iWorld
Joe Earley becomes Hulu’s new president
Mumbai: Disney has announced the appointment of Joe Earley as president of streaming service platform – Hulu. He previously served as executive VP of marketing and operations at Disney Plus and is headed to its sister service after joining the media company in 2019.
Earley succeeds former Hulu chief Kelly Campbell, who left the company in October to become the president of NBCUniversal’s Peacock.
In the new role at Hulu, Earley will be responsible for building on the service’s brand and will liaise with its various content studios. He will report to Michael Paull, who has been promoted to a new role overseeing Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and Star+ as president of Disney Streaming.
“I am excited to embark on this new era at Hulu, a streaming pioneer that over the past 15 years has distinguished itself with an unrivaled offering of groundbreaking, award-winning series and films from our talented content partners,” Earley said in a statement. “I have been a longtime Hulu subscriber and fan and have admired the unbridled creativity of the service’s content and culture, and I’m looking forward to the exciting opportunities that lie ahead, collaborating with our content studios, and tapping into the full power and strength of The Walt Disney Company.”
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.
