Black Lives Matter in partnership with J. Walter Thompson New York has created BackingBlackBusiness.com, a web tool allowing people to easily discover Black owned small businesses throughout the U.S. Currently in Beta with over 300 Black-owned businesses, the site aims to reframe the importance and the role of Black-owned small businesses for the Black community. It also hopes to draw attention to the large and often underestimated racial disparities in business ownership and performance. The Google map based tool gives people the opportunity to use their dollars to support local Black-owned businesses in order to have a national impact. The site aspires to become the biggest and most easily accessible Black businesses database in the country. The goal is to have a good representation of Black-owned businesses in all states on the site by the end of 2017. The site allows Black owners to add themselves to the map, making data collection easier. It will be supported by a social and influencer campaign. Brent Choi, chief creative officer, J. Walter Thompson New York, said: “Our hope is to reduce the racial disparity that exists in economic well-being through the promotion of Black business ownership”….
Growth Brings Growing Pains–and Bots–To Bluesky
Bluesky has seen its user base soar since the U.S. presidential election, boosted by people seeking refuge from Elon Musk's X, which they view as increasingly leaning too far to the right given its owner's support of President-elect Donald Trump, or wanting an alternative to Meta's Threads and its algorithms.
The platform grew out of the company then known as Twitter, championed by its former CEO Jack Dorsey. Its decentralized approach to social networking was eventually intended to replace Twitter's core mechanic. That's unlikely now that the two companies have parted ways. But Bluesky's growth trajectory — with a user base that has more than doubled since October — could make it a serious competitor to other social platforms.
But with growth comes growing pains. It's not just human users who've been flocking to Bluesky but also bots, including those designed to create partisan division or direct users to junk websites.
The skyrocketing user base — now surpassing 25 million — is the biggest test yet for a relatively young platform that has branded itself as a social media alternative free of the problems plaguing its competitors. According to research firm Similarweb, Bluesky added 7.6 million monthly active app users on iOS and Android in November, an increase of 295.4% since October. It also saw 56.2 million desktop and mobile web visits, in the same period, up 189% from October.
Besides the U.S. elections, Bluesky also got a boost when X was briefly banned in Brazil.
"They got this spike in attention, they've crossed the threshold where it is now worth it for people to flood the platform with spam," said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University and a member of Issue One's... Read More