$2.34 Billion Business Support, TikTok Popularity Contest & More

This Week’s Business, Tech & Marketing News

Monday, 6 September 2021 News Highlights

• An additional support package of $2.34B will become available to Victorian businesses. The package is expected to support 175,000 businesses affected by the extended lockdown.
• Updates in the Apple App Store policy will allow iPhone “reader” app developers to directly link their customers to their own sign-up website.
• Twitter is planning to update privacy features. Possible features include enabling users to archive old tweets and options to limit who can see users’ activity.

Tuesday, 7 September 2021 News Highlights

• The Bing content submission API is now open to everyone, after being a private beta for the last 2.5 years. It will allow you to submit new content and URLs directly to Bing, rather than wait for it to be crawled.
• LinkedIn are scrapping their Stories feature from the 30th September. They will be working on other short-form video features instead.
• Google has said their Google Wings drones could be picking up parcels from Australian businesses as early as within the next 6 months. Google Wings can pick-up packages under 1.5kg.

Wednesday, 8 September 2021 News Highlights

• LinkedIn are building a Microsoft-powered native video meetings feature. It will allow users to easily access a video meeting within the platform.
• Research from Kantar’s Media Reactions Survey has found TikTok ad exposure has almost doubled within the last year. This makes TikTok the favoured media channel for ads among consumers.
• Twitter is testing edge-to-edge video and picture formatting for user timelines. This is in hope the new formatting will better support visual and text-based conversations.

Thursday, 9 September 2021 News Highlights

• Parts of regional NSW are expected to be released from lockdown this weekend. Residents hope the lockdown lifting will lead to an easing of QLD’s border restrictions.
• TikTok is adding a promotion option to their advertising tools due to successful results from weeks of testing. TikTok’s Promote will allow retailers and brands boost their posts as part of an ad campaign.

Friday, 10 September 2021 News Highlights

• Established Queensland social enterprises can now start preparing applications for the Social Enterprise Jobs Fund. Eligible social enterprises could expect grants of up to $25,000.
• On the 12th October, YouTube will halve the number of subscribers needed to unlock Community posting.
• Google has announced they will be adding multiple services to Gmail, including the ability to ring another Google user with Google Meet.