Influencers, brace yourselves: Instagram may be considering charging a fee to add links to photo captions, a patent application suggests. Mike Murphy discovered it as part of his (fascinating!) weekly roundup of tech patents over at Protocol.

The patent application, which Instagram parent company Facebook first submitted back in 2016, shows a pop-up appearing when the user adds a URL to a caption, asking if the user wants to pay $2 to make the link live.

The patent application (titled “adding paid links to media captions in a social networking system”) describes how the system would work: “If the online system detects the text content of the caption includes a string of link text identifying an address, the online system prompts the posting user to pay a fee in exchange for generating a link.”

This, of course, has long been one of the biggest complaints about Instagram: that if you want to include a link to a story, product, or anything else in your post you can’t add URLs to captions of photos. Most people go the “link in bio” route and verified Insta users can add links to Stories. The question here will be whether Instagram influencers, brands, and other users will be willing to pay a per-link fee. But it seems like a no-brainer to generate revenue for Instagram if this goes into effect.

However, as with any patent, it’s important to note that companies apply for patents all the time for products and services that never come to fruition, so there’s no telling if or when this feature might actually happen. Maybe don’t splurge on that new selfie stick just yet.

source: TheVerge

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Facebook has launched its second TikTok clone, Reels, in over 50 countries through an integration with Instagram, the same method it used in 2016 to try to dethrone Snapchat.

Facebook’s systematic copycat strategy, which the markets have greeted with a 6% share price increase, is among the tactics the U.S. Congress’ antitrust subcommittee documented last week as potentially harmful to competition. Facebook tried four times to clone Snapchat, finally using Instagram as an umbrella and achieving its goal. This time, after failing with Lasso, it’s opted for direct integration with Instagram, a strategy that that has worked so well in the past.

This is precisely what antitrust legislation is supposed to prevent: competitors so powerful and with unlimited resources, that when faced with any initiative that could be considered as competition, they simply buy it or copy. With TikTok being fought on multiple fronts, competitors were bound to try to fill the gap with clones, but Facebook’s strategy is simply based on replicating a rival’s very successful product, and from a position of clear and undoubted leadership. If that’s not a case of predatory competition, then nothing is. 

Beyond the possible consequences of applying antitrust legislation to its activities, Facebook risks turning Instagram into a ragbag that is increasingly hard for users to navigate. What started out as a great app to improve your photos and publish them in a few clicks, now requires users to understand how to post photos and videos, convert them into a Story that is displayed for 24 hours and then disappears or moves into the background, link them to make a longer video, or now, make a Reel, which in turn has several additional possibilities lifted directly from TikTok. This complexity is likely to discourage people who are simply not comfortable with so many options.

There are limits to these kinds of umbrella strategies of bundling features into a successful product and Facebook could have reached them with Instagram. Next time you try to upload a simple photo and find that the app now offers you several more alternatives, some longer, some shorter, some ephemeral, some permanent and some a combination thereof: don’t worry, you haven’t suddenly turned into a technophobe. It’s what happens when an app that was originally simple and well-thought out becomes an umbrella used to cover all kinds of tools copied from others. It’s a strategy that may have worked in the past, but that has surely passed its sell-by date.

Source: Forbes
 

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As more and more people are inching towards mobile games such as PUBG Mobile, Fortnite, COD Mobile, it is important to know what things in a phone make it stand out among the others and make it a worthy gaming phone. Here are the things which phone should have to give its user the best gaming experience :

Performance

This is probably the most important thing which separates a normal phone and a gaming phone. The SoC (System on Chip) is the thing that runs your games and your day to day apps. The SoC comprises CPU, GPU, and many such components. The better the SoC the better the phone will perform in the games. Having a 4GB ram is enough. Currently, the best SoC which is offered by Qualcomm is Snapdragon 865+(launched 2 months ago). Snapdragon 855 is more widely available. 

Screen

This is the thing you look the most while gaming and if it's not a good one, it'll ruin your gaming experience. A good screen comprises of 3 things:

Screen resolution: Gaming at high resolution will give you an edge over your opponent. 1080p is perfect as going beyond it will barely give you any advantage as human eyes will hardly notice a difference between 1080p and higher resolution. 

Type of screen: Having a phone with AMOLED display will enhance your gaming experience as it provides better contrast and vibrant colors compared to an LCD panel. Also, AMOLED panels are more efficient than LCD panels. Having AMOLED will also give you a better content consumption experience

Screen refresh rate: Higher refresh rate screens will provide smoother gameplay. The normal phones have a refresh rate of 60Hz. Currently, 90Hz has become common among devices and will smoothen your gameplay by a lot. But some devices even offer 120Hz which will enhance your experience even more. 

Cooling system

Gaming is a very intense and resource-heavy task for a device, which in return produces a lot of heat. Heat and electronics don't go well together. Also, a gamer holds the device for an extended period of time. So having a device that has a better cooling solution will help in performance and will also help the person holding the device. Many devices offer some sort of liquid cooling and a small number of devices even offer a fan!

Battery + Fast charging

Having a device with a large battery will significantly extend your gaming session. A device with a 5000 mAh battery is more than enough for a gaming session of about 4 hours+. A device offering fast charging will greatly reduce the time between your gaming sessions. Some devices nowadays even offer devices with 6000 mAh battery and blazing-fast 30 W charging. 

 

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Most of the people, while setting up a gaming PC, tend to prioritize the hardware and fill their computer case with expensive hardware. Besides the hardware, peripherals like keyboards and mouse are given more emphasis even though the average keyboard and mouse will do for most people. Monitors, on the other hand, are most important yet most bypassed part while setting up a gaming PC. What fun will it be if your display won’t have the specs that won’t augment your expensive hardware?

As the display or monitor shows your actions, moves, enemies and your entire game; it should obviously be considered cautiously while setting up a gaming PC. The things that should be considered while buying a Gaming monitor are:

Resolution

Resolution is the most important aspect to look for while buying a gaming monitor. Higher the resolution- higher the number of pixels, clearer the images and superior will be your gaming experience. The gaming monitors come in 3 resolutions- 1080p, 1440p and 2160p. Considering the hardware and GPU limitations 1440p can be regarded as the most suitable resolution for enhancing your gaming experience with inexpensive hardware. But, if you have advanced hardware and GPU, then you can go for 2160p resolution.

Refresh Rate

Refresh rate, simply, is the number of times the image or frame in your screen is refreshed within 1 second. A monitor with 60 Hz refresh rate will be able to refresh the image on the screen up to 60 times per second. Higher the refresh rate, smoother and less choppy images will be formed. Generally, for gaming purpose, the refresh rate should be at least 75Hz for smoother gameplay.

Response Time

Response time is the speed at which a single pixel on the screen can change its color. Lower the response time, better will be the gaming experience. If response time is higher, it will create ‘motion blur’ effect. For gaming, monitor with response time less than 8ms should be considered.

Panel Type

Basically, there are 3 different types of panels each with their own set of strengths and weaknesses- TN, VA and IPS. TN is the cheapest and offers the lowest response time though its visual quality and viewing angles are relatively not so impressive. VA panels offer best viewing angles and have the superior visual quality to TN panels; however, its response time is higher and is a bit pricey. Amongst all, IPS panels are regarded as best panels but most expensive. They have the best visual effects and contrast but have about 4ms response time which is higher than TN panel. If your budget supports, IPS panels are best for consideration or else, TN panels with their lowest response time will also do.

G-sync or Freesync

NVIDIA’s G-Sync and AMD’s Freesync are the technologies that aim to eliminate the screen tearing (a graphics distortion where multiple frames are displayed in a single screen draw that occurs when graphics processor is out of sync with the display). They help your monitor to refresh at a rate that matches your graphics card. However, you cannot use AMD’s Freesync technology with NVIDIA’s graphics card and NVIDIA’s G-Sync technology with AMD’s graphics card. Both technologies are good and you can choose among these relying upon your budget or the video card of your choice.
 

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