You might pay extra to interact with your favorite streaming stars on Twitch, but would you click over to Amazon to buy products that those stars recommend? Amazon hopes that you will, and announced this week that broadcasters on Twitch will be able to earn up to 10% commission on items that they recommend to viewers.
This builds on in-stream selling features that Amazon has tried in the past, such as offering viewers the opportunity to buy the same game that they’re watching someone else play.
The new feature, called Gear on Amazon, will feature items recommended by streamers in an on-screen widget on the page. At the bottom of the widget, there’s a tiny disclosure that the streamer will receive a commission from your purchase.
As Twitch begins to carry more content other than video games, including opportunities to watch people cook, eat, or make art, that opens up opportunities to sell items other than games, consoles, and headsets to fans.
“Many streamers have such strong connections with your communities that you can earn a living on their support,” Kathy Astromoff, the head of develper platform at Twitch, said while presenting the new features this week in advance of the gaming convention PAX West. “Our mission at Twitch is to build tools and services that help even more streamers do this.”
Where developers come in is that the Gear on Amazon widget is just one of many extensions that will be available for streamers on Twitch.
What the site doesn’t want to risk is losing its place as a spot where people with a common interest gather online to watch things and chat.
That’s why it’s rolling out features like this slowly,rather than transforming a familiar stream screen into a mini-mall right away. Streams are free to watch, but the site uses traditional advertising.
Both big-name “partners,” who get money from Twitch, and small-time “affiliates,” who can receive small contributions from their viewers, will be eligible for the sales commission program.
Of all the phrases one might expect to find on a receipt — “Have a nice day!” “Come again!” — an insulting message is the last thing any customer wants to read. But a Panera Bread worker is now out of a job, after a customer said there was a strongly-worded note left on her receipt.
A woman who recently stopped by a Panera location in DeKalb County, GA, tells WSB-TV that she’d asked for a substitution on her salad. She received it — along with a note on her receipt to add watermelon “for this stupid b***h.”
“I was floored. What are your morals? What does Panera Bread stand for?” she asked.
She told a manager, who said he’d talk to the cashier, but she was so upset she called the company’s corporate office as well. Their response wasn’t sufficient, she says, so she posted her frustration on Facebook.
Panera now says the worker involved is no longer employed by the chain.
“At Panera, we have a zero tolerance policy for this kind of behavior and the associate has been terminated as a result of this situation,” the restaurant said in a statement to WSB-TV.” We are focused on fostering a warm and welcoming environment for everyone, and this incident is not indicative of the way that we treat our guests.”
That’s all well and good, the customer says, but she wishes it didn’t take her writing on social media to get a satisfying response.
Sadly, this is far from the first time we’ve heard of restaurant workers adding offensive things to receipts:
• There was the waitress who received a “tip” telling her to stay home with her nonexistent husband and kids;
• The Sonic employee fired over writing offensive notes on multiple receipts;
• The Virginia diners surprised to find nasty comments about them at the end of the meal;
• A New Orleans restaurant that fired a server for adding a racist slur to customer’s receipt;
• The restaurant that claimed an offensive comment on a receipt was a joke meant for the kitchen staff;
• And the Red Lobster server who landed in hot water for posting a photo of a receipt with a racial slur.
And these are just a few examples.
You can use your face to check bags for a flight or board an airplane, and now at one KFC in China, you can pay for your food by smiling at a screen.
Yum! China — a spinoff of its U.S. parent — is introducing a facial recognition system called “Smile to Pay” at KPRO, its health-focused, millennial-baiting concept store.
Here’s how the Smile to Pay system works: Customers look at a screen and smile, and then enter their mobile phone number to verify their identity and process the payment.
“Combined with a 3D camera and liveness detection algorithm, Smile to Pay can effectively block spoofing attempts using other people’s photos or video recordings and ensure account safety,” said Jidong Chen, director of biometric identification technology for Ant Financial, the company behind the facial recognition tech.
The company’s desire to lure in younger customers is no secret: KPRO touts “other cutting-edge technology” throughout the restaurant to appeal to “tech savvy” patrons, including digital ordering kiosks, and a system that allows diners to scan QR codes and order at their tables.
Then there’s the push for healthier fare, something younger consumers are all about these days.
“Developed to cater to China’s burgeoning population of urban professionals, KPRO offers a creative, modern and seasonal menu with a wide range of dishes that are freshly made-to-order,” said Joey Wat, President and Chief Operating Officer of Yum China.
Here in the social media era, everyone is a brand — but some more than others. Verified “influencers” on social media platforms can make a pretty penny selling access to their influence… and so it perhaps is unsurprising that the ability to influence is, itself, a hot commodity you can buy.
Verification on most platforms is hotly coveted, but for a well-known person or brand to get the blue checkmark on Facebook or Twitter is a fairly straightforward process: Anyone can use a publicly available form to apply. Instagram, however, is another thing entirely.
Mashable took a deep look at the world of shady backroom deals for that coveted Instagram verification.
Instagram often gets lumped into one sentence with Twitter and its parent company Facebook, but in one key way it’s a little different. While every social platform that exists doubles as an advertising platform, on Instagram the line blurs heavily. For some influencers, to be on Instagram is to advertise, with no clear line between “a person, being” and “a brand, selling.”
That’s something that has gotten loads of “influencers” in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission. If your job is to “influence” someone to buy something, that’s called advertising and we have rules about that in this country.
The FTC has put social media influencers on notice to follow the dang rules about disclosure already, but follow-up reports indicate that most of them still aren’t, and instead continue to be stealth advertisers, hawking wares for cash as if genuinely enthusiastic about something — despite Instagram itself making sponsorship connections easier to disclose.
Verified accounts, though, have more cachet with the platform’s massive audience, and are more likely to show up in search results. Owners of those accounts also get access to extra features.
The point of all that is: There’s money to be made simply by getting attention on Instagram. Verified accounts can get more attention, which can mean more money. And where there’s money to be made, there are people who will try anything to make more of it.
One verification-selling middleman tells Mashable that he’s sold access for anywhere from $1,500 to $7,000.
He is not the one inside Instagram granting the magic blue icon; rather, a contact of his does. That Instagram employee charges $1,200 per checkmark. The middleman charges whatever he likes to someone who comes to him, because he can make a profit based on what he perceives as the needs of the user seeking it.
He tells Mashable he’s sold five verified badges this year, although only three have been approved so far because the employee selling them — as you might guess — wants to be careful not to get caught.
The middleman tells Mashable that he has heard of Instagram employees losing their jobs for selling verification, although Instagram did not comment.
Another source, with access to a different seller, tells Mashable that he has known that person to sell verification badges for $3,000 to $7,000. A third seller says that he usually sells verification for $5000-$8000, with 60% – 80% going to the employee who does the deed and the rest to him.
Still more sources tell Mashable that they have seen verification sell for as much as $15,000, or as little as “a bottle of wine.”
However, Instagram has limited the number of accounts it will mark verified in recent years, and so even black marketers have to move slowly and take their time, Mashable reports.
Instagram declined to comment to Mashable about the issue.
If you’re like approximately one-third of the Consumerist staff in the office today, you can’t wait for the return of pumpkin spice lattes to Starbucks and other coffee places. If so, you’ll be delighted to hear that the beverage unofficially appears in Starbucks stores for the season today, as pumpkin spice everything sprouts in stores across the country.
It might seem like the latte returns earlier every year, but that’s not true. According to vital research by Business Insider, 2017 marks the shortest gap between an early PSL release and the beverage’s “official” launch.
Customers are reporting pumpkin spice success today, and the official launch day is today, despite the fact that the official launch day is Tuesday, Sept. 5. The longest interval was in 2014, when the unofficial release was on Aug. 26, with the official release an entire week later on Sept. 2.
The appeal of the pumpkin spice latte goes far beyond the beverage itself, of course. Like the return of kids to school and the Labor Day holiday, the beverage is an indicator that fall is almost here, but it isn’t quite here, so it’s time to go out and enjoy green leaves and sunshine while we have them.
That, or people just really like pumpkin-flavored syrup. Either way, most people, including the ones who Instagram joyfully about it, only have around one fall-flavored coffee confection per year. That’s enough for them.
In a confusing social media stunt, Starbucks is live-streaming a miniature barn stall where something is going to happen today, which has only been explained as “the arrival of the pumpkin spice latte.” Will it hatch? Will it rise from the hay like the Great Pumpkin?
It doesn’t matter, Starbucks. We’re hooked.
As it was predicted, so it has come to pass: Days after the country’s largest fuel system temporarily shut down its main lines in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, gas prices around the country are shooting upwards.
According to AAA, between Thursday and Friday, the national gas price average went up about $0.7 to $2.52, the highest recorded price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline so far this year.
As one might expect, some southern states have had larger increases: Texas prices went up by $0.10 to $2.35, for a $0.21 increase since last Friday; Georgia saw a spike of $0.12 overnight to $2.51 for a $0.29 increase in a week; and North Carolina’s gas prices rose by $0.11 t $2.47 for a $0.27 increase since the storm hit.
The Colonial Pipeline shutdown — as well as temporary refinery closures — have led to an increase in gasoline futures — the wholesale prices charged to gas stations — that are eventually passed down to customers.
Higher prices could reign for a bit longer as refineries try to get up and running again.
“There’s a worry now that most of the Texas refineries could be compromised for weeks rather than days,” Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, which tracks prices for AAA, told CNN (warning: link contains autoplay video).
“Consumers will see a short-term spike in the coming weeks with gas prices likely topping $2.50 per gallon, but quickly dropping by mid to late September,” Jeanette Casselano, an AAA spokesperson, said on Thursday.
Months after some Tesla employees interested accused Tesla of illegally intimidating them, the National Labor Relations Board has taken their side.
Yesterday, the Oakland branch of the NLRB ordered Tesla to respond to workers’ complaints, after finding merit in claims from three factory employees who say they were coerced and intimidated after expressing interest in unionizing, reports The Mercury News.
In April, the United Automobile Workers union filed four charges with NRLB accusing Tesla of illegally surveilling workers, and coercing employees who were trying to spread the word about the union drive at Tesla’s Fremont, CA, factory.
In its new complaint, the NLRB also claims that security guards asked workers who were handing out pamphlets to show their ID badges and ordered them leave the premises.
Also noted in the complaint is Tesla’s confidentiality agreement, reports Buzzfeed, which the NLRB says prohibits workers from sharing information about their jobs with the media, or on social media, and forbids forwarding work emails to personal accounts. In January, California lawmakers warned [PDF] Tesla that this agreement was “overly-broad” and appears to violate state laws that forbid employers from having policies that prohibit employees from discussing wages and working conditions, or from retailiating against employees for doing so.
The agreement “has resulted in a chilling effect on workers’ ability to engage in protected activity,” the letter notes, asking Tesla to revise its policy.
The complaint names three Tesla managers or supervisors who “interrogated” workers about union activities or otherwise tried to keep them from discussing the union.
To that end, the NLRB says it has determined that Tesla “has been interfering with, restraining and coercing employees in the exercise of their rights.”
Tesla must respond by Sept. 19, and then an administrative law judge will review the case at a hearing scheduled for November.
The workers who first filed charges against Tesla are trying to unionize, with an effort called Fair Future at Tesla that claims Fremont factory employees work too many hours and in dangerous working conditions.
“I joined others in filing the charges for myself, but I also did it for my coworkers — they need to know we have rights, and that we can speak up about what we are seeing and experiencing,” said Tesla production associate Jonathan Galescu in a statement. “I want to thank the NLRB for hearing us and the UAW for having our backs as we continue our fight to address the issues on the shop floor and form our union.”
Tesla says the allegations are without merit, taking aim at what it calls an ongoing “publicity campaign” by UAW.
“For seven years, the UAW has used every tool in its playbook: misleading and outright false communications, unsolicited and unwelcomed visits to the homes of our employees, attempts to discredit Tesla publicly in the media, and now another tactic that has been used in every union campaign since the beginning of time — baseless ULP filings that are meant only to generate headlines,” the company said in a statement. “These allegations, which have been filed by the same contingent of union organizers who have been so outspoken with media, are entirely without merit. We will obviously be responding as part of the NLRB process.”
When sitting down to eat a chicken sausage, you should be confident that there’s no meat, spice, or other substance in there that isn’t marked on the label. That’s not the case for two products distributed recently: Thin & Trim and Trader Joe’s chicken sausages have dairy and soy, respectively, in the sausages that aren’t declared on the label.
The two recalls aren’t related other than both involving sausages made from chicken, which come from different suppliers. The larger recall is Thin ‘n Trim, consisting of 32,228 pounds, or around 16 tons, of buffalo-style chicken sausage. The Trader Joe’s recall covers a shorter period of production, and includes 3,778 pounds of sausage. Here’s what you should look for in your fridge or freezer if you think you might have purchased one of these products.
What to look for: The sausages were distributed to retailers in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. They’ll have “use by” dates between May 17 and Dec. 6, 2017, and the USDA establishment number printed on the package is P-8891.
What to do: The company hasn’t received any reports of people becoming sick from these sausages, but asks people who have purchased the products not to eat them, and instead to throw them away or return them to the supermarket where they were purchased for a refund. If you have any questions about the product or the recall, call (781) 417-1127.
Chicken breakfast sausages sold at Trader Joe’s stores have been recalled because they contain soy lecithin, which isn’t noted on the label. Soy is a major allergen, and the product could cause a life-threatening reaction.
What to look for: Affected packages of sausage were distributed to Trader Joe’s stores in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington D.C. They were produced from Aug. 10 to Aug. 24, 2017, and have USDA establishment number P-4398 on the label.
What to do: There have been no confirmed reports of people becoming ill from eating these sausages, but the company urges customers not to eat them. They ask that you either throw the sausage away or return it to the store. Customers with questions about the products or the recall can call (978) 750-9700.
Putting “California” and “cars” together in one sentence evokes a nice mental image of a convertible cruising down the scenic coastal curves of state Route 101. These days, though, the big thing in the Golden State is less about drivers having fun in the sun, and more about taking drivers out of the picture altogether.
The California Department of Motor Vehicles has updated the list of participants in its autonomous vehicle program, Android Headlines reports, and it seems Samsung — best known in the U.S. for phones, TVs, and appliances — has decided to join the fray.
This isn’t Samsung’s first foray into autopilot; the company got permission to start testing self-driving cars in its home country of South Korea earlier this year.
Samsung isn’t starting to make the cars, though, which is probably for the best given that some of its other products — phones, washing machines — have had a marked tendency toward exploding in recent years. Instead, Samsung is likely to be partnering with its fellow Korean company Hyundai for the actual cars, the same as it has done overseas.
Meanwhile, the robot-driven streets of the western states are starting to get crowded. Samsung is a latecomer to this game: Apple, Lyft, and Uber are all running autonomous vehicle road tests. And Google has of course been testing autonomous vehicles for years, to the point where it spun the self-driving car project off into an entire business unit called Waymo in late 2016.
Here are eight of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.
Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.
