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The social media giant Facebook announced a major rebranding decision. Hereafter, the corporate name of Facebook will be Meta. However, the change is only for the parent company, and individual platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, will remain the same in the name.

Mark Zuckerberg announced the new name as he unveiled plans to build a “metaverse” – an online world where people can game, work, and communicate in a virtual environment, often using VR headsets.  “The existing brand could not possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future, and needed to change- He added. The word “Meta” is Greek in origin and represents “beyond”.

“Over time, I hope that we are seen as a metaverse company and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we’re building towards,” he told a virtual conference.

“We’re now looking at and reporting on our business as two different segments, one for our family of apps, and one for our work on future platforms. “And as part of this, it is time for us to adopt a new company brand to encompass everything that we do, to reflect who we are and what we hope to build.”

The company said it would better “encompass” what it does, as it broadens its reach beyond social media into areas like virtual reality (VR). The move is counted to be an aftermath of negative stories about Facebook, based on documents leaked by Frances Haugen who has accused the company of putting “profits over safety”.

Instead of being on a computer, people in a metaverse might use a headset to enter a virtual world connecting all sorts of digital environments. The new virtual world could be the future of the internet and is anticipated to be used for practically anything from work, play and concerts, to socializing with friends and family.

Facebook unveiled a new sign at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Thursday, replacing its thumbs-up “Like” logo with a blue infinity shape. Facebook also announced on intention to start trading its shares under the new stock ticker MVRS from 1 December.

Influencer marketing is a trending concept in the Marketing strategies of today’s businesses. Recent research revealed that influencer marketing is used by 72% of companies in the market. Also, 42% of companies cited influencer marketing as one of their primary channels to attract target groups.

Compared to content marketing and other digital marketing efforts; overreaching strategies, influencers remain as opposed to this strategy. Around 48% of the companies believe in influencer marketing. More than three-quarters of marketers agree that, in the coming three years, this is going to set trends in marketing. Furthermore, the channel looks to set record levels of investment, with 76% planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets during that time.

Business performance in the post-covid era requires more push and pulls in marketing strategies. As the pandemic has greatly accelerated brands’ shift towards the digital marketplace, adopting a digital-first approach that could offer huge potential rewards, will stand out in the increasingly competitive crowd. Winning the trust and love of the target audience, and evolving to a stage where digital space is utilized for best will take organizations to next level.

Counting this, as further data privacy regulations roll out alongside the demise of third-party cookies and the launch of iOS 14.5, traditional marketing tactics will become prohibitively costly where they even remain possible. While this move to a privacy-first mentality is largely a victory for consumers, it will leave many digital marketers scrambling to find substitutes for strategies that have historically relied on users’ behavioral data.

As there are more audiences naturally segmented in consideration to the positives or benefits of the influencers they choose to follow, brands with an in-depth influencer strategy can circumvent limitations on behavioral tracking. Also, the influencer content is seen as most authentic as well. Building trusted consumer relationships with influencers that share their interest will add more benefits to organizations.

Alwafaa Group is a complete IT solution provider in UAE popular for E-Commerce Solutions, Digital Marketing (SEO,SEM,SMM), Mobile App, Website Design and Development, Hosting Solutions, Software Development, and more.The company has also bagged various awards and recognition and is best rated digital marketing company in UAE via google review parameters and customer testimonials.
“Recognitions elevates our enthusiasm and are adding more responsibility as well. The trust and faith in Alwafaa, will never go disappointing when these kinds of awards and achievements get added to our cap- said Mr. Muneer CEO of the company.
Over the past 18+ years, Alwafaa has added remarkable contributions in the industry with cream layer expertise and is continuing to spread excellence in customer-oriented website development, powerful web hosting, digital marketing, mobile application development, and more customized technology solutions.

Technological advancements have always surprised the medical industry with enormous opportunities for diagnosis, cure, and wellness. Over years AI is facilitating the industry with enhanced performance through novel techniques.

Now, the big news of AI interventions to study every protein made by the human body is adding a greater sparkle of hope to the medical industry. The possibility of using Artificial intelligence to predict the structures of almost every protein made by the human body could help supercharge the discovery of new drugs to treat disease, alongside other applications.

Proteins are known as the essential building blocks of living organisms wherein getting deep know-how on them is going to be critical for advancing medicine. Though only a fraction of these has been worked out to date, the industry is looking forward with greater hope.

Researchers used a program called AlphaFold to predict the structures of 350,000 proteins belonging to humans and other organisms. As the instructions for making human proteins are contained in our genomes – the DNA contained in the nuclei of human cells, the AI integrated study will help detect this and facilitate drug formations. There are around 20,000 of these proteins expressed by the human genome. Collectively, biologists refer to this full complement as the “proteome”.

In response to the results from AlphaFold, Dr. Demis Hassabis, chief executive and co-founder of artificial intelligence company Deep Mind, said: “We believe it’s the most complete and accurate picture of the human proteome to date and also this work represents the most significant contribution AI has made to advancing the state of scientific knowledge to date, and I think it’s a great illustration and example of the kind of benefits AI can bring to society.” He added: “We’re just so excited to see what the community is going to do with this.” The research could lead to enzymes that can also break down the plastic polluting our environment.

Proteins are made up of chains of smaller building blocks called amino acids. These chains fold in myriad different ways, forming a unique 3D shape. A protein’s shape determines its function in the human body.

AlphaFold predicted 350,000 protein structures, that consist of 20,000 human proteome and also model organisms used in scientific research, such as E. coli, yeast, the fruit fly, and the mouse.

AlphaFold made a confident prediction of the structural positions for 58% of the amino acids in the human proteome. The positions of 35.7% were predicted with a very high degree of confidence – double the number confirmed by experiments. This giant leap in capability is described by DeepMind researchers and a team from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in the prestigious journal Nature.

Traditional protein structure defining techniques like X-ray crystallography, cryogenic electron microscopy (Cryo-EM), and others are expensive and also consume more time. Thus the 3D shapes are often determined as part of targeted scientific investigations, but no project has proceeded systematically for determining structures for all the proteins made by the body. To date, just 17% of the proteome is covered by a structure confirmed experimentally.

Commenting on the predictions from AlphaFold, Prof McGeehan said: “It’s just the speed – the fact that it was taking us six months per structure and now it takes a couple of minutes. We couldn’t have predicted that would happen so fast.” “When we first sent our seven sequences to the DeepMind team, two of those we already had the experimental structures for. So we were able to test those when they came back. It was one of those moments – to be honest – where the hairs stood up on the back of my neck because the structures AlphaFold produced were identical.”

Prof Edith Heard, from EMBL, said: “This will be transformative for our understanding of how life works. That’s because proteins represent the fundamental building blocks from which living organisms are made.” He also added that “The applications are limited only by our understanding.”

These applications will support in developing new drugs and treatments for disease, designing climate change-resistant crops, and enzymes that can break down the plastic that pollutes the environment.

Dr. Ewan Birney, director of EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute, said the AlphaFold predicted structures were “one of the most important datasets since the mapping of the human genome”. DeepMind and EMBL are in collaboration to make the AlphaFold code and protein structure predictions openly available to the global scientific community. Dr. Hassabis said, “DeepMind planned to vastly expand the coverage in the database to almost every sequenced protein known to science – over 100 million structures.”

Twitter executive Lena Emara posted a thread of tweets announcing four-category concepts working on the Replies, Account Breadcrumbs, Privacy sets and Discover me on the social media platform.
These multiple concepts and features are taken into account by the social media giant to extend more control as to who all can see, read tweets, or let people find you on Twitter. The tweets also highlight the possibility to select a user’s profile before replying to or sending out a tweet.

These new features are said to be in the light as a social media platform is currently asking for users’ feedback. The new concept also adds to the ability to make tweet replies public before publishing, provided a user’s tweets are protected. If a user is replying to someone who doesn’t follow them, they will now receive a notification reminding them to make their tweets public. Emara also added that there could be a possibility to switch to a public account if users wish so.

Another tweet revealed the possibility to know which account a user is posting from if they have multiple accounts on Twitter. Emara says, “Switching accounts today is doable but not obvious. This makes it clearer and puts your avatar, name, handle, and privacy status all in one visible place.”

The Privacy sets concept talks about user access to content discoverability and conversation control settings available to them. To facilitate this the Privacy sets concept would then periodically send alerts to users, to let them pick among various groups of settings depending on their needs and wants of the time.

The fourth concept shared by Emara is about how users can control the way they are discovered on Twitter. As of now, users are searching on others by their phone numbers or email id, in addition to their name and Twitter handle. This new concept will now notify users if they have been searched using their username on the platform. Users will also be given the choice to choose if they want to be found by their credentials on Twitter. Also, users can set a time limit on these discoverability settings as well.

“With immense pleasure and privilege, we are celebrating the pride of partnering with Padelae,” said, Mr.Muneer, the CEO of UAE’s leading web developer and digital marketer. Alwafaa grabbed another milestone by being the digital partner of UAE’s largest venture of indoor padel complex. ‘Since inception Alwafaa has been serving hundred plus clients every year, and the journey gets continued with the enormous support of exceptional digital talents’. Added Mr. Muneer.

Padelae indoor complex in Al Quoz is all set for padel enthusiasts across AUE. UAE’s largest indoor air-conditioned complex is dedicated to racquet sport and is composed of an eight-court facility. Padalae is developed and operated by Padel Planet Sports & Amusement Tracks and offers world-class padel courts and high-quality service and has been established to make the sport more accessible and expanding padel communities in the UAE.

William, operation manager of Padelae, said: “As everywhere, Padel is riding a wave of popularity in the UAE, with the sport’s appeal transcending die-hard enthusiasts to capture the interest of people who otherwise largely keep away from sporting activities but find themselves drawn to padel because it is just such a fun and easy-to-play sport, and an extremely sociable one at that.”

The facility offers members and non-members a range of services and amenities including more than 60 private and valet parking slots, separate changing rooms for ladies and gents, Padel Pro-Shop, and a café named The Bandeja. Also, the needs and concerns of female players are at the center of the new facility’s planning process and operational approach. From designing women-friendly court spaces to offering ladies arrangements cut off from outside view, every effort has been taken to ensure the comfort and convenience of female padel players.

The digital identity designed and developed for Padelae by Alwafaa is only of this kind with the best user-friendly interface, advanced dashboard, highly optimized content, ultra-security features, integrations, and many more. The Company is looking ahead with more challenging projects in the coming days, Alwafaa’s latest feed declared.