App Biotechnology and health

Oct 30 2024

Exosomes are touted as a trendy cure-all. We don’t know if they work.

There’s a trendy new cure-all in town—you might have seen ads pop up on social media or read rave reviews in beauty magazines. Exosomes are being touted as a miraculous treatment for hair loss, aging skin, acne, eczema, pain conditions, long covid, and even neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. That’s, of course, if you can afford the price tag—which can stretch to thousands of dollars.

“They’re magic!” claims one YouTube review. One US clinic exhorts: “Unlock the fountain of youth with exosome therapy.” “All aspects of skin health improve with exosome therapy,” states one UK clinic’s website, adding that “this is as cutting-edge as it gets.” Exosome particles could be used to treat “any inflammatory disease you could think about, which is almost all of them,” the founder of an exosome company says in a video on YouTube.

But there’s a big problem with these big promises: We don’t fully understand how exosomes work—or what they even really are.

We do know that exosomes are tiny particles that bud off from cells and that their contents can vary hugely, depending on the source of the cell (some popular options include human umbilical cords, salmon testicles, and roses) and how healthy or stressed it is. Even cell biologists can’t agree on what, exactly, is inside them, and how beneficial—or dangerous—those contents may be.

The world of exosome treatments is being likened to a “Wild West” by some researchers. Rigorous trials have not been conducted, so we don’t know how safe it is to spray on or inject these tiny mystery blobs. Exosome products have not been approved by regulatory agencies in the US, UK, or Europe, where the treatments are growing in popularity. Nor have they been approved for medical uses in Japan or South Korea, two other countries where exosome treatments are popular. Still, “exosomes have emerged as a sort of panacea for almost everything,” says Leigh Turner, a bioethicist and public health researcher at the University of California, Irvine, who tracks direct-to-consumer marketing of unapproved health products. “Risks are commonly minimized, and benefits are commonly exaggerated.”

This hasn’t stopped customers from flocking to the growing number of aesthetic centers, stem-cell clinics, and medspas offering exosome treatments, hoping for a miracle fix. The global market for exosome skin-care products was valued at $256 million in 2023 and is forecast to grow to $674 million in the next six years.

Mystery blobs

Technically referred to as vesicles, exosomes are made inside cells before being released. They’ve long been mysterious. The term “exosome” was introduced in the 1980s. Before that, tiny particles that are now thought to have been exosomes were described as “platelet dust” or “matrix vesicles.”

At first, scientists assumed that exosomes functioned as trash bags, shuttling waste out of the cell. But research in 1996 suggested that exosomes might also work to help cells communicate by delivering signals between them. If a cell is dying, for instance, it could perhaps send a signal to neighboring cells, giving them a chance to produce more protective substances in order to save themselves from the same fate. Cancer cells, on the other hand, could potentially use exosomes to send signals that co-opt other cells to support the growth of a tumor. Still, it’s not fully understood what signals are actually being sent.

Another major mystery is what, exactly, is inside exosomes. “It depends who you ask,” says James Edgar, who studies exosomes and similar vesicles at the University of Cambridge, UK. Cell biologists agree that exosomes contain proteins, lipids, and other molecules that result from cell metabolism. Some believe they also contain DNA and RNA, but not everyone is convinced. “It’s just very difficult to prove or disprove,” says Edgar.

That’s partly because exosomes are so small—only about 70 nanometers wide, around one-hundredth the size of a red blood cell. While the first images of them were published in the 1970s, we still don’t even know for sure what they look like; Raghu Kalluri at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and his colleagues are studying the shape of exosomes to figure out if they are round, oval, or rod-like, for example.

Further complicating all of this, cell biologists don’t know what triggers the release of an exosome from a cell. Most cells release them at a relatively steady pulse. Some cells release a lot of exosomes; others release a relatively small number. Immune cells, for example, release more exosomes than cancer cells. “We don’t really understand why that’s the case,” says Edgar.

“Fundamentally, we don’t know enough,” he adds. “We don’t quite know yet where these things go when they hit cells, and if they’re released into that cell—or how any of it happens, basically.”

Exosome explosion

Despite these enduring questions, exosomes have taken off as a beauty and health treatment. Turner has been tracking stem-cell clinics both in the US and globally for years. When he and his colleagues assessed US clinics offering direct-to-consumer treatments in 2016, exosomes “just didn’t pop up at all,” he says. When he did the same analysis in 2021, he identified around 100 clinics in the US offering exosome therapies.

It’s not clear why exosomes are taking off now. “It’s not as though there’s an overwhelming amount of safety and efficacy data,” says Turner. “I think it might be more of a buzz kind of phenomenon. This seems to be kind of a moment for exosomes.”

There are many different types of exosomes available on the market. Some are from human cells, including those from the placenta or umbilical cord. Some companies are selling exosomes from plants and animals. In the US, exosomes are regulated as drugs and biological products when they are “intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease” and “intended to affect the structure of any function of the body of man or other animals,” according to the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates medicines in the US.

Clinics get around this by using them as cosmetics, defined in law as “articles intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, or sprayed on, introduced into, or otherwise applied to the human body … for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering the appearance.” What practitioners are not allowed to do is make claims about the health benefits of exosomes. After all, even anti-dandruff shampoo, which purports to treat a skin condition, is considered a drug by the FDA.

Dev Patel offers exosome treatments at his “anti-aging and skin rejuvenation” clinic, Perfect Skin Solutions, in Portsmouth, UK. Over the last 10 years, he says, he has noticed a trend: Customers are less interested in injectable treatments that merely give an impression of youth, like fillers and Botox, and more interested in the idea of treatments that can rejuvenate their skin. The demand for devices like lasers, which create heat on the skin and trigger repair, has “gone through the roof,” he says. Now, exosomes are catching on too.

Patel—who has a medical degree, served in the Royal Navy, and holds a postgraduate diploma in dermatology—left his job in the UK’s National Health Service to start his clinic around 10 years ago. He didn’t start offering exosome treatments until 2020, after he heard about them at a meeting for aesthetic clinicians.

The first treatment he offered involved unapproved exosomes derived from human fat cells—making them illegal to sell in Europe, he says. Patel says that he didn’t realize this until after he’d bought the exosomes and started using them, partly because of the misinformation he’d been fed by the distributor. He says some of the sellers were telling doctors that they were allowed to use the exosomes topically (on a person’s skin) and then inject them as part of an “off-label” use. Patel won’t name the distributor he bought from, but he says the company continued to sell its exosome products to clinics in the UK for at least two years after that point.

Patel stresses that as soon as he found out about the regulations surrounding exosomes derived from human cells, he stopped using the product. “I had probably had £5,000 [around $6,500] worth of product sitting in my clinic, and it was just thrown away,” he says. Instead, he switched to exosomes from plant cells and, more recently, others derived from salmon testes.

For hair regrowth, Perfect Skin Solutions offers a course of five exosome treatments, each delivered during a half-hour appointment, at a total cost of £2,000. When it comes to skin treatments, Patel recommends two or three sessions—more for those who are looking to counter the signs of aging. “By harnessing the power of exosomes, you can achieve a more youthful and radiant complexion, while also addressing specific skin concerns and promoting overall skin health,” according to the company’s website.

Patel says he uses the exosomes to treat clients for baldness around four times a week. He and his team members will first perform microneedling on the scalp. This technique uses tiny needles to make miniature holes in the skin—“80,000 holes a minute,” he says. Microneedling is often used to trigger a wound healing process that can improve the look of the skin. But after Patel performs the procedure on a person’s head, he uses a “jet propulsion device” that uses carbon dioxide to spray cooled salmon exosomes into the tiny indentations. “You basically create these … micro-icicles containing the product,” he says. “They pierce the skin, but you don’t feel it. It feels quite nice, actually.” After six to 10 weeks, customers can expect healthier skin and thicker, stronger hair, he says.

“The results are amazing,” says Patel. “I’ve had it done on my hair, which is probably why it’s looking out of control now,” he adds, pointing to his thick but neatly styled do, combed back and shaved at the sides.

Not everyone is as enthusiastic. Sarah, who is being identified by a pseudonym to protect her professional image, tried exosomes last year, though not at Patel’s clinic. Now in her 30s, she had acne as a teenager, and her dermatologist suggested that rubbing exosomes from human umbilical-cord cells into her face after a microneedling treatment might reduce the scarring. But he didn’t fully explain exactly what exosomes are or what they were expected to do, she says.

“I feel like it’s a little bit of health marketing bullshit,” she says. “I don’t really understand how they work.”

Sarah received three treatments, three months apart, as part of a trial her dermatologist was participating in. As a participant, Sarah didn’t have to pay for her treatment. In each of the sessions, the doctor numbed Sarah’s face with lidocaine cream before microneedling it. “Then they kind of dribbled the exosomes on with a syringe,” she recalls. She was advised to sleep on a clean pillow and avoid washing her face that evening. “There was some redness … but my skin was mostly back to normal the following day,” she says.

Her last treatment was a year ago. And she hasn’t seen a reduction in her scarring. “I don’t think I’d recommend it,” she says. “The results were very underwhelming.”

Safety in salmon?

In theory, exosomes should be safer than stem-cell therapies. Cells can be thought of as “living drugs,” while exosomes are non-living collections of biological molecules, says Ke Cheng at Columbia University in New York, who is doing more conventional research into potential applications of exosomes. Cheng is exploring the use of engineered exosomes for heart diseases. Exosomes are less likely than cells to trigger an immune response, and because they can’t replicate, the risk of tumor formation is also lower.

But that, of course, does not make them risk-free. There are no established standards or regulations for the manufacture of exosomes to be used in people. This leaves plenty of room for companies to manufacture exosomes in different ways—and for disagreements over which method is the best and safest.

The product Sarah tried that was derived from human umbilical-cord cells is called Age Zero. Erin Crowley and her father, Michael Crowley, who manufacture and sell the product, have a team that grows the cells and then harvests the exosome-containing liquid surrounding them at a clean lab in Rochester, New York.

“We have in stock right now about $3.5 billion worth of exosomes,” says Michael Crowley. That’s enough for millions of treatments, he says, although the figure will depend on what they are used for: The pair have different companies that sell exosomes for experimental medical use (25 billion to 100 billion exosomes per treatment) and cosmetic use (5 to 10 billion). Cosmetic clinics can buy vials that the company says contain 5, 10, 50, or 100 billion exosomes. Those with 10 billion exosomes are sold in packs of nine for $1,999, according to the company’s website.

“Right now, we’re in about a little less than a thousand medspas, aesthetician offices, dermatologists, plastic surgeons with our cosmetic product,” Erin Crowley says. “We can sell direct to consumer, but the product really works great after microneedling or after laser or dermaplaning.” They have been selling in the US for the last year and half; she says the product is also available in the UAE, Pakistan, Lebanon, Canada, and Turkey.

The Crowleys argue that because their exosomes come from human umbilical-cord cells, they are more effective than those from other sources, although again, rigorous side-by-side comparison studies have not been done. Exosomes from plant or fish cells “just don’t have the right language to speak to human cells,” says Erin Crowley, who has a background in mechanical engineering and quality control. She says that she analyzed the exosome market a couple of years ago and was “appalled” at what was on offer.

“The industry now … is very, very confused, and the marketing is very confused,” she says. Across the board, production quality standards are low, she says, adding that she and her dad hold their product to higher standards by testing for potential sources of infections (which can arise from contamination) and using devices to count exosomes.

On the other hand, Primacure, the company that sells the product derived from salmon testicles, argues that fish exosomes are safer than those taken from human cells or from other animals. These exosomes are collected from cells grown in a medium that contains a mix of growth factors and peptides, and the team uses ultrasound to release the exosomes from the cells, according to a video presentation by Mike Lee, CEO of Primacure. “We want to refrain from using products that are human-derived, or maybe even animal-derived, that can transmit diseases to humans,” Lee says in the video.

There are no known cases of exosomes causing such diseases in people. But some practitioners buy that argument: “Fish present a very low-risk option in terms of disease transmission,” says Patel. Turner, though, isn’t convinced: “I don’t see any reason why they would be [safer],” he says, adding that usually, biological materials from other animals are seen as posing a greater risk to patients. The use of animal cells or tissues in humans carries risks of infection, for example.

We can’t be sure either way, because rigorous research comparing these exosomes and their safety simply has not been done. “If they are from different sources, their outcomes and effects will be different,” says Cheng. “You need to have science; you need to know why they work.”

Exosomes derived from human cells will still have molecules that are foreign to a person’s body and could trigger an immune response, says Edgar. He is also concerned that because exosomes may hold the original cell’s waste, they could be introducing things that a recipient’s cells would rather be rid of. They might, for example, shuttle excess receptors for growth factors out of a cell. If another cell takes these up, it might end up with too many growth factor receptors, which could help drive cancer, he says. “We do need to understand the basics of what’s going on here before we jump into the clinic,” he adds.

At any rate, there are no rigorous human studies to support the safety or effectiveness of using exosomes for skin health, hair growth, or anything else. Look at any clinic website, and it will probably have some impressive-looking before-and-after photos of a customer or two. But these individuals are often having several treatments at the same time. Microneedling alone has been used for decades as an aesthetic treatment. And Patel says he delivers each vial of exosomes alongside a second vial containing a concoction of many other ingredients that are thought to be beneficial to skin health.

So how can a clinician be sure that the apparent effects are due to the exosomes? I put this question to Patel. “I can’t answer that,” he told me. “I’ve never just used the mix on its own to see [what it does]. You’d have to do countless patients with either [vial] to know.”

Beyond beauty

While many of the clinics offering exosome treatments are focused on their purported cosmetic benefits, a significant number claim that they can treat diseases. In the three months between November 2021 and January 2022, Turner and his colleagues identified 16 businesses that were marketing exosome-based therapies to treat or prevent covid-19 or long covid, for example. Others claim exosomes can treat sports injuries and even disorders like Alzheimer’s disease. Again, there is no rigorous research to support these claims.

There have been some promising early studies in animals, and a handful of small, weak phase I trials exploring the use of exosomes in medical treatments. But these fall way below the approval standards of the FDA.

“There are currently no FDA-approved exosome products for any use,” Paul Richards, an FDA representative, wrote in an email to MIT Technology Review. Because of this, no exosome product should be marketed for any medical use.

“There is an abundance of misleading information in the public domain regarding regenerative medicine products, including exosome products,” wrote Richards. “The FDA continues to remind consumers to be cautious of any clinics, including regenerative medicine clinics, health-care providers, physicians, chiropractors, or nurses, that advertise or offer anything purported to be an exosome product. These products are not without risk and are often marketed by clinics as being safe and effective for the treatment of a wide range of diseases or conditions, even though they haven’t been adequately studied in clinical trials.”

No exosome-based products have been approved by the UK’s Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) or by the European Medicine Agency (EMA), either.

“They’re unproven technologies, at least from the perspective of the FDA,” says Dave Carter, head of research at the biotech company Evox, which is exploring the use of exosomes for drug delivery. “We don’t really understand [how they work] … I personally would be somewhat wary of these types of things outside of the context of proper clinical trials.”

The FDA has issued letters to some of the clinics providing these treatments. In 2020, for example, the organization wrote to Douglas Spiel, president of Regenerative Solutions of New Jersey, about its claims—being published on Facebook at the time—that exosomes could “mitigate, prevent, treat, or cure” covid. The company was also marketing exosome products for a range of other disorders, including spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, lupus, and multiple sclerosis.The FDA letter listed the problematic posts and requested a response within 30 days. Spiel’s current clinic doesn’t make any claims about exosomes.

Turner is concerned that letters like these have little impact. “It’s not terribly consequential,” he says. “No one has to surrender their medical license, and there are no automatic financial penalties.”

Beyond potential harm to individual patients, both scientists and regulatory agencies are concerned that unapproved, untested, and unregulated exosome “treatments” could set back an exciting field of research. Potential uses of exosomes to diagnose and treat diseases are being explored through lab-based research and early-stage clinical trials. Companies making unsubstantiated claims to sell products could undermine that progress.

These marketing claims are often “a mishmash of marketing froth, marketing hype, and some credible claims cut and paste[d] from [scientific] papers and websites,” says Turner. “It makes it more challenging for us to have any kind of meaningful public understanding or discussion.”

In the meantime, Turner is one of many scientists cautioning people against the use of exosomes. “I would say that it’s a bit of a Wild West out there with respect to how these are being used,” says Kalluri of MD Anderson Cancer Center. “Ultimately, some science needs to be done to show that this actually works.”

“From a very basic point of view, we don’t really know what they’re doing, good or bad,” says Edgar, from the University of Cambridge. “I wouldn’t take them, let’s put it that way.”

Even Sarah, who received three exosome treatments last year, agrees. “I think there needs to be more research around it … I would just hold on and see,” she says. “Maybe [I would feel] different if I looked a million years younger after using it. But that wasn’t the case.”

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App Artificial intelligence The Algorithm

Oct 30 2024

Palmer Luckey’s vision for the future of mixed reality

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here.

War is a catalyst for change, an expert in AI and warfare told me in 2022. At the time, the war in Ukraine had just started, and the military AI business was booming. Two years later, things have only ramped up as geopolitical tensions continue to rise.

Silicon Valley players are poised to benefit. One of them is Palmer Luckey, the founder of the virtual-reality headset company Oculus, which he sold to Facebook for $2 billion. After Luckey’s highly public ousting from Meta, he founded Anduril, which focuses on drones, cruise missiles, and other AI-enhanced technologies for the US Department of Defense. The company is now valued at $14 billion. My colleague James O’Donnell interviewed Luckey about his new pet project: headsets for the military.

Luckey is increasingly convinced that the military, not consumers, will see the value of mixed-reality hardware first: “You’re going to see an AR headset on every soldier, long before you see it on every civilian,” he says. In the consumer world, any headset company is competing with the ubiquity and ease of the smartphone, but he sees entirely different trade-offs in defense. Read the interview here.

The use of AI for military purposes is controversial. Back in 2018, Google pulled out of the Pentagon’s Project Maven, an attempt to build image recognition systems to improve drone strikes, following staff walkouts over the ethics of the technology. (Google has since returned to offering services for the defense sector.) There has been a long-standing campaign to ban autonomous weapons, also known as “killer robots,” which powerful militaries such as the US have refused to agree to.

But the voices that boom even louder belong to an influential faction in Silicon Valley, such as Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt, who has called for the military to adopt and invest more in AI to get an edge over adversaries. Militaries all over the world have been very receptive to this message.

That’s good news for the tech sector. Military contracts are long and lucrative, for a start. Most recently, the Pentagon purchased services from Microsoft and OpenAI to do search, natural-language processing, machine learning, and data processing, reports The Intercept. In the interview with James, Palmer Luckey says the military is a perfect testing ground for new technologies. Soldiers do as they are told and aren’t as picky as consumers, he explains. They’re also less price-sensitive: Militaries don’t mind spending a premium to get the latest version of a technology.

But there are serious dangers in adopting powerful technologies prematurely in such high-risk areas. Foundation models pose serious national security and privacy threats by, for example, leaking sensitive information, argue researchers at the AI Now Institute and Meredith Whittaker, president of the communication privacy organization Signal, in a new paper. Whittaker, who was a core organizer of the Project Maven protests, has said that the push to militarize AI is really more about enriching tech companies than improving military operations.

Despite calls for stricter rules around transparency, we are unlikely to see governments restrict their defense sectors in any meaningful way beyond voluntary ethical commitments. We are in the age of AI experimentation, and militaries are playing with the highest stakes of all. And because of the military’s secretive nature, tech companies can experiment with the technology without the need for transparency or even much accountability. That suits Silicon Valley just fine.

Now read the rest of The Algorithm

Deeper Learning

How Wayve’s driverless cars will meet one of their biggest challenges yet

The UK driverless-car startup Wayve is headed west. The firm’s cars learned to drive on the streets of London. But Wayve has announced that it will begin testing its tech in and around San Francisco as well. And that brings a new challenge: Its AI will need to switch from driving on the left to driving on the right.

Full speed ahead: As visitors to or from the UK will know, making that switch is harder than it sounds. Your view of the road, how the vehicle turns—it’s all different. The move to the US will be a test of Wayve’s technology, which the company claims is more general-purpose than what many of its rivals are offering. Across the Atlantic, the company will now go head to head with the heavyweights of the growing autonomous-car industry, including Cruise, Waymo, and Tesla. Join Will Douglas Heaven on a ride in one of its cars to find out more.

Bits and Bytes

Kids are learning how to make their own little language models
Little Language Models is a new application from two PhD researchers at MIT’s Media Lab that helps children understand how AI models work—by getting to build small-scale versions themselves. (MIT Technology Review)

Google DeepMind is making its AI text watermark open source
Google DeepMind has developed a tool for identifying AI-generated text called SynthID, which is part of a larger family of watermarking tools for generative AI outputs. The company is applying the watermark to text generated by its Gemini models and making it available for others to use too. (MIT Technology Review)

Anthropic debuts an AI model that can “use” a computer
The tool enables the company’s Claude AI model to interact with computer interfaces and take actions such as moving a cursor, clicking on things, and typing text. It’s a very cumbersome and error-prone version of what some have said AI agents will be able to do one day. (Anthropic)

Can an AI chatbot be blamed for a teen’s suicide?
A 14-year-old boy committed suicide, and his mother says it was because he was obsessed with an AI chatbot created by Character.AI. She is suing the company. Chatbots have been touted as cures for loneliness, but critics say they actually worse isolation. (The New York Times)

Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity are promoting scientific racism in search results
The internet’s biggest AI-powered search engines are featuring the widely debunked idea that white people are genetically superior to other races. (Wired)

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Oct 30 2024

The Download: mysterious exosomes, and AI’s e-waste issue

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.

Exosomes are touted as a trendy cure-all. We don’t know if they work.

There’s a trendy new cure-all in town—you might have seen ads pop up on social media or read rave reviews in beauty magazines.

Exosomes are being touted as a miraculous treatment for hair loss, aging skin, acne, eczema, pain conditions, long covid, and even neurological diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. That’s, of course, if you can afford the price tag—which can stretch to thousands of dollars.

But there’s a big problem with these big promises: We don’t fully understand how exosomes work—or what they even really are. Read our story.

—Jessica Hamzelou

AI will add to the e-waste problem. Here’s what we can do about it.

The news: Generative AI could add up to 5 million metric tons of e-waste in total by 2030, according to a new study. That’s a relatively small fraction of the current global total of over 60 million metric tons of e-waste each year. However, it’s still a significant part of a growing problem.

Under the hood: The primary contributor is high-performance computing hardware that’s used in data centers and server farms. That equipment is full of valuable metals and hazardous materials, and it’s being replaced at a rapid rate as AI companies race to adopt the most cutting-edge hardware to power their models.

What can be done: Expanding hardware’s lifespan is one of the most significant ways to cut down on e-waste. Refurbishing and reusing components can also play a significant role, as can designing hardware in ways that makes it easier to recycle and upgrade. Read the full story.

—Casey Crownhart

Militaries are great testing grounds for AI tech, says Palmer Luckey

War is a catalyst for technological change, and the last couple of years have been marred by high-profile conflicts around the world. Geopolitical tensions are still rising now.

Silicon Valley players are poised to benefit. One of them is Palmer Luckey, the founder of the virtual-reality headset company Oculus, which he sold to Facebook for $2 billion. After Luckey’s highly public ousting from Meta, he founded Anduril, which focuses on drones, cruise missiles, and other AI-enhanced technologies for the US Department of Defense. The company is now valued at $14 billion. We interviewed Luckey about his new project: headsets for the military.

But the use of AI for the military is a controversial topic, with a long and bitter history that stretches from Project Maven to killer robots. Read the full story.

—Melissa Heikkilä

This story is from The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter all about the latest in AI. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Monday.

The must-reads

I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.

1 Strava is leaking the location of foreign leaders
Their bodyguards’ runs are revealing more than they ought to. (Le Monde)
+ It’s shockingly easy to buy sensitive data about US military personnel. (MIT Technology Review)

2 A man who used AI to make child sexual abuse images has been jailed
His 18-year sentence is the first of its kind in the UK. (FT $)

3 Here’s what Trump plans to do if he wins a second term
The 900-page Project 2025 document provides plenty of hints. (The Verge)
+ It would be hard for him to roll back the Green New Deal—but not impossible. (Axios)
+ Russia, China and Iran are interfering in the election. (NYT $)
+ But cybercriminals may pose an even greater threat. (Wired $)

4 Apple Intelligence is here
But it seems it’s still kinda dumb. (WP $)
+ Meta is reportedly building its own AI search engine. (The Information $)
+ The trouble is, AI chatbots make stuff up. And it’s not a fully fixable problem. (MIT Technology Review)

5 Medium is drowning in AI slop
Almost half of the posts on there now are probably AI-generated. (Wired $)

6 What steampunk can teach tech today
We’re too keen on removing friction—people still like fiddling with dials and gears. (New Yorker $)
+ Prosthetics designers are coming up with new ways to augment our bodies. (MIT Technology Review)

7 This is what wargaming looks like now
Militaries around the world use software called Command PE built by a tiny British game publisher. (WSJ $)

8 Tiktok’s founder has become China’s richest man
Zhang Yiming’s wealth has almost doubled in the last year, to $49 billion. (BBC)
+ How China takes extreme measures to keep teens off TikTok. (MIT Technology Review)

9 How complex life started to flourish
You can thank eukaryotes, a type of cell that emerged about 3 billion years ago. (Quanta $)

10 Oregon Trail is being turned into an action-comedy movie
With musical numbers. Yes, seriously. (Hollywood Reporter)

Quote of the day

“I thought it would conquer the world.”

—Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, spoke for us all (well, for me anyway), when he waxed lyrical about the 1999 Sega Dreamcast video game console on a Twitch stream last weekend, the Washington Post reports.

The big story

Meet the radio-obsessed civilian shaping Ukraine’s drone defense

September 2024

Drones have come to define the brutal conflict in Ukraine that has now dragged on for more than two and a half years. And most rely on radio communications—a technology that Serhii “Flash” Beskrestnov has obsessed over since childhood.

While Flash is now a civilian, the former officer has still taken it upon himself to inform his country’s defense in all matters related to radio. He studies Russian transmissions and tries to learn about the problems facing troops.

In this race for survival—as each side constantly tries to best the other, only to start all over again when the other inevitably catches up—Ukrainian soldiers need to develop creative solutions, and fast. As Ukraine’s wartime radio guru, Flash may just be one of their best hopes for doing that. Read the full story.

—Charlie Metcalfe

We can still have nice things

A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet ’em at me.)

+ Timothée Chalamet turned up at his own look-alike contest in New York last weekend. Spoiler alert: he didn’t win.

+ Learn these basic rules to make veg-based meals delicious.

+ There’s something very special about ancient trees.

+ Do you tend to please everyone but yourself? Here’s how to stop. (NYT $)

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Oct 30 2024

Cultivating the next generation of AI innovators in a global tech hub

A few years ago, I had to make one of the biggest decisions of my life: continue as a professor at the University of Melbourne or move to another part of the world to help build a brand new university focused entirely on artificial intelligence.

With the rapid development we have seen in AI over the past few years, I came to the realization that educating the next generation of AI innovators in an inclusive way and sharing the benefits of technology across the globe is more important than maintaining the status quo. I therefore packed my bags for the Mohammed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in Abu Dhabi.

The world in all its complexity

Today, the rewards of AI are mostly enjoyed by a few countries in what the Oxford Internet Institute dubs the “Compute North.” These countries, such as the US, the U.K., France, Canada, and China, have dominated research and development, and built state of the art AI infrastructure capable of training foundational models. This should come as no surprise, as these countries are home to many of the world’s top universities and large tech corporations.

But this concentration of innovation comes at a cost for the billions of people who live outside these dominant countries and have different cultural backgrounds.

Large language models (LLMs) are illustrative of this disparity. Researchers have shown that many of the most popular multilingual LLMs perform poorly with languages other than English, Chinese, and a handful of other (mostly) European languages. Yet, there are approximately 6,000 languages spoken today, many of them in communities in Africa, Asia, and South America. Arabic alone is spoken by almost 400 million people and Hindi has 575 million speakers around the world.

For example, LLaMA 2 performs up to 50% better in English compared to Arabic, when measured using the LM-Evaluation-Harness framework. Meanwhile, Jais, an LLM co-developed by MBZUAI, exceeds LLaMA 2 in Arabic and is comparable to Meta’s model in English (see table below).

The chart shows that the only way to develop AI applications that work for everyone is by creating new institutions outside the Compute North that consistently and conscientiously invest in building tools designed for the thousands of language communities across the world.

Environments of innovation

One way to design new institutions is to study history and understand how today’s centers of gravity in AI research emerged decades ago. Before Silicon Valley earned its reputation as the center of global technological innovation, it was called Santa Clara Valley and was known for its prune farms. However, the main catalyst was Stanford University, which had built a reputation as one of the best places in the world to study electrical engineering. Over the years, through a combination of government-led investment through grants and focused research, the university birthed countless inventions that advanced computing and created a culture of entrepreneurship. The results speak for themselves: Stanford alumni have founded companies such as Alphabet, NVIDIA, Netflix, and PayPal, to name a few.

Today, like MBZUAI’s predecessor in Santa Clara Valley, we have an opportunity to build a new technology hub centered around a university.

And that’s why I chose to join MBZUAI, the world’s first research university focused entirely on AI. From MBZUAI’s position at the geographical crossroads of East and West, our goal is to attract the brightest minds from around the world and equip them with the tools they need to push the boundaries of AI research and development.

A community for inclusive AI

MBZUAI’s student body comes from more than 50 different countries around the globe. It has attracted top researchers such as Monojit Choudhury from Microsoft, Elizabeth Churchill from Google, Ted Briscoe from the University of Cambridge, Sami Haddin from the Technical University of Munich, and Yoshihiko Nakamura from the University of Tokyo, just to name a few.

These scientists may be from different places but they’ve found a common purpose at MBZUAI with our interdisciplinary nature, relentless focus on making AI a force for global progress, and emphasis on collaboration across disciplines such as robotics, NLP, machine learning, and computer vision.

In addition to traditional AI disciplines, MBZUAI has built departments in sibling areas that can both contribute to and benefit from AI, including human computer interaction, statistics and data science, and computational biology.

Abu Dhabi’s commitment to MBZUAI is part of a broader vision for AI that extends beyond academia. MBZUAI’s scientists have collaborated with G42, an Abu Dhabi-based tech company, on Jais, an Arabic-centric LLM that is the highest-performing open-weight Arabic LLM; and also NANDA, an advanced Hindi LLM. MBZUAI’s Institute of Foundational Models has created LLM360, an initiative designed to level the playing field of large model research and development by publishing fully open source models and datasets that are competitive with closed source or open weights models available from tech companies in North America or China.

MBZUAI is also developing language models that specialize in Turkic languages, which have traditionally been underrepresented in NLP, yet are spoken by millions of people.

Another recent project has brought together native speakers of 26 languages from 28 different countries to compile a benchmark dataset that evaluates the performance of vision language models and their ability to understand cultural nuances in images.

These kinds of efforts to expand the capabilities of AI to broader communities are necessary if we want to maintain the world’s cultural diversity and provide everyone with AI tools that are useful to them. At MBZUAI, we have created a unique mix of students and faculty to drive globally-inclusive AI innovation for the future. By building a broad community of scientists, entrepreneurs, and thinkers, the university is increasingly establishing itself as a driving force in AI innovation that extends far beyond Abu Dhabi, with the goal of developing technologies that are inclusive for the world’s diverse languages and culture.

This content was produced by the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.

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Oct 30 2024

Top WooCommerce Extensions to Grow a Store

WooCommerce is the open-source plugin from Automattic that transforms a WordPress website into an ecommerce store. WooCommerce‘s many extensions provide additional tools and features.

Here is a list of essential extensions for WooCommerce to customize, manage, and grow a store. Some extensions are from WooCommerce directly, and others are from third-party developers. All are free to install but may require a subscription or fee afterward.

Essential WooCommerce Extensions

AutomateWoo brings automation tools to grow and manage a store. Create triggers, rules, and actions within WooCommerce. Build advanced logic so rules only trigger in certain situations, and define customizable actions when workflows are triggered. Price: $159 per year.

AutomateWoo

Yoast WooCommerce SEO helps increase the Google search visibility of a store and products. Automatically optimize your sitemap. Get search-engine-optimization recommendations for your product content and category pages for the best online results. Includes access to the Ecommerce SEO course in Yoast’s Academy. Price: $79 per year.

WooPayments from WooCommerce is an extension for accepting credit and debit cards and localized methods. Buy-now pay-later options Klarna, Afterpay, and Affirm are now available. Price: Free.

LiveChat for WooCommerce is a customer support tool for a store, as well as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Engage shoppers using the automated chat invitations feature while they browse with coupons, deals, and announcements. Price: Free to install. Requires a third-party subscription.

LiveChat for WooCommerce

WooCommerce Tax automatically calculates sales tax upon checkout. Calculate how much sales tax to collect for orders by city, country, and state. Price: Free.

Product Recommendations is an advanced tool to offer upsells and cross-sells. Build intelligent engines that generate automated recommendations. The algorithm analyzes orders to discover meaningful recommendations and adapts to new trends and seasonal patterns. Deploy in-depth analytics to measure a campaign’s impact. Price: $99 per year.

Smart Coupons is a tool for running discounts and promotions automatically. Create advanced discount rules such as bulk discounts, dynamic pricing, percentage discounts, product-based discounts, tiered discounts, and time-based discounts. Price: $129 per year.

B2B for WooCommerce enables the optimization for wholesale customers. Define user roles and modify product visibility accordingly. Create and run a quotation management system. Adjust pricing for individual customers, user roles, and quantity levels. Add discounts on the cart level, in percentage or fixed amounts, and on total quantity or amount. Allow all or selected user roles to claim tax exemption. Restrict shipping methods or payments by those roles. Price: $179 per year.

B2B for WooCommerce

Google for WooCommerce syncs a WooCommerce product feed to the Google Merchant Center. Product listings automatically update with real-time prices, promotions, inventories, and details. Promote your products across Google, including search, Shopping, and YouTube. Price: Free.

Google Analytics for WooCommerce enables performance tracking on the leading analytics platform. Learn which of your store’s channels — search, social, ads, email — drive the most traffic. Track users from a product page to checkout. Compare traffic and transactions across projects. Identify shoppers’ needs by monitoring the pages they land on from search engines. Price: Free.

Jetpack for WooCommerce offers tools to enhance the security and performance of a WooCommerce store. Run automated malware scanning, authenticated customer logins, and brute force attack prevention. Utilize real-time backups to keep sales transactions and data safe. One-click restore enables reversions to any point. Jetpack provides at-a-glance data on orders, trends, and traffic in a centralized dashboard. Price: Free.

Facebook for WooCommerce connects a store to its existing Facebook page, Meta Business Manager, and Meta Pixel to reach prospects across Facebook and Instagram. Create Meta ads directly on WooCommerce — design an ad and set the targeting. Enable Meta Pixel and Conversion API (CAPI) to increase ad performance and improve measurement. Price: Free.

Facebook for WooCommerce

USPS Shipping Method for WooCommerce accesses the United States Postal Service’s API for domestic and international shipping rates. Show customers accurate rates automatically — for individual packs or the built-in box packer. Price: $109 per year.

JetPack CRM is a customer relationship management application for small and medium-sized businesses. Collect leads, create quotes, capture orders, and generate invoices to send directly to your contacts. Develop relationships via email and automation tools. See your team’s interactions with each contact and a performance snapshot on the sales dashboard. Price: Free to install. Requires a third-party subscription.

Back In Stock Notifications for WooCommerce lets you send automated emails to shoppers when their desired products are restocked. Turn sold-out products into waitlists anyone can join. Recover lost sales and build customer loyalty. Price: $59 per year.

Vimeo for WooCommerce provides tools to create, upload, and embed videos. Publish product videos to your WooCommerce storefront or share video ads to social media. Build videos with customizable templates using existing images and videos, or use Vimeo’s stock library and music options. Automate product videos from your page assets. Price: Free to install. Requires a third-party subscription.

Vimeo for WooCommerce

Min/Max Quantities lets you set minimum and maximum quantity rules. Specify lower and upper limits per product or order. Require products or categories to be purchased in predefined quantities and multiples. Exclude individual products from order rules. Price: $49 per year.

Product Add-Ons allows merchants to offer special options such as gift wrapping or personal engravings via text boxes, dropdowns, text areas, checkboxes, custom price inputs, and even sample images. Collect customers’ customization details at checkout without needing to follow up. Price: $79 per year.

Product Bundles facilitates offering related products together. Offer bulk discount packages, personalized product bundles, and assembled products. Create physical, virtual, or downloadable bundles. Group simple, variable, and subscription products. Recommend optional items and let shoppers choose the quantities. Price: $79 per year.

WooCommerce Memberships is a subscription system tied to your store. Sell standalone memberships, grant access to a membership as part of a product purchase, or assign memberships manually in an invite-only members area. Drip content over time to schedule when members have access. Price: $199 per year.

WooCommerce Memberships

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Oct 29 2024

Google Q3 Report: AI Drives Growth Across Search, Cloud, & YouTube via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Alphabet Inc. reported its third-quarter earnings, with revenues reaching $88.3 billion, a 15% increase from last year.

The Google parent company’s operating margin expanded to 32% from 27.8% year-over-year, while net income rose 34% to $26.3 billion.

During the earnings call, the company highlighted the growing role of AI across its products and services.

Google Cloud revenue increased 35% to $11.4 billion, while YouTube surpassed $50 billion in combined advertising and subscription revenue over the past four quarters.

Several operational changes occurred during the quarter, including the reorganization of Google’s AI teams and the expansion of AI features across its products.

The company also reported improvements in AI infrastructure efficiency and increased deployment of AI-powered search capabilities.

Highlights

AI

CEO Sundar Pichai emphasized how AI transforms the search experience, telling investors that “new AI features are expanding what people can search for and how they search for it.”

Google’s AI infrastructure investments are yielding efficiency gains. According to Pichai, over a quarter of all new code at Google is now generated by AI and then reviewed by engineers, accelerating development cycles.

Google has reduced AI Overview query costs by 90% over 18 months while doubling the Gemini model size. These improvements extend across seven Google products, each serving over 2 billion monthly users.

Cloud

The Google Cloud division reported operating income of $1.95 billion, marking an increase from $266 million in the same quarter last year.

Company leadership attributed this growth to increased adoption of AI infrastructure and generative AI solutions among enterprise customers.

In an organizational move, Google announced it will transfer its Gemini consumer AI team to Google DeepMind, signaling a deeper integration of AI development across the company.

YouTube

YouTube achieved a notable milestone: its combined advertising and subscription revenues exceeded $50 billion over the past four quarters.

YouTube ads revenue grew to $8.9 billion in Q3, while the broader Google subscriptions, platforms, and devices segment reached $10.7 billion.

Financials

Net income increased 34% to $26.3 billion
Operating margin expanded to 32% from 27.8% last year
Earnings per share rose 37% to $2.12
Total Google Services revenue grew 13% to $76.5 billion

What This Means

Google’s Q3 results point to shifts in search that SEO professionals and businesses need to watch.

With AI Overviews now reaching over 1 billion monthly users, we’re seeing changes in search behavior.

According to CEO Sundar Pichai, users are submitting longer and more complex queries, exploring more websites, and increasing their search activity as they become familiar with AI features.

For publishers, the priorities are clear: create content that addresses complex queries and monitor how AI Overviews affect traffic patterns.

We can expect further advancements across services with Google’s heavy investment in AI. The key will be staying agile and continually testing new features as they roll out.

Featured Image: QubixStudio/Shutterstock

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Oct 29 2024

Google Loses €2.4B Battle Against Small Business Founders via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

A British couple’s legal battle against Google’s search practices has concluded.

Europe’s highest court upheld a €2.4 billion fine against Google, marking a victory for small businesses in the digital marketplace.

Background

Shivaun and Adam Raff launched Foundem, a price comparison website, in June 2006.

On launch day, Google’s automated spam filters hit the site, pushing it deep into search results and cutting off its primary traffic source.

“Google essentially disappeared us from the internet,” says Shivaun Raff.

The search penalties remained in place despite Foundem later being recognized by Channel 5’s The Gadget Show as the UK’s best price comparison website.

From Complaint To Major Investigation

After two years of unanswered appeals to Google, the Raffs took their case to regulators.

Their complaint led to a European Commission investigation in 2010, which revealed similar issues affecting approximately 20 other comparison shopping services, including Kelkoo, Trivago, and Yelp.

The investigation concluded in 2017 with the Commission ruling that Google had illegally promoted its comparison shopping service while demoting competitors, resulting in the €2.4 billion fine.

Here’s a summary of what happened next.

Timeline: From Initial Fine to Final Ruling (2017-2024)

2017

European Commission issues €2.4 billion fine against Google
Google implements changes to its shopping search results
Google files initial appeal against the ruling

2021

General Court of the European Union upholds the fine
Google launches second appeal to the European Court of Justice

2024 March

European Commission launches new investigation under Digital Markets Act
Probe examines whether Google continues to favor its services in search results

September

European Court of Justice rejects Google’s final appeal A fine of €2.4 billion is definitively upheld
Marks the end of main legal battle after 15 years

The seven-year legal process highlights the challenges small businesses face in seeking remedies for anti-competitive practices, despite having clear evidence.

Google’s Response

Google maintains its 2017 compliance changes resolved the issues.

A company spokesperson stated:

“The changes we made have worked successfully for more than seven years, generating billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping services.”

What’s Next?

While the September 2024 ruling validates the Raffs’ claims, it comes too late for Foundem, which closed in 2016.

In March 2024, the European Commission launched a new investigation into Google’s current practices under the Digital Markets Act.

The Raffs are now pursuing a civil damages claim against Google, scheduled for 2026.

Why This Matters

This ruling confirms that Google’s search rankings can be subject to regulatory oversight and legal challenges.

The case has already influenced new digital marketplace regulations, including the EU’s Digital Markets Act.

Although Foundem’s story concluded with the company’s closure in 2016, the legal precedent it set will endure.

Featured Image: Pictrider/Shutterstock

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Oct 29 2024

Transformation Complete: Google’s New AI Shopping Experience Verticalizes Search via @sejournal, @Kevin_Indig

While everyone is looking at AI Overviews, Google launched a personalized shopping experience to build a foothold in the vertical that’s the least sensitive to LLM disruption.

AI could revive personalization and bring it to other areas of Google as well.

The new SERP layout shakes up ecommerce SEO by making Google the new category page and shifting the focus to product pages.

[…] today, we’re introducing a transformed Google Shopping — rebuilt from the ground up with AI. We’ve paired the 45 billion product listings in Google’s Shopping Graph with Gemini models to transform the online shopping experience with a new, personalized shopping home, which is rolling out in the U.S. over the coming weeks, starting today.

Users can try the new experience out on shopping.google.com or the shopping tab. I see this as a test that could replace the default experience for shopping queries.

In reality, shopping SERPs have been transforming for a while. I wrote about it back in December 2023 in Ecommerce Shifts:

Google’s metamorphosis into a shopping marketplace is complete. Two ingredients were missing: product filters that turn pure search pages into ecommerce search pages and direct checkout. Those ingredients have now been added, and the cake has been baked.

In the same article, I highlighted why:

Reality is that Google had few options. Amazon had been eating their lunch with a growing ad business that hits Google where it hurts: ecommerce. Shopping is lucrative in part because conversions and returns are easier to measure than in industries like SaaS.

Two things changed since I published the article that explains the urgency of Google pushing into shopping:

Google rolled AI Overviews out. In Phoenix, I outlined how often Google tried to personalize the search results without much success, but AI has a chance to make it work.
TikTok has stepped into the ring with Amazon, encouraging merchants to livestream and advertise. Everyone was looking at TikTok as a search competitor to Google when former head of search Prabhakar Raghavan publicly mentioned that “nearly half of Gen Z is using Instagram and TikTok for search instead of Google,” but we missed how aggressively TikTok was pushing into ecommerce. If Google competes harder with Amazon and Amazon competes against TikTok, then TikTok is a stronger competitor to Google than originally assumed.

LLMs and AI Overviews likely disrupt informational searches by making many clicks obsolete, but ecommerce search is still alive and kicking and one of the main contributors to revenue growth.

The exact impact of personalized, AI-based shopping Search will take a few more months to assess. But it makes a change in how Google:

Looks for different verticals.
Looks for different geos.
Looks for different users.
Aggregates websites.

Google’s Verticalization

Image Credit: Kevin Indig

Different queries trigger different experiences on Google across shopping, travel, local and information.

Search for [mens shoes], and you get a shopping marketplace. Search for [best flight between chicago and nyc], and you get a flight booking engine. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Google’s search demand for verticalized SEO reflects the trend: Searches for [seo] are flat while demand for verticalization, e.g., “B2B SEO,” is growing.

So, why do we still generalize SEO? There is no one SEO. There are many different types of SEO based on which vertical we talk about.

With different Google experiences grows the need to specialize skills by vertical. Ecommerce SEO, for example, centers around free listings and feed optimization in Google’s Merchant Center.

Our tools and insights are still far behind. There is no tool to run split tests for free listings in Merchant Center, but several tools handle feed optimization and experimentation for paid results.

Even worse, most companies still measure organic positions for success in ecommerce, but free listings show up above position 1 almost half of the time. Trend: growing.

Google’s Localization

Source: YouGov

Google’s experience in the EU is already different for verticals like travel.

From 2 Internets:

Regulation splits the internet experience, aka Search, into a European and American version with stark differences. While Big Tech companies face complexity, Search players have an opportunity to compare SERP Features and AI Overviews in both internet versions and better understand their impact.

AI Overviews have not yet rolled out in EU markets, and it’s unclear if they will.

Since the new shopping experience heavily leans on AI Overviews, I am equally skeptical that it will come to the EU, especially with the strong personalization layer.

Personalization under the Digital Marketing Act (DMA) is not forbidden, but GDPR mandates that users consent to it.

YouGov surveyed thousands of people across 17 countries and found vast discrepancies in consent.

Google will almost certainly “burry” consent in its general terms of service, which no one reads. It will be up to legislators to evaluate whether that’s sufficient.

Just like AIOs, the non-personalized shopping experience in the EU might serve as a comparison for the U.S. and other countries to understand the impact of Google’s new experience better.

Google’s Personalization

Image Credit: Kevin Indig

Google personalizes the new shopping experience based on user behavior and matches it with its vast shopping graph that covers over 45 billion entities.

Note that 45 billion entities include product variations, reviews, brands, categories, and more.

However, the Shopping Graph looks like a dwarf compared to Google’s knowledge graph with over 1.5 trillion entities.

If personalization is a question of graph size and AI capabilities, it’s only a matter of time until non-shopping results are more personalized.

Personalization also makes sense in the context that AI can answer long questions much better than Google’s old semantic search ever could, so Google might as well personalize results based on behavior.

Google also uses YouTube as a source to personalize shopping. I wonder: why not for regular Search as well? ~25% of queries show videos, and most of those are from YouTube.

Google could easily prefer videos from YouTube channels you subscribe to in the regular search results, as an example.

The challenge of personalization for marketers is optimizing for a uniform search experience.

When our experiences differ significantly, our data does as well, which means we’re losing a whole layer of insights to work with.

The result is that we need to rely more on aggregate data, post-purchase surveys and market research, like in the good ‘ol days.

Google’s Aggregation

Free product listing click-through rates, according to Johannes Beus (link) Image Credit: Kevin Indig

The big question, of course, is how this new experience impacts organic clicks. Can websites still get clicks? We don’t know for sure until more data rolls in.

One reference point comes from Johannes Beus (Founder/CEO of Sistrix), who found that Free Listings cut clicks on organic results in half, e.g., position 1 drops from ~21% on average to 9.5%.

But based on the layout and my experience with layout changes in the past, I will say that I don’t see a threat here. I see a change.

Google’s new layout for shopping SERPs, the one it has been using for a year now, is essentially a category page that lists products from online stores. As a result, the focus of ecommerce SEO shifts from category to product page optimization.

Where I do see a negative impact is for sites that provide price comparison, tracking, or discounts. Chrome has been tracking price changes for over a year.

We know shoppers always want low prices, and the new Google Shopping not only includes deal-finding tools like price comparison, price insights and price tracking throughout, but also a new dedicated and personalized deals page where you can browse deals for you — just click the “Deals” link at the top of your page to explore.

We know Google uses Chrome data for ranking due to leaked documents and court trials.

I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that Google also uses Chrome data to inform the shopping graph and product recommendation in the personalized shopping experience.

If so, separating Chrome from Google in the context of the antitrust trial would also impact its personalization capabilities.

Above: “shopping tab” with Google’s new shopping experience; below: “all” tab (Image Credit: Kevin Indig)

Image Credit: Kevin Indig

One improvement from the new experience is that editorial content doesn’t have to fight with product or category pages over positions anymore.

The layout constantly changes, but it seems some queries highlight links to editorial articles about products (like “cheap laptop for work”), others (like “mens winter jackets”) don’t.

At least, there seems to be a lifeline for publishers in ecommerce.

Boost your skills with Growth Memo’s weekly expert insights. Subscribe for Free!

Google Shopping’s getting a big transformation

TikTok Tries to Woo American Shoppers, One Livestream at a Time

Critical SERP Features of Google’s shopping marketplace

Mozcast: Google SERP Features

Shopping insights & price tracking in Chrome

Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal

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Oct 29 2024

Ready to Make Reddit Work for Your Brand? [Webinar] via @sejournal, @brentcsutoras

Looking to unlock the power of Reddit’s unique platform to boost your brand, build organic strategies, or foster community engagement? We’re bringing together the experts, and they’re going to tell you how to do it.

Don’t miss this exclusive opportunity to receive actionable insights directly from the experts who help shape Reddit’s advertising and marketing landscape.

You’ll get insider tips on how to engage Reddit’s vast and diverse user base, tap into real-time conversations, and leverage the platform’s unique community-driven environment to drive your brand’s growth.

Whether your focus is on organic search, paid campaigns, community engagement, or crafting a winning content strategy, this is a rare chance to ask Reddit insiders whatever you want.

Meet Your Expert Panel:

Moderated by Brent Csutoras – A seasoned expert in digital marketing and Reddit strategy, Brent has spent years helping brands leverage Reddit to achieve tangible success. His strategic guidance will help ensure you get the most from this AMA.
Susan Billingsley – As the leader of Reddit’s global business brand and audience marketing, Susan is responsible for crafting narratives that connect with Reddit’s diverse user base and drive brand loyalty. She’ll share insights into what resonates with Reddit users and how to create compelling brand stories.
Rob Gaige – Rob brings his expertise in turning Reddit’s community conversations into actionable marketing strategies. With his finger on the pulse of consumer trends, he’ll guide you on how to stay ahead of shifts in audience behavior and preferences.
Nishe Modoyan – Overseeing Reddit’s core ads platform, Nishe leads go-to-market strategies with a deep passion for identifying the most effective advertising opportunities for Reddit’s business partners. She’ll offer expert advice on optimizing ad spend and maximizing ROI.

This AMA is designed to be an interactive, no-holds-barred conversation, giving you direct access to the minds behind Reddit’s advertising and marketing strategies. You’ll walk away with real insights for crafting your next campaign, whether it’s organic or paid – insights you can only hear from the experts shaping Reddit itself.

What We’ll Be Covering:

This is a chance to get behind the scenes of Reddit’s advertising and marketing ecosystem and understand how you can make the most of the platform’s vast and engaged user base. Learn how to harness Reddit’s vibrant communities, use advanced targeting options for ads, and capitalize on emerging consumer trends.

Who Should Attend?

This presentation is tailor-made for marketing leaders, digital strategists, and managers who are eager to explore Reddit’s full potential. If you’re tasked with expanding brand reach, fostering community engagement, or driving targeted ad campaigns, we want to hear your questions!

While We Typically Provide Key Takeaways, This Time You Drive the Conversation!

Wondering what you can expect? Here are a few of the burning questions we anticipate answering:

What are the most effective strategies for engaging Reddit’s highly active communities and creating meaningful interactions?
How can I use Reddit Ads to boost brand awareness, generate leads, and drive conversions?
How can insights derived from Reddit’s communities help predict emerging consumer trends and behavior?
What are the best practices for leveraging Reddit’s rich data to enhance and refine my brand strategy?
How do I find the right balance between organic engagement and paid advertising to maximize impact without losing authenticity?

Ready to Gain a Competitive Edge? Secure Your Spot Now!

Always wanted direct access to the pros at Reddit? Register today to be part of a live conversation and get answers to all your burning questions.

Can’t Make It?

No worries! Register anyway, and we’ll ensure you receive a recording of the event after, so you don’t miss out on a single insight.

We can’t wait to take your questions!

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Oct 29 2024

Core Web Vitals Documentation Updated via @sejournal, @martinibuster

The official documentation for how Core Web Vitals are scored was recently updated with new insights into how Interaction to Next Paint (INP) scoring thresholds were chosen and offers a better understanding of Interaction To Next Paint.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP)

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is a relatively new metric, officially becoming a Core Web Vitals in the Spring of 2024. It’s a metric of how long it takes a site to respond to interactions like clicks, taps, and when users press on a keyboard (actual or onscreen).

The official Web.dev documentation defines it:

“INP observes the latency of all interactions a user has made with the page, and reports a single value which all (or nearly all) interactions were beneath. A low INP means the page was consistently able to respond quickly to all—or the vast majority—of user interactions.”

INP measures the latency of all the interactions on the page, which is different than the now retired First Input Delay metric which only measured the delay of the first interaction. INP is considered a better measurement than INP because it provides a more accurate idea of the actual user experience is.

INP Core Web Vitals Score Thresholds

The main change to the documentation is to provide an explanation for the speed performance thresholds that show poor, needs improvement and good.

One of the choices made for deciding the scoring was how to handle scoring because it’s easier to achieve high INP scores on a desktop versus a mobile device because external factors like network speed and device capabilities heavily favor desktop environments.

But the user experience is not device dependent so rather that create different thresholds for different kinds of devices they settled on one metric that is based on mobile devices.

The new documentation explains:

“Mobile and desktop usage typically have very different characteristics as to device capabilities and network reliability. This heavily impacts the “achievability” criteria and so suggests we should consider separate thresholds for each.

However, users’ expectations of a good or poor experience is not dependent on device, even if the achievability criteria is. For this reason the Core Web Vitals recommended thresholds are not segregated by device and the same threshold is used for both. This also has the added benefit of making the thresholds simpler to understand.
Additionally, devices don’t always fit nicely into one category. Should this be based on device form factor, processing power, or network conditions? Having the same thresholds has the side benefit of avoiding that complexity.

The more constrained nature of mobile devices means that most of the thresholds are therefore set based on mobile achievability. They more likely represent mobile thresholds—rather than a true joint threshold across all device types. However, given that mobile is often the majority of traffic for most sites, this is less of a concern.”

These are scores Chrome settled on:

Scores of under 200 ms (milliseconds) were chosen to represent a “good” score.
Scores between 200 ms – 500 ms represent a “needs improvement” score.
Performance of over 500 ms represent a “poor” score.

Screenshot Of An Interaction To Next Paint Score

Lower End Devices Were Considered

Chrome was focused on choosing achievable metrics. That’s why the thresholds for INP had to be realistic for lower end mobile devices because so many of them are used to access the Internet.

They explained:

“We also spent extra attention looking at achievability of passing INP for lower-end mobile devices, where those formed a high proportion of visits to sites. This further confirmed the suitability of a 200 ms threshold.

Taking into consideration the 100 ms threshold supported by research into the quality of experience and the achievability criteria, we conclude that 200 ms is a reasonable threshold for good experiences”

Most Popular Sites Influenced INP Thresholds

Another interesting insight in the new documentation is that achievability of the scores in the real world were another consideration for the INP scoring metrics, measured in milliseconds (ms). They examined the performance of the top 10,000 websites because they made up the vast majority of website visits in order to dial in the right threshold for poor scores.

What they discovered is that the top 10,000 websites struggled to achieve performance scores of 300 ms. The CrUX data that reports real-world user experience showed that 55% of visits to the most popular sites were at the 300 ms threshold. That meant that the Chrome team had to choose a higher millisecond score that was achieveable by the most popular sites.

The new documentation explains:

“When we look at the top 10,000 sites—which form the vast majority of internet browsing—we see a more complex picture emerge…

On mobile, a 300 ms “poor” threshold would classify the majority of popular sites as “poor” stretching our achievability criteria, while 500 ms fits better in the range of 10-30% of sites. It should also be noted that the 200 ms “good” threshold is also tougher for these sites, but with 23% of sites still passing this on mobile this still passes our 10% minimum pass rate criteria.

For this reason we conclude a 200 ms is a reasonable “good” threshold for most sites, and greater than 500 ms is a reasonable “poor” threshold.”

Barry Pollard, a Web Performance Developer Advocate on Google Chrome who is a co-author of the documentation, added a comment to a discussion on LinkedIn that offers more background information:

“We’ve made amazing strides on INP in the last year. Much more than we could have hoped for. But less than 200ms is going to be very tough on low-end mobile devices for some time. While high-end mobile devices are absolute power horses now, the low-end is not increasing at anywhere near that rate…”

A Deeper Understanding Of INP Scores

The new documentation offers a better understanding of how Chrome chooses achievable metrics and takes some of the mystery out of the relatively new INP Core Web Vital metric.

Read the updated documentation:

How the Core Web Vitals metrics thresholds were defined

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Vectorslab

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