iWorld
Google to broadcast edutainment series for SMBs on Doordarshan
NEW DELHI: Google India country head and vice president Sanjay Gupta kicked off the Google for India event, today. He touched on topics about health, welfare and digital India. Gupta spoke about how Google has helped in connecting more people to India.
The company also announced new initiatives as part of its ongoing efforts towards the response to the Covid2019 pandemic. Talking about the Covid2019 impact on small businesses and creating economic opportunity, Google GM and VP of payments and next billion users Caesar Sengupta said: "Now more than ever, to survive and grow, every Indian business must be a digital business. And we are investing in helping Indian businesses go digital and helping Indian workers learn, grow and find better jobs."
He announced a new initiative with Prasar Bharati, launching an edutainment series on Doordarshan on how small businesses can adopt digital tools and adapt to the current situation, using examples of real-life Indian businesses.
“We are investing in helping Indian businesses go digital and helping Indian workers learn, grow and find better jobs,” Gupta elaborated.
“Digital revolution is redefining what's next and presents an opportunity to build the future of India. As a country, we have made tremendous progress in making the internet more accessible and affordable to people. India now has over 550 million active internet users with over 400 million users accessing the internet on a smartphone,” said Gupta.
Connectivity and access provides a foundation for building products and services that are relevant and helpful. These products and services help solve some of the biggest challenges that our society faces like learning, education, jobs or payments. Solving these challenges has been a focus for Google in India, over the last several years, Gupta emphasised.
At the sixth edition of Google for India, Gupta further stated that India has always been a strategic and important focus for Google. “Today, we are committing ourselves to partner deeply and support India in becoming a truly digital nation by making the internet helpful for a billion Indians and empowering India to become a leading digital economy,” he said.
"Google Pay facilitated the transfer of more than Rs 120 crore through its platform to help the government during the pandemic,” he said, adding that digital payments have facilitated consumers to buy products online even during the lockdown. “With Google, small businesses have also managed to go online quickly and continue their business when physical distancing kept consumers away from stores.”
Going forward, Sengupta also spoke about the spot platform on Google Pay, he shared that the Google Pay Nearby Stores Spot which was introduced in March this year to improve offline merchant discoverability and to help people find shops near them to see what essential food items are in stock, has been used by more than 2 million users. To support people who are looking for work he shared that the Job Spot on Google Pay now allows for remote interviews and remote work listings so that people who are unemployed can secure employment and income more quickly during the Covid2019 pandemic.
Follow Tellychakkar for the consumer facing news & entertainment
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.
