TikTok is rolling out a new program in the US that's designed to help creators increase their earning potential and "unlock more exciting, real-world opportunities." The Creativity Program builds on initiatives like the Creator Fund. TikTok wrote in a blog post that it took feedback from previous efforts into account while building the program.

Details are relatively scant for now, but TikTok says the Creativity Program will be invite-only at the outset before opening up to all eligible creators in the US in the coming months. Participants need to be at least 18 years old; meet the minimum follower and video view counts; and have an account that's in good standing. TikTok hasn't said how many followers a user will need to take part, but a previous report suggested the floor is 100,000 followers, a significant jump from the 10,000 baseline for the Creator Fund.

In addition to meeting certain concrete metrics, TikTok says users need to post "high-quality, original content longer than one minute" to be able to earn through the Creativity Program. It added that creators will be able to track video eligibility on an updated dashboard and see their estimated revenue alongside video performance data.

Many creators have taken fire at TikTok, with some claiming that they've received payouts of just a few dollars for videos that were viewed millions of times. The TikTok Creator Fund was unveiled in 2020 with an initial commitment of $200 million. Soon after, the company said it would support hundreds of thousands of creators with over $2 billion in funding over the next three years. TikTok hasn't confirmed how much it plans to pay out through the Creativity Program, but confirmed to TechCrunch it will "provide a higher average gross revenue for qualified video views" under a revised formula.

TikTok is starting to roll out the Creativity Program in the US after testing it in France and Brazil over the last few months. The company has other monetization plans in the works, according to reports, such as a way for creators to paywall their videos. The Stateside debut of the Creativity Program comes soon after YouTube started sharing ad revenue with Shorts creators.

If you're looking to take the first step toward improving your home audio setup beyond your devices' built-in speakers, IKEA and Sonos' Symfonisk lineup is a solid way to get started. The range of WiFi speakers includes several products designed to blend into your home, including one designed to look like artwork. Even better, the Symfonisk picture frame is currently on sale for $195, which is $65 off the regular price, until February 26th. It's available in black and white.

The Symfonisk picture frame is part of the Sonos ecosystem, so it should play nicely with any other speakers you have from the company. It's compatible with AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect, and you can use it to play audio from a host of streaming services. Moreover, you can pair two of the speakers together for stereo sound.

In addition to having the option to wall hang the Symfonisk picture frame, you'll be able to flip out its feet and rest it against a wall or other surface. In truth, the "picture frame" descriptor is a little misleading, since you can't simply drop in your favorite photo of your loved ones. However, you can swap the front panel for a different look or use third-party services to print custom covers.

Two years after indie survival game Valheim became an instant smash hit on PC, it has a console release date. It's coming to Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on March 14th. Valheim will be available to Xbox Game Pass subscribers at no extra cost. The game's currently on PC Game Pass too.

Initially built by a five-person team at developer Iron Gate Studio, Valheim sold 5.7 million copies in its first five weeks and it was one of the highest-earning games on Steam in 2021. Players can team up with up to nine of their friends to go hunting, collect supplies, build bases, sail the seas, explore biomes, take down bosses and, of course, go fishing in a procedurally generated Viking afterlife.

Valheim will be available as a game preview on Xbox at the outset. "There's still a lot left to add before the game can leave Early Access," the game's Twitter account noted. Those who dive into Valheim on Xbox will be able to join up with pals who play on PC, as there's crossplay support.

Microsoft is reportedly in talks with advertising agencies on how to slot ads into the juiced-up Bing, particularly when it comes to the generative AI-powered chatbot. The company is already testing ads there, according to Reuters, including by slotting in traditional search ads.

The ad agency talks are still said to be in the early stages. Only a small number of users have access to the chatbot, and millions more are on the waitlist. As such, Microsoft may not feel like there's a rush to incorporate ads right away.

Microsoft reportedly anticipates that the chatbot's more conversational approach to delivering information will bring in more users and, in turn, advertisers. Ads in the chatbot might also be featured more prominently than conventional search ads. One place where you might see ads is in the links that the chatbot uses for citations in its responses. Microsoft told Reuters that it will work with partners and advertisers as it starts exploring the potential of the tech for ads.

It's not an enormous surprise that ads are likely on the way to Bing's chatbot and, presumably, Google's Bard. While they've already had some hiccups, generative AI chatbots have the potential to reshape how people find information. Given how important search revenue currently is (more than half of Alphabet's $282.8 billion revenue for 2022 came from search), the companies have little choice but to monetize the chatbots. The most obvious path is figuring out how to stuff ads inside them.

Zero-click attacks, which can install malware onto a device without the user clicking or tapping on anything, have been on the rise in recent years. To help fend them off, Samsung has developed a feature called Message Guard. It currently works on the Samsung Messages app and Google Messages on Galaxy S23 series devices, which just became available today.

Message Guard runs in the background. It isolates PNG, JPG, JPEG, GIF, ICO, WEBP, BMP and WBMP files that you receive in messages from the rest of your device. The tool checks images bit-by-bit and processes them to make sure they can't infect your device with malicious code, Samsung says.

The company plans to gradually roll out Message Guard to other Galaxy smartphones and tablets running One UI 5.1 or higher. Samsung says it will release an update that brings the protections to third-party messaging apps too.

Zero-click attacks can remain undetected by users even as the malicious code siphons their data off to hackers. According to reports, a zero-click attack installed NSO Group spyware like Pegasus onto iPhones used by activists, journalists, government officials and politicians via an exploit.

The Federal Trade Commission is opening a dedicated technology office that will place Silicon Valley under more scrutiny and help it stay on top of emerging tech and trends in a fast-moving market. Commissioners voted 4-0 on Thursday to create the office.

Under the direction of chair Lina Khan, the FTC has trained its focus on tech companies. Last year, Epic Games agreed to a record $520 million settlement following FTC allegations that it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The agency has also attempted to block Microsoft's proposed takeover of Activision Blizzard and sued to stop NVIDIA from buying ARM (NVIDIA backed out of the deal).

Moreover, the FTC has looked into Amazon's purchases of One Medical and MGM, according to reports. However, the agency failed in an attempt to block Meta's takeover of Within.

“For more than a century, the FTC has worked to keep pace with new markets and ever-changing technologies by building internal expertise," Khan said in a statement. "Our office of technology is a natural next step in ensuring we have the in-house skills needed to fully grasp evolving technologies and market trends as we continue to tackle unlawful business practices and protect Americans.”

The Office of Technology will support FTC’s investigations by the antitrust and consumer protection divisions into business practices and the tech behind them. It will advise FTC staff and commissioners on policy and research. Additionally, it will shine a spotlight on emerging tech and market trends that affect the FTC's work.

“Actually being able to have staff internally to approach these matters and help with subject matter expertise is critical," FTC chief technology officer Stephanie Nguyen, who will lead the department, told The Washington Post. The agency aims to more than double its number of technology-focused staff from 10 to around 22.

“The areas ... we will focus on is to work on cases,” Ngyuen said. “This means understanding the specific market and business models. This means articulating the platform’s technologies and services. And this means analyzing the competition and key market players.”

With more expertise and a deeper understanding of how tech companies operate, the office could help the agency fine-tune subpoenas and the details of settlements to make them more impactful. The team will help fellow FTC bureaus with other cases (most companies use tech, after all), but its core mandate is to keep a close eye on the tech sector.

The move to create the office and expand the agency's roster of tech experts comes at a time of great upheaval in the industry. Microsoft and Google recently detailed plans to embed AI chatbots into their search engines and other services.

Snap says it has hit a new milestone, as Snapchat now has more than 750 million monthly active users. The company also noted recently that 375 million users hop into the app every day. While that's a far cry from the 2.96 billion monthly and 2 billion daily active users Facebook has, Snapchat's audience numbers are trending upwards. Snap said at an investor day event that it sees "a path for Snapchat to reach over 1 billion people in the next two to three years."

Breaking those figures down a little, most of Snapchat's audience is outside of North America, where it now has more than 150 million monthly active users. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said the app reaches more than three-quarters of 13- to 34-year-olds in more than 20 countries and users post more than 5 billion snaps every day. The Snapchat+ subscription service, meanwhile, has more than 2.5 million members just over seven months after it went live. More than 300 million people use the Snap Map every month too.

These are much-needed signs of positivity for Snap after a rough 2022. The company's stock plummeted by over 80 percent between late 2021 and middle of last year, when it laid off around 1,300 employees. It also ditched its Pixy selfie drone after four months.

Perhaps someone at TikTok watched the recent documentary on the boom and bust of HQ Trivia, because it has announced a live trivia challenge with a $500,000 prize pool. TikTok Trivia is open to users in the US aged 18 and older. You can tap a trivia widget in the For You feed, search for the #TikTokTrivia tag or navigate to the @TikTok account now to register.

TikTok Trivia will run daily for five days, starting on February 22nd. During each of the first three days, there will be two sessions starting at 8PM and 9PM ET. If you ever played HQ Trivia, you'll know the drill. There will be several rounds of multiple choice questions. You'll need to get them all right to have a chance of winning a share of that session's prize pot. TikTok will also run survival rounds. There's no hard limit on the number of questions during these rounds and the questions will get progressively more difficult. Players who make it to the end will split $100,000.

The questions will mostly be general knowledge, covering topics such as lifestyle, sports, music and beauty. But, if you want to win big, it's a good idea to brush up on John Wick as there will be some questions about Keanu Reeves' hitman movies. TikTok Trivia is part of a promotional campaign for John Wick: Chapter 4, which will hit theaters next month.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has announced that she's stepping down from the helm of the streaming video service. Wojcicki, who joined Alphabet nearly 25 years ago, said she's starting "a new chapter focused on my family, health, and personal projects I'm passionate about."

In her farewell letter, Wojcicki said Neal Mohan is taking over as the new chief. Mohan arrived at the company when Google bought DoubleClick in 2007. He went on to become YouTube's Chief Product Officer in 2015 and helped to launch YouTube TV, YouTube Music, Premium and Shorts. Mohan has also led the service's trust and safety team. 

Intriguingly, Wojcicki wrote that Mohan will be senior vice-president and head of YouTube, rather than CEO. "With all we’re doing across Shorts, streaming and subscriptions, together with the promises of AI, YouTube’s most exciting opportunities are ahead, and Neal is the right person to lead us," Wojcicki said.

She won't be leaving YouTube immediately. "In the short term, I plan to support Neal and help with the transition, which will include continuing to work with some YouTube teams, coaching team members, and meeting with creators," she wrote. Wojcicki will still be involved with the company after that as she'll serve as an advisor to Google and Alphabet. "This will allow me to call on my different experiences over the years to offer counsel and guidance across Google and the portfolio of Alphabet companies," she noted.

Wojcicki has been involved with Google practically since the beginning. The company's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, set up office in her parents' garage soon after they incorporated Google in 1998. Wojcicki became Google's first marketing manager the following year and played a role in the earliest Google Doodles. In 2006, she encouraged Google to buy YouTube, which launched a year earlier.

Developing...

The story behind how Tetris became a global phenomenon is the basis of an upcoming Apple TV+ movie. The film will hit the streaming service on March 31st and Apple has just dropped the first trailer.

Taron Egerton stars as Henk Rogers, a Dutch entrepreneur who (spoiler) secured deals to distribute Tetris on the Game Boy and other consoles. Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov (played by Nikita Yefremov) created the game during the Cold War, but because he was a government employee, he didn't receive any royalties at the outset. On the surface, that might not sound like the most compelling foundation for a thriller, but the rights to the classic puzzle game were embroiled in a clash between communism and capitalism. 

The fast-paced trailer (appropriately soundtracked by "The Final Countdown") highlights some of that inherent tension. Rogers encounters resistance from a British media mogul who wants the game, KGB agents and even Mikhail Gorbachev.

If you suddenly feel the urge to rotate falling shapes and create horizontal lines with them, there are dozens of ways to play Tetris. Still, it's worth noting that the original version of the game just hit Nintendo Switch Online as part of the first wave of Game Boy titles on the service.