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Photo courtesy of HeyPal
Meet HeyPal, the Language App Using Social Media Influencers To Spread the Word
Christian Hetrick
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Katy Johnson, a reality TV star and globe-trotting travel blogger, has lately offered some advice to her more than 100,000 Instagram followers.
“I urge you to learn a new language,” the model has told her fans, noting how locals in the foreign countries she has visited appreciate the effort. “It’s essential to be able to connect with people as much as possible while I travel,” she wrote in another post last month. Johnson, a former contestant on the TV show “Joe Millionaire,” has repeatedly suggested one particular way to study a new language: HeyPal, a one-year-old language-learning app.
A photo from Johnson's Instagram account, which she's used to promote HeyPal.
Photo courtesy of HeyPal
“Today I wanted to work on some Arabic slang, so I literally can pull out the phone and use the app anywhere, anytime!” read a caption to one photo of Johnson sitting near the Indian Ocean with a smartphone in her hands and a cocktail nearby.
At first glance, her casual endorsements may look like mere tips from a travel expert. But the Instagram posts, sprinkled between photos of the model posing in exotic tropical locations, are part of a paid campaign by HeyPal, which is owned by Beverly Hills-based digital app developer ClickStream.
HeyPal—which promises to help users learn new languages through social media posts and online chats with native speakers—has made content creators like Johnson a key part of its marketing and growth strategy. The app is currently paying three influencers, including Johnson, to spread the gospel by showcasing glamorous real-life examples of how people can benefit from the platform.
HeyPal, which has racked up more than 1 million downloads since going live last June, is hardly the only brand turning to influencers. Spending on influencer marketing has exploded in recent years, jumping from only $1.7 billion in 2016 to $16.4 billion this year, according to research from Influencer Marketing Hub.
In some ways, influencer marketing is not much different from traditional celebrity endorsements where actors, artists and athletes hawk products in advertisements. But online influencers often forge deep relationships with their fans, making their endorsements more effective, according to experts. That’s especially true if the products or services they’re marketing naturally fit with the content they’re creating—such as Johnson highlighting a language-learning app as a travel blogger.
“At the end of the day, influencer marketing works because the audience trusts the creator,” Brad Hoos, CEO of influencer marketing agency The Outloud Group, told dot.LA. Hoos noted that customers acquired through influencers tend to stick with brands longer than those lured by other campaigns.
Launched in 2020, HeyPal aims to help people learn new languages by conversing with native speakers through social media features like chats, posts, comments and media uploads. HeyPal offers both free and paid versions of the app; the latter is available in two subscription tiers ($9.99 or $14.99 per month) and includes additional features like unlimited translations on posts and a “PenPal” feature that matches users who can teach each other new languages.
HeyPal CEO Jonathan Maxim, a marketing veteran who ClickStream hired for the role last year, told dot.LA that Johnson and the app’s other influencers bring credibility to the platform. Those other influencers include Jessica Killings, an actress, model and angel investor who, like Johnson, has a large Instagram following.
HeyPal CEO Jonathan Maxim. Photo courtesy of HeyPal
HeyPal has worked with roughly 20 influencers to date, though it has only struck paid partnership deals with three, according to Maxim. (“The other 20 or so are just enthusiasts of the mission,” he noted.) The company declined to share how much it pays influencers to market its app.
In addition to boosting the brand’s visibility, HeyPal’s influencers are able to steer people to the app or channels like its Instagram account, through which the company can later retarget them with ads or push notifications, Maxim said. HeyPal can measure reach, click-through rates and number of app downloads by influencer, and can optimize its ads accordingly.
“Influencer marketing serves the top of the funnel for us,” Maxim said. “Katy creates engaging content, brings people to the middle of the funnel, and then we retarget them and bring them to the bottom of the funnel—which is conversion and engagement in the app.”
Johnson’s Instagram endorsements don’t dig into the details of the app, but they subtly suggest the perks of learning a new language. An Instagram Reels video she made in March shows Johnson dancing and posing for selfies with people around the world—activities presumably made possible by her ability to speak different languages.
“These types of posts help people dream—to see a country and the beauty, the food, the people,” said Jamie Gutfreund, chief marketing officer for Los Angeles-based Whalar, a creator economy company that works with influencers and brands. “They can imagine what their experience could be, especially if they have learned the language.”
Creators have to tread carefully when it comes to corporate partnerships, however. Although brand deals may provide more stable income than platform ad revenue, creators have to ensure they don’t harm their authenticity by constantly promoting products, experts said. About 13% of fans say they have unfollowed a creator because they included too many ads in their content, according to a recent survey.
Johnson is keenly aware of that balancing act: She said she sends just a few promotional posts per month and doesn’t endorse anything on Instagram “unless I really believe in it.” Asked how she makes her promotional posts seem authentic, Johnson said she doesn’t need to.
“I don't really make it look like anything—it is authentic,” she told dot.LA, pointing to videos she shared of her playing with children in Kenya or receiving some help putting on a hijab in Egypt.
“Those are all real moments that I've had,” she added. “And some of these moments can be helped when I'm learning language from language apps.”
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Christian Hetrick
Christian Hetrick is dot.LA's Entertainment Tech Reporter. He was formerly a business reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and reported on New Jersey politics for the Observer and the Press of Atlantic City.
Watch: NASA Perseverance Rover Blasts Off to Mars in Search of Alien Life
12:55 PM | July 30, 2020
With the fiery flash of a rocket launch, NASA's Perseverance rover headed out today for what's expected to be a decade-long campaign to store up and bring back Martian samples that may hold evidence of alien life.
United Launch Alliance's Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 7:50 a.m. ET (4:50 a.m. PT), sending the rover into space for a seven-month cruise to Mars.
Access to the area surrounding the launch pad was restricted due to the pandemic, but hundreds of thousands of people watched the liftoff via streaming video. And as if the pandemic wasn't enough of a challenge, in the minutes before launch, a magnitude-4.2 earthquake rattled through NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., where the rover mission is managed.
Mission managers said the complications had no effect on the countdown.
"This is all about perseverance," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said during the buildup to liftoff. "Going to Mars is all about persevering in general. Doing it now is more persevering than ever before."
An hour after launch, Perseverance's spacecraft separated from the Atlas 5's Centaur upper stage and flew outward to the Red Planet. NASA said the signal from the spacecraft was initially "too loud for the antennas on Earth." But in the midst of a post-launch news briefing, deputy project manager Matt Wallace reported that the operations team was eventually able to lock onto the signal properly.
Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said such adjustments came with the territory. "You want to be a rocket scientist, this is what you do. … You have to have a little bit of nerves if you're in this business," he said.
Adam Steltzner, the mission's chief engineer at JPL, said he expected in-space operations to settle into a routine. "I'm looking forward to, ideally, a very quiet and boring cruise to Mars, as we prepare for the never-boring and always stressful entry, descent and landing on the 18th of February," he said on NASA TV.
Mars 2020 launchwww.youtube.com
Like its older cousin, NASA's Curiosity rover, Perseverance will land with the aid of parachutes and a retrorocket-equipped descent stage. A "Sky Crane" will lower the 1-ton rover to the surface of Jezero Crater, and then the descent stage will blast itself away from the landing site.
The six-wheeled, nuclear-powered robot is designed for a primary mission lasting at least one Martian year, which is the equivalent of nearly two Earth years. But if Perseverance follows Curiosity's example, it could be on the job for far longer.
Perseverance bears a strong resemblance to Curiosity, in that they're built on the same basic chassis with a similar-looking camera mast and robotic arm. NASA and its collaborators have added some new twists, however.
A mini-helicopter called Ingenuity is tucked under Perseverance's belly and will be deployed for unprecedented test flights after the landing. Another experiment called MOXIE will test a technique for turning the carbon dioxide in Mars' thin atmosphere to oxygen. That trick will come in handy if and when NASA sends astronauts on extended trips to Mars as is planned in the 2030s.
The biggest difference between Curiosity and Perseverance is that the new rover's scientific instruments are fine-tuned to look for signs of life on the microscopic scale.
A laser-equipped camera system called SuperCam can detect organic compounds in rocks and soils from a distance of more than 20 feet. Two close-up imaging systems, SHERLOC and PIXL, can theoretically make out the structural and chemical signs of fossilized microbes. And a radar imager called RIMFAX can map subsurface structure at a resolution of inches, to depths as deep as 30 feet.
Mission Overview: NASA's Perseverance Mars Roverwww.youtube.com
The target landing site in Jezero Crater is thought to have been a river delta in ancient times, and it was chosen in hopes that the minerals in Martian rock would preserve fossils — or at least the chemical evidence of biological processes.
It's unlikely that Perseverance will find indisputable evidence of life on Mars. Debates about Martian life detection tend to end inconclusively, whether we're talking about the Viking lander missions of the 1970s or suggestions of "nanofossils" in Martian meteorites that fell to Earth. But this mission has a long-term strategy for settling such debates.
Perseverance is designed to drill out and save dozens of promising core samples for later pickup. The current plan, which is still under development by NASA and the European Space Agency, calls for sending out a NASA lander and a European-built rover in 2026. That rover would fetch the samples and put them into a capsule, which would in turn be loaded onto a mini-rocket and launched into Martian orbit.
"It's kind of an interplanetary relay race we're doing," David Parker, ESA's director of human and robotic spaceflight, explained during a pre-launch briefing.
Yet another spacecraft would take a trip to Martian orbit, capture the capsule and bring the samples back to Earth for study in 2031. That would mark the first opportunity to examine fresh samples from Mars with the best instruments that scientists have at their disposal — and the best opportunity to answer the age-old question about life on Mars..
"I do believe that the ultimate proof and the ultimate analyses that are really critical to that question, at the level of standard that we need to answer this, will come from laboratory analysis on Earth," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "So I believe this will be a process that will extend over 10 years or so, where evidence is mounting from remote sensing and in-situ measurements up there, but then really culminating in bringing these samples back."
More morsels about the Mars mission:
- Both Perseverance and Ingenuity were named by students who participated in essay contests — and as a reward, Virginia seventh-grader Alex Mather (who named the rover) and Alabama high-school junior Vaneeza Rupani (who named the helicopter) are attending the launch with their families at NASA's invitation.
- Speaking of names, Perseverance is carrying three stamp-sized chips that bear the micro-etched names of nearly 11 million people who responded to NASA's online "Send Your Name to Mars" campaign. The campaign has been revived to collect more names to be sent aboard the next Mars probe.
- Perseverance is also carrying a 3-by-5-inch plaque that pays tribute to healthcare workers and their work to quell the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 Perseverance Plate bears the serpent-and-staff symbol of the medical profession, topped by planet Earth.
- The spacecraft is equipped with microphones that scientists hope will pick up the sounds associated with Perseverance's descent and landing, as well as the zapping sounds created by the SuperCam's laser blasts. Perseverance is the third Mars probe to carry a microphone, but setbacks prevented the microphones from being used during the two earlier missions (Mars Polar Lander in 1999 and Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008).
- Perseverance is the last of three Mars missions to take advantage of this month's favorable launch opportunity — an opportunity that comes around only once every 26 months, due to the relative orbital positions of Earth and Mars. The other two are the United Arab Emirates' Hope orbiter mission, and China's Tianwen-1 mission, which involves an orbiter, lander and rover.
This story first appeared on GeekWire.
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Alan Boyle, GeekWire
GeekWire contributing editor Alan Boyle is an award-winning science writer and veteran space reporter. Formerly of NBCNews.com, he is the author of "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference." Follow him via CosmicLog.com, on Twitter @b0yle, and on Facebook and MeWe.
A Breakdown of the Data Snapchat Collects on Users
09:46 AM | November 14, 2022
Sebastian Miño-Bucheli
Santa Monica-based app developer Snap calls itself a camera company, but it’s really in the business of social media – and more specifically, advertising.
What Data Does Snapchat Collect?
Snapchat, their primary application, collects a myriad of data on its roughly 363 million daily active users, from basics like device information to detailed location tracking. "From day one, we’ve embraced data minimization, and believed that the best way to protect user privacy is to not store data at all, and if we do have to store it, to do so for a short and fixed period of time," Snap spokesman Pete Boogaard told dot.LA.
As such, like most tech companies’ privacy policies and terms of service, the verbiage is intentionally vague or full of legalese designed to make the user gloss over and click “agree.” But Snapchat does have to provide its users some details of how it collects, stores, and uses the data it gains from interacting with the app.
Bill Budington, a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told dot.LA that the common phrase, “necessary to provide service,” is particularly concerning.
“These are very vague ways to basically give a green light to very permissive practices in terms of your data,” Budington explained. He pointed out the ambiguous nature of the word “necessary,” adding, “[tech companies] can deem all sorts of things necessary, [including] using your location at every moment to better tailor their services to your life.”
While Snapchat’s terms of service haven’t changed since last November, the company most recently updated its privacy policy on July 29. Let’s dive into the various types of data Snapchat collects, how it stores it (and for how long), and perhaps most importantly, how Snapchat says it’s used.
Why Does Snapchat Collect Your Location Data?
Snapchat is very invested in collecting users’ precise location data, if users allow it. Its Snap Maps feature launched in 2017 lets users opt-in to showing their Bitmoji avatar on a map corresponding to their location and also allows them to track other friends who have opted in. It’s not dissimilar to Apple’s FindMy app.
In the past, the feature has raised concerns for its ability to make it easier for bullies and stalkers to find targets. Snap Map location, however, isn’t public information. Snapchat says location on Snap Maps will disappear after 24 hours, or when a user deliberately goes into “ghost mode” to hide from friends – but that doesn’t mean the app still isn’t tracking their movements. The company noted that unless you opt-in to live location sharing, the Snap Map won’t update with your location when you’re not actively using it.
Boogaard told dot.LA that while many of Snapchat’s core features do require location tracking, “location-sharing is off by default for all users” and “Snapchatters have complete control over their location sharing.” Snapchat added that there is no option to share your location with any user you aren’t friends with and that users have to individually select friends to share their location with.
Snapchat clarified that it does use location data to provide its Geofilters – custom photo and video filters often themed around specific places or events – and show people what’s nearby (also useful for ad purposes).
“We don’t share personal data about the users of the Snapchat app with data analytics providers,” Boogaard said.
Snapchat employees can also allegedly access all this information, and more – in 2019 Motherboard reported on a tool called SnapLion that it claimed was abused by employees to “spy on users.” In response to the report, Boogaard told dot.LA, “Any perception that employees might be spying on our community is highly troubling, and wholly inaccurate." Boogaard added, "Protecting privacy is paramount at Snap. We keep very little user data, and we have robust policies and controls to limit internal access to the data we do have, including data within tools designed to support law enforcement. Unauthorized access of any kind is a clear violation of the company's standards of business conduct and, if detected, results in immediate termination."
How Does Snapchat Use Your Content?
Snapchat can see the snaps you send, who is receiving them, and how often you’re online, as well as the metadata in each image.
Snapchat’s Streak feature (which tracks how long you and friends have regularly been sending and opening each other’s content) is one reason why the app also collects data on how often you and your friends open messages or capture screenshots.
It also tracks and scans the content users upload to its Memories feature. This is to train its AI to recognize the content of user images. In its privacy policy Snapchat notes that “if there’s a dog in your photo, it may be searchable in Memories by the term ‘dog,’” as part of its goal to make image search more accessible.
Snap’s policy also dictates that any public content a user generates on Snapchat is also fair game for the company to share though it doesn’t say how it will share this content.
What Data Does Snapchat Collect From Accessing Your Camera?
Besides the typical use for taking pictures, Snapchat can also access information from Apple’s TrueDepth camera – the front-facing, high-powered cameras that Apple’s iPhone X uses to record Face ID and Memoji data.
Snapchat says it uses this data “to improve the quality of Lenses”—its filter and augmented reality feature. But it also said it doesn’t collect biometric information, much less store the data on its servers or give it to any third parties.
Still, that’s a practice that’s come under scrutiny recently. In August, Snap was sued, accused of violating Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting and storing users’ biometric data without their consent. That $35 million case is expected to head to settlement next week, after a judge couldn’t rule in favor of either party. "Snap continues to vehemently deny that Lenses violate BIPA, which was designed to require notice and consent before collecting biometric information used to identify people," Boogaard told dot.LA.
How Does Snapchat Use Your Data?
Now that we know all the information Snapchat collects, what is the company doing with it?
The main use case is advertising. Snapchat has a myriad of advertisers on its platform and they are all eager to turn users into sales by showing them the most relevant ads. Ad pricing starts at a modest $5 per day, so theoretically anyone with a marketing budget and the right connections could use Snap’s tools to market to its growing audience of Gen Z and Millennials.
Snapchat promises advertisers “advanced targeting capabilities,” and the benefit of finding a target audience using its location, demographics, interest and device data.
But who’s getting this information? That’s where things get vague. Snapchat doesn’t have to tell users specifically which companies are getting access to their data. The company notes it may share information with service providers that it contracts for services like ad analytics or payments. The company also says it might share user information with “business partners that provide services and functionality” for Snapchat, but again, doesn’t elaborate any further.
Snapchat also says it will share information about users if it could help “detect and resolve any fraud or security concerns, comply with any investigations, legal processes or regulations and to investigate potential terms of service violations.”
Snapchat doesn’t have to tell users when it turns over this data, though. In fact, most apps don’t.
How Does Snapchat Store Your Data?
Snap’s Support site notes Snapchat servers are designed to delete all Snaps automatically after they’ve been viewed by every recipient; the app’s trademark fleeting quality. The servers will delete unopened Snaps between two people after 31 days, and unopened Snaps sent to a group chat after 7 days. Snaps sent to your story are wiped from the servers 24 hours after posting.
Snapchat also says that when you delete a Snap in chat, it deletes it from its servers and will “make our best attempt” to wipe it from your friends’ devices.
If you post a Snap to Memories, though, Snapchat’s servers will back them up forever – unless you delete them, in which case they’ll be erased ASAP.
So what’s the safest way to protect your personal information on Snapchat? Well, Budington recommends an easy fix: simply don’t use it. But for people who are determined to keep their account but want to access what Snapchat collects, there are ways to download your Snapchat data.
You can also opt-out of audience and activity-based ads and third-party ad networks. This will mean the ads on your Snapchat will be less relevant, but the trade-off is that the app will use less of your personal data for marketing purposes.Snap is an investor in dot.LA.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Snap Map's location tracking feature. The feature needs to be enabled first, and Snapchat offers the ability to turn off the feature in Map settings.
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Samson Amore
Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.
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