Instagram to Push Amber Alerts; Tweetdeck Shutdown-Something New; Salesforce Revenue Up; Two Leading Browsers-2nd May Surprise You

Instagram is going to start pushing out Amber Alerts to user feeds, to alert them to missing children reports in their area. Engadget.com reports that the feature begins rollout tomorrow, and should be live in 25 countries in the next couple weeks. Parent company Meta warns that you won’t see them often, and that they will not only be rare, but specific to the search area. They will use IP addresses and location data if you have enabled that to ascertain who will get particular alerts. Unlike text notifications, these will show up in user feeds, and will include a photo and description of the child, as well as where they were last seen…and a number to call with tips for law enforcement. 

Twitter is shutting down its Mac app for TweetDeck in July. The web based version will live on. According to macrumors.com, Twitter Tweeted that it is “saying goodbye to TweetDeck for the Mac app to focus on making TweetDeck even better and testing our new Preview.” That refers to a redesigned version of TweetDeck which is being tested on an invite-only basis. Twitter picked up TweetDeck back in 2011. A lot of people like the multi-column view of Tweets. 

Salesforce revenue was up 24% to $7.4 billion in the last quarter, a great number considering rumblings about inflation. “So far, we’re just not seeing any material impact from the broader economic world that all of you are in,” said Marc Benioff, the Salesforce founder and co-CEO, on a conference call discussing the company’s fiscal first quarter, ended April 30. “Our demand environment remains very strong.” Geekwire.com says that data visualization company Tableau Software, which has been part of Salesforce since 2019, was up 18% in the past quarter. Salesforce did reduce its revenue guidance for the full year slightly…from $32 to $32.1 billion down to between $31.7-$31.8.

The top browser probably won’t surprise anyone, but the #2 one might. Arstechnica.com notes that according to Atlas VPN, the big dog of all browsers is Google Chrome. Chrome has an estimated 3.4 billion users! What’s #2? Nope, not Firefox or Microsoft….it’s Apple’s Safari, with over a billion users. If that makes you scratch your head, this might clear things up…the totals include mobile users, not just desktop ones. With Apple’s massive installed base of iPhones and iPads, that’s where their numbers really add up. It’s still a pretty amazing number, considering that Safari is the only browser not available on Android, OR on Windows! Edge has now passed up Firefox, but only has about 213,000 users. Firefox has a bit over 179,000.