iWorld
Eros Now Joins Freesat’s OTT Line-up
MUMBAI: Eros International PLC (NYSE: EROS) (“Eros”), a leading global company in the Indian film entertainment industry, announced today that Eros Now, its cutting edge digital over-the-top (OTT) South Asian entertainment platform, is now available to Freesat consumers across the UK for a subscription fee of £5.99 per month. Freesat is the UK’s leading subscription-free satellite TV platform with a reach of over 2 million households. With over 128 million registered users and 13.0 million paying subscribers as of September, 30th 2018, Eros Now offers the largest library of over 11,000 Indian films, music videos, TV shows and originals.
Eros Now is the number one destination for Bollywood (Hindi) and other regional Indian content. The platform offers access to a selection of HD entertainment content which is constantly updated to include the best of blockbuster movies in Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Punjabi as well as Indian music and music videos.
The addition of the Eros Now app enables Freesat customers to enjoy premium Indian entertainment on-demand. Complementing the current on-demand offering, which includes iPlayer, ITV Hub, Netflix and YouTube amongst others, Eros Now will help Freesat bring together the best content from the South Asia’s key TV and film selection.
Alistair Thom, Managing Director at Freesat, said: “We are delighted to work with Eros Now to strengthen our growing on-demand line-up. At Freesat, we are constantly looking at partnerships which deliver great value to our viewers and add variety to the content we offer. Our ambition is to provide the best of TV from all over the world and introducing this exciting Bollywood platform to our viewers is a great step in that direction.”
Rishika Lulla Singh, CEO, Eros Digital at Eros Now, said: “Our integration with Freesat is a further step in our endeavor to reach out globally to those seeking the best in Indian entertainment across multiple screens and seamless user experience by being platform agnostic. We are excited to bring our app into Freesat’s 2 million homes and provide them with rich and compelling content from movies and music, to TV shows.“
iWorld
WhatsApp may soon let users to pick who sees their status updates
The messaging giant is borrowing a page from Instagram’s playbook as it pushes to give users finer control over their social circles.
CALIFORNIA: WhatsApp is quietly working on a feature that could make its Status function considerably smarter and considerably more private.
According to reports from beta tracking platforms, the app is testing a tool called Status lists, which would allow users to create named groups such as close friends, family and colleagues, and control precisely which group sees each update. It is a meaningful step up from the platform’s current blunt instruments, which offer only three options: share with all contacts, exclude specific people, or manually select individuals each time.
The new feature draws an obvious comparison with Instagram’s Close Friends function, and the resemblance is unlikely to be accidental. Both platforms sit within Meta’s family, and the company has been nudging them toward a common logic of audience segmentation for some time.
The move also fits neatly into WhatsApp’s broader privacy push. The platform has been rolling out enhanced chat protections and is exploring the introduction of usernames, which would allow users to connect without exchanging phone numbers. Status lists extend that philosophy from messaging into broadcasting.
Meanwhile, Status itself has been evolving well beyond its origins as a simple photo-and-text slideshow. The feature now supports music stickers, collages, longer videos and interactive elements, pushing it closer to the social-media-style story format pioneered by Snapchat and refined by Instagram. In that context, finer audience controls are not merely a privacy feature. They are a precondition for people sharing more.
The feature remains in development and has not been confirmed for release. WhatsApp routinely tests tools that are later modified or quietly shelved. But the direction of travel is clear: the app wants Status to be a destination, not an afterthought. Letting users decide exactly who is in the audience is how it gets there.
