McAfee's Social Privacy Manager gives control back to consumers, providing the ability to adjust over 100 social media privacy settings in just a few clicks to keep posts and personal information more private.

Today, McAfee, a global leader in online protection, announced the launch of Social Privacy Manager to its McAfee+ product line-up. This powerful protection tool makes it easy for consumers to gain and maintain control of their social media privacy, providing visibility over who can access their personal information and shared content. 

With the number of global social media users expected to reach 5.85 billion in 2027, McAfee’s recent research¹ shows a concerning trend: while 58% of social media users state they only share content with their friends, family, and followers, nearly half (46%) do not adjust any privacy settings on their social media platforms. The complexity of doing so may contribute to this lack of action, as 55% of respondents say they struggle to locate or even comprehend their social media privacy settings.

Now, with McAfee’s Social Privacy Manager, consumers can use personalized privacy recommendations, based on their preferences, to adjust more than 100 social media privacy settings quickly and easily across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Google, and YouTube, with TikTok coming soon. McAfee customers can do so on Android and iOS devices, and on Windows and Mac computers.

“Sharing personal experiences and memories with friends and family on social media should be fun,” said Roma Majumder, SVP of Product at McAfee. “With Social Privacy Manager, you can better manage your digital footprint and control who has access to content you share on social media. This also means your personal information, such as pics from the last place you vacationed, cannot be easily found and used by cybercriminals who could try to impersonate you.”

“The great thing with Social Privacy Manager is that you don't have to be expert in the 100 plus privacy settings across social media, because McAfee is. We navigate the complex and ever-changing world of privacy settings for you. All you have to do is select your privacy preference in a couple of clicks and we'll do the rest. This means you'll have greater peace of mind to share your latest family snaps, post updates on loved ones, or connect with colleagues, knowing your private information, stays private,” said Majumder.

The addition of Social Privacy Manager to the McAfee+ product line-up follows other recent mobile enhancements, including McAfee Scam Protection for iOS. This proprietary, AI-powered Scam Protection feature now comes with enhanced notification capabilities on iOS, alerting consumers about suspicious messages or URLs without any action required and providing insights into why those messages were flagged. This approach combines online safety education with proactive protection, reflecting McAfee’s commitment to user-friendly solutions that adapt to evolving threats and ensure a safer online experience for all.

Social Privacy Manager 
McAfee’s Social Privacy Manager helps you adjust your social media privacy settings based on how public or private you want to be online. Personalized privacy recommendations based on your own preferences allow you to adjust more than 100 privacy settings across your Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Google, and YouTube accounts (and coming soon to TikTok), in just a few clicks to ensure your personal info is only visible to the people you want to share it with. McAfee’s Social Privacy Manager works on your Android and iOS devices as well as on your Windows and Mac computers.

Upgrades to McAfee Scam Protection^TM for iOS 
McAfee Scam Protection, McAfee’s patented and powerful AI technology that protects you in real time from scams in text messages, is now also available for iOS devices. McAfee Scam Protection automatically identifies and alerts you of dangerous links in text messages such as suspicious messages from an unknown number or fake package delivery messages, before you open or click on them. The feature also blocks suspicious sites if you accidentally click on a scam link in email, social media, and more.​ Text alert functionality for Android users was launched in Fall 2023.

With unparalleled automation capabilities powered by GenAI, the partnership will deliver optimized efficiencies and business outcomes, while significantly improving customer and employee experiences

Alorica, a global leader of next-generation customer experience solutions, announced today a new partnership with Automation Anywhere, a leader in Intelligent Automation that puts artificial intelligence (AI) to work across every aspect of an organization. With Automation Anywhere’s leading capabilities in GenAI-powered Intelligent Automation, Alorica will seamlessly integrate its customer-centric approach, forging a powerhouse alliance that aims to improve efficiency, personalization, simplicity and satisfaction simultaneously. This collaboration further strengthens the suite of technology-enabled offerings by Alorica IQ – the company’s digital foundry focused on delivering outcome-based solutions that map and solve customer pain points, transforming the customer’s journey through next-level Customer Experience Management (CXM) services. 

"Alorica IQ’s mission is to apply technology to push the boundaries of what's possible now, so that it becomes the CX gold standard in the future. Partnering with Automation Anywhere furthers our relentless commitment to set a new benchmark in customer service,” said Harry Folloder, Chief Digital Officer, Alorica. “This is a huge step toward advancing our business transformation strategy for clients, enabling brands to win more effectively with their customers with less effort in the long run. Our vision is to expand the adoption of our GenAI solutions across the CXM industry to significantly increase CX employee satisfaction while gaining customer trust and loyalty.”

Automation Anywhere will support thousands of Alorica employees in delivering exceptional results for its global clients in diverse industries including retail, logistics, banking and healthcare. Supported by Automation Anywhere’s transformative Intelligent Automation platform, Alorica will enhance processes and elevate CX with quicker response times and personalized interactions across multiple channels.

“Our partnership gives Alorica the power of our Intelligent Automation platform to reimagine the future of customer service and contact center experiences,” said Mihir Shukla, CEO and Co-Founder, Automation Anywhere. “Our collaboration empowers Alorica to deploy next-generation CX solutions for companies, leveraging GenAI to significantly enhance customer experiences for Alorica’s clients and their end-user customers.”

The partnership enables human-in-the-loop Intelligent Automation solutions for more complex contact center response situations that would benefit from GenAI, such as advanced image recognition, complex quote generation or handling of multiple intents in a conversational AI model with end-user customers. Additionally, Alorica IQ and Automation Anywhere have set up a dedicated taskforce for joint go-to-market efforts, combining their expertise to provide tailored automation solutions that meet the unique needs of shared customers and create future-ready GenAI-powered service offerings.

Capgemini and Unity, the world’s leading platform for creating and growing real-time 3D (RT3D) content, today announced an expansion of their strategic alliance that will see Capgemini take on Unity’s Digital Twin Professional Services arm. Per the agreement, Unity’s Digital Twin Professional Services team will join and embed within Capgemini, forming one of the largest pools of Unity enterprise developers in the world. The transaction will accelerate the iteration and implementation of the market leading real-time 3D (RT3D) visualization software for the industrial application of digital twins. It will allow end users to envision, understand, and interact with physical systems - a key enabler for intelligent industry. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2024.

Unity’s Digital Twin Professional Services team has worked with many companies over the past five years to develop real-time 3D solutions to drive business results. As more and more enterprises seek to combine the physical and digital worlds, clients are looking for the RT3D software capabilities coupled with business transformation, design, and engineering expertise to realize value from the industrial application of digital twins at scale. Today’s agreement will extend the reach and scale of Unity’s software through Capgemini, allowing more organizations to further push the boundaries of this technology through the acceleration, adoption, and application of RT3D to build and scale immersive experiences.

“Unity’s real-time 3D technology is the unequivocal industry standard for visualization across platforms and devices. As such, it is a key component that will impact the value-chain of intelligent products - from R&D to manufacturing, operations, and services,” comments William Rozé, CEO of Capgemini Engineering and Group Executive Board member. “This new agreement with Unity will allow Capgemini to embed 3D visualization software capabilities into our end-to-end business transformation services, to help clients realize the immediate and longer-term benefits of intelligent industry.”

“Unity has reached a point in its growth where the opportunity for us in the enterprise market has outpaced our ability to scale fast enough to meet client demand,” explains Jim Whitehurst, CEO, Unity. “With its scale and breadth of services – from design and engineering to business transformation and data expertise, Capgemini is well placed to unleash the full potential of Unity technology for enterprise clients across industries with specific use cases.”

As part of this agreement Capgemini plans to scale a range of sector-specific solutions that are currently in high demand. Particularly relevant for automotive, consumer products & retail, energy & utilities, aerospace & defense, healthcare & life sciences, and industrial products/manufacturing, tailored offerings are expected to include:

• Simulation: A digital representation of an asset, facility or product that emulates its real-world counterpart through advanced modeling to provide real-time insights and simulate future scenarios.
• Human Machine Interfaces: Interactive experiences for in-vehicle infotainment (IVI), meters (gauge clusters), and additional screens.
• Immersive Training: Engaging training experiences in interactive 3D or augmented or virtual reality (AR and VR) to enable better knowledge transfer and safer workplaces.

Connectria, a global leader in IBM Power Systems cloud services and AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, has announced the upcoming opening of two new data centers in Singapore with under 2-millisecond low-latency connectivity to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Asia Pacific region (ap-southeast-1). The facilities are designed to bolster cloud adoption and modernization for IBM i and AIX systems throughout the region, offering a seamless integration of public cloud with traditional IT environments. The two Connectria data centers will also enable inner region Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) with connectivity to all AWS Availability Zones (AZs).

Accelerating IBM i and AIX Cloud Modernization 

Connectria's new data centers use a proven architecture designed to meet the rising demand for infrastructure modernization and hybrid cloud adoption. Drawing on nearly three decades as one of the world's largest providers of IBM i and AIX hosting, Connectria's Asia Pacific data centers deliver a state-of-the-art IBM Power infrastructure built on the latest IBM hardware with < 2 milliseconds of latency to AWS.

"This investment in Singapore builds on our recent Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with AWS. The demand for having a solution in Singapore like we have in the United States and Europe has exceeded our expectations and creates a tremendous opportunity for Connectria and its partners to deliver this unique offering to companies throughout the entire Asia Pacific region." Troy Mitchell, VP Channel & Alliances

The seamless integration between IBM Power and AWS enabled by Connectria can help customers accelerate data center exits to pursue cloud-first IT strategies more effectively and supports the rising need for modern infrastructure and hybrid cloud solutions for IBM Power. By connecting IBM Power workloads to AWS, customers can augment mission critical applications with native AWS services for advanced data analytics, AI/ML, IoT, and more to add new capabilities, improve resilience, and accelerate cloud innovation.

To help customers ensure quick and successful deployments, Connectria can provide migration services and IBM Power hybrid cloud resources in an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) model, or fully managed with support for both IBM Power and AWS. For customers in highly regulated industries like financial services, Connectria's data centers and managed services are compliant with critical frameworks such as PCI DSS; SOC 1, 2, and 3; and HITRUST.

Embracing Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Infrastructures

Ryan Pelerin, Chief Revenue Officer at Connectria, reflected on the strategic significance of the new data centers, stating, "The Singapore data centers signifies a major advancement in our mission to empower organizations throughout the Asia Pacific region. By offering direct AWS connectivity for IBM i and AIX systems, we're not just delivering cloud hosting—we're providing a pathway to modernization that combines the reliability of IBM Power with the agility of AWS."

The data centers leverage the latest IBM Power10 hardware and are strategically equipped to enable businesses to harness the full spectrum of benefits offered by both AWS and IBM Power. These new data centers can deploy not only scale-out systems but also provide support for larger enterprise-class Power systems hardware to allow organizations the greatest flexibility when choosing an infrastructure provider.

Available Summer of 2024

Starting in Q3, companies operating in the Asia Pacific region will be able to deploy IBM Power Systems workloads in Connectria's new data centers with low-latency connectivity to AWS.

To encourage initial adoption in the Asia Pacific region, Connectria is also introducing an Early Adopter Acceleration Program that provides AWS and Connectria funding to subsidize proof-of-concept deployments and reduce overall migration and first-year operating costs for new customers. This program is designed to ease the transition to Connectria's hybrid cloud architecture by removing some of the financial barriers.

Enterprise Customer Growth, EU Footprint Expansion, and Product Innovation Drive the Company’s Success

Iterable, the AI-powered customer communication platform, today celebrated a banner fiscal year of growth and innovation. In addition to eclipsing $200 million in annual recurring revenue, Iterable set the bar for AI product development, with 37 new features released last year, including AI-Powered Predictive Goals, Copy Assist, Explainable AI and Automatic Frequency Optimization, making it the most robust AI offering in the marketing automation space. The company’s momentum is fueled by its ongoing global expansion and the steady growth of its customer base, which includes marquee brands such as Fabletics, GitLab, SeatGeek, Airtable, and PGA of America. 

With a fast-growing customer base of over 1200 brands from 54 countries globally, Iterable stands out as a driving force of innovation in the marketing automation space. Marketers leveraged Iterable to deliver over 200 billion cross-channel messages and execute nearly 3 million campaigns last year alone. This extensive outreach targeted a diverse user base surpassing 8 billion customer profiles across the globe. Impressively, Iterable activated over 1.8 petabytes of data, and orchestrated over 1.5 trillion API calls last fiscal year, underscoring its unparalleled capacity and top-tier performance in the ever-evolving landscape of customer engagement.

The recent expansion of Iterable’s business to Lisbon, Portugal, coupled with the inauguration of their European Data Center in Dublin, Ireland, highlights strategic moves that position Iterable for enhanced operations and accelerated growth in the European market.

“Iterable’s disruptive and innovative approach to customer communications is driven by our ambition to both solve and simplify a critical problem for marketers and consumers alike,” said Andrew Boni, CEO and co-founder of Iterable. “As we forge ahead, our goal is to build a lasting and expanding company that positions itself on the frontier of marketing technology. We are dedicated to staying ahead of the curve, with our valued customers and partners forming the cornerstone of our innovative journey. Iterable is not just about providing solutions; it’s about creating an enduring impact in the dynamic landscape of customer engagement.”

The company’s success to date and its outlook ahead as the industry’s leader in AI and customer joy underscores its ability to shape the future of customer communication and loyalty.

“Iterable’s remarkable growth stands as a testament not only to the company’s creativity, innovative culture, and exceptional talent but also mirrors the evolving landscape where businesses seek fresh and inventive approaches to connect brands with their customers,” said Murat Bicer, Partner at CRV. “They stand out as leaders in the lucrative ($18B) and expanding CRM market. What sets them apart is their commitment to delivering robust, user-friendly AI solutions designed to help today’s biggest brands scale their growth. As one of Iterable’s earliest investors, we applaud their achievements not just over the past year, but across their impressive 11-year history, consistently providing substantial value to customers through an expanding range of inventive products. We are confident that even more history is yet to be written as they continue to fulfill their mission of delivering customer joy.”

According to a recent benchmark survey conducted by Wakefield Research, marketing professionals are rapidly embracing and experimenting with AI especially generative AI in their work. Of the 91% of marketers currently using AI in some capacity on the job, a large majority (67%) see it as more than just a tool for efficiency and productivity they consider it a transformative technological revolution. While most marketers acknowledge the opportunity AI presents, 84% feel ill-equipped with the best tools and are largely intimidated by the technology, along with the increased expectations it brings.

This important research highlights the numerous opportunities and challenges that AI presents areas where Iterable is actively investing to innovate and address. The features in Iterable’s expanding AI offering are designed to enhance efficiency and productivity for marketers, so they can have more time for strategic thinking, creativity, and building unique and personal customer experiences. Iterable’s differentiated approach to AI focuses on transparency and explainability, building trust and confidence among marketers by enabling users to comprehend the reasoning behind their AI solutions. By ensuring the responsible and judicious adoption of AI by marketers around the world, Iterable is playing a pivotal role in shaping the future landscape of AI and customer communications.

Steve Mastrocola, Senior Director of CRM at SeatGeek, the high-growth technology platform transforming the live event experience for fans, teams and venues, highlights SeatGeek’s confidence in foreseeing and adapting to changes with Iterable as their partner, ensuring ongoing meaningful customer connections.

“SeatGeek has been a loyal Iterable customer since 2016. Working with Iterable, we’ve successfully expanded our reach across multiple channels, driving impressive results in the process. Staying attuned to evolving customer trends and demands is paramount for SeatGeek’s success. Through cross-channel marketing and AI capabilities, the Iterable team ensures we stay ahead of the curve in this dynamic industry. We’re confident that with Iterable as our partner, we can anticipate and adapt to these changes, ensuring we continue to connect with our customers in meaningful ways, now and into the future.”

Fahad Zahid, Head of Brand & Digital Marketing at PGA of America, one of the world’s largest sports organizations, underscores the transformative impact of Iterable’s platform and team:

“As a long-standing Iterable customer, I can confidently attest that their customer communication capabilities have been a game-changer for our team, serving as a catalyst for our growth throughout the pandemic to today. Moreover, Iterable’s AI-driven features consistently deliver the efficiency, agility, and intelligence essential not only to reach our customers but also to foster long-term loyalty in today’s rapidly evolving landscape. Not to mention that their team and support are unparalleled. We envision a lasting partnership with Iterable, and are looking forward to leveraging their product offerings as we continue to scale our operations.”

Manifest Financial, Inc., has acquired Nerve Tech, Inc., an innovative banking platform serving the unique needs of creators and entrepreneurs. 

Nerve co-founders, John Waupsh and Ben Morrison drew upon their 20+ year backgrounds as consumer banking and fintech innovators to create a streamlined solution tailored to meet the financial service needs of creators and their platforms. Manifest will build on the foundation laid by Nerve with plans to introduce further enhancements later in 2024. The synergy between the Manifest and Nerve teams is founded on a mutual commitment to redefine financial services for today’s entrepreneurial sector.

Michael Cavallaro, CEO and Co-founder of Manifest, stated, “The acquisition of Nerve marks a significant phase in our commitment to address the unique banking needs and requirements of entrepreneurs, micro-businesses, and the platforms integral to their success. This move significantly accelerates our strategy for deploying these invaluable services to our partners.”

Echoing this sentiment, Waupsh stated, “The journey with Nerve has always been about charting a path towards financial autonomy for creators. This collaboration is a monumental stride towards equipping creators with a banking platform that is not just a tool, but a partner in their entrepreneurial journey.”

This strategic acquisition signals a new chapter in banking, where entrepreneurial needs take center stage, ensuring their voices are heard and needs are met with tailored solutions.

This transaction was facilitated by MJC Partners, LLC, who acted as the advisor to Manifest. Goodwin Procter LLP acted as legal counsel to Manifest.

The onset of AI and over-gamification has changed the approach B2B review sites need to take to ensure reviews remain genuine and trustworthy—a mission TrustRadius has been dedicated to since the beginning.

TrustRadius published its second annual Review Quality Report, bringing transparency to what goes on behind the scenes of review moderation and publications on TrustRadius.

This year's report titled, Fighting Fraud: Review Quality Report 2024, explores the growing use of AI-generated reviews and how those are putting demand on B2B review sites to be more diligent than ever to ensure only genuine reviews are published.

It was discovered that 60% of the 53,777 reviews started on TrustRadius in 2023 were returned to reviewers for more detail, not finished, or were rejected for a variety of reasons—the largest being suspicious users (36%). The remaining 40% (21,336 reviews) went on to be published for 2,217 products.

• Not only does the report cover how reviews are chosen for publication, return, or rejection, it also dives into:
• The proactive approach TrustRadius takes to curb the unethical use of AI in the industry
• How TrustRadius vets reviewers before publication to ensure reviews have unbiased, genuine feedback
• The erosion of confidence in the marketplace and how the trScore removes bias and cherry-picking
• The future of review generation and how TrustRadius has helped vendors gather 60% or more of their reviews for the year at in-person events

"Buying committees are continuing to grow, which means accurate, trustworthy product information that builds collective confidence, like user reviews, is critical," says Vinay Bhagat, Founder and CEO of TrustRadius. "It has always been our mission at TrustRadius to protect the voice of the customer and provide buyers researching tech solutions with unbiased feedback from real-world users. Our team will continue adjusting tactics to combat AI-generated and other fraudulent reviews."

TrustRadius will discuss this year's findings of challenges and the proactive measures TrustRadius takes in a LinkedIn Live on Thursday, March 7, 2024, at 12:00 pm ET. Speakers for the event, Fighting B2B Review Fraud Amidst AI and Over-Gamification, include TrustRadius' Research Operations Manager, Katie Marino-Kyle, and Research Manager, Katie Allison.

By partnering with Emplifi, Dine Brands cut the amount of time it took to manage guest inquiries on social channels from five minutes to sixty seconds or less

Emplifi, a leading customer engagement platform, today announced it has significantly improved guest recovery workflows across social channels and integrated Google Reviews for Dine Brands Global, Inc., the parent company of Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill + Bar^®, IHOP^®, and Fuzzy’s Taco Shop^® restaurants. After managing messages from guests directly in the Facebook app without the ability to respond, monitor, or measure guest interactions from a single dashboard – Dine Brands’ Guest Relations team required more streamlined and integrated guest recovery capabilities. 

Dine Brands was already using Emplifi Agent, a customer service engagement CRM, before they seamlessly integrated Emplifi’s social media management features into their workflow. Within a few weeks of deploying these features, Dine Brands saw immediate improvements across its social media guest recovery efforts. The Guest Relations team reduced the time spent handling social cases from five minutes to sixty seconds or less – an astounding 80% cut in time spent answering guest inquiries.

In addition to faster response times, Dine Brands was able to:

• Prioritize social media guest recovery cases every day of the week, exactly as they do for other case scenarios on email, phone support lines, and other communication channels.
• Curate and measure impactful data from their social recovery workflows by tracking guest data in real-time.
• Support the unique needs of their restaurants, ensuring guest feedback is heard and shared back to franchisees quickly.
• Integrate Google Reviews into their social media guest recovery processes, including the ability to respond to any guest reviews that come through the Google Review platform.

“From integrating Emplifi’s social media management features into our suite of tools to working with our wonderful Customer Success Manager, Emplifi has made life a lot easier,” said Alex Bresette, Director of Guest Relations at Dine Brands. “The technology has proven to be extremely valuable to our overarching guest recovery strategies.”

Research conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by Emplifi shows that more than 52% of consumers or, in Dine Brands’ case, guests expect brands to respond to customer inquiries within an hour, but 20% of customers say they typically have to wait 24 hours before getting a response. The gap in customer expectations and brand response times not only negatively impacts the customer experience, but can jeopardize critical outcomes, including customer loyalty efforts and revenue gains. Dine Brands is well-positioned to exceed their guests’ expectations and vastly improve the guest experience as well as internal processes and workflows.

“Today’s most successful brands are the ones that have been able to remove the silos between their marketing, customer care, and commerce efforts. Dine Brands is a perfect example of a company that understands this paradigm at an in-depth level,” said Zarnaz Arlia, CMO, Emplifi. “Brands need tools that easily integrate and come equipped with intuitive dashboards so that they can manage customer communications from a single platform without having to navigate between multiple social channels. Dine Brands has achieved this — faster response times combined with valuable guest insights making it clear just how important social media platforms are to customer service initiatives.”