Daily Archives: November 14, 2019

The cast of Friends in talks for a reunion (Picture: NBC)

A Friends reboot is officially back on the table with cast members Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry.

According to reports, the creators and stars of the hit comedy are in talks to reunite on HBO Max.

Yep, Christmas has well and truly come early!

Talks are currently underway for an unscripted reunion special, an insider told The Hollywood Reporter however, lets not all get carried away just yet.

The publication also made it clear that a deal is far from done and agreements with cast and creatives still need to be hammered out.

After breaking the internet by uploading a picture of herself and her co-stars back together, Jennifer got us all excited again when she told Ellen DeGeneres that the crew is working on something.

While it seemed to be a joke at first and Jennifer completely ruled out a full reboot, she later admitted that on the shows 25th anniversary, there might be something in the making.

Jennifer said: We would love for there to be something, but we dont know what that something is. So were just trying.

Were working on something, she then teased.

However, in September, Friends co-creator and executive producer Marta Kauffman ruled out any chance of a reunion or reboot entirely.

We will not be doing a reunion show, we will not be doing a reboot, Kauffman said.

The show was about that time in life when friends are your family. On the subject of a reboot, Kauffman added: Its not going to beat what we did.

Looks like she might have changed her mind though

Metro.co.uk has contacted Warner Bros and HBO for comment.

Friends is available to stream on Netflix in the UK.

If you've got a story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk Entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page - we'd love to hear from you.

MORE: Jennifer Aniston dubs Friends the gift of a lifetime in epic Peoples Choice Awards Icon acceptance speech

MORE: Jennifer Aniston shares ultimate Friends throwback to wish stylist happy birthday

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Friends reunion special with cast 'in the works at HBO Max' - Metro.co.uk

Last week, Real, CDiscount, EPrice and EMAG announced that their one account to rule them all model is now ready for users. Whilst it hasnt been a secret that they were planning to work together, they have pressed the magic button which allows online sellers to connect all their accounts through the International Marketplace Network.

Today, Jesse Wragg, Managing Director at eCommeleon takes a look at the pros and cons of the International Marketplace Network. On the one hand if you already sell on either Real, CDiscount, EPrice or EMAG it enables you to easily list on the other three marketplaces extending your reach, but equally its unlikely to be as effective as translating and localising your listings for each marketplace on an individual basis.

If you want to really do justice in each country youll want to tweak your feed for each marketplace. (eCommeleon enables you to upload your product data and it can then help you map, convert and optimise it for each of these channels and validate it with each channels rules and requirements).

My interpretation of the IMN is that its the cross-channel equivalent of Amazons build international listings tool. That is, sign up in one locale/channel, press the right button and pow; youre listing and selling across multiple marketplaces in multiple countries.

In theory, it sounds great. The practice remains to be seen, particularly as Amazon has plenty of issues between its own marketplaces (attributes getting confused, EANs not working properly etc.), so it will be interesting to see how this cross-platform technology works when having to deal with very different systems.

In general, the IMN seems to be a bit of a no-brainer, as long as you dont mind exporting the CSV with your orders and uploading it into your system. What they dont say is how this can be managed alternatively. For example, Real & Cdiscount both integrate well with Linnworks for order management, ePrice & Cdiscount with ChannelAdvisor. Does that mean that you could now view your orders from Real in ChannelAdvisor via the Cdiscount connection? If so, thats something to write home about. If not, sellers using a system such as this will just need to make sure that theyve got a decent buffer on their inventory in order to avoid over-selling.

Machine translation. Its getting better, theres no arguments about that. But when you look at the trouble Amazon has with converting listings internationally via the build international listings tool, its easy to see that machines cant yet be trusted to automate the process of converting data from one marketplace to another; even marketplaces under the same hat. Whilst its nice to see that Real, Cdiscount, EMAG & ePrice are working together to take on Amazon, sellers should still remember that these are still different beasts unto themselves and whilst the technical integration is now alive and well, were working with multiple channels which each have their own requirements.

Lets imagine that Cdiscount allows you to use 250 characters on titles in your category, but Real only allows 200. Sure, the system can machine translate from French to German, but what will your German title look like on Real after its been machine translated and had 50 characters sliced off the end?

If youve got an account with any of the four International Marketplace Network partner marktplaces, youre now able to sell on any of the rest, quickly, simply and at the click of a button Its a quick and easy way to expand your international reach and ideal if you want to test the waters on a new marketplace in a new country.

But, if you are serious about listing on all four channels channel you might as well do it properly. Just as you tailor your feed for each international Amazon or eBay marketplace why wouldnt you spend the time to do the same for Real, CDiscount, EPrice and EMAG?

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Is the International Marketplace Network the best way to expand? - Tamebay

On April 26, 2018, a 15-year-old named Antonio Garza sat in front of her mirror in her bedroom in Austin, Tex., turned on her phone and started talking to herself as she did her makeup. She had long, curly brown hair that she wished were straight, almost no nails at all and a red, irritated upper lip she didnt really know why her lip was red, it just was and she displayed all this for the camera.

Im dying finally! Antonio said, and for the next 20 minutes she oscillated like the teenager that she is, a kind of excited electron, bouncing between one shell of identity and the next: pimply high school freshman, femme glam diva, vulnerable diarist, camera-ready ham. Throughout, she flicked across her face dozens of makeup brushes and powders, creating cut-creases on her eyelids and contours on her cheekbones and nose, then applying fake eyelashes fluffy as kittens. As she did all this, she monologued about how she thought she was going to do a makeup channel but decided she didnt want to do a makeup channel. I need to not be annoying, and Im not doing a good job at that, Antonio said, cheerfully. I also look ugly, and Im really depressed!

Forty-five minutes later, tender, glittering and shellacked in cosmetics, she was ready for school.

A year earlier, in eighth grade, Antonio spent most of her time playing oboe and Fortnite, hanging out alone in her room and making mistakes with her eyebrows. This sounds as if it would be lame, and it was, in fact, lame. But being a depressed kid alone in your room is not what it used to be. Its one thing to be depressed and listen to the Smiths in your oversize Champion sweatshirt and write in your journal and then hide that journal away and come out and pretend you have your act together. Its another thing to be a depressed kid alone in your room in your oversize Champion sweatshirt and then make some videos that toggle back and forth, back and forth, between Im not thriving at all right now and Actually I just slayed; between using Final Cut Pro to distort your face into the shape of a waterlogged Mr. Potato Head and creating a military-grade defense shield of foundation and bronzer. That is to say, to be a gender-bending kid alone in your room making videos that capture exactly what it feels like to be a teenager right now, the whole multipolar mess of humanity deep inside your own brain, and then post those videos to YouTube even though what youve just expressed to your smartphone you probably would not say to your mother in the kitchen and definitely would not say to your classmates, all of whom (you believe, wrongly) think youre really weird.

Later that afternoon, her hair now up in a ponytail, Antonio returned to her room and apologized to her 30 YouTube subscribers for being such a failure because shed forgotten to vlog at school. Or really, she said, she hadnt forgotten to vlog at school. She just hadnt wanted to vlog at school because in every situation in her seven-hour school day, she felt uncomfortable. Also, she said, staring at the floor, she looked terrible. Which maybe you couldnt tell in this lighting. But if you could tell and you were thinking of writing Youre ugly in the comments below

Antonio paused and stared into the camera, open as a wound. Dont, she said. Please.

She titled the video Ninth Grade Makeup Transformation and uploaded it to YouTube.

Then nothing happened. Or at least nothing happened for a few days. Then right before finals week of her freshman year, Antonios phone start blowing up with notifications. On Sunday, May 13, 2018, Antonio reached 10,000 YouTube subscribers. By May 22, she had more than 100,000, and by May 31, 300,000. Kids started sending her screenshots of her face on their YouTube recommendation pages, saying: What the heck! I had no idea! Congrats!

By then, thank God, school was out for summer vacation. Antonio hung out in her room making even more videos digitally widening her brow and narrowing her chin until she looked like the alien E.T.; installing over her dark irises a pair of light blue contacts; slowing down her voice to lower it three octaves; taking mortifying trips to Target, where everybody stared at her; sharing how to get un-ugly tutorials that include so many steps you might want to die; saying: Im funny, Im not funny at all. So thats funny. Its actually Im funny though. By the time school reopened for Antonios sophomore year, she had a million YouTube subscribers, and it was basically impossible for her to attend. Because you cant be a YouTuber and go to a big public school. You just cant. Emma Chamberlain, who is 18 and who some say created the jumpy editing style Antonio now does better, dropped out. The Dolan twins, who are now 19 and who after five years of filming every aspect of their lives, including wisdom-teeth extractions, just announced that they were going to stop uploading weekly for the sake of their mental health, dropped out before her. As Antonio explained to me, to high schoolers YouTubers are the equivalent of mainstream celebrities. Each morning when she walked on campus, the same kids who ignored her for years suddenly wanted to take selfies with her in the courtyard. And the same kids shed known forever, kids who had been in her gym class or played with her in middle-school band, were like, Do you remember me? You probably dont remember me.

And Antonio was like, Um, Ive known you since we were 6.

One day this past spring, I entered my home office to find that my 14-year-old had written ANTONIO GARZA on my whiteboard in small red letters. I texted her at school to ask why.

I thought it would be funny for u to watch one of her videos, she wrote back. Cuz ur old. (She added, jk, I love you. Nice.)

My daughters entertainment philosophy not incorrect was, and still is, that TV is primarily made by old people for old people and thus is irrelevant to her. YouTube, on the other hand, at least the part of it she sees, is made by teenagers for teenagers. And not just that, its made by teenagers talking to themselves in private, broadcasting their boredom-laced secret diaries, promising (and at moments, delivering) remote intimacy. This made watching those videos low-key compelling, good background for texting your friends or doing homework (if you were not inclined just to cue up a four-hour video of a person studying, which is now a thing). My daughter also found Antonio relatable, a huge buzzword among teenage YouTubers these days.

Is this what your brain feels like? I asked.

She said yes. Then she added, more knowingly than I might have liked: You dont think in one constant line of thought. She meant both me specifically and humans in general. My brain could never.

Shutterstock

Meme accounts have taken over Instagram. According to Instagram, meme content is shared seven times more than nonmeme content on the service. The pages have grown so widespread that Instagram is hiring a meme-account liaison to work with such accounts. In 2016, Samir Mezrahi founded @KaleSalad, a tremendously popular meme account with more than 3.4 million followers. If youre looking to start an account of your own, he has a few tips.

1. No interest is too niche.

Youll be more successful if you make memes that are related to your interests. That could be your high school, your high school teams, cars, travel, you can focus on a movie, or show, or character like Shrek.

2. Straightforward handles are best.

You can have your interest and add memes at the end of the handle; try to keep it as clear as possible. A lot of accounts have the words zar, plug, memes: You can add variations if your original name isnt available. Kale Salad was a meme in itself back when I got it. Now its an old meme and kind of a dead meme, but it still works.

3. Fake tweets and viral images are eternal.

A good genre of meme is when you tap into whatever the viral image of the moment is and make it your thing. One genre of meme uses the tweet format. Thats caption on the top and one or two images below; sometimes theres text on the images. People digest that format well.

4. Be shameless.

After you post your first meme, you have to promote it. Every time you post, you should share it to your Instagram Stories. You need to tell people to follow you and check out your account. You can use some hashtags to start. Try to get anyone in your existing network to check out your account. And be consistent. A lot of people dont post enough; you can post a few times a day.

5. Go private.

Going private is a fun growth hack. You set your account to private because D.M.s are a popular thing on Instagram. Friends D.M. each other memes, and when your account is set to private, the person you send it to cant see them, so it forces them to follow you to see the meme.''

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Later in the summer, this same child introduced me to JoJo Siwa, another 16-year-old denizen of the internet. JoJo achieved some fame as a star on the reality-TV show Dance Moms but became a megastar online, just as herself. Or really an avatar of herself. Her persona is deliriously, dementedly plastic and flat, a 6-year-old beauty-pageant princess rolled out in a pasta machine. While Antonio circumscribes vast swaths of the human experience pinballing around her six-dimensional universe guileless/sophisticated; earnest/glib; confident/troubled; boyish/girlish; accomplished/bumbling; thriving/morose JoJo seems to emerge from a deep youth internet mind-set that were all Bitmoji-ed, filtered and served up on tiny screens anyway, so why even bother pretending youre warmblooded and whole? The result is horrifying to just about everybody who is not a child or a teenager, including Justin Bieber (who in the not-so-distant past committed his own teenage culture crimes). Last December, JoJo posted on Instagram an image of herself with a new car: a white BMW with a custom paint job that featured rainbows, sparkles, hearts and a gigantic airbrushed photo of her face. Bieber commented, Burn it. (Later, he apologized, and JoJo asked him to play at her 16th-birthday party; he didnt.)

My 17-year-old daughter, in contrast, watched Jeffree Star, a sort of adult male goth drag version of JoJo who joined YouTube in 2006 and currently sells $100 million worth of his cosmetics annually, and whose own identity is such a deliberately plastic work of self-creation that he has had injections, surgery and other procedures on his lips, forehead, nose, teeth and hair. She even watched videos of a fellow YouTube megacelebrity, Shane Dawson, interviewing Jeffree Star while made up and dressed up as Jeffree Star, the two of them in platinum blond wigs and matching $1,850 Gucci tracksuits.

I found this vertigo-inducing unless I viewed it as campy, Escher-inspired video art. But to my daughter it was a relief: Dawson and Star offered their fans the knowledge that you could put on just about any persona you wanted with little or no risk, as with a costume change and some cosmetics-removing wipes, you could simply make that persona go away. You could test out look after look after look, possibility after possibility. One minute your inner diva; the next, your inner nerd. You could treat the whole exercise as ironic. Or experiment with radical sincerity, knowing you could retreat into the safe waters of cynicism if the embarrassment grew too hot. My daughter found this comforting, even counterintuitively stabilizing. Every morning I go in the bathroom at school, and everybody is putting on makeup, and everybody is changing out of the clothes they wore for their mom, she told me. Like literally every morning. And everyone is saying, This is the ugliest Ive ever been, or, I look like Im in a punk-rock band, or, I look like Im an e-boy. Its just like cognitive dissonance.

It is also just like the human experience. Especially at age 16.

Antonio always knew a few things about herself. She knew she wanted to have long, straight hair, and she knew she wanted to wear so much makeup and just be like, essentially, perfect. She didnt want to look like her mom she loves her mom, and her mom is beautiful, but no, absolutely not, she told me. But neither did she want to be like her dad or her older brother. When she was younger, she was into princess dresses, art and eye shadow, and she knew she expressed herself differently from really, like, everybody I went to school with. She didnt cohere in one tidy prefab identity package. And she didnt really care.

Antonio also always knew she wanted to be a YouTuber and do makeup tutorials. But when she actually started doing them, she also realized she wanted to do makeup tutorials and not talk about makeup. By 2018, this was a viable, scrutable social enterprise, in the same way that it became a viable enterprise for Jon Stewart to make comedy shows that were no longer focused on comedy. People will look at this and say, Oh, this is beauty content like, the purpose of this content is for people to learn beauty tips, Kevin Allocca, YouTubes head of culture and trends, told me. But the truth is, once people who grew up watching makeup tutorials began creating their own makeup tutorials, the form started to morph. You peel back a layer, and the beauty stuff becomes this convention that allows you to have another set of interactions and discussions.

In response to her sudden fame, Antonio gave up a little on looks, on life and started wearing almost no makeup to school except fake eyelashes (and yes, she knows some people think its a big deal to wear lashes to school, but they take her only three minutes and they make her look more presentable, so). Her grades also fell into the dumpster. At that point, her mother relented and let her enroll in online school.

Holed up in her room for even more hours a day, Antonio kept making videos. In them, her mother occasionally reaches an arm into Antonios bedroom and deposits a mug of tea on her bureau. Or Antonio orders Taco Bell. Or Antonio rotates through Wagners entire Ring Cycle of emotions while dying her hair pink. The dramas are grand, banal, earnest and unapologetically boring. Antonio then edits them with frantic cuts, subtitles introducing bald sincerity (I am not O.K.), X-ray filters, horror genre music and satirical product placement that is also product placement. Im like, Oh, this is what happens when someone is raised on the internet, one 23-year-old friend said to me when I asked him to explain, like this person grew up thinking in GIFs.

The result is sui generis relatable and a relief, yes, to the young, but also panic-inducing. We all know were disjointed schizoid selves deep inside, yet arent we supposed to leave these selves in the bathroom mirror?

Antonio insists that shes the same in person as she is online, and its true. On a Thursday morning this fall when she opened the front door to her very decorated-for-Halloween house, she was dressed in an oversize T-shirt that covered her shorts, and we sat and talked in her bedroom while she did her makeup.

Im like, Oh, this is what happens when someone is raised on the internet.

Antonio was feeling a little overwhelmed. She was behind in physics, and behind in calculus, and she knew she needed to grind so she did not fail her classes and get kicked out of online school. But at the same time she needed to post to Instagram. This was a professional, not emotional, need: That day she was releasing merch, big black cotton sweatshirts with a single small orange pumpkin embroidered on the front. But posting on Instagram was stressful, like really so stressful, because if a post didnt receive that many likes which for Antonio was between zero and 600,000 then Antonio felt bad about it and wanted to delete it. But deleting a post also looked bad, because it revealed that you cared a pathetic amount about what other people thought. (If a post receives between 650,000 and 900,000 likes, Antonio will keep it up; she can always tell within 10 minutes, honestly five minutes, how a post is going to perform.)

So after Antonio finished her look pink half cut-creases around her eyes, glinting contours on her cheeks, nose and upper lip and misted her face with setting spray, she moved over to her unmade bed to Facetune her photos. I know some YouTubers who will post pictures of themselves taken straight from their phones, and theyre doing fine, Antonio said. Theyre probably mentally doing amazing. But she has a process: First, she gets rid of her acne. Then she color-corrects her neck, removes flyaway hairs, narrows her jawline, straightens her nose, plumps her lips digital, as opposed to analog, cosmetics, essentially. Then she moves the image over to the VSCO app to use its filters. Im not a VSCO girl, she said. Well, maybe I am.

Part of the terror of the internet, for the olds, is that this technology exploits flaws in our thinking. Pre-internet, the prevailing belief was that we had real selves and fake selves, and we cast judgment on the fakes. We took for granted that we should at least try to present ourselves to the world as coherent people with unified personalities. An avatar could only mean trouble (and often did): an alter ego, an outlet, for the excised bits; a convenient, nearly irresistible portal for the parts of ourselves we had repressed.

This foundational (maybe Puritan?) belief in the integrated self has been helpful, even necessary, in real life, because in real life we need to deal with one another in time and space. Thus its nice if our fellow humans are predictable, and you have some idea of what youll be dealing with when a person shows up. There are whole branches of psychology dedicated to trying to help us keep ourselves together. And, of course, rafts of diagnoses bipolar, schizophrenia, multiple personality, borderline personality for those of us who fail to do this well.

And yet, at the same time, we know its a ruse. We are, all of us, deeply, inalienably contradictory and chaotic. In the practical world, we pretend its not true. But in art, if people capture this multidimensionality beautifully enough Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself we herald their genius and praise them for it.

This chaos this cubism, this unleashing of our multiple selves is a feature, not a bug, of the online world. Its arguably its defining characteristic for those who grew up there. You could attribute all the jump cuts, all the endlessly iterating memes, to a destroyed attention span. But its also evidence of something deeper, a mind-set people are just trying to name. The Dutch cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker settled on the term metamodernism, a cultural position they claim is defined by neither modernisms essential optimism nor postmodernisms irony and mistrust, but as an oscillation, an unsuccessful negotiation, between two opposite poles. The sensibility is, as Luke Turner, a British artist and the author of The Metamodernist Manifesto, puts it, a kind of informed navet, a pragmatic idealism, a moderate fanaticism, oscillating between sincerity and irony, deconstruction and construction, apathy and affect, attempting to attain some sort of transcendent position, as if such a thing were within our grasp. It is nostalgic and cynical, knowing and nave; manipulative, manipulated and spontaneous. Arguably it is the dominant postapocalyptic vision of our digital times, the internets McLuhan moment, brought to us by teenagers who, as such, spend their days feeling like 10 different people at once and believe they can, and should, express them all. We all contain multitudes. The kids seem to know thats all right.

Elizabeth Weil is a writer at large for the magazine. She last wrote a profile of Venus Williams. Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian artist whose work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Pierpaolo Ferrari is an Italian photographer and, along with Cattelan, is a founder of the magazine Toiletpaper, known for its surreal and humorous imagery.

Additional design and development by Jacky Myint.

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What Do Teenagers Learn Online Today? That Identity Is a Work in Progress - The New York Times

A candidate's experience with and impression of your company are formed very early in the recruitment process. And if a candidate has a negative experience at any step along the way, nearly halfwill terminate their relationship with the company entirely. Not only that, but if you're not constantlyoptimizing your recruitment process, your recruitment metrics, like applicants per opening, application completion rate and time-to-fillwill only decline.

While there are a number of tech recruiter resources out there to help your teamimprove the efficiency of your recruitment strategy, simplifying your application process is critical to getting candidates in your pipeline early on.

This article walks you through the different factors that contribute to a successful application process with tips on how you can improve yoursand reduce time-to-fill.

To get a sense of where your application processneeds improvement, ask several members on your team to apply for an open role. Their feedback will giveyou a good sense of where in the process applicants become frustrated orconfused, causingthem to leave the application uncompleted. From there, consider the following tips for ways to improve your application processand reduce time-to-fill.

Job descriptions are a critical part of your application process because they ultimately convincecandidates to apply for an open role or not. Creating a candidate persona before you write your job description will help you determine exactly what is required for a candidate to excel in the role. Additionally, the requirements on your job post and how they are written play a significant role in who will apply for a job.

Believe it or not, the language you use in job descriptions attracts or deters candidates based on their gender. A study found that job descriptions with more masculine language attract fewer female job applicants. There are simple tools available to help reduce biased language in job descriptions, like this Gender DecoderorTextio, whichoffers a service that makes job description language gender neutral. You can also remove gendered pronouns when describing the prospective candidate.

In addition to language, job requirements also affect which candidates apply. More specifically, men are significantly more likely to apply for any given role because men apply to roles when they meet 60% of the requirements listed in a job description.Women, on the other hand, only apply to jobs for which they meet 100% of the requirements. In general, research has found that men and women interact with the recruiting lifecycles differently, so consider thiswhen creating your application process.

If you havent already, invest in an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). An ATS will help your team track candidates throughoutthe hiring process from start to finish. Utilizing an ATS will not only save your team a wealth of time throughout the process, but it can also help improve the process for job applicants.

48% of candidates drop out of the application process due to a confusing or complicated user experience on the front end of an ATS. These systems are often customizable, so your team can create an application form that includes all of the information you need with a user-friendly experience. They also have automation options, so your team can spend less time sending follow-up emails and scheduling phone interviews and more time creating close connections with top candidates.

Once youve perfected your job description and started gathering applications, ensure your application process is less than 15 minutes total. Why? Because 60% of Gen Z job seekerswont spend longer than that on a job application. Additionally, if a job application is confusing, complicated or takes too long, more than half of all candidates will abandon the application altogether.

Out of all of the complaints candidates have about the recruitment process, the second most commonis a lengthyapplication process. Alright, you get the point. Having a shorter application process is key to getting candidates further in your recruitment process, but how are you supposed to actually shorten it?

For starters, you need to strip all of the questions and information that are absolutely not necessary. At such an early stage in the process, limit the candidate information you collect to the following:

Note: Anything with an asterisk (*) is required for the candidate to submit the application.

If your team isnt planning on reading a resume or cover letter for every application you receive, dont require it. If you need that information from candidates who make it past the initial review stage, you can ask for a cover letter, resume or recommendation letters at a later point.

Attract Passive Candidates. Build Your Talent Pipeline.Recruit with Built In

The application process is a tricky balance of asking for all of the critical information needed for your team to determine a candidates potential at your company without creating an unnecessarily extensive process. From our example in the last section, you can see that we ask for minimal information from candidates.

Read up on laws regarding personal information requests such as asking about disability status, race, ethnicity, citizenship status, age, gender, sex, education, income, geographical location, marital status, parental status, military experience or criminal background before creating your application. These may be discriminatory inquiries and legal stipulations on the matter vary by state and county.

Education is a common requirement, but in most casesits more of an arbitrary checkbox thannecessary experience for a job.It also eliminates perfectly qualified candidates who may nothave had the same resources and opportunities as others. In fact, some of the most in-demand roles out there are filled by people who did not complete a bachelors degree. In 2015, only 37.7% of software developers had completed a bachelors degree. Additionally,17.3% of IT technicians, 13.4% of technical support specialists, 10.8% of customer service representatives, 10.7% of network technological coordinators, 9.7% of IT coordinators and 9.4% of marketing representatives did not complete a bachelors degrees.

Instead, companies should care more about experiences and soft skills, in addition to a few necessary hard skills, to qualify candidates. Plus, requiring fewer education requirements help companies attract more diverse candidateswithnon-traditional backgrounds.

If there is a certain hard or soft skillthat is necessary for a candidate to even be considered for the role, implement a pre-screen survey or assessment tool that tests an applicants skills. Such surveys can test for skills in coding, aptitude and personality as well as a number of industry-specific skill sets.

No matter how simple and clear your application process is, there are bound to be applicants who have questions. In order to prevent candidates from leaving the application,provide them with information they need while they are applying. You can do this in the form of a simple F.A.Q.on your career page that answers common inquirieslike:

Another optionis to incorporate a recruiting chat bot that interacts with candidates in real time to answer their questions. And if the botis unable to answer certain questions, it can gather their name and email address so a recruiter at your company can respond to them during work hours the following day. This also prevents your team from having to work off the clock 24/7 to provide a great experience for candidates.

While candidates really want a short and simple application process, they also care about having a personalized experience. Some critics are concerned that removing too much human contact from the application process may leave candidates dissatisfied and frustrated.

However, now that youve invested in an applicant tracking system, shortened your application process and automated at least some of your workload, your team will have more time to provide personal connectionsby focusing on candidates who have high potential and reaching out to them individually.

User experience is critical to ensuring a candidates experience is nothing short of spectacular. However, in order to improve your user experience, you may need the help of an ATS or from your internal developers and designers all of which are difficult resources to access and afford. With that in mind and depending on your budget and resources, here are a few areas of your application that could be improved:

Set critical fields as required so candidates cant accidentally submit their application without filling out every field.

Improve your application page load time. This will require developer assistance, but if a page takes too long to load, candidates are more likely to leave.

Allow candidates to save the application and return to finish it later. It can be difficult to complete an application in a single sitting, and candidates want to submit their best work. However, do send a reminder email so candidates dont forget about the applicationif they leave it unfinished.

Utilize multiple selection or drop down tabs to reduce information candidateshave to type out.

Cut out the amount of clicks a job seekerhas to make to submit the application. Try gettingyour application onto one page toreduce clicks.

Give progress cueslike icons for attaching files, uploading content and submitting application so candidates know the system is in the process of completing a task.

Indicate when the system completed a task with icons that say download complete or a landing page that says application submitted so candidates confidently know their application was submitted in full.

Send a follow-up email to inform candidates that their application was submitted successfully and provide them with information on what to expect moving forward.

Traditionally, candidates look for and submit job applications on a computer. However, nowadays,58% of job seekers find open roles on mobile devices and 35% actually prefer submitting their application on their phones.

Knowing this, you cant just simplify your application process for desktop users. You also need to simplify and optimize your application forone-third ofjob seekers who are applying on their phones.

For mobile applications, reduce the amount of information that needs to be typed or entered directly because that is difficult to complete on a phone's tiny keyboard. Having drop down options or allowing applicants to link to their LinkedIn profiles, websites and portfolios makes it significantly easier for people to apply on their phones.

Instead of sending follow-up emails or phone calls, you can send follow-up texts. Text recruiting is also becoming more popularas people are constantly on their phones. A lot of people spend their commute looking for jobs, and its much easier to respond to messages via text than it is over the phone or even email.

If youre planning on hosting any recruitment events, utilize this as an opportunity for candidates to apply to roles in-person. Bring printed applications or computers or tablets socandidates can apply directly online and are immediately entered into your ATS. This is a great opportunity for your team to answer any questions about your team or the application process in-person and ensure that the applications are submitted in full.

Not only that, but its much easier to make the application process more personal when youre able to chat with candidates in-person. Then, when you send a follow-up email, the candidate will know exactly who is behind the email and trust that their application is in good hands.

If you really want to get ahead of the recruitment game, test out alternative application processes. But wait, isnt mobile the future of recruiting? While mobile recruiting and applications will continue to grow in popularity, other outlets for applications are already being explored.

Exhibit A: voice assistants. So, far there is only one example of a company utilizing a voice assistant to encourage candidates to apply for open roles, and it is none other than McDonald's. Earlier this yearMcDonald's implemented its new McDonalds Apply Thru integration that allows job seekers to apply to jobs through Amazon Alexa by simply asking Alexa, help me get a job at McDonalds, and the device will ask them a few questions to begin the application process.

No matter the state of your application process, there are a number of avenues for your team to consider improving or expanding upon in order to provide candidates with a sweet and simple experience. Making these improvements will not only get candidates in your pipeline early on, but you will simultaneously improve your applicants per opening, application completion rate and most importantly time-to-fill. And if you're lookingfor more ways to improve your recruitment process,check out these related articles.

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Simplify Your Application Process & Improve Time-to-Fill - Built In

Around the middle of our meeting, observing my fingers on the computer keyboard, Lior Shamir tells me he is sure it will soon be possible to extract a great deal of personal information from my typing rhythm. In theory, Your medical condition could be gleaned just from the speed of your typing, says the Israeli-born professor. He speaks with the ease of a scientist who for years has been breaking images down into millions of fragments of information, and thereby translating reality into dimensions of which most of us are not even aware.

I have no doubt that in another 50 years quite a bit will be written about this period, he notes in his dry, analytical, measured and restrained style. They will write about how people gave all their personal data so freely to organizations, even though they didnt have the slightest idea what use is being made of the sensitive information, he continues. For a moment its not clear whether hes more outraged by the invasive collection of information or by the nonchalance with which people surrender their privacy.

Shamir, an associate professor in the computer science department of Kansas State University, has no intention of becoming part of the intrusive effort to round up everyones personal information even though probably few scientists in the world could collect it as efficiently, systematically and precisely as he. In recent years he has published a series of fascinating and widely discussed research studies, based on the advanced programs he has developed.

Using them, he is able to break down vast quantities of information into dry data and exact numbers. He has studied hundreds of political speeches, thousands of works of art, hundreds of hours of music, the performance of thousands of soccer players, and numberless images of galaxies moving through space. He has also done a comparative analysis of thousands of hours of dialogue between whales in the ocean depths, in different parts of the world.

An example is an article Shamir published last December in the Journal of Popular Music Studies, which generated considerable attention. Its a comparative analysis, unprecedented in scope, of the changes in the nature of Western popular music from the 1950s to today. He analyzed 6,150 songs, all of which appeared on Billboard magazines top 100 chart from 1951 to 2016. The program he wrote breaks down the songs content into levels of anger, fear, anxieties, love and other emotions.

The results of the study show clearly how music changed over the years, he says. The emotions that were expressed in the music of the 1950s are completely different from the emotions contained in songs of the 2000s. Todays music expresses far more anxiety, far more sadness, and there are far fewer expressions of happiness.

Shamir pulls from his laptop a detailed graph quantifying the language disparities between Eminem and John Lennon, and between Bob Marley and Elton John. All told, the research shows, since the 1950s expressions of anger and disgust have doubled, fear has surged by 50 percent and, at the same time, openness and personal security have plunged by dozens of percentage points.

The professor makes no pretense of being a music critic or a scholar of culture. But he does not want his research to remain at the level of arid graphics, and tries to impart a social-cultural interpretation to the findings. In the 1950s, music played a very different role from what it did beginning in the mid-1960s, he explains.

In the 1950s, music was meant to entertain, to make people happy. But from the mid-1960s, we see a sharp rise in the fear and anger being expressed in the songs, the immediate context of which was the Vietnam War and the flower generation that sprang up in its wake. In that period, music changed its goal; it became a tool for social protest. The leading example is Bob Dylan, who enjoyed tremendous popularity in those years. In parallel, we see the change undergone by the Beatles, for example with Nowhere Man [December 1965], their first song that doesnt deal with love and romantic themes.

Did the songs become angrier and less happy because society grew more frightened and angrier, or was it the singers who changed and suddenly developed a social and political awareness? We will never know what would have happened if Bob Dylan had created his music in the 1940s, but we can assume that there were quite a few critical artists in the 1940s, too, only their music was received with less openness than was the case in the 1960s and 1970s. So the change occurred in the public, which was now receptive to their music. In the same way, today there is far greater openness toward rap songs that contain a great deal of verbal violence, which in the past simply would not have been acceptable. You can find violent songs in the 1940s and 1950s, too, but their public consisted of small, marginal groups.

How do you account for the openness you describe?

It has to do with the fact that the style of speech in the public space has undergone a change. Things that used to be spoken in private can be heard today in public, including in the political field, which has become far more outspoken. In addition, the internet and the social networks have made artists far less dependent on the big recording companies, which is also why they are a lot less limited in what they can say.

Shamir offers an amusing example, in which the program he developed faced an interesting public test. In 2016 there was a big scandal when some claimed the theme song of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics very much resembled the song Let it Go [from the Disney movie Frozen], he relates. In the wake of this, the periodical Foreign Policy asked me to let the program analyze the song and see what it resembled. To Shamirs delight, the program did not let him down. The computer immediately identified the great musical resemblance between the two songs, he says with a satisfied smile.

In connection with computer-generated information-gathering, what leaps instantly to mind is the controversy surrounding the British firm Cambridge Analytica, which made headlines after revelations of its involvement in the 2016 U.S. election campaign. The company specialized in collecting data and analyzing information it had acquired from 50 million different Facebook profiles. With these it generated personality and behavioral models that enabled the firm to create personalized political campaigns. For every American user, a political slogan that played on his deepest fears; for every Facebook fan, an election broadcast adapted to personality, friends, hobbies, likes, desires, education, age and other information that was collected about him from his own account.

Although this whole phenomenon has often been described in terms of a danger to democracy Shamir seems to treat it as small change, as the tip of the iceberg.

What they did is dangerous and problematic, but its still nothing, he says. Im talking about the ability to create a complete model of your medical condition and your probable life expectancy from the pace of your typing, the time at which you open the computer in the morning, the frequency of your tweets, the number of Facebook friends, your age, the content of your emails, the pictures you upload to Instagram, the clips you put on Facebook, the number of hours youre active at the computer.

Today, we know that a persons walking pace can be an indication of how many years he has left to live. Through the pupils of the eyes we can know which diseases a person suffers from. There have been cases of someone uploading a picture to the social network and a physician diagnosing, through the eyes, that hes suffering from a certain disease. People wear all kinds of smart watches with sensors that record sensitive medical information, such as pulse and blood pressure.

Sounds intense? Shamir doesnt stop there: The way you move the mouse can provide plenty of information about you. Even the frequency of your blinking can supply sensitive medical information about you. A human being cannot analyze so much information, he doesnt have the tools to cope with more than a few dimensions at a time. But a program can be created that will allow you to analyze 4,000 different dimensions for every person, and at the same time cross-check the information with that of tens of millions of other people.

Who has an interest in compiling a vast digitized database about blink frequency and the waking-up habits of millions of people?

Think about what will happen when life insurance companies possess all that sensitive information and will be able to decide, on the basis of an evaluation of the lifespan of every person, whom to sell a policy to and how much to charge each client. And what about old-age homes, which obviously will prefer to accept people with a short life expectancy, who will pay a high initial price and vacate the room as quickly as possible, over those who will occupy a place for many years. Banks and financial institutions will be able to draw up a profile not only of your medical situation but also of your decision-making habits, and on that basis evaluate the prospect of your repaying a loan, or not. Employers will be able to decide on the basis of the profile whom to hire and whom to reject.

To the bone

Shamir, 47, was born in Kiryat Ono and studied computer science at Tel Aviv University. He is married, with two daughters. His wife, Mirit, also works at Kansas State, as coordinator of the program for advanced degrees. In 2003, Shamir moved to the United States, earning his PhD in computational science and engineering at Michigan Technological University. His postdoctoral work was done at the National Institutes for Health in Baltimore, where he tried to develop logarithms for early detection of arthritic diseases in elderly people.

Some arthritic diseases are incurable, but if they are caught early, its possible to delay significantly their rate of development by changing eating habits, losing weight and so on, he notes. The problem, which crops up in most of his research studies, is not a lack of information per se, but the difficulty of analyzing all the information. In this case, there were thousands of x-ray images with very minor levels of deviation, which the human eye cannot detect.

For decades, thousands of people came to the institute every few years to be x-rayed, the professor relates. When 40 percent of them came down with arthritic diseases later in life, the institute staff went back to the early x-rays and fed them into Shamirs program, with the aim of discovering a pattern that could indicate the existence of early symptoms. What the computer found is that the disease starts with the bone and not necessarily with the cartilage, as was usually thought until then, he explains now.

But why waste time talking about arthritis, when there are far more interesting subjects at hand, such as a comparative analysis between annual salary and the field performances of thousands of soccer players around the world?

The truth is that Im not really interested in soccer, Shamir admits, adding that the study sprang from a masters dissertation written in his department. He and his students drew on information collected by FIFA, the international soccer association, which included the detailed monitoring of 6,082 players from dozens of leagues worldwide (not including Israel, by the way).

The height of their leaps, speed, power, pass accuracy, ball losses, goals, assists, fouls, head-butting all told, no fewer than 55 different criteria for each player in the 2016-2017 season were analyzed. I asked Shamir about the importance of a study like this. He admitted that if hed had to invest a lot of time on it, he probably would have dropped it. Its a study that has entertainment significance. There is no exciting scientific discovery. But a few seconds later, he adds, On the other hand, billions of people around the world follow soccer, so who am I to say its not important enough?

Read more here:

Why Messi is grossly overpaid and how blinking can expose our medical history - Haaretz

I hate my job! Have you ever said that?

Chances are if youve held any position for any length of time at all, youve uttered the wordsI hate my job.It seems like a prevailing attitude these days.

Let me contrast hating your job from pursuingearly retirementorfinancial freedom because you want to have more control over your time and your life. Though some have said they hate their jobs, most want to take more control of their lives and put together a plan to get there sooner rather than later.

Im talking about those of us who say I hate my job but feel like they cant do anything about it.

There are a lot of reasons for being unhappy with our jobs. Heres a shortlist too many meetings, bad bosses, not enough vacation time, long hours, not appreciated, too much stress, not fulfilling, or not what matches my education.

Can I be honest with you? As the saying goes, these are first world problems. Sometimes I think we forget how good we have it. Ill spare you the soapbox about how good we have it in this country relative to the rest of the world. And Im certainly not suggesting that anyone should stay in a job thats causing them stress that leads to health problems.

Heres the thing that bothers me. I think we have lost perspective on work. That scares me a bit. If everyone hated their jobs and decided to quit, where would that leave the economy? It would be a mess. Thankfully, not everyone quits their jobs.

But should they? What should we do if we find ourselves in an unbearable job situation? Should we tell our boss to shove it? Stick it out?

Thats what I want to talk about in this post.

Polls and studies tell us that the vast majority of people hate their jobs. A couple of years ago, in 2017, Gallup conducted a survey on workplace happiness. In reality, it was about workplace unhappiness. The title of the study,The Worlds Broken Workplace, says it all. The results show that a staggering 85% of the workers of the world say they hate their jobs. Im not making this up. Its not that they dont like their jobs. They say they hate them.

The reason they cite the most? They hate their boss. Heres a quote from the article:

According to Gallups World Poll, many people in the world hate their job and especially their bossEmployees everywhere dont necessarily hate the company or organization they work for as much as they do their boss. Employees

Wow! And there is more:

Only 15% of the worlds one billion full-time workers are engaged at work. It is significantly better in the U.S., at around 30% engaged, but this still means that roughly 70% of American workers arent engaged. It would change the world if we did better.

Whichever study you choose to use, the evidence is clear. People are unhappy with their jobs!

I hesitate to put this first. But I understand the reality. Many of you cant see your way out of ever being happy with your current job situation. So, lets look at some ways you can find another job.

First, get thatkiller resume ready. The resume should be your best first impression. Spend time getting that together. Consult an expert if you think that will help. Have others look it over and make suggestions. Dont skimp on this step. Most get passed over. Yours needs to stand out. Make sure it does.

If youre in a job that pays $100k or more, Ladders is your best option. You can post your resume there, get into networking groups, and so much more. Even if youre not looking for a $100k plus job, its a great site to get educated on the process.

Indeed.comis another excellent place to look. Their site is much more broad-based. YOu can enter keywords into a search box describing the kinds of jobs you want. Uploading your resume is a simple process. They have profiles of numerous companies you can research. You can search by salary range, income, location, and many more.

LinkedInis another great job search site. Go to theJobs taband search for the jobs you want. Here, you can leverage your connections, get introductions, and much more.

These three would be my top choices to start the job search.

With that out of the way, I would suggest this not be your first step. Ill tell you why when I cover the next few things to do.

Im probably stepping into some dangerous territory here with this one. But if we dont do some self-reflection when things arent going our way, we are more prone to bad decisions.

Have you noticed it? The blame game is alive and well. It seems like most of us dont want to take responsibility for our actions. Thats especially true when it comes to our mistakes. Its much easier to find fault in someone else. In reality, the responsibility may not be with anyones mistake. It may have everything to do withour mindset.

Carol Dweck, who wrote a great book on the topic of mindset,Mindset, The New Psychology of Success, says the following:

Im probably stepping into some dangerous territory here with this one. But if we dont do some self-reflection when things arent going our way, we are more prone to bad decisions.

Have you noticed it? The blame game is alive and well. It seems like most of us dont want to take responsibility for our actions. Thats especially true when it comes to our mistakes. Its much easier to find fault in someone else. In reality, the responsibility may not be with anyones mistake. It may have everything to do withour mindset.

Carol Dweck, who wrote a great book on the topic of mindset,Mindset, The New Psychology of Success, says the following:

In one world, effort is a bad thing.It, like failure, means youre not smart or talented.If you were, you wouldnt need effort.In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.

Your Mindset

The latter description is the growth mindset. The former is a fixed mindset. If you have a fixed mindset in life, you will likely be miserable in your job. Heres how I described it in anarticle on the subject of mindset:

People with a fixed mindset believe their essential qualities,like talents and intelligence, are fixed traits.Rather than spending their time developing them, they spend time documenting their ability or knowledge.They believe their talent and intelligence are the keys to their success.Hard work has no bearing on it.Dr. Dweck says for those with a fixed mindset,its not enough just to succeed.You have to be flawless.Its the belief that says if youve got it, youve got it.If you dont, you dont.

Its a dangerous perfectionist mindset. Do you look at yourself as being flawless? If so, how do you think that impacts those around you at work? Be willing to examine yourself critically to look at your role in your unhappiness at work. People with a growth mindset are always looking for ways to learn and grow.

As yourself some of the following questions.

If youre one who says I hate my job, take a look at what it is you hate about it. Is it the area of the company? Do you hate your boss? Is the work boring? If you could do something else with the company, what would it be?

If, after self-reflection, you feel youve done everything you can, its time to talk to your boss. Before you do, though, get yourself in the right frame of mind. If you go in with an attitude, or with an accusing tone, it wont go well for you. If youre angry and cant get rid of that anger, dont have the conversation until youve settled down. Often, the root of the problems at the workplace comes down to communication.

Im not saying your boss isnt a jerk. He or she very well be a jerk. What I am saying is that it doesnt mean they arent willing to change. Think about what you want to say before setting up the meeting. Write down your thoughts. Talk to your spouse, partner, significant other, or a good friend. Vet it out with someone you trust. Be careful when you do that to look critically at both sides of the issue. There are always two sides to every story. As you contemplate the conversation, try to get a feel for your bosss side of the story. Look at things from their perspective.

Dont turn assumptions based on your feelings into facts. Facts are just that facts. Just because you think you know why someone does something, that doesnt make it a fact. Its an opinion. Look at the other possibilities outside of what you think.

Everyone is fighting a battle. Someone who is a jerk is likely an unhappy person. They have baggage you dont know about. You have baggage they dont know about. Understanding that aspect of the human condition is helpful when preparing to have tough conversations.

Lets say that, after answering the previous questions, you find there may be another place in the company thats a better fit. Do you have the skills or education to move into that position? If not, what would it take to get those skills?

Once you have the answer to that question, put together a plan to get that education. Most companies nowadays offer assistance to advance your knowledge. Most want to help those who wish to further their careers with their company. Pursue that education and make yourself a better employee.If it turns out that the job you want and the skills you need to get it is outside of your current company, put together a plan to get those skills or that education.

According to thePew Research studyreferenced earlier, people in management are much more likely to be satisfied with their jobs. They are salaried employees with excellent benefits as part of the job. People in retail, manual operations have fewer benefits and lower job satisfaction. The survey shows that 59% of people earning $75,000 or more in salary say they are very satisfied with their current job.

Get the additional skills, degree, or certification you need to move into the higher-paying jobs. Work on your income by working on your education and skills.

Finding other sources of income may sound far-fetched if youre miserable in your current job and working long, stressful hours. For a refresher, go back to #2 and check on your mindset. Were going to assume you want to get better and improve your position.Finding financial independencebrings options to your life. Having multiple sources of income is one of the best paths to get there.

Sides hustles for busy peopleare possible. There are numerous ways to make money that dont take a lot of time. Not sure where to start? I get it. If youre one of those people, who say I hate my job and you feel stuck, thinking about side hustles can be difficult. If that describes you, please dont give up hope. Whether youre an introvert, extrovert, or a combination of both (yes, thats possible), there are numerous ways toearn side income.

The most successful people who retire comfortably have more than one source of income. It may be frominvestments in real estate,dividend-paying stocks, businesses, or a simple part-time job. You would be surprised how little money and time it takes to get started in some of these side hustles or investments.

Dont think its impossible because you dont have the time or skills. You have plenty of both. Focusing on a plan to create additional income is a marathon, not a spring. It wont get you out of the job you hate tomorrow.

However, it might make it easier to put up with or feel better about it if you know you have a plan to move away.

I am keenly aware that anyone reading this whos in the I hate my job mindset, might find this oversimplified. Id go so far as to say it might even piss you off. I mean, no one wants to hear about the changes and steps they need to take to improve a difficult job situation. Its much easier to put the onus on another person. Perhaps you put it on the company, the culture, or all of these things.

Heres what I know. There is one and only one thing we can control in these kinds of situations. No, it isnt our boss. Nor is it the companys management (though they may be horrible). It isnt the work environment. It isnt any of those things. You know where Im going with this. The one thing we can control is us. We cant control our circumstances, only how we react and respond to them.

Its our choice. We can stay stuck in the mindset of trying to force change on others. Or we can take matters into our own hands and change the one thing we can control.

Make no mistake. Its easier said than done. I realize that. We will have a much better chance for success when the focus of the change and examination is on ourselves, rather than the one we think is the reason for our misery.

There is a lot more that we could say about this kind of situation. I like to keep things simple. The five items listed here are, at the very least, a starting point to help get you unstuck.

This article first appeared on The Money Mix.

Here is the original post:

Jobs What can I do if I hate my job? Here are 5 things - Ladders

The first time YouTube tried live-streaming, it failed. YouTube Gaming began in 2015, after Google tried and failed to buy Twitch, and as of this May the project was shuttered because it was confusing for users. It was pretty bad. It could not have been worse, to be completely honest, says the e-sports consultant and broadcaster Rod Breslau, when I reach him by phone. The failure knocked YouTube out of the race it had been in with Twitch to win the hearts and minds of the streaming class, and it kept the company from really developing a robust live-streaming community. Its death, however, was not the end.

In recent months, YouTube has been positioning itself for another run at the crown. Juiced by the impending arrival of Google Stadia, the companys first foray into cloud gaming, YouTubes been on a hunt for talent it can use to draw new viewers to its platform. Its especially wild when you consider that YouTube the most popular video platform on the planet already has stars with millions of followers. That, combined with the fact that the platform also has the most effective video distribution network on the internet, means that YouTube could reshape live-streaming in its image. That is, if it learned its lessons from the last go-round.

The bigger question, though, remains: will YouTube be able to capitalize on the opportunity?

In the last month, YouTube cut deals with Jack CouRage Dunlop and Lachlan Power, who between them commanded about 3 million followers on Twitch. While Im sure they were paid handsomely, Dunlop and Power will also benefit from plugging themselves into YouTubes scale. According to Breslau, during Fortnites black hole event, there were about three times as many people watching the hole on YouTube as there were on Twitch. According to YouTube, Powers stream alone maxed out at 198,976 live concurrents, which is a truly staggering number. To put that in perspective: Tim Timthetatman Betar, one of the most followed creators on Twitch, drew in 100,000.

More recently, the League of Legends World Championship semi-final happened last weekend, drawing in a peak of just about 4 million concurrent viewers a number that, according to Breslau, made the event the most watched e-sports event of all time in the west (excluding China). And there were more people watching it on YouTube than on Twitch.

The difference in viewership can be explained by the difference in audience. Twitch, as a platform, has a community built specifically around live streams; YouTubes community is centered around events and prerecorded videos. There isnt really a culture around streaming on the site, or at least not much of one outside of political events and lo-fi chill anime beats streams. But paradoxically, its also generally better for YouTubers to stream on YouTube because thats where their audiences are.

YouTube wants viewers to get more used to seeing live streams on the site. In an email, Ryan Wyatt, head of gaming at YouTube, wrote that part of the reason that YouTube folded gaming back into its main site was to make sure live-streaming was introduced to the entire YouTube audience.

Some YouTubers do go over to Twitch to live stream, but their viewership is nowhere near what they can pull in on YouTube; it can be orders of magnitude different. YouTube, Breslau says, is the only platform with an endemic fan base with millions of subscribers for millions of creators already. And you already have a platform with all of the subscribers on your platform. Translation: its much easier to stream to the audience you already have than it is to find a new one, because its easier to convert fans into concurrent viewers than it is to convert internet strangers into fans.

Here, Felix PewDiePie Kjellberg is probably the best example. Earlier this year he announced hed signed an exclusive streaming deal with DLive, a blockchain-fueled live-streaming platform that doesnt have a huge viewership. He has just over 640,000 followers on DLive an impressive number, but nothing compared to his YouTube audience. On YouTube, he is the most followed creator on the platform, with an utterly bonkers 102 million people. If Kjellberg ever streams on YouTube, where his videos regularly pull in millions of views, it will proverbially break the internet. Many of those 102 million people would get a notification alerting them to a stream at the same time; if even 1 percent of Kjellbergs total audience shows up, thats one million concurrent viewers.

Either way, the platform itself doesnt seem to mind: Wyatt wrote that the site planned to always invest in YouTube creators, even if part of their business is on another platform. In his message to me, he also alluded to the fact that YouTube is actually winning the streaming wars. Regardless of where Creators are streaming, they are all uploading on YouTube, he wrote, and we will be sure to continue to support them since every Gaming creator is a YouTube creator.

The point of all this is vertical integration. YouTube paying creators millions to stream exclusively on the site is just Google buying viewers for Stadia, which neatly integrates with YouTube in ways that encourage streamers to use it. While Twitch is trying to own the future of live television, Microsoft and Google are going head to head in the console wars. As Breslau says, Microsoft bought Michael shroud Grzesiek and Tyler Ninja Blevins to make Project Scarlett, its upcoming console, a success. Obviously they want to make YouTube and Mixer big platforms, but the larger tech portion of it these consoles that are coming out in the next year or two are a significant reason why this is happening.

Its also why were absolutely going to see more big names change platforms in the near future. All of this is good for streamers, of course: they get a hefty payday, sometimes in the seven-figure range, just for changing where they create their content. Its nothing to the platforms, either to them, its like paying a toll with change you found in your couch. And for viewers, its simple: if you like a streamer, youll follow them wherever they decide to go.

See original here:

YouTube enters the live-streaming fight (again) - The Verge

DAWN appeared on MBCs Radio Star on November 13 and shared some insights into his relationship with HyunA!

This was DAWNs first time on a variety show on his own, and he shared that HyunA had told him to be careful about what he said. When Kim Gura suggested that he just talk honestly, DAWN said, Im not good at lying.

DAWN and HyunA both released their new singles on November 5 and held a comeback showcase together as good-natured rivals. DAWN said, I was much lower in the rankings, but we didnt focus on the rankings, and it was just a good-natured competition. We did it because it seemed like it would be a good motivation.

DAWN went on to say, HyunA said that she was the first one to confess and say that we should date, but it was me. When I was a trainee, there was a time when I helped her for a performance. We met for the first time then, and HyunA says that she started liking me then.

When asked if hed felt an interest for her too, DAWN replied, To be honest, I didnt. Kim Gura said that was natural since she was huge star, and DAWN confirmed that was the reason.

HyunA said that she felt more interested in me because while other men showed they were interested in her, I didnt, said DAWN.

DAWN also shared a story about what their dating life is like. He said that HyunA is the scariest when she gets mad and calls him by his real name. I dont get mad much myself, he said. I always apologize first. If Im angry, then once HyunA has her back turned, Ill swear at her back so that she doesnt hear.

DAWN spoke about how he went through a difficult time after they revealed that they are dating. I tend to be really optimistic, he said. Even if I fight with HyunA,by the time I turn around Ive forgotten about it. Im not even that affected by malicious comments. But atthat time, the people that were everything to me turned their backs on me, so it was hard then. I felt like Id lost everything, and I was worried about even goingoutside in case someone recognized me.

He shared that hed managed to get over that feeling after starting to use social media for his fans. There were a lot of fans there who were supporting me, he said.

He later said that he wanted to clear up a misunderstanding thats been caused by their social media posts. He said that many people seem to misunderstand and think that HyunA likes him more than he likes her because shes often uploading pictures of them together and expressing her affection for him. He explained that he doesnt do it much because he feels awkward uploadingphotos like that himself. He clarified, I think I like her more.

DAWN was asked if hes ever thought about a potential break-up with HyunA. Ive talked about it with HyunA, he replied. People around us have said to us, If you break up after youve dated publicly, all of your posts will still be there. What are you going to do?'

DAWN explained, HyunA said, Lets not delete our photos, even if we break up. Its natural for young people to date and then break up, and its possible that we could date again. It would remain as a good memory, so I think that things like deleting all of our photos arent really our style.

He also surprised the hosts when he shared how he and HyunA confidently show their affection for each other in front of his parents. DAWN said, Ive always liked showing affection, ever since I was young. I was like that with my parents too without any hesitation.

He shared, The most recent time my parents came to visit me, HyunA lived close by too so we all met together, he said. I naturally showed my affection for HyunA in front of my parents too. My parents didnt mind at all. But HyunA The hosts joked that she must have been shocked and tried to shy away when he did that, and he laughed and said it was a bit like that. The hosts asked if theyd held hands, hugged, and gave kisses on the cheek, and he said they had.

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DAWN Shares What He And HyunA Would Do With Their Photos Online If They Broke Up, How They Act In Front Of Parents, And More - soompi

Every four to six years, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) celebrates its unity and plans its next season at a General Assembly (GA), gathering some 800 leaders from all over the globe. It takes care of administrative procedures and serves to formulate a fresh vision for the 600 million Evangelical community. The last General Assembly was to be held in 2014 in Seoul, South Korea, but was postponed until 2019.

For seven days, November 7-13, Indonesias capital Jakarta hosted the WEAs 13th General Assembly since the 1950s. A line borrowed from the Lords Prayer, Your Kingdom Come, served as main theme of the summit, uniting 92 national alliances leaders to refresh their passion and commitment to further Christs reign on the earth.

The organizers have aimed to invite three groups of people: endorsers or decision makers, who are the approving authority and direction-setters, normally composed of elder leaders; influencers or mobilizers, who have the passion, social skill and ability to mobilize people and resources; and implementers, or doers, who will get the job done, and make the plans happen at all levels, especially on the ground.

FINAL EVENING: LOVE, HUMILITY, HOPE, URGENCY

At the World Evangelical Alliance General Assembly closing evening, in a surprising visit, the conference welcomed Indonesias Minister of Internal Affairs. A moderate Muslim, he delivered an improvised talk with words about bridges between religious communities and common work towards public peace.

He had prepared a special gift: a beautiful texture map of Indonesia to WEA. In return, Secretary General of the WEA Efraim Tendero gave him a medallion of peace as a recognition for his efforts to promote security and peaceful atmosphere in Indonesia.

The final plenary session was led by George Verwer, founder of Operation Mobilization. Dressed in a long-sleeve shirt portraying a map of the world, he spoke about being thankful for what God has already given. In his typical radical voice, the 81-year-old veteran ignited the audience with a calling to serve the Lord with love, humility, hope, urgency. He accented on radical grace leading to radical discipleship. Praise the Lord! If He can use a struggling, 81-year-old man like me, He can use anyone else!, ended George Verwer under standing ovations from the assembly.

In a final prayer, two young people prayed a commissioning prayer over the WEA national alliance leaders.

WEA PLEDGE: 4 COMMITMENTS

The WEA General Assembly closed with a pledge of four commitments:

(1) Articulating Evangelical essentials in the 21st Century

Evangelical essentials are timeless, but how they are presented to others in society requires careful consideration. Sensitivity, intentionality and boldness are needed to transmit these essentials effectively.

(2) Being authentic followers of Jesus

An authentic follower of Jesus follows Him personally and in community. Every Christ-follower should be engaging with others and inviting them into a journey of Christ-likeness in every area of their lives. Authentic followers reflect the image of God in who they are and all they do, as the fruit of sanctification, for Gods glory.

(3) Intergenerational leadership

As different parts of the Body of Christ, each generation offers unique gifts to advance the disciple-making effort. Congregations (and other communities and formations of Christ-followers) that incorporate the principle of intergenerational differences and capitalize collaboratively on the wisdom of members from each generation.

(4) Global focus, national impact

Following Jesus takes place within the context of His body of believers the Church locally, nationally and globally. Unity matters to the WEA. This unity will be demonstrated in a shared focus on holistic disciple-making during the next decade. The WEA is committed to maximizing its effectiveness by establishing and building up national alliances, strengthening its commissions, task forces and initiatives, while simultaneously nurturing new and creative networks and movements to accelerate spiritual formation.

MAPPING THE GA WEEK

The conference had opened on November 7 with a spectacular ceremony and then proceeded with plenary sessions, workshops, networks and business sessions. Every day of the GA weighed upon a general theme: Kingdom, Generations, Renewal, Unity, Leadership.

Twelve main sessions captured the hearts and imagination of the attendants: Your Kingdom Come; State of the WEA; The Kingdom in 21st Century Cities; Urgency of Disciple Making; Generational Discipleship; New Breeds of Leaders; Disruptive Innovations; Concert of Prayers; Reinforcements or Replacements; Mindset Shifts; Recalibrate, Realign and Resurgence; Commissioning.

Halfway through the assembly, the participants had an opportunity to make a pause for recalibration, realignment, and renewal as they joined 6:00 AM worship services with local believers. After this early start, the day proceeded with more downtime, local excursions and regional meetings for reflection and fellowship.

WATER THAT HEALS THE LAND

The new week began with Rev. C. B. Samuel, advisor of Micah Global, returning on Ezekiel 47:1,8-12. He said that every teaching about the Holy Spirit which does not have a foundation in both the Old and the New Testament, cannot be Biblical. Rather than the transforming missional engagement of the Holy Spirit, today His presence is only sought after as entertaining and experiential. The imagery of Ezekiel is one of water flowing out from a temple. In the NT, these metaphors would refer to the Spirit and the Church.

In v.9, the water flows towards the Dead Sea, and the sea waters were healed, because wherever the river goes, everything will live. The problem with mission today is that our talking about the Holy Spirit has been confined between four walls, Samuel said. The church is church only when it is missional. In His Kingdom the lion and the lamb will be together. The Jew and the Gentile will be together. This is the character of the Kingdom.

CONCERT OF PRAYERS FOR EVERY NATION

A challenging message by Dick Eastman, International President of Every Home for Christ, engaged the audience in a message, entitled Concert of Prayers. He followed up on a song preceding his talk that said, Its Your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise.

He opened by quoting Dr. A.T. Pierson, Wherever the church is aroused and the worlds wickedness arrested, someone somewhere has been praying. Christians should engage effectively praying for every country round the world. To lay a foundation for prayers, Dick Eastman outlined five main areas to focus: Open hands (in Mt. 9:37-38 God gives us the Great Condition: prayer); Open doors (Col. 4:2-3); Open minds (Acts 26:17-18); Open hearts (2 Cor. 4:3-4); Open heavens (Isaiah 45:8).

With the help of maps containing the name of every country, the audience spent focused minutes in prayer. To make sure every single nation is prayed for, the map lists country names grouped within the days of a month. Every delegate at the GA interceded for the nations listed on the date of his birthday.

RICH HISTORY OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLIES

The World Evangelical Alliance is a network of Evangelical communities in 130 nations, and 100 organizations, representing some 600 million Evangelical Christians. According to its webpage, the WEA seeks to strengthen local churches through national alliances, supporting and coordinating grassroots leadership and seeking practical ways of showing the unity of the body of Christ.

The organization was founded in London back in 1846. Today, it embraces member-bodies whose identity is rooted in historic Biblical Christianity. The WEA affirms the Biblical unity of the Church celebrating diversity of practices and theological emphases consistent with its Statement of Faith, while at the same time recognizing the dynamic tension between unity and diversity.

Every four to six years, the WEA holds a summit for vision renewal, connecting networks, and financial reporting, as well as holding an election of new International Council. The event is called General Assembly, and during the past three decades was held in Manila, Philipines (June 1992), Abbotsford, Canada (May 1997), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (May 2001), Pattaya, Thailand (October 2008). During this time it was consecutively led by Agustin Vencer (1992-2001), Gary Edmonds (2002-2004), Geoff Tunnicliffe (2005-2014), and presently by Bp. Efraim Tendero.

The mandate of Bp. Tendero was coming to an end in February 2019. However, the International Council had decided to extend his term by another year, so that there would be adequate focus on the Jakarta General Assembly. To facilitate the recruitment and on-boarding of an incoming WEA Secretary General, the council has established a human resource group tasked with setting up a Search Committee.

During the past couple of years, the organization accepted 16 new members from various places round the world. Since April 2019, whenever a new national alliance is accepted as a member of one of its eight Regional Alliances (Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Europe, Latin America, North America, Middle East & North Africa, South Pacific), it automatically also becomes a member of WEA.

BUSINESS PROCEEDINGS AND ELECTIONS

At a Monday morning business session, the General Assembly proceeded to grant mandate to its International Council. Eight of its members had already been nominated by the Regional Alliances and voted in a few days earlier. The session needed to accept the reports of the WEA IC Chairman Shana and Secretary General Tendero, to take care of electing the rest of the council, as well as to discuss some amendments in its by-laws.

The voting affirmed that the new WEA International Council would consist of fifteen members, including: 8 regional directors (Goodwill Shana, Noel Pantoja, Desmond Austin, Frank Hinkelmann, Marta Gaspari, David Guretzki, Bassem Fekry and Brian Winslade); 5 members at large (Mario Li Hing, Palmira dos Santos, Yamini Ravendran, Snehal Pinto, Kenneth Artz); one emeritus member (John Langlois) and the Secretary General Efraim Tendero. The mandate of the new council commences in November 2019, and will continue until the next WEA General Assembly. It is intended to represent the cultural mosaic that is the fabric of todays global Church.

In addition, the congregation discussed several amendments in the organizations by-laws: (a) that Regional Alliances would be formed on geographical (and not linguistic or cultural) basis; and every national alliance would only able to participate in one Regional Alliance; (b) that if a new organization from a country that already has a national alliance member of WEA applies for membership in a Regional Alliance or WEA, its application will need to be supported by the existing WEA member from that country; (c) that acceptance of a new member is based on their consent to abide by the WEA by-laws; (d) that in the case of membership termination of a national alliance, WEA would need to have the agreement of the corresponding Regional Alliance; (e) that in case of postal or electronic voting, a lack of reply on behalf of the International Committee members would be counted for abstention instead of affirmative (as it was so far).

After heated debates, the counting of ballots first showed 76% in favor for the changes suggested by the Spanish Evangelical Alliance. According to the organizations by-laws, any amendment in the document can only come in effect with a majority of 75% affirmative vote of the present voting members. Later in the evening at the plenary session, however, the International Committee chair Dr. Goodwill Shana announced that there had been a miscalculation of the ballots percentage. With a 37:13 vote (not counting abstentions), the math showed that only 69% of the delegates were in favor of the amendments. This was insufficient for a valid decision, and thus the by-laws remained unchanged.

For the first time in decades, the WEA announced a budget without financial deficit or debt. The issue had hung as a heavy burden for the past few administrations, and thus the Secretary General expressed his gratitude to the Lord for this achievement.

The WEA is a family of a number of structures and networks that work together constantly. Since 1974, it has maintained six commissions: Theological, Missional, Religious, Womens, Youth, Information Technology. At Jakarta, some of these commissions received new directors.

LAST REFLECTIONS AND PLENARIES

As a last morning reflection, Rev. C.B. Samuel spoke about what kind of leaders are able to bring hope to the world. In Ezekiel 34, God expresses His frustration with leaders who do not take care of the flock. They build empires, they are brutal, and have ruled harshly.

I am concerned with Christian leaders who come from corporate culture and bring in a type of thinking that cares about achievements, but does not care about people, Pastor Samuel admonished the audience. In that same chapter, God commits to send a shepherd to take care of his people. It is easier to develop leadership in a servant, than to develop servanthood in a leader. God needs shepherds after his own heart, concluded C.B. Samuel.

Youth are leaders today; not just tomorrow, insisted Pastor Tan Seow How, of Heart of God Church, Singapore. Do not entertain youth; empower them. Youth need to be invited, involved, included before they can be influenced and impacted. Instead, we wrongly attempt impressing them.

In two consecutive plenary sessions entitled Reinforcements or Replacements, and Mind Shifts to Raise and Release the Next Generation of Leaders, pastor How inspired the conference to create space to empower youth. In traditional Protestant culture, How said, the tendency is: believe-become-behave-belong. However, the mindset of youth culture is radically different: belong-believe-become-behave. Three young people from Heart of God Church stepped on stage sharing how their life was changed as they joined the family of the youth focused ministry.

WEA ON THE WEB

In a designated app, the organizers packed information on GA program, speakers, resources, stories, partners and sponsors. It also provided translation help, a prayer wall, and options for connecting.

On its YouTube channel, the WEA has set up a video playlist, regularly uploading recordings from the GA. Synopses of stage talks can also be found on the event blog. The organizations Twitter account @WEAGA2019 kept feeding relevant information, interviews and snapshots of the event, while a hashtag #jakarta2019 was promoted to mark social media interactions and references.

A new app that had been launched only months earlier, was presented at the assembly. It is developed by Linking Global Voices, a ministry aiming to serve the global missions community by focusing on the unique role of networks. The app is called GENMobile, and is designed to be a place to discover and serve alongside with other networks, collaborating as followers of Christ. Every national alliance or network can have its own profile (for invitation, contact here), presenting its own contact info and ministries, as well as receiving an opportunity to search for and connect with Christian networks across the globe. The application was presented by Eldon Porter, Consultant for Global Engagement on behalf of Linking Global Voices. In a day and age of networking and crisscrossed peer-to-peer communications, of personal linking and flat interconnectedness, GENMobile arrives as a timely and incredibly useful gizmo. The app is intended specifically to serve as a network of Christian networks.

In a similar endeavor to meet contemporary tendencies of interpersonal communication and peer-to-peer encouragement, the Global Institute of Leadership (GIL) was founded to bring together national alliances leaders from around the world via a platform for mutual support and training. GIL is an initiative of WEA administering both online and on-site peer learning communities. The grid sign up walks the participant through a questionnaire of their strong skills and ministry needs. Based on this information, the institute later facilitates for personal connections, as well as more specialized training as needed.

PARTNER MISSION IN FOCUS

A number of networks passionate about reaching and awakening a generation partner under WEA: Converge (aimed at youth); GCF (reaching children); 1for50 (training children); Sports Movement (children & youth); 414 movement (children & youth).

The ministry and vision of several world missions was featured during the WEA GA.

The 4/14 Movement involves passionate focus to reach, rescue, root, and release this emerging generation into the dream of God for their lives. The organization is explicitly intentional about partnering with leaders of the world on various levels for the sake of acquainting children and teenagers with God. The organizers announced relaunching their 4/14 Training Academy intended to equip Christians. A 4/14 global leader summit was announced for May 2020.

Global Institute of Leadership (GIL) is a division of the WEA. Interim chairperson of GIL Dr. Brad Smith said, The GIL is set up to facilitate regional face-to-face and virtual peer learning to strengthen relationships between alliances. It is a long-term, decentralized initiative.

#Gospel is an organization created to bring the gospel to the current generation in ways that sync their culture and uniqueness. The group provides discipleship tools to engage the next generation with the gospel, utilizing social media, video content, and the book #Gospel: Life, Hope, and Truth for Generation Now. It is a book/media project that breaks down Pauls explanation of the gospel in Romans in a way that is accessible and engaging for culture today. This project is designed to use current cultural references and stories to draw us into a thoughtful conversation about what the Gospel really is, and how it radically alters our everyday lives.

Compassion International is a Christian child development organization. Founded back in 1952, it partners with more than 7500 local churches to release children from spiritual, economic, social and physical poverty in Jesus name. Currently, the organization serves over two million babies, children and young adults in 25 countries. The ministry is Christ-focused, Child-focused and Church-based.

Tearfund is a Christian charity called to follow Jesus wherever the need is greatest. To overcome the worst effects of poverty and disasters, Tearfund works alongside local churches and other locally-based organizations in over 50 countries to help people realize their plans for a better future.

World Vision is an international partnership of Christians whose mission is to follow the Lord in working with the poor and oppressed to promote human transformation, seek justice and bear witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God.

Other partners of the WEA GA were: The Global Leadership Summit Youth (leading the worship sessions); Youth Force (setting up the video and tech support); and the Sentul International Convention Center (providing premises for the conference).

CLOSING RECOGNITION OF WEA SERVICE

In a session of appreciation and gratitude, the organizers gave plaques of recognitions to previous WEA leaders like Augustin Vencer and Geoff Tunnicliffe, as well as to current figures like John Langlois and Brian Stiller.

John Langloiss plaque of recognition was handed for his fifty years of faithful and tireless service in providing leadership to WEA in many areas, including theology, religious liberty, governance and accountability. Since the previous 2008 General Assembly, Langlois has been elected emeritus member for life in the WEA International Council.

We have this incredible infrastructure; we have those beautiful ministries of WEA; we see such tremendous needs in the world! And what God has created among us is astounding!, emotionally exclaimed Brian Stiller, Global Ambassador of WEA, after he was handed plaque of recognition for his timely interventions over several decades, helping to firm up WEA sustainability. All that Hes been about in our lives together there is something going on in the Heavenlies we know nothing about. But by His Spirit we can link hands together and accomplish His will. As we go from here, I pray that we will leave in hope, and in risking faith!

With a Scriptural blessing from Joshua 1:17, the General Assembly prayed for the newly elected International Council: Just as we obeyed Moses in all things, so we will obey you; only may the Lord your God be with you as He was with Moses. Medallions of recognition were given to every member of the governing body of the WEA.

A SENSE OF NEW MOMENTUM

Thus, after an exuberant week with a beautiful texture of plenary messages; a spicy bounty of Indonesian cuisine, a plentitude of topical workshops and networks, a delightful profusion of worship experience, and deep sense of Christs inspiration and guidance, the Jakarta General Assembly 2019 officially closed.

The delegates left Indonesia with a sense of destiny and a new momentum, looking forward to a decade of the Spirits moving in unique ways, awaking and raising a new generation, and furthering Gods Kingdom on this earth.

See more here:

With a recalibrated vision WEA commits to further God's Kingdom - Evangelical Focus