LinkedIn is testing a ‘Premium Company Page’ subscription service for SMEs which includes AI-produced content and tools to grow follower counts, as well as other features to raise the profiles of subscribers.

What Is It? 

LinkedIn says the LinkedIn Premium Company Page is: “a subscription to help you make your Page stand out and convert more LinkedIn members into clients for your business. Premium Company Page gives you access to certain features that are only available to premium subscribers.” 

How Much? 

This service is rumoured to cost a pricey $99.99 per month per Page, reducing to $839.88 per page for an annual subscription. LinkedIn says that users can subscribe to their Premium Company Page from their Page super admin view. Users do not need a Premium Business subscription to get a Premium Company Page (these are separate subscriptions).

What Do You Get? 

The LinkedIn Premium Company Page offers users a range of premium LinkedIn features. These are:

– A custom call-to-action (CTA) button. As the name suggests, this is a button in which users can select their own custom name and unique url (for the call-to-action). Super admins who subscribe to the Premium Company Page can add this call-to-action button at the top of the Page, feed posts, and search result cards.

– The “Who’s visited my Page?” feature.  Again, as the name suggests, this feature allows Page admins to review visitor traffic and demographic trends across different time periods in Visitor Analytics. The Admin of a Premium Company Page can also use this feature to review a list of recent visitors to your Page within the Who’s Visited your Page section, subject to those visitors’ privacy settings. Admins can also see up to one new visitor’s details each day when eligible members visit the Page.

– The “Custom Testimonial” feature allows the inclusion of a testimonial or quote from a client and an optional image at the top of a subscriber’s LinkedIn Page. Linked says this feature will be made available “gradually.”

– Perhaps the most noteworthy feature is the “AI-powered post-writing assistance.” In other words, this is the use of LinkedIn’s generative AI (only available with a Premium Company Page subscription). LinkedIn says subscribers can use it to “generate a first draft of a post for your Page using your ideas on a topic” and that the tool “quickly transforms your ideas into a draft that you can edit before posting.” 

The ability to “auto-invite engaged members to follow your Page.”  LinkedIn says, with this feature “you can grow your followers by automatically inviting members who engage with your content to follow your Page” and that “After you enable automatic invitations (auto-invites), members who publicly reacted, commented on, or shared your posts in the past 30 days will be invited to follow your Page”. 

A gold LinkedIn ‘IN’ logo in the top right corner of each subscriber’s Page header to show that they have a Premium Company Page subscription. LinkedIn says this will help subscribers’ pages to stand out.

Premium Services – Monetising LinkedIn 

LinkedIn’s Premium Company Page is another example of how Microsoft’s LinkedIn has been engaged in significantly monetising its platform through the introduction and expansion of premium services, although these services still represent a relatively small percentage of overall users. This year, for example, LinkedIn’s premium subscriptions saw a notable 55 per cent growth year-over-year (Kinsta), highlighting the popularity of these services and the marketing efforts of LinkedIn.

Examples of other primary premium services offered by LinkedIn include:

– LinkedIn Premium Career. This service is designed to help individuals enhance their job search and career development by offering features such as the ability to see who viewed their profile, detailed insights into competitive applications, and direct messaging capabilities through InMail.

– LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This tool is geared towards sales professionals and offers advanced search capabilities, lead recommendations, and the ability to track potential and existing clients. It’s useful for generating leads and managing sales processes.

– LinkedIn Learning. Formerly known as Lynda.com, LinkedIn Learning provides a wide range of courses aimed at professional development, covering topics from business and technology to creative subjects.

– LinkedIn Premium Business. This service focuses on providing deeper insights into business trends and the ability to make more informed decisions through more comprehensive market data.

Also, LinkedIn has rolled out other features like Collaborative Articles and verification badges, to enhance user engagement and trust on the platform. These initiatives not only improve the functionality of LinkedIn for its users but also contribute to LinkedIn’s overall monetisation strategy by making the platform more indispensable to business and career-oriented people.

While some critics have suggested that the features of LinkedIn Premium aren’t that much better than the free offerings, LinkedIn’s premium services can provide a way to gain advantages for those looking to expand their professional network and access detailed insights and opportunities not available with a basic account.

Competition 

In addition to monetising more of its premium services, LinkedIn’s Premium Company Pages also provides a way for LinkedIn to compete with other business-oriented social networking and content platforms’ offerings. For example, Facebook Business Pages, Twitter for Business/X For Business, Instagram Business Accounts, and Google My Business all offer tools that support brand visibility, customer engagement, and online marketing.

How Do You Sign Up? 

Since it’s early days and still in the testing phase, who can see the options for signing up (and a free trial first) depends on the user’s “eligibility” and LinkedIn says those who go to their LinkedIn homepage “may see different ways to try or purchase Premium.” 

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

The introduction (it’s still being tested at the moment) of LinkedIn’s Premium Company Page service marks a strategic move by Microsoft’s LinkedIn to further monetise its platform while offering enhanced tools for SMEs to distinguish themselves in a crowded digital marketplace. This service is particularly significant as it includes AI-produced content and features designed to increase follower counts and enhance page visibility, which could potentially be a game-changer for some small to medium-sized enterprises looking to expand their reach and convert LinkedIn members into clients.

For Microsoft’s LinkedIn, the Premium Company Page service represents another layer of monetisation on an already profitable platform. By adding premium features that are targeted specifically at businesses, LinkedIn can increase its revenue streams and also its appeal as a business-to-business service provider in the competitive social media landscape. This aligns with LinkedIn’s recent strategy of rolling out more specialised and high-value features, such as Collaborative Articles and verification badges, (aimed at boosting user engagement and trust).

For SMEs, the benefits of subscribing to LinkedIn’s Premium Company Page could be substantial, if it lives up to the hype. Features like custom call-to-action buttons, AI-powered post writing assistance, and advanced analytics on page visitors could enhance the marketing capabilities of a business directly within the LinkedIn ecosystem. For example, these tools may allow businesses to craft more targeted, effective marketing strategies and to engage more personally with both existing and potential new clients. Also, the visibility boost provided by premium features like the gold LinkedIn IN logo could potentially help SMEs stand out against their competitors on the platform.

However, the introduction of these premium services is also a sign of increased competition (and monetisation efforts) among social networking platforms that cater to business users. LinkedIn’s move, therefore, places it in more direct competition with platforms like Facebook Business Pages, Google My Business, and Twitter for Business/X For Business, each of which offers tools for business visibility and customer engagement. As LinkedIn enhances its offerings, these platforms may also respond by innovating and updating their services, which could lead to a more dynamic, competitive environment that pushes further advancements in digital business tools, and provides more new marketing options for business users.

Ultimately, therefore, LinkedIn hopes its Premium Company Page will make money and help solidify its position as a leader in professional networking and as an important platform for business growth and digital marketing. As and when this service rolls out, it will be interesting to see how it influences the competitive dynamics among the major players in social media and digital marketing.

In this article, we look at why and how networkless attacks (which target cloud apps and identities) have created new opportunities for attackers and new risks for businesses, plus what your business can do to mitigate these risks.

The Move To SaaS and Cloud 

In the rapidly evolving digital landscape, one of the key drivers enabling attackers to compromise an organistaion without needing to touch the endpoint or conventional networked systems and services is the increased reliance on cloud-based services and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications (to drive efficiency and innovation). This shift, while beneficial, has also created new cybersecurity challenges for businesses, primarily due to the decentralisation of ‘digital identities’ and the interconnected nature of cloud services.

The SaaS Revolution and Its Impact on Security 

The proliferation of SaaS applications is a direct result of the digital transformation that has reshaped the business world. For example, companies can now be using hundreds (if not thousands) of cloud applications to perform daily operations, from customer relationship management to financial operations. This shift is driven by the convenience and scalability of SaaS solutions, however it comes with inherent security risks.

The new risk that businesses are facing is that each application potentially serves as an entry point for malicious actors, and the interconnectivity between these apps can allow a breach in one service to cascade through to others.

Why Digital Identities Are The New Security Battleground 

As the traditional network perimeter dissolves, digital identities become the new security frontier. Put simply, a digital identity can be a user account created for services that someone in the business has signed up for using a username/email and password. More broadly, it can also mean other personal data used to identify and authenticate users online.

These digital identities, which provide access to a myriad of cloud applications, are now central targets for attackers. Securing them has become increasingly complex due to the sheer number of them that businesses may be using and their dispersion across various cloud platforms, each with its own security environment. This decentralisation not only makes consistent security policies harder to enforce but also increases the complexity of monitoring these identities for potential breaches.

How Attackers Are Exploiting Vulnerabilities in Cloud Identities 

Attackers have adapted to this new environment by developing sophisticated techniques to exploit vulnerabilities in cloud identities without ever touching the physical endpoints or traditional networked systems.

Examples of techniques include AiTM (Adversary in The Middle) phishing, SAMLjacking, and Oktajacking, all of which exploit weaknesses in the authentication processes and session management of cloud services.

AiTM phishing involves intercepting and manipulating real-time data during a session to steal credentials or manipulate transactions. SAMLjacking and Oktajacking focus on manipulating Single Sign-On (SSO) processes to gain unauthorised access.

Security stats now increasingly reveal that attackers are deliberately targeting cloud services as a way into organisations. For example, CrowdStrike figures show that 3 out of 4 attacks last year were malware-free (malware used to be one of the main threats) and that the targeting of cloud services has increased 110 per cent. This helps to illustrate why cloud identities are the new digital perimeter and that Cloud apps and identities (because of the shift to cloud services) now give attackers the same result as old-style attacks without them having to try and breach a network perimeter via the endpoint.

The Security Gap in Identity Management 

Despite advances in cybersecurity, it’s clear to see why many businesses are now vulnerable to identity-based attacks. Traditional security measures like endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems and firewalls, for example, are less effective in a cloud-centric world where applications are accessed primarily through web browsers. This gap is exacerbated by the reactive nature of many security strategies, which focus on mitigating threats after they have been detected rather than preventing them proactively.

What Does This Mean for Your Business? 

For UK businesses, their move to the cloud and the usage of a wide range and complicated combination of SaaS apps, digital identities, and the interconnection and decentralisation of these have meant that they are now vulnerable to networkless attack techniques, perhaps without realising it until now. The shift to cloud computing has not only expanded the attack surface but also highlighted the inadequacies of traditional security models in protecting digital identities. This means that UK businesses must now take a much closer look at the security of these identities as part of their overall cybersecurity strategy.

To mitigate the risks associated with networkless attacks, businesses should perhaps consider adopting a zero-trust security model, which assumes that threats could be internal or external and verifies each identity and device continuously, regardless of their location. Additionally, enhancing visibility across all cloud services and implementing advanced security measures like multi-factor authentication (MFA), behavioral analytics, and more sophisticated identity and access management (IAM) solutions could help.

In short, as these networkless attacks continue to evolve, UK businesses must be proactive with security, stay vigilant and adapt their security strategies. By understanding the vulnerabilities associated with digital identities and cloud services, and implementing security measures accordingly, businesses can safeguard their assets in the cloud era.

Microsoft says its new VASA-1 AI framework for generating lifelike talking faces of virtual characters is so good that it could easily be misused for impersonating humans and, therefore, Microsoft says it has “no plans” to release any aspect of it until it can be sure it can be used responsibly.

What’s The Problem? 

2024 is an election year in at least 64 countries (including the US, UK, India, and South Africa) and the risk of AI being misused to spread misinformation has grown dramatically.  In the US, for example, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law has held a hearing titled “Oversight of AI: Election Deepfakes”. There is also now widespread recognition of the threats posed by deepfakes and proactive measures are being taken by governments and private sectors to safeguard electoral integrity. AI companies are keenly aware of the risks and have been taking their own measures. For example, Google’s Gemini has been restricted in the kinds of election-related questions that its AI chatbot will return responses to.

Google has also recently (in a blog post) addressed India’s AI concerns as regards its potential impact (deepfakes and misinformation) on what is the world’s largest election. None of the main AI companies have, therefore, wanted to simply release their latest updated generative AI without being seen to test them and include what safeguards they can against misuse. Also, none of the main AI companies are keen to be publicly singled-out as enabling electoral interference.

VASA-1 

Microsoft says its VASA-1 AI can produce lifelike audio-driven talking faces, generated in real-time, all from a single static portrait photo and a speech audio clip.

How Good Is It? 

Microsoft says that its premier model, VASA-1, is “capable of not only producing lip movements that are exquisitely synchronised with the audio, but also capturing a large spectrum of facial nuances and natural head motions that contribute to the perception of authenticity and liveliness.” 

The “core innovations” of VASA-1 include “a holistic facial dynamics and head movement generation model that works in a face latent space, and the development of such an expressive and disentangled face latent space using videos”. 

See some demos of VASA-1 in action here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/vasa-1/

Key Benefits

Microsoft says some of the key benefits of the VASA-1 model that set it apart are:

– Realism and liveliness. The model can produce convincing lip-audio synchronisation, and a large spectrum of expressive facial nuances and natural head motions. It can also handle arbitrary-length audio and stably output seamless talking face videos.

– Controllability of generation. Microsoft says its diffusion model accepts optional signals as conditions, such as main eye gaze direction and head distance, and emotion offsets.

– Out-of-distribution generalisation. In other words, the model can handle photo and audio inputs that weren’t present in its training set, e.g., artistic photos, singing audios, and non-English speech.

– Power of disentanglement. VASA-1’s latent representation disentangles appearance, 3D head pose, and facial dynamics, enabling separate attribute control and editing of the generated content.

– Real-time efficiency. Microsoft says VASA-1 generates video frames of 512×512 size at 45fps in the offline batch processing mode and can support up to 40fps in the online streaming mode with a preceding latency of only 170ms, evaluated on a desktop PC with a single NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPU.

Not Yet 

However, Microsoft says it is holding back the release of VASA-1 pending the addressing of privacy and usage issues, stating that: “we have no plans to release an online demo, API, product, additional implementation details, or any related offerings until we are certain that the technology will be used responsibly and in accordance with proper regulations”. 

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Given what VASA-1 can do, you’d think Microsoft would be itching to get VASA-1 out there, monetised, and competing with the likes of Google’s Gemini family of models. However, as with Gemini and other generative AI, it may not be fully ready and may have some issues – as Gemini did when it received widespread criticism and had to be worked-on to correct ‘historical inaccuracies’ and woke outputs.

This is also, crucially, an important and busy electoral year globally with governments nervous, trying to introduce legislation and safeguards, and keeping a close eye on AI companies and their products’ potential to cause damaging deepfake and misinformation/disinformation and electoral interference issues, as well as their potential for use in cybercrime. As such, AI companies are queuing up to be seen to be acting as responsibly and ethically as possible, claiming to be holding back and testing every aspect of their products that could be misused – at the same time basically avoiding the eyes of governments and regulators, and potentially bad publicity and penalties.

As some have pointed out, however, it would be difficult for anyone to regulate who uses certain AI models for the right or wrong reasons and that some very sophisticated open source models can be made from source code found on GitHub by those who are determined. All that said, it shouldn’t be forgotten that VASA-1 appears to be very advanced and could offer many benefits and useful value-adding applications, e.g. for personalising emails and other business mass-communication. It remains to be seen how long Microsoft is prepared to wait before making VASA-1 generally available.

Previously available on desktop, mobile and Fire TV, Amazon has now extended the reach of its “Amazon Live” FAST free ad-supported, interactive TV “shoppable” channel by launching it on Prime Video and Freevee, for US customers.

What Is Freevee? 

For those who aren’t familiar with Freevee, it’s an Amazon-owned, ad-supported, premium, free streaming service that offers a 24/7 variety of TV shows, movies, and original content. It was previously known as IMDb TV. Freevee can be watched via an app on Amazon devices like Fire TV and Echo Show, smart TVs from brands like LG and Samsung, streaming media players including Roku and Apple TV. It can also be watched on gaming consoles (Xbox and PlayStation), mobile devices with Android and iOS apps, and directly through web browsers on PCs and laptops.

Amazon Live 

Amazon Live was originally launched on February 7, 2019. It’s a live streaming service where influencers and brands can promote and demonstrate products available on Amazon in real-time, similar to a digital shopping channel. The platform allows viewers to interact with hosts through a live chat feature and directly purchase products featured in the streams.

How Popular Is It? 

Amazon says that in 2023, more than 1 billion customers in the US and India watched Amazon Live streams across desktop, mobile, and Fire TV.

Easy To Buy 

Amazon also says that one of Amazon Live’s most unique benefits is how customers can “easily add items to their shopping cart and complete their purchases in just a few clicks without ever leaving what they’re watching”. 

Now On Prime And Freevee 

Wayne Purboo, vice president of Amazon Shopping Videos, announced the launch of Prime and Freevee saying “We are excited to bring customers more ways to shop with their favorite Amazon Live creators and brands on our premium streaming services”. Mr Purboo described the reason for (and the benefit of) extending the reach of Amazon Live Fast saying: “With the new ‘Amazon Live’ FAST Channel on Prime Video and Freevee, we’re making shoppable entertainment more accessible, interactive, and engaging than ever before.” 

How It Works 

With Amazon Live FAST, while watching the FAST Channel, customers can open the Amazon Shopping app on their phone, and type “shop the show” into the search bar. This enables them to be instantly directed to a shopping carousel highlighting the featured products they see on TV in real-time.

Why?

Amazon says that with 75 per cent of adults in the US looking at a mobile device while watching TV, the “shop the show” technology means customers are given a seamless, interactive, and convenient “shopping experience”. In other words, it’s incredibly easy to buy on impluse!

Creator and Brands 

Amazon Live FAST on Prime Video and Freevee will feature customers’ most-watched and most-loved content and will also provide an opportunity for creators and brands. Amazon says its creators “bring their unique style, expertise, gossip, and authenticity to each stream, making the experience even more engaging and entertaining.” 

The experience that Amazon is trying to create for customers can be summed up by Paige DeSorbo, described as a TV personality, fashion tastemaker (and co-host of Giggly Squad) who says: “Watching Amazon Live is like shopping with a friend who is also a personal stylist.” 

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Amazon’s launch of Amazon Live FAST on its two premium channels, Prime Video and Freevee, is a move designed to extend a successful format of live streaming and ad-supported content. This move should help Amazon to capture an even larger portion of the digital advertising market while boosting user engagement across its platforms.

For content creators, this could open up new opportunities for real-time audience engagement, which could significantly enhance interaction and visibility. Also, the direct integration of streaming with purchasing options, making it incredibly easy for customers to buy on impulse, offers a lucrative new channel for monetisation through advertising revenue shares and increased sales conversions. Creators can also benefit from Amazon’s vast customer base, potentially expanding their reach well beyond traditional or social media channels.

For competitors, Amazon’s entry into the FAST channel market is a heightening of competition, challenging established players in live streaming and ad-supported content like YouTube, Twitch (an American interactive video live-streaming service), and other streaming services. These competitors may now face increased pressure to innovate and improve their offerings in terms of content quality, user experience, and pricing models to retain and grow their user bases. Also, Amazon’s extensive data capabilities and its seamless integration with its retail and advertising businesses mean it’s now an immensely powerful contender for attracting ad spends.

This could result in the shifting of advertising money away from traditional TV and other digital platforms, compelling content creators and competitors alike to adapt to these rapidly changing market dynamics. Amazon’s strategy not only aims to diversify and enrich its content offerings but also to further integrate its ecosystem, making it a comprehensive hub for entertainment, shopping, and social interaction (no need to go anywhere else), which could reshape the landscape of digital streaming and advertising.

It’s been reported that the Chinese government has ordered Apple to remove popular messaging apps including Meta’s WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal from its iPhone app store in China, due to national security concerns.

Some reports indicate that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may not be happy that the apps are outside of their control and are pro-democracy media, plus contain political content (such as criticism of the Chinese president and government).

Also, this is likely to be part of the ongoing poor relations, trade wars, and tit-for-tat responses between China and the US. For example, the US is currently in the process of trying to ban the Chinese company Bytedance’s hugely popular TikTok app in the US due to the company’s alleged links to the Chinese Communist Party and, therefore, the possible threat to US national security.

It’s been reported (WSJ) that an internal report by the UK’s privacy regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), has said that Google’s proposed replacements for cookies fall short in terms of protecting consumer privacy.

The ICO’s draft report reportedly says that Google’s proposed technology, known as the ‘Privacy Sandbox,’ leaves gaps that could be exploited by advertisers, potentially undermining privacy and identifying users who should be kept anonymous.

The WSJ reports that the ICO now wants Google to make changes and share its concerns with UK’s competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).