iWorld
Planet Marathi OTT launches the first-ever Marathi pay per view ‘Ticket Window’
KOLKATA: Planet Marathi OTT has launched the first-ever pay-per-view platform for Marathi Films. It has announced the launch of ‘the ticket window’, a select pay-per-view format of the movie experience! Yes, it is a first-ever OTT platform to enable the ‘first day – first show’ experience, especially for the Marathi films.
Planet Marathi CMD Akshay Bardapurkar and COO Aditya Oke jointly today announced their plans to open their Ticket Window segment under the Planet Marathi OTT platform. While talking about the same both Bardapurkar and Oke said, "We are initiating the ‘pay-per-view’ model falling under the ambit of Planet marathi OTT. It means that the ticket windows will open up for our audiences to purchase their online tickets and watch their favorite movie online at a one time fee like never before!"
The segment is named "Planet Marathi Digital Theatre" which will be available to the audience as early as the first week of September 2020. Planet Marathi has been always been ahead of the industry when it comes to aggregation and promotion of Marathi content in different formats.
While talking about what inspired his passion project Bardapurkar said, “Maharashtra film body recently announced in a press release appealing producers to release/sell their films digitally due to the COVID-19 impact. Producers are facing insurmountable losses and it was only natural that producers will try to stay afloat with the help of OTT’s in these trying times”.
Akshay further added, “We have to be agile and adapt quickly in this industry, as soon as we got to know that the film body has taken this stance, taking a cue from them we decided to act as fast as possible and make available a part our platform wherein audience will be able to log in – purchase tickets – and watch their favorite film every Friday”.
Answering the question “which movies are going to be premiered?”, Oke replied, “We have an array of films, a lot of producers are ready to launch their films digitally on our platform but for now, we can’t reveal which films are lined up for a digital release. If you look at Planet Marathi’s commitment to the people and its supportive nature towards the industry we are surely hitting a bullseye with our OTT and the array of features we have under it”. Akshay signs off saying, “Forget Marathi I don’t think anyone has matched anything like Planet Marathi Digital Theatre even for the Hindi industry”.
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.
