User blogs

The advance of short videos is reshaping how information is created, disseminated and consumed online. Snappy 15-second videos aren’t just for entertainment. On Chinese short-video apps Douyin and Kuaishou, people can get their daily dose of news, learn to cook, practice English, hunt for jobs, and seek practically any type of information from the platforms’ quickly expanding content library.

While people are increasingly used to being fed by machine-recommended videos, many users still have the urge and need for active searching. Douyin understood that and incorporated a search function back in mid-2018. More than two years later, the feature reached 550 million monthly active users. There’s still room for Douyin’s search feature to grow, as the app last reported 600 million daily users in September, so its monthly user base should be above that.

Kelly Zhang, the young product manager credited for the rise of Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese version, disclosed Douyin’s search user figure for the first time this week on her microblogging account. Search is a territory that had long been dominated by Baidu in China. As of December, Baidu’s flagship app had 544 million monthly active users, so it’s safe to say as many people are searching on Douyin as on Baidu.

Zhang’s remark is telling of Douyin’s ambition in conquering the online video sector, and eventually how people receive information: “I have said this before: I hope Douyin could become the video encyclopedia for human civilization. Video search is, therefore, the index of the book, the gateway to finding answers and reaping new knowledge.”

She further added that Douyin’s search engine is hiring for research and development, product, and operational roles in the upcoming year (China has just observed the Lunar New Year) as the video app continues to ramp up investment in search capabilities.

Short video platforms are already the second-most popular method for Chinese users to search online, trailing only after general search engines like Baidu and coming ahead of social networks and e-commerce, data analytics firm Jiguang said in a report last December. Baidu’s command of search is increasingly limited by the walled gardens built up by Chinese tech titans who block one another from free access to its sites and data. The status quo harms user experience but bodes well for vertical search engines on apps like Douyin and Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace, and consequently revenues from ad sponsorships.

ByteDance cut its teeth on using machine learning algorithms to recommend content through services like Douyin, TikTok and news aggregator Toutiao. The model proved highly efficient and lucrative, prompting its predecessors from Baidu to Tencent to introduce similarly algorithm-powered content feeds. ByteDance’s move into search, a realm with a longer history, is an intriguing yet natural step. The firm is just completing the puzzle for its digital media empire, giving people another option to find information. Users can receive machine recommendations and subscribe to content creators if they want. They can as well put in a search keyword if they have one in mind, the good old way.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/17/short-video-search-douyin-tiktok/

Despite efforts from companies to create equitable environments, it’s clear that employees of a certain demographics, like Black women, sometimes have very different experiences from their counterparts. Glassdoor aims to better surface those experiences through a new feature that allows folks to filter ratings by demographics.

Up until now, Glassdoor only presented an overall ranking for a specific company, so there was no way to easily determine if, for example, Black women feel the same as white men, or if Latino men feel similarly to Asian men. In addition to race, Glassdoor now allows people to filter by gender identity, parental or caregiver status, disability, sexual orientation and veteran status.

Overall, Black employees are less satisfied at work in comparison to all employees, according to new preliminary research from Glassdoor. The research is based on the more than 187,000 employees across more than 3,300 companies who have provided demographic data.

Image Credits: Glassdoor

That same research showed Apple had the highest overall company rating among Black employees, with an average rating of 4.2 out of five. Apple’s overall company rating from that sample size is 3.9.

“Because these data are so new — having been collected within just the last four months — it’s important to resist the urge to make sweeping claims based on early data,” Glassdoor Data Scientist Amanda Stansell and Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain said in the report. “The averages we’ve reported above are not derived from representative probability samples of company workforces — they represent data shared anonymously by Glassdoor users at this time. Readers should therefore take some caution in making conclusive, company-wide inferences about the state of race and employee satisfaction.”

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/17/glassdoor-now-lets-you-filter-company-reviews-by-demographics/

Despite efforts from companies to create equitable environments, it’s clear that employees of a certain demographics, like Black women, sometimes have very different experiences from their counterparts. Glassdoor aims to better surface those experiences through a new feature that allows folks to filter ratings by demographics.

Up until now, Glassdoor only presented an overall ranking for a specific company, so there was no way to easily determine if, for example, Black women feel the same as white men, or if Latino men feel similarly to Asian men. In addition to race, Glassdoor now allows people to filter by gender identity, parental or caregiver status, disability, sexual orientation and veteran status.

Overall, Black employees are less satisfied at work in comparison to all employees, according to new preliminary research from Glassdoor. The research is based on the more than 187,000 employees across more than 3,300 companies who have provided demographic data.

Image Credits: Glassdoor

That same research showed Apple had the highest overall company rating among Black employees, with an average rating of 4.2 out of five. Apple’s overall company rating from that sample size is 3.9.

“Because these data are so new — having been collected within just the last four months — it’s important to resist the urge to make sweeping claims based on early data,” Glassdoor Data Scientist Amanda Stansell and Chief Economist Andrew Chamberlain said in the report. “The averages we’ve reported above are not derived from representative probability samples of company workforces — they represent data shared anonymously by Glassdoor users at this time. Readers should therefore take some caution in making conclusive, company-wide inferences about the state of race and employee satisfaction.”

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/17/glassdoor-now-lets-you-filter-company-reviews-by-demographics/

If you’ve ever tried to hop on the bus in San Francisco and were bummed to find that Apple Pay wasn’t an option: good news! That’s changing. Apple has announced that support for Clipper (the payment system for BART, Muni, Caltrain, AC Transit, and a bunch of other Bay Area transit agencies) is officially on the way. You’ll soon be able to just tap your iPhone or Apple Watch to the card reader and be on your way.

Apple says that Apple Pay will work across all 24 agencies where Clipper is accepted, meaning it should play friendly with:

• AC Transit
• BART
• Caltrain
• City Coach
• County Connection
• Dumbarton Express
• FAST
• Golden Gate Ferry
• Golden Gate Transit
• Marin Transit
• Muni
• Petaluma Transit
• SamTrans
• San Francisco Bay Ferry
• Santa Rosa CityBus
• SMART
• SolTrans
• Sonoma County Transit
• Tri Delta Transit
• Union City Transit
• Vine
• VTA
• WestCAT
• Wheels

Apple does mention that it’ll work with the optional “Express Transit” feature built into Wallet, allowing you to make these relatively small transit transactions without requiring Face ID or Touch ID verification — a nice touch for when there’s 10 people waiting to get on behind you and you’d rather not have to deal with convincing your phone that you are, in fact, you.

So when will it officially roll out? Good question — and one that Apple isn’t answering yet. In an e-mail announcing the coming Clipper support, they say it’s “Coming soon,” but don’t get any more specific than that. A tweet from the @BayAreaClipper account, meanwhile, narrows it down to “this spring” and reiterates that Google Pay support is coming soon, as well.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/17/apple-pay-will-soon-work-on-bart-and-muni/

As part of the grant-making associated with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Infrastructure for Rebuilding America program, the agency will for the first time carve out some of that program’s $889 million budget for projects addressing climate change and environmental justice.

The projects will be evaluated on whether they were planned as part of a comprehensive strategy to address climate change, or whether they support strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions such as deploying zero-emission-vehicle infrastructure or encouraging shifts in modes of transportation or vehicle miles traveled, the agency said in an announcement.

“As we work to recover and emerge from this devastating pandemic stronger than before, now is the time to make lasting investments in our nation’s infrastructure,” said Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a statement. “We are committed to not just rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, but building back in a way that positions American communities for success in the future—creating good paying jobs, boosting the economy, ensuring equity, and tackling our climate crisis. The INFRA grant program is a tremendous opportunity to help achieve these goals.

Racial equity will also be considered, according to the agency’s announcement. With requirements including equity-focused community outreach and projects designed to benefit underserved communities privileged, along with projects that are located in opportunity, empowerment, or promise zones or choice neighborhoods.

The new programs show just how quickly federal dollars could be made available to startups that are looking at electrification and provide more strength to the tailwinds already propelling the electric vehicle industry — and its attendant charging networks forward.

Large infrastructure projects could receive grants of $25 million or more while small projects must have grant requirements that meet a minimum threshold of at least $5 million, according to the DOT.

Eligible project costs could include: reconstruction, rehabilitation, acquisition of property (including land related to the project and improvements to the land), environmental mitigation, construction contingencies, equipment acquisition, and operational improvements directly related to system performance.

Opportunities for applications are going to be open through Friday, March 19.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/17/for-the-first-time-the-us-dot-carving-out-budget-for-climate-and-environmental-justice-projects/