for the program I was building and knew more notice would be the best way to set my boss and colleagues up for success. However, given how long the background check took, I couldn’t give notice until September 13, to provide only 2 weeks. The issue? My boss was set to leave the country on September 19, and would be gone the whole rest of the following week, basically providing only 3 days of transition with her in the office. Remembering your frequent advice that people leave all the time and sometimes timing is bad, but folks just manage, I delivered this news as matter-of-factly as possible. Boss was Not Pleased. Not pleased with me for leaving at all, not pleased with the notice timing, really just upset all around. However, I held firm- I would be foregoing a bonus if I chose to start later than September 30! And that was the plan, until…the woman who runs my division at my new company inquired how my giving notice had gone. I told her the story, including my boss’s international trip. New company and old company are close partners in the same industry, and new company didn’t want to damage the relationship with the old company, so division head was quite concerned. (Without exaggeration, I can say this was one of the most stressful times of my professional life, worrying that both companies- both of which I respect greatly!- were unhappy with me.) Division head pulled some strings with HR to allow me to receive a “signing bonus” that was more or less commensurate with what I would have received at year end, and so I provided an additional week’s worth of notice, working 3 weeks total, one week after my old boss returned to the country. My old boss remained cool towards me for leaving, though we are professionals in a small industry- she can’t avoid working with me in the future. I’ll say that I absolutely worked my tush off during my notice period to set my colleagues up for success as best I could, and as I was documenting it all, even I was shocked by how much had been on my plate. I know they were already discussing breaking my role into 2; if they’d asked me, I would have advised 3, because 2 people would be able to handle everything I was doing, but the 3rd person would have been able to get to all the things I wanted to do or should have been doing, but just didn’t have time. I’m not sure how they plan to pay these folks- I was underpaid for how much I was doing already- but I suppose that’s not my problem. I took my nearly 40% pay increase and went to work for a company I had already deeply admired, doing work I’m excited about with people I really enjoy working with. Thanks to you and the commenters for reassuring me that it really was okay to move on. I wish I could have finished building what we started at my old company, but I’m delighted to be working for a company where the workload expectations are reasonable, and they’re paying me so much more. 3. Do I have to use the phone for my freelance client? (#2 at the link) Edwina called me a few more times about potential projects, but each time they ended up not going ahead for various reasons. I finally realized that she needs to talk through projects and her feelings in order to wrap her head around what to do — meaning she does on the phone with me what most people do on their own before deciding to hire a freelancer. I imagine she’s one of those people you find in every office who is extremely nice but you have to plan an escape route from when you’re busy. In the end, someone else has taken over the projects I do regularly for this client, and we have settled into a nice routine of her emailing me the project to ask if I can take it, and me answering yes and then emailing it back when it’s ready. So I didn’t end up taking anyone’s advice specifically, but have come to better understand Edwina’s motivations, and hopefully I can steer the conversation back into focus if we work together again. I also have a friend who stopped working with a freelance client after she couldn’t take the client calling to destress over projects all the time. My friend absorbed it all and then could no longer function, so that also helped me inform how to draw a line between what’s included in my work and what isn’t. It’s a flexible line, of course, but I think there’s value in examining it now and then and evaluating how clients fill or drain us. 4. My friend applied for a job reporting to me and I don’t want to hire her (#4 at the link) I got quite lucky in the end and didn’t have to have too hard of a conversation. In her application, friend’s salary expectation was way above our range, which was a great way for me to describe to her that the role was quite junior and wouldn’t be a good fit. She was at a point where she was coming to the end of a contract and getting a little worried about finding her next gig so said she’d take anything but I don’t think she meant this low of a salary and within a few days she’d gotten something way more appropriate. So she never made it through initial screening and I didn’t need to talk to my boss about her. Her new role has its challenges but the workplace is nicer so although she might still get sucked into things that don’t really affect her, she’s also less negative than she used to be. And I’m totally amenable to listening to a friend vent! So she and I are still great friends. View the full article

Cost accounting is about reporting all of the fixed and variable costs involved in producing something. It corrals in numbers like overhead costs, materials, and labor. And others. It gives your small business a solid framework to plan with. And it shows your enterprise what’s working and profitable and what needs to be tweaked. What Exactly is Cost Accounting? Cost accounting involves several different metrics. It’s about cost control to increase profits. By looking at numbers like marginal cost versus standard costs to name a few. Businesses put the pieces together for a cost volume profit analysis that provides a cost accounting system tracking production. It tracks an SMB’s financial performance by recording, analyzing, and then reporting on costs. There’s one goal here to analyze such costs. To bump up a small business’s net profit margins by increasing the sales level for a product or service. Summary Cost TypeDescription Fixed CostsRemain unchanged regardless of the numbers produced or sold. Examples: Lease, rent, utilities, salaries. Process costing integrates mass production. Variable CostsFluctuate with sales. Include raw materials, distribution. Labor costs can be variable. Used in calculating the contribution margin. Direct CostsTied directly to a specific product. Examples: Material for a car. Known as COGS in manufacturing and COS in retail. Affected by factors like currency exchange. Indirect CostsNot directly tied to production. Examples: Business admin salaries, managerial accounting costs, office expenses. Operating CostsAlso known as operating expenses. Include utilities, rent. Indicate efficiency of production processes. Can be fixed or variable. Sunk CostsHistorical cost that is unrecoverable. Money already spent and doesn't figure into current business decisions. Main Costs Analyzed by a Cost Accountant Cost accountants are the people who work these numbers. They use the following cost accounting methods. Fixed Costs Fixed costs don’t change regardless of the numbers produced or sold. Like lease and rent, utilities and salaries. Process costing is a way to fold mass production into total fixed costs. Variable Costs These are costs incurred that fluctuate with sales. These variable costs change and include raw materials and distribution. Labor costs can be added in. Fixed and variable costs are the types most small businesses deal with. These work with what’s called a contribution margin. That’s leftover revenue after subtracting variable delivery costs from production costs. Direct Costs This type of financial accounting isn’t that simple. Good decision-making needs great data, so the direct cost needs to be included in the production process numbers. This cost is tied directly to a specific item, like the material used for a car. Here’s another example. In manufacturing, these are called the cost of goods sold (COGS) and in a retail business that buys from suppliers, these are called cost of sales (COS). Direct costs change when production or purchasing increases or decreases. Changes in currency exchange or supplier prices have an effect. Indirect Costs Indirect costs show up on a balance sheet in a different way. They are not tied directly to what’s produced. Think business administration salaries and managerial accounting costs. Utilities and office expenses count as indirect costs, too. Operating Costs These can be called operating expenses in the financial accounting world, which includes utilities and rent. They can be fixed or variable and they are used to gauge how efficient production processes are. Sunk Costs This cost is historical. A certified public accountant lists these as unrecoverable. Money already spent. They don’t figure into current business decisions. Cost accounting often needs to factor in a work in progress. That’s a term for goods that are being produced but aren’t completely finished. Types of Cost Accounting There are several common types of cost accounting, and their results are reflected in financial statements. Cost accounting systems are effective across various industries. For instance, steel companies must manage numerous departments. Standard Cost Accounting The costs are based on what is produced under typical operating conditions. Cost accountants look for differences between standard and actual costs. That leads to variance analysis. Activity-Based Costing Often called ABC, this is cost accounting dealing with specific services and goods. A business assigns overhead costs to either and the activity-based costing provides accurate numbers. Absorption Costing This is used to corral all the costs that go into any product. Common input costs in this category that go on financial statements include: Wages for the employees who build the product. The type and quantity of raw materials needed overhead costs. This type of cost accounting results in lower expenses on an income statement. Read More: what is financial accounting Lean Accounting This is a bit different than standard costing. Lean focused performance measurements look to streamline production cycles and lead times. Done right, this can free up 25% more production capacity. Marginal Costing This is used for budget preparation and to make short-term decisions. Marginal costing looks at how variable costs affect production. Throughput Accounting This is an alternative to other methods. Two factors are taken into account. Sales and production variable costs. It also assumes that labor is a fixed cost. Cost Accounting Vs. Financial Accounting There are distinctions that need to be made for good business management. Like the differences between cost accounting and financial accounting. If you’re wondering: “What is financial accounting?” There’s a definition below. In a nutshell: Cost accounting classifies costs for a total quantity over a specific time. It’s designed to uncover and control them. Financial accounting takes a different approach. It’s a record of all monetary transactions. This includes Balance Sheets, Cash Flow Statements, and Income Statements. Following are some pluses and minuses of the cost accounting model. Advantages of Cost Accounting Small businesses will find advantages to hiring a cost accountant. Here are five. Cost Control: Cost accounting standards establish a budget, ensuring that expenses do not exceed the allocated amount. By comparing actual costs to the standard costs, you can identify any unfavorable variances. Planning Future Production: This allows you to compare input costs and other numbers like sales prices and plan future production. Analyze Trends Use a trend line to track a cost. This kind of variance analysis highlights spikes and declines in expenses. Look for anything abnormal. Do A Cost Objects Analysis Cluster revenues and expenses in this manner. Utilize categories such as product and distribution channels to identify a reasonable profit. Make Better Decisions This kind of management accounting can help your team stay informed. That means decisions are made based on accurate assessments. Disadvantages of Cost Accounting Cost accounting was developed to look at cost control. But there are some drawbacks. The Expense Setting up this system requires a significant investment. For instance, you will need to maintain two sets of accounting books. Initial Setup and Maintenance: Setting up a cost accounting system demands significant financial resources. Beyond the initial setup, the ongoing maintenance and updating of the system can also be costly. Duplication of Work: Companies that utilize both financial and cost accounting must maintain two sets of accounting records. This not only raises costs but can also result in redundant efforts and inefficiencies. High Software Costs: With technological advancements, many companies opt for sophisticated cost accounting software. These can be pricey, and the return on investment isn’t always immediate. It Can Be Complicated There are a number of steps involved, like collecting and classifying expenses. That means more documents and forms to put reports together. It Requires Skilled People This kind of accounting requires highly skilled auditors and accountants. Employees would need special training. Addressing Challenges in Cost Accounting While cost accounting offers numerous benefits, small businesses may face challenges in its implementation, such as the complexity of data collection and analysis and the need for ongoing adjustment of cost accounting models to reflect business changes. Simplifying Data Collection: By identifying key cost drivers and concentrating on essential expense areas, the data collection process can be streamlined, reducing complexity. Additionally, utilizing automated data collection methods can greatly lessen the effort required. Adapting to Business Changes: Cost accounting systems must be sufficiently flexible to respond to changes in the business environment, including alterations in production methods, fluctuations in supply chain costs, or the introduction of new products. Conducting regular reviews and updates of the cost accounting system helps maintain its relevance and accuracy. Strategic Implementation of Cost Accounting Implementing cost accounting within a small business requires strategic planning and a clear understanding of the business’s operational dynamics. It involves identifying the specific cost accounting methods that align with the business’s production processes, product offerings, and financial goals. Customized Cost Accounting System: Creating a customized cost accounting system tailored to the unique needs of your business can provide more accurate and actionable insights. This system should integrate seamlessly with existing financial systems, ensuring comprehensive tracking and analysis of all relevant costs. Training and Development: Investing in training for your team to understand and effectively apply cost accounting principles is crucial. This includes not only the accounting department but also managers and decision-makers across the business who can benefit from cost-related insights to optimize their operations. Leveraging Technology in Cost Accounting Advancements in accounting software have made it easier for small businesses to adopt and benefit from cost accounting practices. Selecting the right technology tools can automate many aspects of cost tracking and analysis, reducing the manual workload and improving accuracy. Cost Accounting Software Solutions: There are numerous cost accounting software solutions available that cater to different business sizes and industries. These tools can help in tracking costs in real-time, performing variance analysis, and generating detailed reports for informed decision-making. Integration with Business Processes: Integrating cost accounting software with other business systems, such as inventory management and CRM platforms, can provide a holistic view of your business’s financial health. This integration allows for a more dynamic approach to managing costs and optimizing profitability. How Much Does it Cost to Hire a Cost Accountant? The Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the average hourly rate at $40 per hour. The actual fee can be above or below that depending on: The experience of the cost accountant. The tasks your small business needs to be performed. How often will you need to use their services? Remember most of these professionals charge on per-service rate or hourly. Some might even charge for specific projects like doing small business taxes. Is Cost Accounting Right for Your Business? Cost accounting systems analyze and report on a small business’s cost structure. There are several different types, including lean accounting and standard costing. There are advantages and disadvantages to this type of accounting. For example, it can help your business plan production. But you need skilled people to work the numbers. And that can be expensive. You can hire one of these accountants or look at DIY software. Either way, make sure to look at the services you need to start. Many small businesses will need everything from business advice to bookkeeping. Don’t forget to consider the financial gains when using these services. And how your small business can avoid fines and filing mistakes. Image: Depositphotos This article, "What is Cost Accounting?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Cost accounting is about reporting all of the fixed and variable costs involved in producing something. It corrals in numbers like overhead costs, materials, and labor. And others. It gives your small business a solid framework to plan with. And it shows your enterprise what’s working and profitable and what needs to be tweaked. What Exactly is Cost Accounting? Cost accounting involves several different metrics. It’s about cost control to increase profits. By looking at numbers like marginal cost versus standard costs to name a few. Businesses put the pieces together for a cost volume profit analysis that provides a cost accounting system tracking production. It tracks an SMB’s financial performance by recording, analyzing, and then reporting on costs. There’s one goal here to analyze such costs. To bump up a small business’s net profit margins by increasing the sales level for a product or service. Summary Cost TypeDescription Fixed CostsRemain unchanged regardless of the numbers produced or sold. Examples: Lease, rent, utilities, salaries. Process costing integrates mass production. Variable CostsFluctuate with sales. Include raw materials, distribution. Labor costs can be variable. Used in calculating the contribution margin. Direct CostsTied directly to a specific product. Examples: Material for a car. Known as COGS in manufacturing and COS in retail. Affected by factors like currency exchange. Indirect CostsNot directly tied to production. Examples: Business admin salaries, managerial accounting costs, office expenses. Operating CostsAlso known as operating expenses. Include utilities, rent. Indicate efficiency of production processes. Can be fixed or variable. Sunk CostsHistorical cost that is unrecoverable. Money already spent and doesn't figure into current business decisions. Main Costs Analyzed by a Cost Accountant Cost accountants are the people who work these numbers. They use the following cost accounting methods. Fixed Costs Fixed costs don’t change regardless of the numbers produced or sold. Like lease and rent, utilities and salaries. Process costing is a way to fold mass production into total fixed costs. Variable Costs These are costs incurred that fluctuate with sales. These variable costs change and include raw materials and distribution. Labor costs can be added in. Fixed and variable costs are the types most small businesses deal with. These work with what’s called a contribution margin. That’s leftover revenue after subtracting variable delivery costs from production costs. Direct Costs This type of financial accounting isn’t that simple. Good decision-making needs great data, so the direct cost needs to be included in the production process numbers. This cost is tied directly to a specific item, like the material used for a car. Here’s another example. In manufacturing, these are called the cost of goods sold (COGS) and in a retail business that buys from suppliers, these are called cost of sales (COS). Direct costs change when production or purchasing increases or decreases. Changes in currency exchange or supplier prices have an effect. Indirect Costs Indirect costs show up on a balance sheet in a different way. They are not tied directly to what’s produced. Think business administration salaries and managerial accounting costs. Utilities and office expenses count as indirect costs, too. Operating Costs These can be called operating expenses in the financial accounting world, which includes utilities and rent. They can be fixed or variable and they are used to gauge how efficient production processes are. Sunk Costs This cost is historical. A certified public accountant lists these as unrecoverable. Money already spent. They don’t figure into current business decisions. Cost accounting often needs to factor in a work in progress. That’s a term for goods that are being produced but aren’t completely finished. Types of Cost Accounting There are several common types of cost accounting, and their results are reflected in financial statements. Cost accounting systems are effective across various industries. For instance, steel companies must manage numerous departments. Standard Cost Accounting The costs are based on what is produced under typical operating conditions. Cost accountants look for differences between standard and actual costs. That leads to variance analysis. Activity-Based Costing Often called ABC, this is cost accounting dealing with specific services and goods. A business assigns overhead costs to either and the activity-based costing provides accurate numbers. Absorption Costing This is used to corral all the costs that go into any product. Common input costs in this category that go on financial statements include: Wages for the employees who build the product. The type and quantity of raw materials needed overhead costs. This type of cost accounting results in lower expenses on an income statement. Read More: what is financial accounting Lean Accounting This is a bit different than standard costing. Lean focused performance measurements look to streamline production cycles and lead times. Done right, this can free up 25% more production capacity. Marginal Costing This is used for budget preparation and to make short-term decisions. Marginal costing looks at how variable costs affect production. Throughput Accounting This is an alternative to other methods. Two factors are taken into account. Sales and production variable costs. It also assumes that labor is a fixed cost. Cost Accounting Vs. Financial Accounting There are distinctions that need to be made for good business management. Like the differences between cost accounting and financial accounting. If you’re wondering: “What is financial accounting?” There’s a definition below. In a nutshell: Cost accounting classifies costs for a total quantity over a specific time. It’s designed to uncover and control them. Financial accounting takes a different approach. It’s a record of all monetary transactions. This includes Balance Sheets, Cash Flow Statements, and Income Statements. Following are some pluses and minuses of the cost accounting model. Advantages of Cost Accounting Small businesses will find advantages to hiring a cost accountant. Here are five. Cost Control: Cost accounting standards establish a budget, ensuring that expenses do not exceed the allocated amount. By comparing actual costs to the standard costs, you can identify any unfavorable variances. Planning Future Production: This allows you to compare input costs and other numbers like sales prices and plan future production. Analyze Trends Use a trend line to track a cost. This kind of variance analysis highlights spikes and declines in expenses. Look for anything abnormal. Do A Cost Objects Analysis Cluster revenues and expenses in this manner. Utilize categories such as product and distribution channels to identify a reasonable profit. Make Better Decisions This kind of management accounting can help your team stay informed. That means decisions are made based on accurate assessments. Disadvantages of Cost Accounting Cost accounting was developed to look at cost control. But there are some drawbacks. The Expense Setting up this system requires a significant investment. For instance, you will need to maintain two sets of accounting books. Initial Setup and Maintenance: Setting up a cost accounting system demands significant financial resources. Beyond the initial setup, the ongoing maintenance and updating of the system can also be costly. Duplication of Work: Companies that utilize both financial and cost accounting must maintain two sets of accounting records. This not only raises costs but can also result in redundant efforts and inefficiencies. High Software Costs: With technological advancements, many companies opt for sophisticated cost accounting software. These can be pricey, and the return on investment isn’t always immediate. It Can Be Complicated There are a number of steps involved, like collecting and classifying expenses. That means more documents and forms to put reports together. It Requires Skilled People This kind of accounting requires highly skilled auditors and accountants. Employees would need special training. Addressing Challenges in Cost Accounting While cost accounting offers numerous benefits, small businesses may face challenges in its implementation, such as the complexity of data collection and analysis and the need for ongoing adjustment of cost accounting models to reflect business changes. Simplifying Data Collection: By identifying key cost drivers and concentrating on essential expense areas, the data collection process can be streamlined, reducing complexity. Additionally, utilizing automated data collection methods can greatly lessen the effort required. Adapting to Business Changes: Cost accounting systems must be sufficiently flexible to respond to changes in the business environment, including alterations in production methods, fluctuations in supply chain costs, or the introduction of new products. Conducting regular reviews and updates of the cost accounting system helps maintain its relevance and accuracy. Strategic Implementation of Cost Accounting Implementing cost accounting within a small business requires strategic planning and a clear understanding of the business’s operational dynamics. It involves identifying the specific cost accounting methods that align with the business’s production processes, product offerings, and financial goals. Customized Cost Accounting System: Creating a customized cost accounting system tailored to the unique needs of your business can provide more accurate and actionable insights. This system should integrate seamlessly with existing financial systems, ensuring comprehensive tracking and analysis of all relevant costs. Training and Development: Investing in training for your team to understand and effectively apply cost accounting principles is crucial. This includes not only the accounting department but also managers and decision-makers across the business who can benefit from cost-related insights to optimize their operations. Leveraging Technology in Cost Accounting Advancements in accounting software have made it easier for small businesses to adopt and benefit from cost accounting practices. Selecting the right technology tools can automate many aspects of cost tracking and analysis, reducing the manual workload and improving accuracy. Cost Accounting Software Solutions: There are numerous cost accounting software solutions available that cater to different business sizes and industries. These tools can help in tracking costs in real-time, performing variance analysis, and generating detailed reports for informed decision-making. Integration with Business Processes: Integrating cost accounting software with other business systems, such as inventory management and CRM platforms, can provide a holistic view of your business’s financial health. This integration allows for a more dynamic approach to managing costs and optimizing profitability. How Much Does it Cost to Hire a Cost Accountant? The Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the average hourly rate at $40 per hour. The actual fee can be above or below that depending on: The experience of the cost accountant. The tasks your small business needs to be performed. How often will you need to use their services? Remember most of these professionals charge on per-service rate or hourly. Some might even charge for specific projects like doing small business taxes. Is Cost Accounting Right for Your Business? Cost accounting systems analyze and report on a small business’s cost structure. There are several different types, including lean accounting and standard costing. There are advantages and disadvantages to this type of accounting. For example, it can help your business plan production. But you need skilled people to work the numbers. And that can be expensive. You can hire one of these accountants or look at DIY software. Either way, make sure to look at the services you need to start. Many small businesses will need everything from business advice to bookkeeping. Don’t forget to consider the financial gains when using these services. And how your small business can avoid fines and filing mistakes. Image: Depositphotos This article, "What is Cost Accounting?" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Whether you’re moving from one Salesforce workspace to another, migrating from Salesforce to another CRM, or upgrading to Salesforce, you’ll need to migrate a ton of data. You can always build a team to handle this migration manually, but this isn’t feasible for most organizations. It leads to a ton of manual work, data loss, and more issues that can slow down or even completely stall your migration. Not to mention how expensive it can become. That’s why Salesforce data migration tools exist. For most organizations, these tools are a must-have for any migration to and from Salesforce. Here are some of the best. Unito: Best Salesforce data migration tool for phased migrations Unito is a no-code, fully customizable integration platform with some of the deepest two-way integrations for tools like Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, ServiceNow, and more. With its two-way integration for Salesforce, Unito unlocks what’s called synced migration, allowing organizations to migrate progressively, with enough overlap between tools to train teams at their own pace. Unito keeps everything in sync between Salesforce and whatever tool you’re migrating to (or from). That means everyone has all the context they need for their work, no matter which tool they’re in. With Unito as your Salesforce data migration tool, your migration doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. You can migrate your way, on your time, without losing any data. Want to see everything Unito can do for your Salesforce users? Check out our free ebook: 15 Ways to Integrate Salesforce in Real-Time. Salesforce Data Loader Salesforce Data Loader is a free, built-in migration tool available for Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer plans. It allows Salesforce users to import, update, delete, or export Salesforce in one of two ways: From CSV files, spreadsheets that can usually be exported from most other software tools. Database connections, built-in Salesforce integrations for tools like Amazon Athena, Microsoft Azure Synapse, Snowflake, and Zendesk. If you have access to this tool in your Salesforce plan, it’ll likely be the first data migration tool you look at. Though be aware that it might not necessarily be the best option for all migrations. Jitterbit Data Loader Jitterbit’s Data Loader is a free tool for Salesforce with a visual, drag-and-drop for mapping Salesforce fields with fields from your source tool. With built-in features for automating, scheduling, and repeating migration operations, you can streamline your migration process, and even automatically migrate your data piece by piece. Note, though, that this tool is only free for up to 100 operations a month, after which you’ll need a paid Jitterbit plan. Astera Astera is an AI-powered integration and data migration solution for Salesforce. It can be used for one-off migrations as well as setting up ongoing integrations between Salesforce and other enterprise tools, like SAP (Systems, Applications, and Products) platforms and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software. Astera allows Salesforce users to connect multiple accounts to their Salesforce organization, filter and transform their data, and migrate even the largest datasets. MigrateMyCRM MigrateMyCRM is a dedicated migration tool specifically built for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems like Salesforce. No matter what CRM you’re migrating from (or to), you’ll be able to move your data as you see fit. This likely won’t be the best option for you if your customer data is scattered throughout spreadsheets and other tools — as is the case in many smaller organizations. Migrate flawlessly with Unito While there are more than a few options for managing your Salesforce data migration, only one allows you to run a synced migration: Unito. With a single Unito flow, you can migrate Salesforce cases, contacts, leads, and more to over 50 other tools. All on your terms, in your own time, with the deepest two-way sync on the market. Ready to see what Unito can do for your migration? Meet with our team and get a full walkthrough of using Unito as a Salesforce migration solution. Book a demo FAQ: Salesforce data migration tools What is a data migration tool in Salesforce? A data migration tool in Salesforce is any tool that allows you to either pull data out of Salesforce and load it into other tools, or pull it out of other tools and load it into Salesforce. While Salesforce has built-in tools for doing this, they’re not always the best option. Which tool is best for data migration? That depends entirely on your needs, but here are some of the best tools for managing your Salesforce data migration process: Unito Salesforce Data Loader Jitterbit Astera MigrateMyCRM What are the four types of data migration? The four types of data migration are categorized based on the kind of system being migrated. They are: Database migration Application migration Storage migration Cloud migration View the full article

Measurements need to be refined. By CPA Trendlines Research Go PRO for members-only access to more CPA Trendlines Research. View the full article

Measurements need to be refined. By CPA Trendlines Research Go PRO for members-only access to more CPA Trendlines Research. View the full article

The most important leadership strategies are often the ones you don’t see. The quiet, behind-the-scenes work that truly drives success might not make the headlines, but it makes all the difference. We spoke to 10 experienced leaders who opened up about the practical, everyday practices they use to transform team dynamics and boost business outcomes. From creating space for honest conversations to fine-tuning how work gets done, these insights show that small, thoughtful changes can have a big impact. Create space for vulnerability and open dialog One of the most impactful but often invisible aspects of leadership is creating space for vulnerability and open dialog within the team. As leaders, we’re often expected to be solutions-oriented, decisive, and forward-focused. While these traits are critical, the behind-the-scenes work of fostering trust and ensuring everyone feels heard is just as vital, though it rarely makes the highlight reel. A real-life example comes from my time leading marketing at a private company. The team was incredibly talented but stretched thin as we took on a large-scale branding initiative. It was clear that the surface-level team updates weren’t addressing the underlying stress and misalignment. So, I introduced a weekly stand up meeting. It was a simple concept: every team member anonymously submitted one thing they felt was working well and one thing causing frustration. The key wasn’t just collecting feedback, it was addressing it transparently. Each week, I’d share a summary of the submissions and collaborate with the team to find actionable solutions. This process wasn’t glamorous, and it required consistency and vulnerability. I had to acknowledge blind spots, accept critique, and, sometimes, admit we didn’t have an immediate fix. Also, that it would take all of us to solve. Over time, this practice reshaped our team dynamics. People felt safe to speak up and trust grew stronger. Productivity soared because the hidden obstacles were brought to light and resolved. The importance of this kind of invisible work lies in the ripple effect. When team members feel heard and supported, they don’t just work harder, they work smarter and with greater collaboration. Leadership isn’t always about big wins or public recognition; it’s about the small, consistent actions that cultivate an environment where people can thrive. That effort to foster a culture of trust continues to influence how I lead today with clients. It’s the foundation for building stronger teams, which is ultimately the backbone of any organization’s success. Renae Scott, founder and CEO, Bee Collaborative LLC Revise and adjust treatment plans As a leader in physical therapy and sports medicine, I consider one of the most vital back-office tasks to be the careful revising and adjusting of treatment plans for each specific patient. Often, this requires staying late to evaluate patient progress based on data accumulation, researching new techniques, and communicating with other professionals so that the provided care is not only effective but also at the forefront of the latest developments in the field. This may not always be work that’s directly visible to my team, but it does set the bar for the quality of care we provide. By doing so, I model for them what thoroughness and continuous learning look like; this has cultivated a culture of dedication and excellence in the team. Over time, this invisible effort has engendered trust, inspired others to go the extra mile, and strengthened our collective commitment to the success of our patients. Amir Majidi, physiotherapist, CEO Sports Medicine Clinic, Push Pounds Review team workloads weekly I’ve learned that one of the most crucial behind-the-scenes tasks is something surprisingly simple: I spend two hours every Sunday reviewing each team member’s workload for the upcoming week. This habit started after I noticed our best analyst getting burned out from uneven task distribution. Looking deeper, I found that different client projects had similar deadlines, creating hidden pressure points nobody could see from their individual view. The impact of this weekly review surprised me. By redistributing work and adjusting timelines before the week started, our team’s stress levels dropped significantly. Our internal surveys showed a 20% decrease in reported overtime hours, and our project completion rate improved. One specific win stands out the most. Last month, I spotted three major reports due on the same day for different clients. By shifting one deadline earlier and one later, our team delivered higher quality work on all three projects. This invisible work of load balancing might not always show up in metrics directly, but it’s transformed how smoothly our projects flow. Vukasin Ilic, SEO consultant and CEO, Linkter Observe and shape communication styles As a 25-year veteran behavior analyst and subject matter expert in neurodiversity, it’s part of my involuntary operating system that I am constantly observing and shaping communication styles to elicit the best thinking in my team. Understanding that context and lived experience has shaped individual preferences and communication styles helps reduce friction and problem solve faster than continually trying to force all individuals into one communication style. For example, individuals from the boomer generation often tend to prefer a quick phone call to discuss a matter rather than texting or email, whereas individuals from Gen X and younger tend to prefer quick written communication. I think this may be in part due to the education and training of older generations to have a far more formal written style. Also, as a female leader of an all male team I am acutely aware of communication differences between genders. I use humor to point out disparities to a group of individuals who obviously are open to such feedback by way of joining a queer, female CEO in a company called NonBinary Solutions. Modeling authenticity invites others to be authentic and understanding that different individuals have different communication styles fosters trust in an organization. Allowing all individuals to be authentically themselves invites collaboration, innovation, and builds psychological safety. And you can still create healthy boundaries and call out bias when you see it to foster growth. It’s not binary. By acknowledging that each team member thinks differently, we create space to appreciate creative collaboration to problem-solving. Things are not black and white—solutions often live in the gray. Amanda Ralston, founder and CEO, NonBinary Solutions Develop and maintain emotional regulation One critical piece of behind-the-scenes work I prioritize as a leader is developing and maintaining my emotional regulation. Leadership can be demanding, and in a world that often feels increasingly chaotic, I recognize that how I manage my emotions has a profound ripple effect on the people I serve. Each day, I carve out at least 30 minutes for practices that help me stay centered. Meditation and affirmations are a staple of this routine. These practices allow me to connect deeply with my inner self, align my thoughts with my values, and set a positive tone for the day. Breathwork has also become an invaluable tool for me. It’s a simple yet profound way to regulate my nervous system, helping me stay calm and focused, especially when I’m navigating high-stress situations. I’ve recently been learning HeartMath’s approach to building heart-brain coherence. This practice is about harmonizing my emotions and thoughts to strengthen emotional resilience and promote a sense of calm clarity. It not only enhances my ability to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively but also fosters a deep sense of emotional balance. This work is invisible to others, but its importance cannot be overstated. By showing up grounded, I create a sense of safety and stability for my community. When people know they’re interacting with someone who listens deeply, responds thoughtfully, and doesn’t let external chaos dictate their energy, it encourages trust and openness. This emotional consistency allows for more authentic communication and collaboration, which are the cornerstones of healthy relationships and effective leadership. The people I serve feel empowered to bring their whole selves to the table because they see it modeled in me. It has also fostered a culture of calm confidence within my community. By prioritizing my emotional regulation, I not only strengthen my ability to lead but also inspire others to embrace their own emotional resilience. This, in turn, equips them to navigate challenges with greater clarity, courage, and composure. The unseen work of emotional regulation may never make headlines, but it’s the steady undercurrent that allows me to lead with intention and more grace, even amidst the most challenging times. This commitment to grounding myself daily ensures I can show up as the leader my community deserves. Natalie Jobity, leadership elevation strategist, keynote speaker, best-selling author, The Unveiled Way Design strategic icebreakers for meetings One simple example of my behind-the-scenes work as a leader is strategically designing the first five minutes of our team meetings to promote skill-building and relationship-building in the areas my team needs. I call them “strategic icebreakers.” While it may seem like a simple icebreaker, I carefully choose questions or activities that align with the challenges or goals the team will face in the near future. For instance, if collaboration with another department is upcoming, I’ll use a question like, “What’s one skill you admire in a colleague?” to foster a mindset of mutual respect. If the team is presenting at a conference, I might ask, “What’s a story in our industry that has inspired you recently?” to get them thinking about compelling narratives. When stress is high, we might start with a quick breathing exercise or, “What’s one thing you do to recharge during a busy week?” This invisible work matters because it sets the tone for the meeting and primes the team for the tasks ahead. It also consistently builds relationships and trust, even in virtual and hybrid environments. Over time, this intentional approach has positively impacted our team dynamics by fostering a sense of connection, purpose, and alignment that extends far beyond the icebreakers themselves. Bailey Parnell, founder and CEO, SkillsCamp Curate Personalized Growth Roadmaps One of the most unique and often unseen aspects of my leadership is curating personalized “growth roadmaps” for every team member. This isn’t just about job responsibilities—it’s about understanding what drives each person, what they’re passionate about, and how they want to grow both professionally and personally. Some want more 1:1 meetings for guidance, others prefer fewer meetings to focus, some are looking for tips on growing their LinkedIn presence, while others need accountability partners to stay on track. By getting to the heart of what each individual needs, I can tailor my approach, offering support where it’s most needed. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach; it’s about aligning their role with their personal goals. This level of personalization is crucial because everyone on the team is motivated by different factors. By understanding what they need to succeed and feel fulfilled, I can provide the right kind of environment for them to thrive. Whether it’s a space to be creative, the opportunity for deeper mentorship, or the chance to grow their personal brand, this approach ensures that people feel empowered and engaged in what they do. For example, one team member wanted more frequent feedback and strategic input, so I set up regular 1:1s with them. Another person needed fewer meetings to stay in a creative flow, so I gave them more flexibility in their schedule. Some were eager to build their LinkedIn presence, so I offered tips and coaching, while others needed a push to stay accountable, so I paired them with accountability partners. AJ Eckstein, founder and CEO, Creator Match Foster cross-team communication and alignment One example of behind-the-scenes work I do is fostering cross-team communication and alignment. It’s not something that’s immediately visible, but it’s crucial for keeping everyone on the same page, especially as the organization grows. I spend a significant amount of time in one-on-one conversations with team leads, understanding their challenges, and finding ways to bridge gaps between departments. This work is important because miscommunication or misalignment can slow progress and create frustration among teams. By staying proactive, I ensure that everyone understands how their work contributes to the bigger picture and where they can support each other. The impact? It’s created a more collaborative environment where teams feel supported and empowered to work together. This invisible effort has strengthened our team dynamics, leading to faster problem-solving, smoother project execution, and a stronger sense of shared purpose. Yuying Deng, CEO, Esevel Reflect before making decisions One of the most impactful, yet often invisible, aspects of my role as a leader is the time I spend in quiet reflection before making decisions that affect our company. Whether it’s choosing a strategic direction or addressing operational challenges, I take a step back to evaluate how these choices will impact every stakeholder—our employees, vendors, clients, and the broader ecosystem of our business. This approach is deeply rooted in my military experience, where I learned that every decision has cascading effects on the mission, the team, and the larger operation. That same principle applies in business leadership—every choice I make must be thoughtful and precise, with a clear understanding of how it will ripple through the organization. This intentional process requires me to disconnect and think deeply about long-term implications. While it might look like I’m “off the grid,” I’m actually mapping out how a single decision could affect every layer of the business. This ensures that when I communicate a decision with my team, I’m prepared to address follow-up questions and explain the rationale clearly. Not everyone sees the full picture—they may only focus on how a decision affects their specific role or department. By taking the time to consider how my choices impact everyone, I help align our team around a shared vision, reduce friction, and create a culture where people trust that their perspectives have been factored into the bigger picture. It’s invisible work, but it’s essential for fostering trust, cohesion, and long-term success within the company. Tabatha Turman, CEO, Integrated Finance and Accounting Solutions Embed values in every business aspect Much of the behind-the-scenes work I do revolves around ensuring our values are embedded in every aspect of the business. Sustainability isn’t just a marketing message—it’s a guiding principle that requires ongoing decisions around materials, supply chain processes, and product innovation. I dedicate significant time to conversations with suppliers, auditing production methods, and improving our B Corp scores to ensure we remain true to our mission of creating a more sustainable world. It’s not glamorous, but it’s vital to maintaining authenticity and building trust with our customers. Embedding values into the core of our business is crucial for three reasons: Building trust and reputation: Stakeholders—including customers, partners, and investors—engage more deeply with companies that consistently uphold their values, enhancing our integrity and reputation. Improving employee engagement and retention: A company that practices what it preaches fosters a positive work environment, reduces turnover, and attracts talent aligned with its mission. Enhancing customer loyalty: Authenticity and ethical principles resonate with customers, creating stronger emotional connections and driving long-term loyalty. A strong team culture is equally important. Investing in people ensures they feel valued and see a clear connection between their aspirations and the company’s success. This drives engagement and motivation, creating a ripple effect of positivity and collaboration. This approach has fostered a culture of trust, psychological safety, and empowerment, allowing team members to bring their authentic selves to work and take ownership of their roles. It strengthens our resilience in high-pressure situations and deepens the sense of community that fuels collaboration and innovation. Phoebe Yu, founder and CEO, ettitude View the full article

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. Inside the new Grok 3 model In just two years, Elon Musk’s xAI has become one of a dozen or so labs capable of developing state-of-the-art AI models. Now xAI is out with its Grok 3 large language model, which beats state-of-the-art frontier models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o and DeepSeek’s V3, in common mathematics, science, and coding benchmarks by a wide margin. Meanwhile, the smaller Grok 3-mini performs at par with the larger competing models. The new Grok model reportedly was trained using unprecedented computing power—first with a cluster of 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. A small group of rival developers have been testing an early version of Grok 3, and most say they’re impressed, with some caveats. OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy posted on X that Grok 3 exhibited sharp reasoning skills and was able to resolve some complex problems. He estimates that the model is on par with OpenAI’s o1-Pro reasoning model and slightly better than DeepSeek-R1 and Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking. However, he did find that Grok 3 choked on some prompts commonly known to give large transformer models trouble, such as determining how many Ls are in “Lollapalooza,” for example. Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang posted on X that Grok 3 is a state-of-the-art model and gives it props for achieving the top spot on the Chatbot Arena benchmark. Whereas AI skeptic Gary Marcus, who also posted on X, said that while Grok 3 shows real progress, it doesn’t represent a significant leap beyond existing models. More benchmark test scores will surface in the coming days and weeks to provide a fuller picture of how Grok 3 stacks up against the competition. Impressive as that is, the development of new “thinking” models is now moving so fast that Grok 3 could disappear back into the pack of benchmark performers three months from now. AI labs are only now learning how to scale up the computing power that “thinking” models use after being presented with a problem. Upcoming models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, and others will show the fruits of that research. Brookings: The AI revolution’s winners and losers won’t be who or where you’d think A new Brookings Institution analysis of AI’s effects on jobs and job losses suggests highly educated urban workers will be most at risk of losing their jobs. The last industrial revolution mainly affected lower-wage manufacturing and service jobs in smaller towns and rural areas. This time around, it’ll be knowledge workers in tech hubs and financial centers who will face the greatest exposure to AI-driven change. In San Jose’s Santa Clara County, Brookings found that nearly 43% of workers could see half or more of their tasks transformed by AI tools including OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Meanwhile, workers in less tech-oriented regions like Las Vegas would see less than a third of their tasks altered by AI tools. This pattern holds true across the nation, with major disparities even within states: California’s exposure rates range from 42.8% in tech-heavy Santa Clara County to just 26.7% in rural Mono County. It’s not so surprising when one looks at the technology itself, according to Brookings’s report. Factory-floor machinery was meant to replace repetitive physical tasks, while generative AI specializes in cognitive work: writing, analysis, coding, and other knowledge-based tasks. The more education and higher wages a job requires, the more likely it is to be touched by AI capabilities. Brookings, a D.C.-based policy think tank, says lawmakers should be thinking about ways of protecting the jobs of urban-knowledge workers, and “reskilling” them, while ensuring that rural areas aren’t left behind in accessing AI’s productivity benefits. The geography of technological disruption has been rewritten, the think tank says, and the implications for workforce development and economic inequality are only just beginning to emerge. Ex-OpenAI Mira Murati unveils AI startup, but its focus remains vague Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati has unveiled her new AI company, Thinking Machines Lab. While the product the startup intends to build remains unclear, Murati apparently intends to build AI in a very different way than her former company—out in the open. The AI research community used to be a fairly chatty place, but the research breakthroughs that led to ChatGPT soon attracted a lot of money—and with big money comes more secrecy. So, while companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic closely guard their training methods, Murati said in a blog post that Thinking Machines will regularly publish its technical insights, research papers, and code. If DeepSeek is any guide (it open-sourced its models and published its research methods), this practice could intensify the race toward the industry’s goal of creating artificial general intelligence (that is, AI that’s generally smarter than humans). Murati’s blog post also expresses an intent to create models that can be more easily steered toward specific applications in specific subject areas. AI systems remain “difficult for people to customize to their specific needs and values,” Murati wrote. She said her company will build systems that are “more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable.” The Information reports that more than two-thirds of the researchers at Murati’s company come from OpenAI, including OpenAI cofounder John Schulman and former head of safety Lilian Weng. The startup intends to build systems that assist humans, not replace them. “Instead of focusing solely on making fully autonomous AI systems, we are excited to build multimodal systems that work with people collaboratively,” Murati wrote. “We see enormous potential for AI to help in every field of work.” Beyond that, little is known about what Thinking Machines Lab will build. Based on Murati’s background and statements, it seems likely that the company will focus on very large foundation models that can be trained or adapted to many different specialized tasks. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that another OpenAI alum, cofounder Ilya Sutskever, is in talks to raise more than $1 billion in funding in a round that could value his AI startup, Safe Superintelligence, at more than $30 billion. More AI coverage from Fast Company: This AI tool could help curb domestic violence This AI trend lets TikTok users relive history’s best—and worst—moments How to use AI to find new movies, music, and books AI hallucinations could get lawyers fired, one law firm says Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium. View the full article

When Apple first revealed Apple Intelligence, its slate of generative AI features, a huge part of that announcement was a super-charged Siri. No longer would Apple's digital assistant be lagging behind competitors like Google: With the power of AI, the new Siri might actually be useful. When Apple Intelligence drops in full, Siri will reportedly be much more contextually aware, and be able to scan what's on your phone to understand and answer questions you ask. If your friend sends you their new address, you can ask Siri "add this address to their contact card." You don't need to specify which address or which contact, because the assistant will, according to Apple, be able to understand that by what's currently on-screen. Another huge feature is the ability to ask Siri to take action for you: You can ask Siri to send an email you have in your drafts, edit an image on your behalf, or add a photo to a specific note. If your iPhone is compatible with Apple Intelligence, you might have assumed it supports this new Siri. iOS 18 has been out for a bit, after all, and Apple has been pushing Apple Intelligence (and the new Siri) hard, including with a campaign featuring Bella Ramsey. Some Apple Store employees even started a chant about AI during the iPhone 16 launch. A waiting gameThe thing is, the new Siri isn't here yet. Apple did upgrade Siri a bit with iOS 18.1, and its the first wave of new AI features: That includes Siri's new design, which glows around the edges of the display; the ability to type to Siri by double-tapping on the bottom of the screen; Siri's ability to understand requests even when you misspeak; and a new feature that turns Siri into impromptu tech support (e.g., "How do I turn off Do Not Disturb?"). But iOS 18.1 came and went without any further updates to Siri. iOS 18.2 added more Apple Intelligence features, including ChatGPT integration, but no major Siri changes. iOS 18.3 was a smaller update (Apple even disabled notification summaries for certain alert types), but, again, skipped any upgrades for Siri. It's not clear when Siri's full form will arriveAnyone hotly anticipating Siri's AI promise might need to keep waiting. For the longest time, it seemed like these upgrades would come as part of either iOS 18.3 or iOS 18.4. Following 18.3's absence of Siri updates, of course, those predictions turned to iOS 18.4. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported back in September that Apple was planning on rolling out most of Siri's big features by this update. However, last week, Gurman said issues and bugs are plaguing the engineering team, and, as a result, Siri may be delayed even further. We'll find out soon enough, it seems. Apple now says in fine print that additional Apple Intelligence features (as well as additional language support) are coming in early April. The company doesn't specify, but those features are likely a part of iOS 18.4. Before the company releases that update in early April, they'll need to beta test it, which means we should see 18.4's first beta sooner rather than later. When it arrives, we'll know whether Apple plans to roll out big Siri changes now, or whether they've put those upgrades on the back-burner once again. Not all iPhones will get new Siri featuresWhile Apple supports iPhone as old as the XS with iOS 18, not many iPhones will actually get these new Siri features. That's because Apple Intelligence is limited to iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and the iPhone 16 series—including the new iPhone 16e. If you have an iPhone 15 or older, you won't see these new upgrades, even when you update to iOS 18.4, or whichever update contains the AI-overhauled Siri. View the full article

On Wednesday, Apple officially revealed the iPhone 16e, the spiritual successor to the iPhone SE. While the second and third-generation SEs borrowed from the design language of the iPhone 8, this new iPhone looks just like an iPhone 14. There are a lot of perks that come with that decision, but in doing so, Apple has also done something pretty drastic: It has officially killed off the Home button. With the launch of the iPhone 16e, no iPhone, nor any iPad Apple currently sells, ships with a Home button. (The iPod touch was killed off a long time ago.) This is, definitively, the end of an era, and I come not to mourn the Home button, but to praise it. Let's take a look at the life of Apple's Home button—what it did right, what it did wrong, and where we go from here. A brief history of the Home buttonWhen Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, a lot of attention was given it its "giant" touch screen—as Jobs described the iPhone's 3.5-inch display. But while touch controls certainly stole the spotlight, it wasn't the iPhone's only unique feature to get a shoutout. Here's what Jobs had to say when addressing the Home button for the first time: "And on the front, there's only one button down there. We call it the 'Home' button: [It] takes you home from wherever you are." And at that point in time, that's all the Home button did. Want to leave an app? Hit the Home button. Welcome home. But that simplicity didn't last forever. Very quickly, simply clicking the Home button to go home wasn't enough: Users expected more from their smartphones, and Apple had to adapt. One of the first non-home functions of the Home button was to take screenshots. Anyone who has used an iPhone with a Home button knows how it works: You press the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button together, and presto: screenshot. (The functionality on today's Face ID iPhones is similar, but now you use the Side button with the Volume up button.) All of a sudden, the Home button had more than one purpose. Next came Voice Control. Not Siri, mind you: Voice Control is a rudimentary version of Siri that launched on the iPhone 3GS in 2009. (Fun fact: It still exists on iOS!) As you might expect, to activate Voice Control, you hold down the Home button, wait for the Voice Control UI to appear, then ask it to complete a task (e.g. "Call Mom," or "play a song.") With the release of iOS 4 in 2010, Apple introduced app switching: By clicking the Home button twice, you could reveal a new menu at the bottom of your screen with all of your recently-used apps. Tap one, and you could switch to it, without needing to go to your Home Screen first to find the app you were looking for. Of course, the real revolution came in 2011, with the iPhone 4S and Siri. Apple took the Voice Command control and assigned it to Siri. With a long-press of the Home button, you could call upon the digital assistant to help answer questions and complete tasks. (The utility of asking Siri to do anything has been a point of contention ever since.) The Home button's next milestone came with the iPhone 5s. For this model, Apple outfitted the button with a fingerprint reader. It was the era of Touch ID. Gone was the iconic rounded square icon in the center of the Home button, replaced by solid glass. Users could now scan their fingerprints using the button and unlock their iPhones without having to punch in a passcode. Perhaps the Home button's final development was when it ceased to be a true button at all. With the iPhone 7 series, Apple replaced the physical button with a capacitive one. Just as with its MacBooks, a Taptic Engine underneath the bottom bezel of the iPhone provides a clever vibration each time you "press" on the button. In effect, it creates the illusion a click, even though the "button" never moves at all. (There was nothing quite like the feeling of the Home button going dead when your iPhone ran out of charge at the worst possible moment.) A new player in townFor a number of years, the Home button was a key component of most Apple products—minus the Mac. Whether you bought an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, even a particular iPod nano, you were using a Home button. But nothing lasts forever. The Home button took up a lot of screen real estate, if you recall: As other smartphones pushed their displays to the edge of the device, the iPhone still sported the same general design for about 10 years. Sure, the overall device looked different, and the screens got much larger, but the display was still sandwiched between a large top and bottom bezel—the latter of which held the Home button. When Apple was looking to overhaul the iPhone's design for the iPhone X while pushing the display to its physical limits, there was only one thing to do: nix the Home button. The iconic button was pushed out, in favor of Face ID, so Apple could present its "10th anniversary iPhone" with an edge-to-edge (-ish) display. The iPhone 8 (left) vs. the iPhone X (right). Credit: Marques Brownlee/YouTube The Home button wasn't totally eliminated, of course—along with the iPhone X, Apple released the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, which included the same capacitive Home button as the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. But by the following year, Apple's entire lineup of flagship phones—the iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR—had all ditched the Home button. Since then, only the iPhone SE line has offered a Home button—at least in the iPhone space. Apple kept the Home button alive on iPad for a while, until the third-generation iPad Pro (2018), fourth-generation iPad Air (2020), sixth-generation iPad mini (2021), and 10th-generation iPad (2022). And as of the iPhone 16e, the Home button is gone from Apple's lineup. What the Home button got rightIt's not that gesture controls aren't great—they are! Swiping around iOS feels intuitive and, in many ways, is objectively better than getting around using the Home button. But the Home button had some undeniable perks. It's tough to remember for those of us with Face ID iPhones, but there was a time when it was much simpler to unlock your iPhone in the morning without resorting to using your passcode. You didn't need to contort your face in the right position away from your pillow in order to authenticate yourself: Touch ID works however you're lying down. (Touch ID also works when your face is all puffy from sleep.) That ease extends to however you unlock your iPhone: As long as you can physically touch the Home button with the correct fingerprint, you're in. Just try to unlock a Face ID iPhone while it's resting on your desk without moving your face towards it. And don't get me started on what it was like unlocking a Face ID iPhone while wearing a mask during the pandemic: Before Apple issued an update making it easier, that was a nightmare. More simply, the Home button was a button, and buttons are great! Devices in general seem to be moving away from buttons in favor of touch or voice controls, and while those can certainly be effective, physical buttons are kind of the best. There's a satisfaction in clicking something and seeing an action as a result. Swiping is perfectly fine: I'm used to swiping up to go home, or swiping up and over to access my app switcher. But clicking once to go home, or clicking twice to pull up my open apps, still works really well—as does clicking the button without purpose, just because it's there. You could also have some fun with the Home button that you can't with Face ID. Touch ID settings let you save five fingerprint scans on each device, but most of us have ten fingers. So, when setting up each fingerprint, you'd alternate fingers until a scan was complete—which effectively registered two fingers on one scan. Repeat that five times, and you could use any finger to authenticate yourself. (This still works on Macs with Touch ID.) What the Home button left to be desiredHere's the problem with buttons, though: they can break. I never had a Home button break on me, but plenty of others did, for one reason or another. And if your Home button broke, it was a real pain in the ass. It's possible to fix a Home button yourself—iFixit sells a kit at a reasonable price—but if you want Touch ID to keep working, you need to take it to the Apple Store, which will likely charge you hundreds of dollars for the privilege. While Touch ID is superior to Face ID in some ways, it falls short in many others. Are your hands wet? Your fingerprint will not scan until they're dry. Do you suffer from dry skin in the winter? Ge used to using your passcode for a few months. Wearing gloves? Better take them off. Not to mention, Face ID is way more secure than Touch ID, at least according to Apple: The company claims the former has less than a one in a million chance of unlocking when someone else uses your phone, while Touch ID has a one in 50,000 chance of the same failure. The extra screen real estate the removal of the bottom bezel affords is also an undeniable plus. The largest Home button iPhone had a 5.5-inch display, while the smallest Face ID iPhone Apple currently sells has a 6.1-inch display. It's hardly a contest. I will say, I don't see those advantages for watching videos: I don't like cropping out my content to fill my iPhone's display, so on a Pro Max iPhone, the overall video size is about the same as it would be on, say, an 8 Plus. But for everything else on iOS? Those bezels are hardly missed. Don't call the coroner yetThe Home button may be gone from Apple's lineup, but it won't soon be forgotten. It was an iconic attribute of the iPhone for the first 10 years of the product's life: Many phones had a similar design to the iPhone, but only one had that distinct rounded Home button. It also isn't dead. There are still plenty of Home button iPhones in use right now. Apple still supports the second and third-generation iPhone SE, as well as a number of Home button iPads, so the company will still need to keep Home buttons in mind when developing its software for some time. And while Apple itself won't sell you a new iPhone with a Home button, you can still easily buy one elsewhere. You can find new and used iPhone SEs through many retailers, and while I wouldn't recommend doing so if you care about your device's longevity, you can even pick up a used iPhone 8 or 8 Plus for less than $100. The point is, for a long time, the Home button mattered. And until Apple drops support for all Home button devices entirely, it still does. View the full article

In the about 1,000 days between her drunken-driving crash in May 2022 and her death, South Korean mainstream news organizations published at least around 2,000 stories on film actor Kim Sae-ron. They illustrate how the local media often cover a celebrity’s fall from grace. Previously one of the brightest young stars in South Korean cinema, Kim was condemned and ridiculed for driving drunk; for talking about her financial struggles after losing roles; for taking a job at a coffee shop; for attempting a comeback in theater; for going out with friends instead of “showing remorse”; and for being seen smiling on set while shooting an indie movie. After the 24-year-old actor was found dead at her home Sunday, the headlines predictably swung to calling for changes to the way celebrities are treated in the public arena. Kim’s death, which police consider a suicide, adds to a growing list of high-profile celebrity deaths in the country, which some experts attribute to the enormous pressure celebrities face under the gaze of a relentlessly unforgiving media that seizes on every misstep. EDITOR’S NOTE: In South Korea, callers can receive 24-hour counseling through the suicide prevention hotline 1577-0199, the “Life Line” service at 1588-9191, the “Hope Phone” at 129 and the “Youth Phone” at 1388. Here’s a look at the intense pressure faced by South Korean celebrities who fall from grace. A sudden fall from grace South Korea is notoriously harsh on its celebrities, particularly women. Kim rose to stardom as a child actor with the 2010 hit crime thriller The Man from Nowhere and garnered acclaim and popularity for her acting in movies and TV dramas for years. But that changed after May 18, 2022, when Kim crashed a vehicle into a tree and an electrical transformer while driving drunk in southern Seoul. She posted a handwritten apology on Instagram and reportedly compensated around 60 shops that lost power temporarily because of the crash, but that did little to defuse negative coverage and she struggled to find acting work. When a Seoul court issued a 200 million won ($139,000) fine over the crash in April 2023, Kim expressed her fears about the media to reporters, saying many articles about her private life were untrue. “I’m too scared to say anything about them,” she said. Relentless negative coverage In the wake of Kim’s drunken-driving crash, celebrity gossip channels on YouTube began posting negative videos about her private life, suggesting without providing evidence that she was exaggerating her financial straits by working at coffee shops, and arguing that social media posts showing her socializing with friends meant she wasn’t showing enough remorse. Other entertainers, especially female, have struggled to find work after run-ins with the law, including drunken driving or substance abuse, and experts say many of them are reluctant to seek treatment for mental health problems like depression, fearing further negative coverage. Kwon Young-chan, a comedian-turned-scholar who leads a group helping celebrities with mental health issues, said celebrities often feel helpless when the coverage turns negative after spending years carefully cultivating their public image. Kwon, who stayed with Kim’s relatives during a traditional three-day funeral process, said her family is considering legal action against a YouTube creator with hundreds of thousands of subscribers for what they describe as groundless attacks on Kim’s private life. Peter Jongho Na, a professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, lamented on Facebook that South Korean society had become a giant version of “Squid Game,” the brutal Netflix survival drama, “abandoning people who make mistakes or fall behind, acting as though nothing happened.” Media blamed for celebrity deaths The National Police Agency said officers found no signs of foul play at Kim’s home and that she left no note. But a spate of high-profile deaths has sparked discussions about how news organizations cover the private lives of celebrities and whether floods of critical online comments are harming their mental health. Similar conversations happened after the 2008 death of mega movie star Choi Jin-sil; the death of her former baseball star husband, Cho Sung-min, in 2013; the deaths of K-Pop singers Sulli and Goo Hara in 2019; and the death of “Parasite” actor Lee Sun-kyun in 2023. Sensational but unsubstantiated claims like from social media are widely recycled and amplified by traditional media outlets as they compete for audience attention, said Hyun-jae Yu, a communications professor at Seoul’s Sogang University. Struggling with a sharp decline in traditional media readership, he said, media turn to covering YouTube drama as the easiest way to drive up traffic, often skipping the work of reporting and verifying facts. Following the 2019 deaths of Sulli and Goo Hara, which were widely attributed to cyberbullying and sexual harassment both in the public and media, lawmakers proposed various measures to discourage harsh online comments. These included expanding real-name requirements and strengthening websites’ requirements to weed out hate speech and false information, but none of these proposed laws passed. Reforms remain elusive South Korean management agencies are getting increasingly active in taking legal action to protect their entertainers from online bullying. Hybe, which manages several K-Pop groups including BTS, publishes regular updates about lawsuits it’s filing against social media commentators it deems malicious. But Yu said it’s crucial for mainstream media companies to strengthen self-regulation and limit their use of YouTube content as news sources. Government authorities could also compel YouTube and other social media platforms to take greater responsibility for content created by their users, he said, including actively removing problematic videos and preventing creators from monetizing them. The South Korean office of Google, YouTube’s parent company, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Heo Chanhaeng, an executive director at the Center for Media Responsibility and Human Rights, said news organizations and websites should consider shutting down the comments sections on entertainment stories entirely. “Her private life was indiscriminately reported beyond what was necessary,” Heo said. “That’s not a legitimate matter of public interest.” —Kim Tong-Hyung, Associated Press View the full article

You can now use a feature that's very similar to Android's "circle-to-search" on iPhone. While it's not exactly called that, both the Chrome app and the Google app will now allow you to circle text or images to search whatever's in your selection using Google Lens. The limitation? On Android, you can use the circle-to-search feature across your entire phone, but on iPhones, this feature is limited to the Chrome and Google apps. When you've got a webpage loaded in the iPhone Google app, press the three-dots button in the top-right corner and tap Search this Screen. In Chrome for iOS, open any webpage, tap the three-dots button in the bottom-right corner, and select Search Screen with Google Lens. You'll then see a gradient layer over the webpage, where you can either circle, tap, or highlight the part you wish to search. Google will then use Lens to identify what you're looking at and show search results accordingly. I used it to look up house crows, so I could learn more about a bird that's made a habit of sitting at my window and demanding food, and check what it might like to eat (pretty much everything, it turns out). The new feature is quite fast on both Chrome and the Google app, and it handles multiple different types of queries pretty well. That's to be expected, since Google Lens has been around for a long time and is generally quite dependable. This is really just a new, more intuitive way of selecting subjects to search. I also tried multiple different gestures instead of circling (everything from a tap to drawing an octagon), and all of them worked quite well. If you want to search for one word, tapping or highlighting works best, but for a larger block of text or a part of an image, you can use other gestures. Google does say that you can use any gesture that feels natural, so feel free to use anything that you like. Google also announced that you'll be seeing more AI overviews in Lens search results. You won't be able to block these results here because they're in Google's own apps, but there are many ways to block AI in your favorite browser. View the full article

A TikTok trend claims giving your baby a tablespoon or two of butter before bed will help them sleep better at night. “What if I told you my toddler was still waking up every 2 hours at almost 2 years old until I started giving her real grass fed butter before bed,” reads one TikTok post by creator @bridgette_.gray. Since then, her child has experienced “a week straight of sleeping almost 8 hours every night.” Another TikTok user @abbyexplainsitall calls butter (importantly, not margarine) the “best sleep hack for kids” and she lets hers eat “as much as they want.” The video currently has 279.8K views. In the caption she adds, “The fats help keep them satiated and that helps with sleeping! My kids sleep from 6:30pm – 6:30am and still take amazing naps throughout the day.” But experts are pumping the brakes on the trend. According to pediatric consultant Niamh Lynch, there is actually no scientific evidence that giving babies butter before bed makes them sleep longer. “Unfortunately butter is not going to make babies sleep better,” she said in a video posted to Instagram. “It might upset their tummy. It might cause diarrhoea. It’s a choking hazard obviously to give them a big chunk of butter. So, park the butter idea.” Instead she suggests a list of foods that do actually help with sleep, including kiwi, cherries, milk, fatty fish, nuts, and rice (although beware of allergies). Giving babies any solid food before they are around 6 months old is also not recommended. From about 6 months old, babies can begin to be offered nutritious solid foods. Even then, butter is not the best option as it is high in salt and saturated fat, which are not recommended in large amounts. Butter is not the only sleep-hack tried and tested by desperate parents. It was once thought that adding cereal in a bottle of milk before bedtime would also help babies sleep through the night (research found this did not increase sleep in the slightest). More recently, the viral lime hack, where parents cut a lime in half, place it in a dish, and position it next to their child’s bed for better sleep, has been doing the rounds online. The truth is, it is perfectly normal for babies to wake during the night. Not even a stick of Kerrygold or half a lime can come to parents’ rescue. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes: I would love to hear stories from people who made the transition from nonprofit work to for-profit work, as I am considering that transition myself. I’ve only ever worked in this sector and have a master’s in Nonprofit Management (not even an MBA) so the idea of changing sectors is really overwhelming, but I know people have done it before. Readers who have made this transition, please share advice in the comment section. View the full article

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) is one of Google’s three Core Web Vitals. Like the other two (Cumulative Layout Shift and Interaction to Next Paint), it’s not exactly clear what it means. Lots of tools can show your LCP score and outline ways to improve it. But their tips are often generic, and lack the detail you need to actually take action. So, in this guide I’ll walk you through actionable steps to improve your LCP. I’ll separate them by: Their potential impact The effort required to make the fix Which specific aspect of your LCP score they help with But first, let’s talk about what LCP actually means for your website (jump to this part for the fixes). What Does Largest Contentful Paint Even Mean? Largest Contentful Paint measures how long it takes for the main content of your webpage to appear on your user’s screen—whether that’s a hero image, heading, or block of text. It’s not the most intuitive phrase, so let’s break it down word by word: Largest: The biggest piece of visible content on the screen. This could be a large image, a big headline, or any major element that stands out. Contentful: It’s something that has actual content—like text or an image—and isn’t just a background or frame. Paint: This refers to how your browser “draws” (or renders) that element on your screen. For example, imagine clicking a link to read a news article. The page might load various elements quickly, like the header menu at the top and placeholders for ads. But if the article text takes five seconds to show up, that’s a poor experience. That delay is what LCP measures. When you think about LCP, think about your visitors. It’s the difference between someone seeing your main product image or headline right away versus waiting and possibly leaving. A faster LCP generally means a better user experience. And a better experience means happier visitors who trust your site and want to hang around (and potentially buy from you). Further reading: For more on how loading speed can affect your website experience and optimization, check out our full guide to page speed and SEO. What Is a Good LCP Score? Google provides three scoring ranges for LCP: Good: 2.5 seconds or faster Needs Improvement: 2.5 to 4 seconds Poor: Longer than 4 seconds These benchmarks serve as useful guidelines, but your users’ actual experience matters most. A visually rich photography portfolio might take longer to load but still satisfy visitors. Meanwhile, a simple text-based article that loads in three seconds might frustrate users who expect instant access. So, focus on your audience’s expectations and behavior. Check your analytics to see if slower LCP correlates with higher bounce rates or lower conversion rates. These numbers tell you more about your site’s real performance than any benchmark can. If your conversion rate is 10x the industry average, it likely won’t make a massive dent in your bottom line if you improve your LCP score. But if people aren’t staying long on your important pages, improving your LCP score could help boost your site’s performance. This, in turn, can lead to better results for your business. How to Measure Your LCP Score There are lots of tools you can use to measure your LCP. But you don’t want to just get your score. You also want to learn these two things: What your LCP element is Which stage of your LCP is longest Finding these two pieces of information is key for prioritizing which methods you should use to improve your LCP. For example, you could spend hours minifying your code, inlining your CSS, and deferring JavaScript. But it won’t make much of a difference if your LCP element is a hero image you just haven’t optimized yet. As for the stages: LCP is made up of four stages: Time to First Byte (TTFB) Resource load delay Resource load time Element render delay Each stage is affected by different factors (and methods of optimization). So, if you can identify which stages of your LCP are taking the longest, you can prioritize your fixes accordingly. Here are two ways to find this information. Note: With many tools, you’ll get different LCP scores depending on whether you check the mobile or desktop version of your site. Optimizing for both helps improve your experience for all users. Google PageSpeed Insights Google’s PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a popular choice if you want a simple, web-based report. Just plug in your URL, and you’ll get a quick overview of your Core Web Vitals, including LCP. PSI is great if you’re not a big fan of digging around in complex dashboards. It gives you clear visuals and actionable tips without much fuss. It also has a handy diagnostics section which tells you some of the main ways you can reduce your score. Just make sure you select the “LCP” option next to “Show audits relevant to.” Click the “Largest Contentful Paint element” option to see which element on that page is the LCP element. It also shows you the breakdown (as a percentage) of each stage of your LCP. From the example above, you can see the vast majority (88%) of our LCP time comes from the render delay stage. Knowing this lets us focus our efforts on the methods in the next section that specifically help reduce that stage of the LCP score. Chrome DevTools Chrome’s DevTools can give you detailed, real-time feedback on various aspects of your page’s performance. It’s especially useful for testing changes on the fly, but it might feel a bit overwhelming if you’re completely new to web development. Access it in Chrome on any webpage by right clicking and selecting “Inspect.” In the interface that appears, head to the “Performance” tab. (You can select the three dots next to the cog icon and change where the dock goes—I find horizontal is best for analyzing LCP.) This view shows your LCP score. If you hover over the “LCP element” underneath the score, you’ll see which part of the content is the largest contentful element. Then, get a breakdown of the LCP stages by clicking the “Record and reload” button. This will run the performance checks again on the page, and you’ll see more information along with a waterfall chart. Ignore that for now, and instead click the “LCP by phase” drop-down. This breaks the LCP down into its four constituent parts, showing the actual time for each stage along with a percentage. As before, you can use this information to prioritize your optimization efforts and more effectively improve your LCP. How to Improve Your LCP You can improve your LCP in several ways, and some methods will help you more than others. The table below sorts the methods by impact, also indicating the effort level each one requires and which stage of your LCP it’ll help reduce. Method Impact Helps Reduce Use a CDN High Resource Load Time Optimize Your Images High Resource Load Time Use WordPress Plugins High Potentially all stages Implement Caching High Time to First Byte Use a Faster Host High Time to First Byte Minify Your Code Medium Resource Load Time Optimize Your Fonts Medium Resource Load Time Avoid Lazy Loading Above the Fold Medium Resource Load Delay Remove Elements You Don’t Need Medium Element Render Delay Use Defer/Async for JS Medium Element Render Delay Inline Critical CSS Medium Element Render Delay Switch to SSR Medium Element Render Delay Preload Important Resources Medium Resource Load Delay These values are all relative. Your own skill level, your website’s setup, and your budget will affect how easy or cost-effective these changes are for you. I’ve taken each method in isolation, as the relative impact of each fix may decrease as you implement each one. For example, if you implement lots of these methods but don’t use a CDN, your LCP score will likely improve to the point that using a CDN might not make much difference to the score (although it may still improve your user experience). Finally, a few of these might help reduce different stages of your LCP. As with every change you make to your website, there’s usually a bit of overlap in terms of what it’ll affect. I’ll explain more of the nuances and who each fix is best suited to below. Free Resource: Stay on top of your LCP optimization efforts with our free LCP progress tracker. Use a CDN Impact: High | Effort: Low | Helps Reduce: Resource Load Time A Content Delivery Network (CDN) stores (cached) copies of your content across servers around the world. When people visit your site, they’re served files from the closest server to them. That means faster load times for your users. If you’re running a small local blog, you might not absolutely need a CDN. But if you have visitors from all over, a CDN can boost your LCP by reducing the travel time for your data. This is most impactful for: Websites with visitors from multiple regions Sites with lots of large images or media files Anyone wanting to improve global load times without lots of coding How to Implement This You can sign up for a CDN service like Cloudflare, KeyCDN, or StackPath. They’ll provide instructions for changing your domain’s settings to route traffic through their servers. Once set up, the CDN will serve your website files to users from the server that’s physically located closest to them. There are cheap and free options, but it can get expensive for larger sites with lots of traffic. If you use WordPress or a similar content management system (CMS), there are often plugins that make the setup process even smoother. Optimize Your Images Impact: High | Effort: Medium | Helps Reduce: Resource Load Time Large image files are a common reason for poor LCP scores. This is especially true if you use a large hero image at the top of your pages or blog posts. By compressing images before uploading them, you reduce their file size to make them load faster. This is most impactful for: Sites with lots of large product or blog images Photographers or ecommerce stores with high-res visuals Anyone looking for a straightforward way to speed up load times How to Implement This You can optimize your images using online tools, and there are lots of free options. Or you can use plugins that auto-compress images when you upload them to your content management system. Squoosh is a free tool that lets you tweak the optimization settings, choose a format to convert to, and resize the image: To do this in bulk, you can also use a tool like TinyPNG: Just keep an eye on quality—if you compress too much, your images might look blurry. But most of the time, you can shrink them a lot without anyone noticing. Pro tip: Beyond images, it’s usually best to avoid having a video above the fold. This can lead to poor LCP scores. Use WordPress Plugins Impact: High | Effort: Low | Helps Reduce: Potentially all stages For many WordPress users, plugins are the easiest way to speed up your site and fix LCP issues with minimal effort. They can handle image optimization, caching, code minification, and more—all from a simple dashboard. The caveat is that the best ones aren’t always free. So you’re often paying a convenience cost. But there are still some unpaid options out there. Another downside is the risk of plugin “bloat,” which can slow your site if you install too many or choose poorly optimized ones. Compatibility issues may also pop up, especially if you try to use multiple optimization plugins at one time. But as long as you don’t have hundreds of plugins, and check for compatibility, I find the benefits typically outweigh the downsides here. Note: If you use a different CMS, like Shopify, there are likely apps or add-ons that can help with your LCP score. This is most impactful for: WordPress users without technical know-how Anyone who wants a quick fix for multiple performance issues Those willing to spend a bit of money to solve a lot of issues at once (although there are free options) How to Implement This There are lots of WordPress plugins that are great for improving your LCP in particular, and your page speed in general. One example is WP Rocket. It’s a paid WordPress optimization plugin that does a lot of the things on this list for you. Including: Image optimization Code minification Preloading/prefetching resources CDN implementation Caching There are lots of customization options, making this a useful plugin a quick and fairly easy solution to improve your LCP. Autoptimize is a free WordPress plugin that does a lot of the same things as WP Rocket. It does lack a few features, like generating critical CSS and caching. But it’s a good starting point for beginners on a budget with a WordPress site. Implement Caching Impact: High | Effort: Low | Helps Reduce: Time to First Byte Caching stores parts of your site on your user’s browser so it doesn’t have to request them from scratch every time they visit the site. This can speed up your LCP because your server won’t need to work as hard to deliver the key page elements the next time the user visits. Many hosting providers include caching by default. You can also install plugins that handle caching for you. This is most impactful for: Sites with repeat visitors (e.g., blogs, online magazines) Websites on platforms that generate pages dynamically (like WordPress) Sites experiencing slow server response times How to Implement This If your host offers caching, enable it in your hosting dashboard. Otherwise, consider a caching plugin. If you use a CDN, it already relies on caching to serve your content to users with faster load times. Note: You only need to use one effective caching setup or plugin at a time. Using multiple can lead to no performance improvements at best, and various compatibility issues at worst. Use a Faster Web Host Impact: High | Effort: Low | Helps Reduce: Time to First Byte Switching to a more powerful hosting plan or provider can make a big difference in how quickly your site’s main content loads. That’s because your web host’s speed is going to have the largest impact on your Time to First Byte. This is often the simplest route if you don’t want to tinker with technical details. However, premium hosting can be expensive. If you have a small site or a tight budget, you might find it hard to justify the cost for LCP gains alone. But for large businesses or sites that generate a lot of revenue, investing in better hosting can pay off. Note: This is also unlikely to put a dent in your LCP if your host is already pretty quick. I’d generally only recommend considering this option if your Time to First Byte is exceptionally long. Or if you’re noticing other performance issues or extended periods of website downtime. This is most impactful for: High-traffic sites that need consistent speed Businesses with a budget to invest in premium hosting Sites that have outgrown their current hosting plan How to Implement This When upgrading your web host, look for: Reliable uptime Scalability Good support Security features Robust backup options Migrating your site can be as simple as using a migration plugin if you’re on WordPress, or asking your new host for help. It’s usually fairly straightforward if you’re staying with your current host and just upgrading your plan. But moving hosts can be a little more effort-intensive. Further reading: Website Migration Checklist: Essential SEO Steps for Success Minify Your Code Impact: Medium | Effort: Low | Helps Reduce: Resource Load Time Minifying code involves stripping out anything “unnecessary,” like extra spaces or new lines, from your site’s HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files. This makes them smaller and faster to load. If you’re not a developer, you can still do this using tools or plugins that automate the process (like WP Rocket mentioned above). Just be sure to back up your site or test it in a staging environment. Sometimes, minification can cause layout or script issues. This is most impactful for: Sites with lots of CSS and JavaScript files Pages that rely on multiple libraries or frameworks How to Implement This You can minify your code with free tools like Minifier: If you use a CMS like WordPress, use plugins (e.g., WP Rocket, Autoptimize) that automatically shrink your CSS, JS, and HTML. Here’s how it looks in the “File Optimization” screen of WP Rocket: Most plugins let you choose which files to minify, so if you see any issues, uncheck or exclude the problematic file and test again. Alternatively, reach out to a developer to help with this instead. Optimize Your Fonts Impact: Medium | Effort: Medium | Helps Reduce: Resource Load Time Fancy fonts can look great, but they can also slow down your page. Custom fonts often have to be downloaded from a separate server. If you optimize or host them locally, you reduce delays that stop your text (like big headlines) from being visible. You do want to maintain your site’s style, so it’s a balance between looking good and loading fast. Some sites solve this by using system fonts that don’t need extra downloads. This is most impactful for: Sites using multiple custom fonts or large font families Design-heavy pages with fancy typography Anyone noticing a “flash of invisible text” when pages load How to Implement This Hosting fonts locally is often faster than pulling them from external servers. If you use Google Fonts, you can download them and serve them from your own domain. But honestly, this just won’t be necessary for most site owners. While it might reduce your LCP, it’s unlikely to be a massive gain and may not be worth the effort. Alternatively, let a plugin handle font optimization for you. Minimize the number of font weights you use—if you only need bold and regular, don’t load the entire family. Avoid Lazy Loading Above the Fold Impact: Medium | Effort: Low | Helps Reduce: Resource Load Delay Lazy loading is a feature that only loads images when you scroll down to them. In other words, images only load when they’re in the user’s “viewport” (on their screen). It’s great for boosting page load time, and is typically regarded as a best practice for fast websites. But if you lazy load images that are right at the top of your page, your visitors will see a blank space before anything else pops in. That can really hurt your LCP. The idea behind lazy loading is to not load images the user doesn’t need to see yet. But when it’s the first image you want a user to see as soon as they land on your page, clearly you don’t want to delay loading at all. So, it’s usually best to load above-the-fold content right away, then lazy load what’s below. This is most impactful for: Sites that lazy load everything by default Above-the-fold areas with key images or banners Pages where the main header image is crucial for user engagement How to Implement This Many lazy-loading tools let you exclude certain images. Find the settings or plugin option that specifies “above the fold” or “first contentful paint” images, and disable lazy loading for those. In WP Rocket, you do that in the “Media” area: If you’re not using a CMS like WordPress, just make sure the LCP image’s HTML looks like this, with either loading=“eager” or no loading attribute (“eager” is the default): Rather than like this, with the loading=“lazy” attribute: Remove Elements You Don’t Need Impact: Medium | Effort: Medium | Helps Reduce: Element Render Delay Every script, image, or widget on your site adds to the time it takes for your page to fully load. So you need to think carefully about what appears above the fold. If there’s a huge banner, multiple images, or extra code that doesn’t add real value, consider removing it or placing it below the fold. Just make sure you don’t strip away elements that are crucial for your users or your brand message. This is most impactful for: Content-heavy sites filled with widgets or ads Homepages stuffed with multiple banners, slideshows, or animations Anyone looking to simplify their design without sacrificing core features How to Implement This Audit your site’s above-the-fold area and ask, “Does this element help my user right away?” If not, move it below the fold (or remove it entirely). Think about collapsing large sign-up forms or extra images. Removing unnecessary scripts, like old tracking codes, can also help. To pinpoint snippets you might want to remove, look out for the “Reduce unused JavaScript” opportunity in PageSpeed Insights: Use Defer/Async for JS Impact: Medium | Effort: Medium | Helps Reduce: Element Render Delay JavaScript files can block the rendering of your page if they load first. By deferring or asynchronously loading scripts, you let your main content appear before any heavy scripts run. This helps your LCP because the biggest chunk of your page shows up without waiting for all your JS to finish loading. The main reason you’ll likely want to look into async and defer is if the tool you’re measuring your LCP with says you have render blocking resources. Like this: Basically, without any attributes, the browser will attempt to download and then execute your JavaScript as it encounters it. This can lead to slower load times, and longer LCP times if it blocks the LCP element from loading. With async, it won’t pause parsing (breaking down and analyzing) of the HTML during the download stage. But it still pauses as the script executes after downloading. With defer, the browser doesn’t pause HTML parsing for the download or execution of your JavaScript. This can lead to lower LCP scores, but it means your JavaScript won’t execute until the browser has finished parsing the HTML. You might need a developer’s help if you’re not sure which scripts to defer or load asynchronously, or how to do it. Some optimization plugins for platforms like WordPress can also handle this for you. This is most impactful for: Sites that rely on several JavaScript libraries Pages slowed down by loading scripts too early Website owners looking for a middle-ground solution without full SSR (more on that below) How to Implement This If you’re on WordPress, look for an optimization plugin that includes deferring or async-loading scripts. In custom setups, you’d add attributes like “defer” or “async” to your script tags in the HTML. Just make sure you don’t delay any critical scripts (like core functionality) too much. Inline Critical CSS Impact: Medium | Effort: High | Helps Reduce: Element Render Delay Inlining CSS means putting small blocks of CSS code right into your HTML, so your page doesn’t need to fetch a separate file for that part. It can speed up how quickly your main elements appear. But you can’t inline everything, or you’d end up with a massive HTML file that defeats the purpose. This method can be helpful for critical (above-the-fold) styles, but it shouldn’t replace your entire stylesheet. Plus, the Chrome team’s official guidance on this is that: “In general, inlining your style sheet is only recommended if your style sheet is small since inlined content in the HTML cannot benefit from caching in subsequent page loads. If a style sheet is so large that it takes longer to load than the LCP resource, then it’s unlikely to be a good candidate for inlining.” This is most impactful for: Sites with a small amount of critical CSS for the header area Minimalist designs that don’t rely on big external stylesheets Anyone looking to shave off small load delays How to Implement This Identify the essential CSS you need to style your page’s top section, and place it directly in the HTML <head>. This can reduce the time it takes to render the crucial above-the-fold part. Keep the rest of your CSS in external files to avoid bloating your HTML. Some performance plugins can automate this “critical CSS” approach for you. Autoptimize offers a cheap solution, while it’s baked into plugins like NitroPack and WP Rocket. While there are also dedicated critical CSS plugins, I’d generally recommend going for a more feature-rich option for a bit of extra money (if you have the budget). You’ll typically get more value than spending $10 a month on one feature that may have limited impact on your LCP. Switch to SSR Impact: Medium | Effort: High | Helps Reduce: Element Render Delay CSR (Client-Side Rendering) means your user’s browser does a lot of the work to build the page. SSR (Server-Side Rendering) means most of the work happens before the page hits the user’s browser. SSR can help LCP for sites heavy in JavaScript, because the biggest content is already “pre-built” for the user. But switching from CSR to SSR can be a big project if you’re not familiar with it. For some sites, it’s overkill. For others, it’s the key to big performance gains. This is one method where you really need to weigh up the benefits and how they might apply to your specific situation: Run a fairly standard blog, service website, or ecommerce store? Switching to SSR might bring noticeable performance gains. Got a highly interactive web app? You might want to stick with CSR for a better user experience. Generally, if you implement other methods like caching and using a CDN, you’ll see performance benefits with SSR that outweigh the potential server load increase. This is most impactful for: JavaScript-heavy web apps (e.g., React, Vue) Sites noticing a significant delay before content appears Advanced users or teams that can handle more complex architecture How to Implement This Switching from Client-Side Rendering to Server-Side Rendering (or a hybrid approach) typically involves using frameworks (like Next.js for React) that pre-render your content on the server. This can speed up LCP since the browser receives a ready-made page. However, it’s a bigger project requiring code changes and a good understanding of your tech stack. If you’re not comfortable with that, you might need to hire a developer or agency. Preload Important Resources Impact: Medium | Effort: Medium | Helps Reduce: Resource Load Delay Preloading tells the browser which files it should grab or prepare in advance. It can shave off a bit of loading time and help your main content appear slightly faster. For many small sites, these optimizations won’t create dramatic changes. But on bigger sites or those with lots of images and unique fonts, it can make a difference. This is most impactful for: Sites that rely on off-site resources (e.g., fonts or images) Those comfortable editing HTML headers or using plugins that can do this at scale How to Implement This You can preload fonts and images by adding special link tags in your site’s <head>. They tell the browser to grab or prepare certain resources before they’re actually needed. You simply add rel=“preload” to the <link> tag. Like this: How much effort this requires depends on your specific setup and how many pages you want to deploy it on. But it’s a fairly simple process that can help reduce your LCP score. Note: As with a lot of the other methods on this list, WordPress plugins can help here too. Boost Your Rankings by Improving Your Page Experience Improving your LCP is one way to boost your overall page experience for users. In turn, this can actually end up having an impact on your rankings beyond Google’s page experience signals. Check out our guide to user behavior and SEO to learn how the way your users behave on your website could potentially impact how Google ranks your site. (It makes optimizing for factors like LCP and the other Core Web Vitals A LOT more important.) The post How to Improve Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) in Under an Hour appeared first on Backlinko. View the full article

Currently, the mobile AI apps market is valued at $2 billion, primarily led by the success of ChatGPT and the sector continues to rise with more apps. In 2024 alone, over 4 thousand new AI apps were released and downloads reached a staggering 1.49 billion times across all AI apps. But what are the most popular AI apps worldwide and in the US, besides ChatGPT? Most Popular AI Apps (Top Picks) As of January 2025, ChatGPT ranks as the most popular AI app worldwide with 349.41 million monthly active users worldwide. ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Doubao were the most downloaded AI apps worldwide in 2024. In 2024, ChatGPT became the most popular AI app in the US, recording 31 million downloads. Most Popular AI Apps Worldwide by Monthly Active Users (January 2025) ChatGPT was the most popular AI app in January 2025 with 349.41 million app monthly active users worldwide (excluding website users). A total of 6 AI-first apps have an active monthly user base of 30 million and over. Here’s a complete ranking of the most popular AI apps worldwide as of January 2025 ranked by monthly active users: Note: Data above includes app users only, excluding website users. Rank, App Developer App Monthly Active Users Worldwide 1. ChatGPT OpenAI (US) 349.41 million 2. Doubao ByteDance (China) 78.61 million 3. Nova HubX (Turkey) 56.6 million 4. DeepSeek DeepSeek (China) 33.7 million 5. Talkie AI SubSup (Singapore) 32.8 million 6. Remini Bending Spoons (Italy) 31.77 million 7. ChatOn AIBY (US) 29.1 million 8. Character AI Character Technologies (US) 28.75 million 9. Ask AI Ai Search (US) 28.35 million 10. Chatbot App HubX (Turkey) 25.65 million 11. FaceApp HubX (Turkey) 25.35 million 12. Hypic ByteDance (China) 19.95 million 13. Kimi Moonshot AI (China) 19.43 million 14. AI Mirror Polyverse (US) 19.37 million 15. Google Gemini Google (US) 19.18 million 16. Genius No data available 16.67 million 17. Umax No data available 16.11 million 18. Luzia Luzia (Spain) 16.04 million 19. Photoroom Photoroom (France) 13.67 million 20. AI Chatbot No data available 13.49 million Source: Aicpb Most Popular AI Apps by Downloads Worldwide (2024) ChatGPT was the most downloaded AI app in 2024 by far with 250.1 million installs worldwide, followed by Gemini and Doubao. Here’s a complete table of the most downloaded AI apps across iOS and Google Play worldwide in 2024: Note: Download estimates above include data for 99 countries and the total number of worldwide downloads may differ. Rank, App Downloads Worldwide (2024) 1. ChatGPT 250.1 million 2. Google Gemini 81.5 million 3. Doubao No data available 4. Microsoft Copilot No data available 5. Nova 31.7 million 6. ChatOn 29.6 million 7. Chatbot AI 29.2 million 8. Talkie 27.9 million 9. Character AI 27.9 million 10. Genius 23.2 million Source: Analysis of Sensor Tower, Appfigures data Most Popular AI Apps by Downloads in the US (2024) In 2024, ChatGPT was the most downloaded AI app in the US with 31 million downloads, followed by Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini. Here’s a complete list of the most downloaded AI apps in the US in 2024: Rank, App Downloads in the US (2024) 1. ChatGPT 31 million 2. Microsoft Copilot No data available 3. Google Gemini 7 million 4. PolyBuzz 6.5 million 5. Question.AI 6.5 million 6. Talkie 6 million 7. Character AI 5.4 million 8. ChatOn 5.4 million 9. Linky AI 3.52 million 10. Future Baby Generator: Cosplay 2.72 million Source: Analysis of Sensor Tower, Appfigures data Most Popular AI Apps by Downloads in the US in First 18 Days Since Launch in the App Store ChatGPT’s US launch ranked #1 with 1.4 million downloads in the App Store in the first 18 days since app release, followed by Google Gemini (951 thousand) and Microsoft Copilot (518 thousand). Here’s the complete list of the most downloaded AI apps in the US in the first 18 days of release for each app: Rank, App Downloads in the US (First 18 Days) 1. ChatGPT 1.4 million 2. Google Gemini 951 thousand 3. Microsoft Copilot 518 thousand 4. DeepSeek 384 thousand 5. Grok 256 thousand 6. Claude 132 thousand Source: Appfigures The post Most Popular AI Apps appeared first on Backlinko. View the full article

Hey peeps, The remote work world is full of debates—should we scrap job titles? Will the WFH culture war ever end? And, most importantly, how do you actually land a remote job in 2025? This week, we’re diving into: ✅ Why one startup ditched job titles—and what happened next ✅ How to move past the endless WFH vs. office debates ✅ What you really need to know before applying for a remote job Vic Our Favorite Articles 💯Why We've Removed Job Titles At ElevenLabs (Sifted)At ElevenLabs, employees don’t have job titles—just responsibilities. Is this the future of remote work? ​Read more​. Things to Know Before Applying for a Remote Job in 2025 (InclusivelyRemote)A strong résumé isn’t enough to land a remote job; here’s what really matters in the hiring process. ​Learn more​. How Do We End The WFH Culture Wars? I Have The Answer (The Guardian)Still arguing about WFH vs. the office? This piece makes a case for calling a truce once and for all. ​Check it out​. This Week's Sponsor 🙌Too many emails? Declutter your inbox with Meco, your home for reading newsletters. Try it for free Remotive Jobs 💼 Is this job for you? 👉 ​Backend/Full-stack Python Developer​ (Odoo) at YouNav (Europe) 👉 ​Migrations Engineer - Support Role at Discourse​ (Americas, EMEA) 👉 ​iOS Developer at nooro ​(USA) 👉 ​Backend Engineer at Clerkie​ (USA) 👉 ​Senior Frontend Developer at Mimo GmbH​ (EMEA, UK) 👉 ​Senior Backend Developer at Mimo GmbH​ (EMEA, UK) 👉 S​enior Sharepoint Developer at Proxify​ (CET +/- 3 HOURS) 👉 ​Senior Django Developer at Proxify​ (CET +/- 3 HOURS) 👉 ​Senior ERP Solutions Developer (NetSuite) at Proxify​ (CET +/- 3 HOURS) Free Guides & Tools​Public Job Board​We curate 2,000 remote jobs so you don't have to! ​Find your remote job →​ ​Exclusive Webinar​3 Mistakes to Avoid When Looking For A Remote Startup Job (And What To Do Instead) ​Register for free →​ ​Job Search Tips​Looking for a remote job? Here are our tips to help you work remotely ​Check it out → Join the Remotive newsletter Subscribe to get our latest content by email. Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription. There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again. Email address Subscribe Powered by ConvertKit View the full article

Alphabet Inc’s Google is close to deciding on locations in its key market of India where it will open its first physical retail stores outside the United States, three sources familiar with the matter said. Google counts India as a key growth market, where it has committed to investing $10 billion. It currently has only five physical stores, all in the United States, which sell its products such as Pixel phones, watches, and earbuds. It is aiming to mirror a retail approach that helped Apple Inc. rake in billions of dollars in the past two decades by showcasing its own products. Apple has 500 plus stores worldwide. Google is in advanced stages of finalising locations in or around the capital of New Delhi, and the financial capital Mumbai, said three sources, who declined to be named as the process is confidential. Google declined to comment on the matter. The first source said the stores are likely to be around 15,000 square feet, and will take at least another six months to open, though the timeline could change. The IT hub of Bengaluru in south India was also considered, but New Delhi and Mumbai are the frontrunners, the person added. “The idea is to compete with Apple . . . especially to target the luxury segment,” said the person, adding more stores will be considered if the initial ones do well. Google currently sells it products in India through authorised retailers, as does Apple. But in 2023, Apple CEO Tim Cook visited India to open its first company-run stores in Mumbai, and then in New Delhi. Pixel phones in India cost from about $370 to $2,000 for top-end models. Apple’s iPhones cost from about $520–$2,130. Google has also started making Pixel smartphones in India. In 2024, Apple dominated the local market for premium phones, priced above $520, with a roughly 55% share, compared with Pixel’s 2% share, research group Counterpoint said. The fast-growing Indian market has about 712 million smartphone users currently. Google’s plan to open the stores is firm and will be executed soon, there are some standard regulatory and compliance processes to clear before the stores can be set up, said the second source, without elaborating on the issues. A third source said one of the possible locations Google is considering near New Delhi is in the satellite city of Gurugram, where many global corporations such as Uber and Meta have offices and the likes of Uniqlo have retail outlets. In India, Google is battling many regulatory and legal challenges. Among them are ongoing antitrust cases related to its in-app billing system and abuse of market position in the market for smart TVs. In a top-level departure, Google lost its India head of public policy this month, marking the second departure in around two years from the critical role which is key to government engagement. —Aditya Kalra, Reuters View the full article

Studio agrees deal with longtime producers Michael Wilson and Barbara BroccoliView the full article