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PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that the global sharing economy, worth $15 billion today, will hit $335 billion by 2025. IMeYou, which makes local information collaborative, is hoping to grab a piece of that pie.

New to Bengaluru, Anuj Singh wants to buy some Hindi fiction books. But he doesnt know where to go and wishes he knew someone who shared his interest. Its tougher because Anuj lives in a locality of Kannada speakers. A friend suggests IMeYou, an app that will connect him to people who have the books hes looking for.

I borrowed the books, made friends and returned the books after a month, says Anuj Singh, who works as a restaurant manager in Bengaluru.

Such are the wonders of the sharing economy.

Every year, it is expected that more than six million students head to 56 cities in search of jobs. At their new destination, they must depend on local agents for information on rentals, food and local government rules. What if this was sorted for you on an app where a digital friend can answer queries dynamically? This is exactly what 30-year-old Vartika Manasvi has been trying to do for a couple of years.

Vartika, who completed her MBA course from JIIT, Noida, in 2010, built communities during her initial days at work, but chose to give up her corporate job when she realised that there was a business opportunity staring her in the face.

Most people would call their friends to know about a place or to know how to get something done, says Vartika, who quit her job in December 2015 and started IMeYou as a side project.

This was a project on Slack initially and I joined an Asian blog as a community manager to make some money to survive, she says.

Vartika went about her idea with clinical precision. She on-boarded 300-plus people on the Slack group by doing Skype calls and telling them about her vision for IMeYou, where people share knowledge with each other and collaborate.

She envisaged IMeYou as a geo-social platform to context connect people at places that matter), as a social networking platform for the sharing economy.

The objective of this experiment was to make one friend in every city who can help with local information and test digital trust among strangers, she says.

Vartika was joined by two young engineers, Celento C George, 19, and Arshpreet Wadehra, 21, who came forward to help build this platform because they believed in the vision and the power of the community she was building.

The three of them formed a strong team and the Slack group supported them with UI suggestions.

By August 2016, less than a year after she had started work on IMeYou, the platform was built.

From that Slack group we graduated to the web application and recently launched our mobile app for IOS, she says.

IMeYou, which currently has 2,000 consistent customers, wants to democratise access to goods and services.

Its our vision to unlock the world of collaborative consumption where trust is the new currency, Vartika says.

The companys business model is to take on traditional market behaviour pertaining torenting, lending, sharing, bartering and gifting.

On this platform, users will be able to generate the most efficient use of resources by extracting maximum value from products and materials while in use, and extending longevity through reuse at the end of a life cycle. So if you and your classmate want to read the same book why not invest in buying the book equally, share the cost and then redistribute it to someone who would want it?

Currently we are not charging our users to engage with each other. It will evolve as we gather data on engagement levels, Vartika says.

IMeYou is focusing on a micro-universe of college hubs where students can connect with each other to collaborate on needs like sharing hostel rooms, exchanging books and notes, planning project groups, finding accommodations, and inter-college connectivity.

The company has an investment of less than Rs 10 lakh and is yet to generate any revenues.

PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates the global sharing economy to be worth $15 billion today, a figure that is projected to hit $335 billion by 2025.

There are plenty of social sharing and discovery apps, including GoYaNo, Fashin and Loqation, on the market, but majority are yet to make money while some are struggling to stay afloat.

IMeYou is yet to deliver value and being a consumer business must spend for consumers to discover their app on a national scale.

But Vartika believes that the sharing economy drives huge benefits not only from the economic point of view, but also from environmental and social points of view.

Naganand Doraswamy, founder of IdeaSpring Capital, says: All consumer businesses need to build on strong technology and must figure out a business model quickly otherwise history shows how money is lost to marketing instead of building a strong product.

Vartika is hopeful that connecting people will help take her product forward. For now, we suggest you check out IMeYou if you want to share guitar/lessons, meet someone for coffee or exchange notes on rental apartments.

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With IMeYou, Vartika Manasvi aims to build top social networking platform for the sharing economy - YourStory.com

Since the Echos release in 2014, millions of people have given in to Amazons nonstop advertising and welcomed Alexa into their homes. Amazons original sell for the always-on, voice-activated device was that users could ask Echo for information, music, news, sports scores, and weather from across the room and get results or answers instantly. But in the last couple of months, it has evolved into something else: the hub for Amazons new social network.

In May, Amazon pushed a software update that added features called Drop in and Alexa calling and messaging, which let you connect to other peoples Echos. The communal device, used by all members of a given household, suddenly became a telephone and answering machine, much like an old-school landline shared by a family, except this one emits a pulsing yellow light when you have a message.

This is a unique aspect to being a consumer of the Internet of Things: The things stay connected to the company you bought them from, which means the company can push down an update from afar and change them into, well, other things. Overnight, the Echo went from being a voice-activated Google search to a device that could be networked to a bunch of other devices.

In order to use the new feature, Echo owners have to open the Amazon Alexa app on their phones and import their contacts, after which they are stored in the Amazon cloud. Amazon then offers up a list of who among their contacts is an Echo owner, and automatically makes all of them part of their network, rather than letting them choose who they actually want to connect with (as most other companies do). Amazon assumed this was the best way to organize its network, apparently not realizing most of us have tons of strangers and randos in our phonebooks.

My own list included a couple of ex-boyfriends, a person I stayed with once on Airbnb, current co-workers, former colleagues, and a U.S. senators press secretary, who would probably be surprised to learn I knew she had an Echo because Ive never actually called or talked to her. There was not a single person on the list whose Echo I would want to call. Instead, it was an uninvited look into the consumption habits of the sundry individuals whose numbers have made their way into my phone over the last 15 years.

When asked about the privacy context collapse involved in revealing your Echo ownership to anyone with your phone number, an Amazon spokesperson emphasized that calling and messaging via Alexa is an optional feature.

To import contacts and send voice messages youll need to first set up calling/messaging if you prefer not to use the feature, simply dont set it up, the spokesperson wrote via email.

Amazon is not the only company to decide that its users should be able to identify other users based solely on knowing their phone numbers. Signal, an encrypted messaging app, also discloses its users this way. (Its why I had the press secretarys number in my phoneI wanted to find out which senators offices were using the secure app.) It makes it easier to connect with other people using the same app, but theres a privacy trade-off: You only need someones phone number to figure out that theyve bought or downloaded that product.

And that could potentially be used against users. A repressive government, for instance, could find out if activists were using Signal to encrypt their communications. A hacker could find out if a target was using an Echo, in the hopes of using it to invade the persons network.

But Echo users had more immediate concerns when the feature came out. Amazon, new to the social networking game, didnt realize that some users in its network might not like other users. Those who first turned on Alexa calling, like Elise Oras, discovered that they couldnt block people from calling their Echo. And once they discovered that, they discovered they couldnt easily leave the social network. There is no delete button. To exit AmazonEchoverse, you have to call Amazon Customer Service and get a real live human being to turn off the feature.

Its still the case two months after its release that you have to make an actual phone call to exit the Echo social ecosystem, but Amazon came to its senses with blocking. Last month, it gave users the ability to block contacts from calling their Echo; those contacts will still see the person listed but wont be able to make a call to them or leave them a message.

Amazons missteps here may not prove to be a big deal to Echo owners. After all, if theyve bought a device for their home with an always-on microphone, theyre likely the type of people who arent too worried about their privacy. But its good to remember, as you ponder whether to buy an internet-connected thermostat, or lamp, or refrigerator: The transformation from a lowly appliance to a node in a vast privacy-demolishing network is just a software update away.

This post was produced by the Special Projects Desk of Gizmodo Media Group.

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Surprise Echo Owners, You're Now Part of Amazon's Random Social Network - Gizmodo

The micro-blogging site admitted there is "still much work to be done".

Twitter users are experiencing "significantly less abuse" on the social media platform than six months ago, the company has claimed.

As part of a results update on the social network's work to improve safety for users, Twitter said it is taking action on ten times the number of abusive accounts every day compared to the same time last year.

However the micro-blogging site admitted there is "still much work to be done".

Since the start of the year, Twitter has announced several updates to its platform designed to cut down on abusive content, including reducing notifications and increasing filters on "low quality tweets" that appear in user timelines.

The social platform has been repeatedly criticised by industry figures and government over its record of handling abusive material that appears on the site, and has pledged to work with independent experts to cut down on extremism online.

Twitter's Ed Ho said in the last four months, the site had removed double the number of abusive accounts created by users who had previously had other accounts suspended for violations of site rules.

"Beyond the technology, our teams are continuing to review content daily and improve how we enforce our policies," Mr Ho said.

He also revealed that communicating with violators on why their accounts had been temporarily suspended has led to a reduction in future abuse incidents.

Mr Ho added: "Communication about problematic Tweets, especially to the people who send them, is key.

"Accounts that demonstrate abusive behaviour are now limited for a time, and told why. Accounts that we put into this period of limited functionality generate 25% fewer abuse reports, and approximately 65% of these accounts are in this state just once."

He said Twitter would continue to seek the advice of industry experts and academics as part of ongoing review of its services, having convened its first "Trust and Safety Council" earlier this year, seeking feedback on its performance.

Dan Raisbeck, co-founder of The Cybersmile Foundation said continued dialogue between Twitter and other organisations would improve safety on the site and the wider internet.

He added: "We are pleased to see Twitter continuing to meet the challenges of user safety and will continue our work with the Twitter Safety Team in addressing these important issues.

"We are confident that through working with industries, governments and Internet users around the world we can all help to make the internet safer for everyone."

Twitter's head of trust and safety, Del Harvey, said: "There's no easy fix - as the world's conversation evolves so too does the challenge we face.

"We'll continue to adapt and do our part to ensure Twitter continues to be the safest place to see every side of what's happening."

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Twitter clamps down on abuse on social networking site since start of 2017 - Lancashire Evening Post

Whats the worst social networking site for cyberbullying? At one point, youd probably say Twitter, but according to a new study done by Ditch the Label, a British anti-bullying nonprofit group, its Instagram.

Instagram, where diet teas and makeup gurus thrive, actually has a larger base of younger people than other sites, and people between the ages of 12 and 20 experience cyberbullying there the most, according to a new study.

In the study (pdf), 10,000 British teens were studied, and 42 percent said that they were bullied on Instagram. Facebook wasnt far behind, with 37 percent saying they were bullied, and Snapchat came in next with 31 percent. Twitter (9 percent) and Tumblr (3 percent) were at the bottom.

Our theme this year was to explore the impact of technology and digital abuse upon the lives of young people, said Liam Hackett, founder and CEO of Ditch the Label.

Young people, Hackett also said in the report, have a huge disconnect between the things that happen online and reality, with 44 percent of respondents believing that only things happening offline could be considered as real life.

When it comes to the United States, online harassment and bullying has been studied by the Pew Research Center, and although it did not pinpoint a social media network in its July 2017 report, and used a slightly larger age range (18-29), in its survey of 4,248 U.S. adults, it found that 41 percent of Americans have been subjected to online harassment and bullying, and 66 percent have witnessed these behaviors directed at others.

Whereas Instagram seems to harbor cyberbullying for teens in Britain, in an older report done by U.S.-based Cox Communications in 2014 (pdf), Facebook was labeled the worst place for cyberbullying in its study of 1,301 teens ages 13-17, with 39 percent of teens saying that they had witnessed bullying on Facebook. Instagram and Twitter came in the lowest, with 22 percent of teens saying that they witnessed bullying on those platforms.

With adults, its probably easier to block and dismiss harassing behavior, but with teens, and a lack of monitoring done by parents, harassment and bullying can result in tragedies weve seen played out on social media. Suicide after suicide has been reported over the last couple of years because of bullying and social media. And although Pew suggests that parents need to monitor their childrens social media activities better, teens and children are finding better ways to hide their social media activities.

Toxicity on social media isnt going away anytime soon, but one can only hope that parents learn the tricks of the trade to monitor their childrens social media activities. And for those adults who are involved in cyberbullying, maybe one day theyll actually realize how pathetic they really look.

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British Study Shows Cyberbullying Thrives on Instagram - The Root

Retweet. Comment. Like. Snap. Direct message. Twitter. Facebook. Snapchat. Instagram. The world has certainly changed over the past 10 years, and social media has played a massive role in the transformation. Social network giants have taken over peoples computers, phones, tablets and lives. For all the good that technology can impart on society through the ability to communicate with friends and family, and the quick dissemination of news (hopefully not fake), it is imperative that we acknowledge the deleterious effects that social media can have on our youthand adults for that matter.

With interactive multimedia and mobile communication garnering more attention and taking up more hours in peoples daily lives, it should come as no surprise that concerns have arisen as to where our culture is headed. Spending significant time on social networking sites has the potential to negatively affect emotional intelligenceessentially, ones ability to identify and comprehend emotions in oneself and other people, and then draw upon this awareness to direct behavior and manage personal relationships. The decline in face-to-face interactions can stifle emotional development and growth in a way that has never been witnessed. Social skills have been reduced to liking someones meme or commenting on a photograph. Where is the deeper conversation and engagement that can only truly be fostered through real-life, present communication?

The Grand Caf in Oxford, U.K. is the oldest coffee house in England, with an establishment date of circa 1650. The coffee shop novelty had a profound influence on the citizens of Oxford, as the coffee stimulant and social environment provided a means of sharing bright ideas and original thoughts that would go on to inspire genius inventions. Nowadays, when you walk into the same coffee shop, it is not uncommon to see young 20-year-old classmates looking down at their phones, swiping right on a dating application or double-tapping a friends post. Sure, it might be fun and a way to pass the time, but what about looking up at your peers and engaging with them on an issue just discussed in class? Or perhaps asking your friend how they are coping with a recent family members passing and how you can help?

Not only emotional intelligence is threatened by the rise and take-over by social media but also general intellect. Again, there can certainly be benefits to having quick access to the most up-to-date news stories, possibly consuming new information and interacting with diverse populations beyond what one may be experiencing in his or her physical environment. Some researchers have actually suggested that social media can improve verbal and critical-thinking skills. Nevertheless, it can be argued that spending hours upon hours each day swiping up and down on a social network feed is leading to a less-informed and cultured society. Instead of picking up a newspaper to read entire articles (rather than a 140-character quip) or beginning a classic novel that could prove to be great discussion material during a college or job interview, our youth have been exposed to the glamour and excitement of pictures and one-liners. Obsession over distant celebrities and the daily ventures of friends (who they often know only on a superficial level) has become all too frequent.

Social media will never die, at least as long as we are around. And I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, suggesting that it will or should falter. However, take it upon yourselves to encourage those around you to live in the moment. Engage with your children, colleagues, mentors and strangers by looking them in the eyes and challenging yourself to escape from behind the touchscreen on your mobile device. You might just find something that you have been missing.

Mr. Williams is manager/sole owner of Howard Stirk Holdings I & II Broadcast Television Stations and the 2016 Multicultural Media Broadcast Owner of the year. Listen to Mr. Williams on Sirius XM126 Urban View nightly 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., EST. Follow on Twitter @arightside.

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Social media destroying intellect and work ethic - Amsterdam News