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Fired Twitter and Google Employees Create Rival Social Media Platform

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Fired Twitter and Google Employees Create Rival Social Media Platform

Sarah Oh, a former human rights advisor for Twitter, and her friend Gabor Cselle, a former Director at Google, have teamed up to create T2, a rival service to Twitter.

Currently, in beta, T2 offers a post feed with a 280-character limit. However, according to Oh, that’s not the only difference between T2 and Twitter. “We really do want to create an experience that allows people to share what they want to share without fearing risk of things like abuse and harassment, and we feel like we’re really well positioned to deliver on that,” Oh told CNN.

There have also been many creators who have teamed up to create Twitter-esque social media platforms to attract those users who have left Twitter after expressing their distaste for the app following Elon Musk’s takeover. For example, the founders of Instagram announced Artifact, “a personalized news feed” powered by artificial intelligence, a description that quickly earned it comparisons to Twitter. According to CNN, it resembled news reader applications like Apple News or the defunct Google Reader. Artifact displayed popular articles from large media organizations and smaller bloggers in a main feed, tailored to users based on their activity and selected interests. 

Additionally, Alphonzo “Phonz” Terrell, who served as Twitter’s global head of social and editorial for three years, and  DeVaris Brown, who served as a product manager lead, were let go by Musk and have also teamed up to create their own social media platform, Spill.

According to The Insider, Spill, named for the phrase “spill the tea,” will use blockchain to compensate users for popular posts and include a feature called “tea parties” where users can gather online or in real life to connect. “While Spill is for everyone, we are catering to culture drivers who frequently set new trends yet routinely get overlooked and under compensated,” Terrell tweeted in his announcement of the app. “Yes, we mean Black creators, Queer creators, and a variety of influential voices outside the U.S.”

Following the app’s announcement, Terrell tweeted that Spill had received 20,000 reservations for handles within 12 hours.

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What Can Google’s Music AI Do?

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Google recently announced that its researchers had created a “music-making” AI bot that generates original music from any text. Whether it’s a paragraph-long prompt or a one-word phrase, this new technology can transform it into melodic audio. The model system is called MusicLM.

So far, the function is not open to the public. The tech giant has released snippets of audio from songs created using short descriptions that can craft various genres, vibes, and even specific instruments.

MusicLM has been described as a “model generating high-fidelity music” from text descriptions like “a calming violin melody backed by a distorted guitar riff.” The model system can generate music at 24 kHz that remains consistent over several minutes,” according to a report by Cornell University.

The study also reveals that the model system can transform “whistled and hummed melodies” according to the specific style described in a text caption.

It’s unclear when the Google AI music maker will be released to the public, as it will likely stir conversations about intellectual property and copyright infringement. It will be interesting to see how the tech giant rolls out the platform in the near future.

Snippets of the AI-generated songs have been uploaded to Google’s Github account. You can listen here.

Is Google’s Music AI Open To The Public?

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Just when you think technology can’t be more advanced, something new pops up. Before, it was NFTs, and now, it’s AI. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has slowly seeped its way into every facet of our lives, so it’s no surprise music would be next. Google, one of the world’s leading tech giants, announced it had developed a music-making robot that will be able to create “original” audio from texts and prompts.

The Verge reports that Google researchers have created an AI that can “generate minutes-long musical pieces from text prompts, and can even transform a whistled or hummed melody into other instruments.” The model system is called MusicLM.

MusicLM is even said to be able to imitate human vocals, despite having a few kinks, including a grainy or staticky sound.

Currently, there is no way for users to play around with this on their own, but Google has uploaded several 30-second snippets of songs that have been created through this process. The songs were crafted using ” paragraph-long descriptions that prescribe a genre, vibe, and even specific instruments.” Longer pieces could even be generated by one or two-word phrases like “melodic techno” and “futuristic club.”

There is even a “story mode” where the AI model is given a script to modify between prompts.

It has not been announced when the technology will be available for public use, but it will presumably be in the near future.

Justice Dept. Sues Google Over Digital Advertising Dominance

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The U.S. Department of Justice and eight states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on Tuesday, seeking the breakup of the company’s online ad business.

Antitrust lawsuits are a type of class-action lawsuit in which individuals, organizations, or agencies file for claims of anticompetitive business practices which led to unfair competition, price fixing, or other types of fraud. The goal is to keep the market free, open, and competitive. The importance of this is that this is the second major antitrust lawsuit filed against Google by the Justice Department in the last three years, and if successful, it could force Google to sell off much of its ad business. The suit states, “Competition in the ad tech space is broken, for reasons that were neither accidental nor inevitable,” the filing reads. “Google has corrupted legitimate competition in the ad tech industry by engaging in a systematic campaign to seize control of the wide swath of high-tech tools used by publishers, advertisers, and brokers, to facilitate digital advertising.”

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said monopolies “threaten the free and fair markets upon which our economy is based.” He added, “We will aggressively protect consumers, safeguard competition and work to ensure economic fairness and opportunity for all.” Whereas, Peter Schottenfels, a Google spokesman, said the lawsuit “attempts to pick winners and losers in the highly competitive advertising technology sector.”

The Department of Justice further claims that Google is illegally using its monopoly power and should be required to divest a host of entities that allow it to carry out the allegedly offending behavior. Prosecutors must prove that Google holds a harmful monopoly in a ‘clearly defined market.’ Google can argue that its services are free to its consumers, making It tough to prove how its market dominance harms them.

As for the next steps, Google now has a chance to respond to the DOJ’s initial complaint. Antitrust suits like this one can take years before they reach a resolution.

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Nas And Google Invest $20 Million Into A South African Video Game Publisher

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Nas never really struck me as a gamer, but he has been a shrewd investor over the past couple of decades, so his investment in South African mobile game publisher Carry1st actually makes perfect sense. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Nas joined venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Google, and League Of Legends developer Riot Games in raising $20 million of financing for Carry1st, which is known for publishing Tilting Point’s SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off. Carry1st is based in Cape Town and looking to expand on its 96 percent monthly revenue growth, moving into games development and pro gaming.

Cordel Robbin-Coker, co-founder and CEO of Carry1st, said in a statement, “We’re excited to partner with this world-class group of investors who, in addition to capital, bring expertise across gaming, fintech, and web3. In 2021, we launched multiple games and digital commerce solutions achieving really strong growth. Together we can accelerate this growth and achieve our goal of becoming the leading consumer internet company in the region.”

Nas’ other recent investments include involvement in cryptocurrency and NFTs, which he’s used to split streaming rights to two of his recent songs with fans, and Audius, an artist-driven streaming platform. Of course, he’s also got his label and media company, Mass Appeal, which has released projects from Nas himself, Boldy James, Dave East, Run The Jewels, and more. If his latest bet pays off, he’ll have a toehold in a whole new arena (shooter, boom), becoming a legend in the rap game and video game worlds.

Olivia Rodrigo, DMX, And Travis Scott Lead Google’s Top Trending Searches Of 2021

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At the end of every year, Google shares lists of the top trending searches in various categories, which they note “are based on search terms that had the highest spike this year as compared to the previous year.” Now they’ve dropped their 2021 rankings and a lot of music figures have found their way on the lists.

Globally, DMX was the tenth top-trending search overall, due largely to his death earlier this year. On the top songs list, Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” leads the rank and is followed by a pair of Lil Nas X songs: “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” and the Jack Harlow collaboration “Industry Baby.”

When you narrow down to the top trends of just the United States, DMX is the second biggest trend overall. Meanwhile, Travis Scott and Morgan Wallen are both in the top ten top-trending people. Musicians also have a firm hold over the “celebrities search together” category: “Kim and Kanye” are No. 1, followed by “Kanye and Jeffree Star” (No. 4), “Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal” (No. 5), “JLo and A-Rod” (No. 6), “Ben Affleck and JLo” (No. 9), and “Selena Gomez and Chris Evans” (No. 10).

As far as the music-specific lists for the US, Scott leads under “musicians and bands,” while “Drivers License” is the top trend under songs.

There are more music-related searches sprinkled throughout the lists, so find the global trends here and the US trends here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.