Category: Social Media
Twitter’s VVIP gold verification badge will cost a grand a month and SMS 2FA no longer be available on free accounts
It’s been a while since Elon took over Twitter and made quite some radical changes but it certainly was not the last time he did so. In his latest attempts to make Twitter profitable, he has made some changes to verification. Many Twitter users are definitely now familiar with the yellow checkmark, most prevalent on […]
WhatsApp becomes a note taking app, working to allow sending photos in OG quality
I’m still a bit surprised that WhatsApp won the messaging battle. It wasn’t my pick back then but its simplicity won it favour with the masses and it’s now the default messaging app. In Zimbabwe it is not only the default messaging app, it’s also pretty much the internet. For many people it is where […]
ZETDC is bringing a 24-hour National Contact Center
The season we are in is notorious for weather-induced power cuts either from falling trees, broken tree branches, or lightning strikes. Let’s not forget those stealing transformer oil. The volume of fault reports is pretty high and ZETDC wants to try and manage that. Starting 1 February 2023, they will be employing a 24-hour National […]
Instagram has notes now. Feeling the pressure from BeReal
If you ask those familiar with social media platforms they will tell you that Instagram is a platform to flex on how well you are doing socially. Only the best photos and videos with luxurious backgrounds of either products or scenery. The most polished version of the person but coincidentally the least authentic version of […]
An ‘Official’ badge for that US$8 Twitter subscription? [Updated]
Things are moving quickly on Twitter since Elon Musk bought the company. Employees got fired then got called back again and the US$8 payments have started rolling in. The result, for now, is a second verification check mark with the label ‘Official’. So essentially some Twitter-verified accounts are more verified than others. And at the […]
And then it was $8. Final offer to keep that Twitter verification badge
Ever since Elon Musk let that sink in the Twitter HQ the raging debate has been, on his end, on how to make it more profitable. And the first order of business was charging Twitter subscribers a monthly fee to maintain their verification badge. The initial offer was US$20 a month. This is more than […]
It’s not your phone or your network provider, WhatsApp is down worldwide
WhatsApp is down for many people across the globe. It all started around 9:00 am CAT, many people started reporting that they could not send messages, see statuses etc. On WhatsApp web and the desktop app, I am stuck on a ‘Connecting to WhatsApp, Make sure your computer has an active Internet connection.’ Many more […]
WhatsApp is down. Again! [Updated]
At approximately 9.20 am in Zimbabwe, WhatsApp went down. The cause of the outage is still yet to be announced but with VPNs failing to connect it seems that it’s a WhatsApp failing to connect to the server. The outage seems to be global and a Meta spokesperson managed to give Reuters a statement that […]
‘Edit tweet’ button is already out, kind of, and WhatsApp working on ‘edit message’ feature
I’m glad I did not live in the typewriter era. You have to give it up to those keyboard ninjas that typed out whole novels with very few wayward key presses. Mistakes back then meant losing a sheet of paper and so trying to type fast and hitting an ‘O’ instead of a ‘P’ was […]
No, your WhatsApp calls are ‘probably’ not being recorded
“Some people just want to watch the world burn,” said our favourite butler, Alfred. If only that was just a clever movie quote. Unfortunately, this is real life and some people get kicks out of watching people scurry and scatter. The WhatsApp doom and gloom purveyors are still at it. There is a message circulating […]
The sex tape link Facebook hackers have hit Zim, here’s how to secure your account
The Facebook hacks are out of control, over the weekend two people I friended had their accounts hacked and they both had the same sex tape line from some “IG model”. I don’t them very well but it was suspicious that both had the same link tagging 98 other people they knew. This, at least […]
Mai Titi vs Chihera: internet drama setting the pace for new cyberbullying law
Internet personality and former gospel artist turned comedienne Evidence Chihera appeared before Harare Magistrate yesterday in connection with a Facebook Live where she allegedly claimed that Mai Titi’s children had been raped by a mentally ill person according to a report by NewsDay. This rivalry (for a lack of a better term) has been rumbling […]
Zimbabwe Married Men Database: Haaa guys, have we failed that badly?
We were tagged in a tweet by The App Guy – @zimexapp (real name Washington Mkombodzi) who was notifying us about an application/website in development called the Zimbabwe Married Men Database. Now, the first thing that crossed my mind is that as men in Zimbabwe have we failed so hard that an app developer sees […]
TECHNIKARI Mike Madoda & Barry Manandi: Football before social media in Zim & the state of the PSL
On this episode of Technikari, I was joined by one of the best sportscasting duos out there, Barry Manandi and Mike Madoda. I am sure all of you have heard their voices over the radio or seen them on TV and I had the pleasure of picking their brains about what football was as a […]
Social media exaggerates and so should be regulated, says ZEC. No election rigging in most cases.
What a time to be alive! Never in the history of the world has an average Joe like myself been able to communicate directly with millions or even thousands of people. Now, armed with a budget smartphone I have ‘reach’ that even monarchs just a century ago could only dream of. The democratization/decentralization of the […]
Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44bn, has many ideas including transparency on censorship decisions
Elon Musk made an offer to purchase Twitter less than 2 weeks ago, on the 14th of April 2022. The Twitter board of directors flailed about, contemplating ways of fending off the takeover. However, as it became clear that Musk was serious about the offer, which valued Twitter at $44 billion, the board had no […]
EU to force WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger to interoperate with smaller platforms. Sasai must be giddy
It is amazing that in a world of over 7 billion people of different nationalities only a handful of online platforms are popular. Such is the advantage first movers enjoy when they create platforms and amass millions of users before the competition even exists. When the competition eventually comes it will have its fans but […]
Strive Masiyiwa is leaving Facebook? Who’s following him to Sasai?
Econet Group Founder Strive Masiyiwa’s nearly six million Facebook followers will have to do without him on the platform according to a post he put up on the 7th of February 2022. “As we’re on the countdown to the last days of the platform at the end of this month, I want to remind you […]
Investment scams made up 37% of the US$770 mil lost to social media fraud
The United States of America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report earlier this week that shows a massive uptick in social media scams in 2021. The report said that fraud on social media soared to US$770 million from the US$258 million that was recorded in 2020. For scammers, there’s a lot to like about […]
ZRP lashes out at a parody Twitter account
The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) has issued a statement lashing out at a lookalike Twitter account that goes by the handle @PoliceZimb. ZRP’s statement reads as follows: ZRP PRESS STATEMENT 26 JANUARY 2022 FAKE TWITTER ACCOUNT IN THE NAME OF ZRP The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) dismisses a twitter handle dubbed “Zimbabwe Republic Police (@PoliceZimb)” […]
Twitter is going to look a lot more like TikTok real soon
Every platform is trying to copy TikTok in one respect or another. I mean who can really blame them, the site is now the most used in the world, supplanting Google… So it only makes sense that Twitter will try its hand at the short format reaction content that YouTube and Instagram have copy-pasted from […]
@pablozw1, 23K followers on TikTok in 4 months. The man is an entertainer
Today I had the pleasure of having a conversation with Michael Sibanda or you might know him by his TikTok handle @PabloZW1. He is one of the funniest guys online and it’s no surprise that he has garnered 23.5K followers on TikTok since his first post in August. You can listen to or download the […]
Meta’s (Facebook) 2021 investments and activities in Africa
Meta (previously known as Facebook) has released its ‘2021 Africa Year in Review’, an infographic capturing some of the company’s significant investments and initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa this yea, focused on driving innovation, connecting communities, helping businesses to grow and supporting the tech and creator ecosystem. The infographic highlights key Meta successes and milestones across […]
Davido raised US$486,000 in 2 days just playing around on Twitter. I’m taking notes
For those not in the know, Davido is an internationally popular Afrobeat musician from Nigeria. He has performed in Zimbabwe in the past and has a collaboration with our very own Jah Prayzah (who is not doing too bad himself). So, Davido was on Twitter one day and was feeling a little ‘playful’ and sent […]
Not even YouTube co-founder was fan of removing dislike counter, looks like it’s back
They are smoking the strong stuff over at YouTube HQ. For some reason they came out and announced they would be removing the dislike counter on videos. They said we would still be able to dislike videos, just that we wouldn’t be able to tell how many other people had disliked it too. Only the […]
You may soon be able to hit pause while recording a WhatsApp voice note
The feature that I am sure many have been waiting for has finally hit the WhatsApp beta program. According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is working on allowing you to pause while you are recording a voice note. The pause function in beta seems to be available only to a select few testers on iOS. However, if […]
Meta launches tool to help African SMEs grow their businesses on WhatsApp, Facebook & Instagram
Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has announced the launch of Facebook Business Coach, an innovative and easily-accessible way for owners of small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya and other English speaking countries to learn more about how to grow their business online with Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The Facebook Business Coach available on WhatsApp, is […]
Big Brother is watching: the govt’s social media prefects are back
There truly is nothing new under the sun. Not even in a dynamic place like the little teapot we call home, Zimbabwe. It was only a few years ago that we were making fun of the former finance minister, Chinamasa, when he was made ‘social media prefect.’ Turns out his legacy lives on, the social […]
New Twitter Spaces update basically makes it an online radio platform
Twitter Spaces, the platform that dethroned Clubhouse, is now going to be available to non-Twitter users. This means that you can send a Twitter Spaces link to that one friend (we all have one) who for whatever reason doesn’t want or have a Twitter account. have friends not on Twitter? that's weird but now you […]
Will “Meta” give Zuckerberg enough distance from Facebook & Instagram controversies?
So it happened… Facebook is now “Meta”, well the holding company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp is now called Meta. News of this was broken by The Verge last week in an exclusive that dropped before the official announcement was made at Facebook’s Connect Conference that happened last night. The metaverse kicks off So… essentially […]