Following the release of Meta’s alternative platform to Twitter called ‘Threads’, Meta’s head, Mark Zuckerberg, reports 100 million signups to the new platform in its first five days.

What Is Threads? 

The Threads app, launched by Meta on 6 June, is a “text-based conversation app” that is a direct competitor to Twitter – it looks remarkably similar to Twitter and functions in a very similar way.

Threads – Available Via Instagram Login 

The fact that the app is from Meta and available via Instagram (and was developed by the Instagram team) which has over a billion users means that it has instantly become a serious competitor to the troubled Twitter.

To use Threads, Instagram users use their normal Instagram account to log in and their Instagram username and verification is carried over, with the option to customise their profile after specifically for Threads. The app is available for iOS and Android and can be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

In what appears to be a little swipe at Twitter, Meta says Threads will “enable positive, productive conversations” and posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length. Users can share a Threads post to their Instagram story or share their post as a link on any other platform they choose.

Available in 100+ Countries But Not In The EU 

Threads has been launched in 100+ countries but Meta has decided not to make it available in EU countries due to what it describes as the “complexities” of trying to comply with new laws coming in next year. This appears to be a reference to the Digital Markets Act.

30+ Million In The First Day  

Meta’s head, Mark Zuckerberg reported that more than 10 million users had signed up to the Threads “initial version” within the first seven hours of its release, more than 30 million had signed up before the end of the first day, and a staggering 100 million had signed up in the first five days! (a faster sign-up rate that ChatGPT).

Zuckerberg has great ambitions for the app which he sees as a “friendly” alternative to Twitter, stating that it could become a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it and that “Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will.”

Launched As Twitter Is Struggling 

Seen a as part of the latest rivalry between Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter owner Elon Musk (in June, Elon Musk challenged Mark Zuckerberg on social media to “a cage match” fight), the Threads app has been launched at a time when Twitter is seen by many to be in a weakened position.

Why Is Twitter Looking Weak? 

Since Musk took over Twitter and tried to produce more revenue streams from it than just advertising, avoid bankruptcy (something Musk said publicly could happen), and turn Twitter into a ‘super-app’, several events, and comments have led to bad publicity and appeared to be unpopular with Twitter users and advertisers. For example:

– Musk’s $44 billion takeover led to ultimatum’s being given to staff over committing to new working conditions, mass job cuts – Twitter slashed roughly 50 per cent of its workforce (reports showed Musk’s leadership sacking an estimated 80 per cent of contract employees without formal notice).

– Twitter top executives getting sacked, e.g. Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadd.

– Fears that Twitter could change for the worse under Musk’s ownership, i.e. reinstating unpopular banned users and controversial figures and allowing the wrong kind of ‘free speech’ (former US President Trump, who’d been previously banned was invited back – an offer he declined).

– Thousands of (outsourced) content moderators were dropped, leading to fears of a drop in quality and possible rise of misinformation.

– The Blue service/Blue Tick service, a way to generate new revenue and tackle the problem of fake / bot accounts, and parody accounts led to a wave of blue tick verified (yet fake) accounts impersonating influential brands and celebrities tweeting fake news plus having to be suspended and removed. Also, there was confusion over the introduction of new grey “official” badges instead of blue ticks on some high-profile accounts, which were then suddenly scrapped, also reports that US far-right activists have been able to purchase Twitter blue ticks.

– Elon Musk announcing that all but “exceptional” Twitter employees need to come back to working in the office for at least 40 hours per week or their resignation would be accepted.

– Twitter users leaving the platform in protest over Musk’s ownership and moving to competing, and decentralised social network ‘Mastodon’, Donald Trumps ‘Truth Social’, Discord, Hive Social, and Post.

– America’s Federal Trade Commission warning that “no chief executive or company is above the law,” fears over Twitter’s approach to security, and questions about this in relation to possible Saudi involvement in the Twitter takeover.

– Reports of Apple and Google threatening to drop Twitter from their app stores (denied by Musk).

– Apple and Amazon (major sources of advertising revenue for Twitter) stopping (which some deny about Amazon) and then resuming advertising on Twitter following a reported meeting between Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook at Apple HQ over the “misunderstanding.”

– Twitter losing more than 50 per cent of its advertising partners and a number of large companies pausing advertising on Twitter since Musk’s takeover, e.g. General Mills Inc, Audi, Volkswagen, General Motors, and more.

– Reports (Mikmak) of Twitter suffering a massive 68 per cent drop in media traffic (the number of times people click on an ad).

– Many high-profile celebrities publicly leaving/announcing they were leaving Twitter since Musk’s takeover, e.g. Elton John, Jim Carrey, Whoopi Goldberg, and more.

– A storm of criticism following Elon Musk’s threatening to turn off SMS 2FA after 20 March 2023 unless users paid for Blue Tick.

– Microsoft dropping Twitter from its advertising platform following Twitter’s announcement that it would charge a minimum of $42,000 per month to enterprise users of its API.

– Following a vote by Twitter users for him to resign, Elon Musk saying he may step down as head of Twitter the end of this year.

Most Recently…. 

Some other controversial moves very recently include:

– In response to alleged “data scraping” (perhaps a reference to Microsoft allegedly using Twitter’s data), and “system manipulation”, Twitter is limiting how many tweets users can read daily – verified 6,000 posts, unverified 600. In contrast, Meta has said there are no restrictions on how many posts users of Threads can see. The restrictions on how many posts Twitter users could read led to problems as angry TweetDeck users reported issues such as notifications and entire columns failing to load.

– As part of a “temporary emergency measure” against data scraping by companies (e.g. perhaps OpenAI using Twitter data to train), anyone wanting to view any Twitter content will need a login or will need to sign up, which could be inconvenient to web users and could affect search engine results.

Meta Not Without Its Own Bad Publicity 

That said, although Twitter doesn’t appear to be having its finest hour, in the interest of fairness it’s worth remembering that Meta/Facebook has faced its own worries with users such as trust issues over data sharing with Cambridge Analytica, Facebook being used to spread disinformation in the US election and UK Brexit campaigns, plus issues about user safety on its platform (hate speech, damaging content, and more).

Twitter Threatens Legal Action 

Towards the end of the first day of the release of Threads, Twitter threatened to take legal action against Meta with Twitter’s attorney Alex Spiro sending a letter to Mark Zuckerberg accusing Meta of “systematic, wilful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property” in the creation of Threads. Musk said, “competition is fine, cheating is not”. Meta denied any wrongdoing and denied claims that ex-Twitter staff helped create the rival app.

Big Plans – Striking While The Iron’s Hot 

Meta clearly plans to push forward more and give the Threads app maximum reach and clout, saying that it is working to make Threads compatible with the open, interoperable social networks – making it “compatible with ActivityPub, the open social networking protocol” (from the W3C). This could also make Threads interoperable with other ActivityPub-supporting apps like Mastodon and WordPress, and Tumblr in the future.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Meta seems to have chosen the right moment and used the huge leverage and reach it has (via Instagram) to launch an app to compete head-on, and perhaps with more success than others, with Twitter. The fact that Twitter is undergoing a crisis of funding and unhappiness among many customers and continuing issues under Musk, who also appears to be involved in personal rivalry with Meta’s head Mark Zuckerberg, while there have been 30+ million plus sign-ups in one day and 100 million sign-ups in just five days could mean that Twitter is now facing a very serious extra challenge from a credible, strong competitor. With Instagram having an estimated 1.3 billion users worldwide and Twitter having 353 million users, if even one-third of Instagram users signed up to Threads it would dwarf Twitter (10 per cent of the number of Twitter users signed up to Threads in the first day!) and some are predicting that Threads could even kill off Twitter.

Musk’s language lately has contained many references to suing people who take things from Twitter, e.g. data, and his public rivalry with Zuckerberg has intensified, and one could be forgiven for thinking that Musk may have got wind of what was coming with Threads. In the legal letter from Twitter to Zuckerberg, the accusation that ex-Twitter staff worked on Threads is interesting because there may well have been many disgruntled Twitter staff who were ousted unceremoniously when Musk took over and it’s conceivable that they could have gone across to Meta.

For users, the fact that Threads is from Meta, is easy to sign up to, and free, doesn’t have some of the limitations and restrictions of Twitter, appears to be making it look like a viable alternative. This is also unwelcome news for other Twitter alternative platforms, e.g. Mastodon, Discord, Hive Social, and more who will also see Threads as a serious competitor. For business advertisers, Threads may provide another good opportunity to reach customers, plus advertisers, celebrities, and influencers may also value the chance to use another platform that gives them the reach while escaping any negative connotations of things Musk may have said, done, or introduced, e.g. problems over the Blue Tick scheme or sharing a platform with those whose ‘free speech’ may not be compatible with their thinking and brand image. Signing up to (and switching across to) Threads may also simply give many people an opportunity to feel that they’re ‘sticking it’ to Musk – who many see as a controversial figure.

In this tech insight, we take a look at what Microsoft 365 Copilot is, how it is being used, and how it can help your business.

What Is Copilot? 

Introduced in March 2023, Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI assistant that’s embedded within the Microsoft 365 apps and services to help users save time and increase productivity. Copilot, created using ChatGPT version 4 and Microsoft Graph (an API developer platform that connects multiple services and devices) and, like ChatGPT, is essentially a natural language conversational chatbot that can give human-like responses to questions and link aspects of all the 365 apps together in a new and more productive way.

Improves Productivity, Creativity, & Upskilling 

Microsoft says that Copilot can increase your employee’s productivity by as much as 50 per cent. In general, whereas the ‘average person’ uses 10 per cent of what Microsoft 365 apps can do, Microsoft says Copilot can unlock the other 90 per cent, thereby improving productivity, creativity, upskilling, and maximising use of business tech resources.

Embedded In Popular Apps

The Copilot AI assistant has been embedded in popular Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, so that it can be used to help users to use 365 apps more creatively, productively, and in a way that can “uplevel skill”, that means (as Microsoft says) it can make you “better at what you’re good at and lets you quickly master what you’ve yet to learn”.

Business Chat   

Copilot is operated in Microsoft 365 by ‘Business chat’, which is the field (like that in ChatGPT) where you ask the chatbot questions and give it instructions using normal language. For example, to generate a status-update based on the morning’s meetings, emails and chat threads, type in “Tell my team how we updated the product strategy”.  

How Have Businesses Said They’re Using Copilot? 

A few examples online of where businesses written about how they are using Copilot or have been reported to be using Copilot include:

– Baker Hughes, an energy technology company, using GitHub Copilot to help their developers write code faster and with fewer errors.

– The New York Times is reported to use GitHub Copilot to help their developers write code for their internal tools.

– Spotify uses GitHub Copilot to help their developers write code for their music streaming service.

– Airbnb uses GitHub Copilot to help their developers write code for their home rental service.

All of these businesses have discovered that Copilot can be particularly useful for generating code for new features and for automating repetitive tasks.

How Is Copilot Being Used In Different Industries?  

Here are some examples of ways that Microsoft 365 Copilot is being used in different industries:

– In the legal profession, law firms have been using Copilot to streamline their legal document creation process. The AI-powered assistant helps them draft legal documents, contracts and letters more efficiently. It also assists in proofreading and editing these documents, ensuring they are free of errors and are professionally written. This has significantly reduced the time lawyers spend on document creation, allowing them to focus more on their clients.

– Large retailers have been using Copilot to manage their internal and external communications. The AI assistant helps draft emails, create presentations and generate reports, thereby saving employees significant time. It also assists in scheduling meetings and managing tasks, improving overall productivity.

– In healthcare, private health companies / healthcare groups have used Copilot to manage their vast amount of healthcare data. The AI assistant helps them organise and analyse data, generate reports, and create presentations. Healthcare companies have found that it improves their decision-making process and has made their operations more efficient.

– Manufacturing companies have used Copilot to help manage their supply chain. The AI assistant helps them track inventory, schedule deliveries, and manage orders. This has improved their supply chain efficiency and has reduced operational costs.

– In the education sector, universities have found that Copilot can help manage their academic and administrative tasks. The AI assistant helps them schedule classes, manage student data, and create academic reports. This has improved their administrative efficiency and has made academic management easier.

What Are IT and Tech Companies Saying About Copilot? 

Many different technology consulting firms, IT support and managed service providers, and cloud solutions providers have published online examples of how Copilot can be used by businesses. For example:

– Using Copilot to streamline internal operations, e.g. using it to automate repetitive tasks, such as scheduling meetings and managing project timelines with the benefits of increased efficiency and productivity, allowing staff to focus on more strategic tasks.

– Copilot being used by businesses to enhance their customer service. For example, integrating it into a customer support system can provide instant responses to customer queries, reducing the workload on a customer service team and improving customer satisfaction.

– Using Copilot can be used to improve project management by automating the process of tracking project progress and managing project resources, resulting in improved project delivery times and reduced project costs.

– Copilot being used in conjunction with Microsoft Power Platform to enhance business processes, e.g. using it to build professional websites, process invoices, enhance chat experiences, analyse documents, and develop automated workflows.

– Using Copilot to automate workflows can reduce costly error rates.

Microsoft Says… 

Microsoft’s examples of how Copilot can be used in its 365 apps to help your business include:

– If using Microsoft Word, Copilot can save hours in writing, sourcing, and editing by being able to write a first draft, to edit and shorten it, rewrite it, or give feedback as required, in the same way as you might write a piece using ChatGPT.

– In Microsoft Teams, Copilot could save time and effort and make meetings more productive by being used to make a summary of key discussion points of meetings, including who said what, where people are aligned and where they disagree, and suggest action items, all in real-time during a meeting. It can also recap meetings for you and send you the notes afterwards.

– In PowerPoint, Copilot can create whole presentations from a simple text prompt and add any relevant content from a document you made, again saving time and effort. It can also improve creativity in PowerPoint and other apps, improving the quality of work and making it more interesting and engaging. This could be useful, for example, when pitching for business or conducting training.

– In Microsoft Excel, Copilot can instantly analyse trends and create insightful summaries and graphs of data, all done in seconds from simple text prompts. This could improve decision making and uncover new business insights and opportunities that may not have been possible, certainly not as quickly, just through normal human efforts.

– Email is an important communications channel for most businesses, and in Outlook, Copilot can save time by clearing an inbox in minutes, not hours, e.g., by drafting emails for you and analysing long email threads in seconds. This saves time, simplifies the process, and could help businesses to free up time to be used elsewhere in the business.

– Using Power Platform, Copilot can be also used to automate repetitive tasks, even creating chatbots, and can enable a fast transition from idea to working app in minutes. This gives developers a powerful time-saving tool that can increase their productivity.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?  

The power and versatility of AI natural language chatbots, which many people first experienced through ChatGPT, has seen them quickly adopted by businesses because of the value they add by saving time and boosting productivity in a user-friendly way. Embedding Copilot in 365’s apps has, therefore, given businesses an instant, flexible, and effective way to get much more out the most popular apps in Microsoft 365. As well as being a competitive advantage for Microsoft and for businesses, Copilot, therefore, offers businesses an easy-to-use way to save time, be more creative with IT, boost productivity, upskill staff in IT (without spending on training), and get greater and perhaps new insights into their own business and operations. As the examples in this article show, Microsoft 365 Copilot is adaptable, can be used in a wide variety of industries and can handle a range of tasks, making it a potentially valuable tool for any business that can improve efficiency and productivity and feed into improving the bottom line.

Microsoft and NHS England have announced the signing of new five-year contract whereby Microsoft (via a major reseller) will roll out the Microsoft 365 cloud-based online productivity suite to 1.5 million NHS staff.

Trusted Relationship Continues 

Coinciding with the 75th Anniversary of the NHS, Microsoft says the partnership, through a contract awarded to the reseller, will see it supply digital solutions – Microsoft’s 365 suite and security tools – to NHS organisations all over the country. The contract is believed to be worth £775 million (£930 million with VAT), is seen as the next step in a “trusted relationship” over decades.

Improving Collaboration, & Modernising 

The reseller which described the deal as “money saving” says that it will mean that NHS workers (doctors, nurses, clinicians, and support staff) will now be able to benefit from the full suite of Microsoft 365 workplace productivity apps, which will make collaboration easier and maximise time for care.

The reseller’s managing director said the deal will with NHS England will provide: “A platform for future innovation in healthcare”, and that the five-year contract “highlights the breadth and depth of skills [they] bring in managing, advising, and supporting the NHS to utilise secure cloud platforms, analytics, and apps”. 

Clare Barclay, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft UK, said: “This agreement will ensure that NHS organisations can deliver efficiency, reform ways of working through collaboration tools and build resilience through a modern, secure cloud-based infrastructure”. 

Money Saving 

The money saving aspect of the deployment contract comes from negotiating one single, national NHS contract rather than, as in the past, negotiating separate software licences with different prices with each individual healthcare trust. John Quinn, Chief Information Officer at NHS England said the new contract is “a further great example of the NHS using our collective buying power to secure market-leading products at a reduced cost for taxpayers”. 

That said, the contract was only signed after £8m had been spent on emergency one-month extensions to previous arrangements.

Follows The Teams National Deal In 2020 

This new national deal follows the first national deal in March 2020 whereby the Microsoft Teams app was made available to all NHS staff, saving users an estimated 17 million hours of time by being able to have virtual meetings.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

For NHS England, the collective deal with an already familiar major Microsoft re-seller is a way of building on the success of the previous 2020 deal, moving more to the cloud, and improving the type of collaborative working that the NHS needs. Also, the deal brings modernisation, scope for innovation, and the kind of updated security that the NHS needs – health organisations with outdated security have been targets for cyber criminals in recent years. For the reseller, a near billion-pound new deal with a massive existing client is clearly good news and brings the security of continuing close relationship. For Microsoft, already dominant in this area, it’s another high-profile endorsement of its products that’s bought good publicity and enhanced an already profitable relationship through its resellers. With the NHS once more known to be the biggest purchaser of fax machines, this deal marks another big step towards modernisation of the tech aspects of its operation that could benefit all stakeholders.

Those with photos and videos stored on Apple’s Photo Stream may wish to back them up elsewhere or lose them when Apple retire Photo Stream on 26 July.

What Is Photo Stream? 

Apple’s Photo Stream was a feature introduced in 2011 as part of their iCloud service, which allowed users to sync and share photos across their Apple devices. Photo Stream was designed to automatically upload and store the most recent 1,000 photos taken or saved on an iOS device, Mac, or PC for a period of 30 days (after which they are automatically deleted from iCloud). In essence, Photo Stream temporarily uploads the photos taken on one device so users can view them on any other device with My Photo Stream enabled and import them to their library on that device if they wish.

Replaced With iCloud Photos (iCloud Photo Library)

Photo Stream was largely replaced by iCloud Photo Library / iCloud Photos, a separate service, which was introduced in October 2014, alongside the release of iOS 8.1, and provided users with a more comprehensive and integrated solution for managing and syncing their photos across Apple devices.

Photo Stream Being Retired On July 26 

Apple says that Photo Stream will be shut down on July 26, 2023. Users may already be aware that new photo uploads to My Photo Stream from devices were stopped one month before, on June 26. Apple says, “Any photos uploaded to the service before that date will remain in iCloud for 30 days from the date of upload and will be available to any of your devices where My Photo Stream is currently enabled”. 

What To Do 

Users of Photo Stream should already have been emailed about the matter, but a summary of the advice is:

– Check whether you use iCloud Photos. Go to Settings > your name > iCloud. Check that it says “On” next to Photos on each device. On a Mac, go to Apple menu > System Settings, click your name, then click iCloud. Make sure that it says “On” next to Photos on each of your devices.

– If you already have iCloud Photos enabled on all of your devices, there’s no need to do anything as your photos are already uploaded and stored in iCloud.

– If you don’t use iCloud Photos, you can save photos currently in My Photo Stream to your device. To keep your photos synced across your devices, you can turn on iCloud Photos.

– If you don’t have iCloud Photos, the photos in ‘My Photo Stream’ will already be stored on at least one of your devices, and as long as you have the device with your originals, photos won’t be lost. However, if a photo you want isn’t already in your library on a particular iPhone or iPad, make sure that you save it to your library on that device.

– To set up iCloud Photos (on any iPhone with iOS 8.3 or later, iPad with iPadOS 8.3 or later, or Mac with OS X Yosemite or later), follow the instructions on the Apple website here.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

The iCloud Photos feature essentially replaced Photo Stream many years ago with a more permanent, better alternative – Photo Stream only saves photos/videos in iCloud for 30 days. Apple announced back in May its intention to close down Photo Stream and users should have been told by email. However, some users may still not be aware and may not have iCloud Photos set up so, in order to avoid possibly losing some valuable memories which may include business-related videos and photos, it’s worth checking now to avoid any problems.

July 1968 … The Start of ‘More Noise’.

On 18th July 1968, Intel was incorporated.

These days, you’ll know them as the wildly successful manufacturer of microchips and indeed the processor that you’re using right now in whichever device you’re holding may well have “Intel Inside”.

One of their big-breaks came when they correctly predicted that memory chips were going to have a lot of competition, so they took action and went into the microprocessor market.

However, they’ve also created some less-than-stellar products over the years as well. Did you know they used to make digital watches for example? Gordon Moore (one of Intel’s founding fathers) famously wore his Microma watch for many years after they’d decided to abandon the digital watch market, calling it his ‘$15 Million dollar’ mistake.

Not that it was all wasted because the pioneering integrated circuitry which helped spawn the age of digital watches directly translated into advances in the field of mircroprocessors.

As an aside, Intel entered the watch market again in recent years with smartwatches and wearables and fitness trackers and once again they failed to make it commercially successful and abandoned the market. The reason for Intel’s forays into the watch market every few decades isn’t because they’re hell-bent on making watches! It’s because they’re hell bent on pioneering and innovation in markets that show promise, which means making (and accepting) mistakes.

Even their name was a failure at first … they were originally called Moore & Noyce, which people thought sounded like “More Noise” and so the name Intel (from ‘Integrated Electronics’) quickly replaced it which is fair enough because Robert Noyce did invent the integrated circuit after all, being the prodigious physicist that he was.

It’s said that if you want more success, you need to experience more failure. So, it pays to get organised.

One way of describing organised-failure is “Research” and Intel has highly-renowned research divisions and collaborate with universities around the world and – crucially – joint-venturing with other businesses for their research.

Internal research and development isn’t the only way to test new products and markets because Intel have bought many businesses over the years including Microma’s aforementioned washed-up watches to the acquisition of Altera, an attractive augmentation which now provides them with steady profits.

All in all, not bad for a company founded by a humble physicist (Noyce) and a chemist (Moore).