Top Tech News Today: WhatsApp Business Crosses 200 Mn, Apple Hikes iCloud+ Prices, Nothing Clos

WhatsApp Business has crossed 200 million users, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said. WhatsApp for Business is also rolling out an update that would let users create Facebook and Instagram ads right from the app. The world’s most popular messaging platform is also getting a new paid messaging feature that is aimed to help small businesses easily target new customers. The details were mentioned by Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.

WhatsApp for Business is a free app that can be downloaded from the official Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, and helps merchants have a business presence on the platform and manage conversations with their customers.

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Apple has increased iCloud+ price in several regions, quietly. The tech giant has only increased the price of iCloud+ in countries like Brazil, Denmark, Norway and the UK, among a few others while the price of iCloud+ continues to remain unchanged in the US. As per the Cupertino, California-headquartered company’s price change in iCloud+ storage plans, the prices effective in India start at 50GB for Rs 75, 200GB for Rs 219 and 2TB for Rs 749. These prices are inclusive of all taxes.

The other countries including Turkey would witness a hike in Apple iCloud+ pricing. The basic 50GB plan now costs £0.99, up from £0.79 in the UK. The 200GB plan is now £2.99, up from £2.49. And the 2TB plan is now £8.99, up from £6.99. These hiked prices mean a 25 per cent-30 per cent increase for customers in the UK.

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In a bid to scale up its business and portfolio of devices, Lonon-based Nothing on Wednesday closed an investment of $96 million. According to a report by TechCrunch, this funding will go towards expanding the consumer tech brand’s business and lineup of devices, starting with its next smartphone, the Nothing Phone (2) which is expected to launch soon. With this round, Nothing’s total funding has reached $250 million, as the company also crossed selling 1.5 million products. Among Nothing’s leading investors are Highland Europe which is leading the round and previous investors such as GV (Google Ventures), EQT Ventures and C Capital also participating.

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In what may become a new benchmark for flagship smartphones, OnePlus and Oppo are likely to introduce smartphones with memory bigger than most laptops. Tech behemoth BBK electronics-owned smartphone OEMs OnePlus and Oppo could soon launch bring handsets with a whopping 24GB of memory. According to famed leakster Digital Chat Station, “Oga group” (through Google Translate) has started to work on devices with 24GB of RAM.

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Twitter Blue subscribers are getting the ability to post longer tweets as the company has increased the character count for a tweet to 25,000. It should be noted that the character limit has been increased only for paid Twitter users. To recall, soon after taking over Twitter, tech billionaire Elon Musk had said that the platform will allow users to monetise written content. Soon, Twitter Blue paid subscription was announced.

The company increased the character limit to 4,000 in February, later increasing it to 10,000 in April. Prachi Poddar, an engineer at Twitter, announced the change in a tweet last week: “We have increased NoteTweet (aka longform Tweet) limit from 10k to 25k characters. Enjoy longer NoteTweet and happy tweeting”.

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