Welcome to the Connected Church News!
Top 5 latest Digital, Social Media, AI & Web3 News in 5 minutes, to help your ministry stay on top of industry trends.
This week, we have news about Android, Meta, Mastercard, TikTok, WhatsApp.
🗞️ News 1: Android Releases New Features for Google TV, WearOS and Google Home
Android announced that they are adding multiple new features to the operating system. These features are going to impact the way we interact with other Google products like Google Home, Google TV, Wear OS, Android Watch. But I wanted to highlight a few features that I think are going to impact consumer trends globally. Considering how much Android is being used, millions of people use the Android operating systems on a day-to-day basis. So it’s important for us to watch these new features as they’re rolled out. First is Google TV. Google TV announcement says it’s easier to access shows you love and find new favorites with more than 10 free channels available from Google TV. Basically, Google is adding free channels into Google TV, bridging the gap between traditional television and online television. With respect to wear OS, you can now switch on and off all your smart appliances at home directly from your watch. You can run assistant routines, you can set your status and so on.
🗞️ News 2: Meta Celebrates 10 Years of FAIR, AI Research, Releases New AI Models
Meta released an article last week celebrating 10 years of their AI team called FAIR, F-A-I-R, which stands for Fundamental AI Research Team within Meta. It is probably Meta’s way of showcasing that AI is not a new thing to them. They’ve been at it for 10 years now. The article outlined the various projects the AI team has been working on, the progress they’ve made, the contribution they’ve made, and so on. One of the things I like about Meta’s AI projects is their inclusion of multiple languages. The way they make translation easier is quite remarkable. Especially in this article, they talk about the launch of a new AI model, AI translation suites are called Seamless Communication. Any technological development in translation and multilingual models should be something that we should pay attention to because this impacts our work globally as nonprofits and ministries.
🗞️ News 3: Mastercard Launches its Own Generative AI Chatbot, ‘Shopping Muse’
Mastercard announced that they are launching their own generative AI chatbot assistant called Muse, Shopping Muse. This, as the name says, is specifically focused on e-commerce and shopping, which is the fundamental business model of Mastercard, which is a credit card service provider, digital payment service provider around the world. This has a few interesting features that I wanted to bring to your notice. This chatbot not only acts as a sales assistant in the sense people can come and say, Show me certain products of certain colours, and if they don’t like it, they can say, Change the colours, change the model. It’s almost like having a conversation with the real person inside a shop. But this chatbot also has additional features like future prediction. This can predict what products these customers might want in the future. In this holiday season, if you are a nonprofit or ministry that has shopping or e-commerce built into any of your organisational needs, then this is something you might want to check out.
🗞️ News 4: TikTok Launches ‘Artist Account’ & Announces ‘Open House’ AR Event
Couple of announcements from TikTok. Tiktok has announced that they are launching a new set of features to help musicians and artists become more discoverable on the platform under the banner of artist account. Even though it’s called artist account, right now, it only includes features for musicians. Eventually, it looks like they will add other features for other type of artists as well. Right now, if you are a musician, you get an artist tag below your name, and you can have a separate tab called Music. You can highlight certain type of music even before you release it. You can start promoting it. There are lots of features specifically for musicians to check it out. The next news is about their upcoming event on December 12th called Open House, which is a AR effects-based event. If you are a non-profit church or ministry focusing on adding AR in the coming days to your media ministry, then you might want to check out. We will link to the details in the show notes.
🗞️ News 5: WhatsApp Releases ‘Secret Code for Chat Lock’ Security Feature
Whatsapp has announced that they are adding one more additional security layer for chat options. They are bringing in secret codes that can be added to the chat lock feature. Chat lock is a feature that they released a few months ago, and this allows you to lock a particular chat just to maintain privacy. Now, on top of it, you can add a secret code. This could be particularly useful for non-profit churches and ministries where you use one WhatsApp number shared with multiple people, for example, your office staff or your prayer group leaders or something like that. Then those type of use cases, you can use this to lock specific chat conversations that you don’t want everyone to see. You can add two layers to it. Apart from blocking, you can also add a secret code layer. Whatsapp also says that you can hide all locked chats from the chatlist if you choose to do so.
News Source Links
🗞️ News 1: Android Releases New Features for Google TV, WearOS and Google Home
Source: Google
🗞️ News 2: Meta Celebrates 10 Years of FAIR, AI Research, Releases New AI Models
Source: Meta
🗞️ News 3: Mastercard Launches its Own Generative AI Chatbot, ‘Shopping Muse’
Source: Mastercard
🗞️ News 4: TikTok Launches ‘Artist Account’ & Announces ‘Open House’ AR Event
Source: TikTok | Open House
🗞️ News 5: WhatsApp Releases ‘Secret Code for Chat Lock’ Security Feature
Source: WhatsApp
Author of The Connected Church. Social Media and Digital Marketing Consultant for Nonprofits, Faith-based Organisations, Churches, and Ministries.
