Connect with us

Published

on

Members of Gen Z take .5 selfies.

Courtesy of Duncan Grant, Rebecca Smith, Rachel Aquino and Gabriel Lesser.

When 16-year-old Riley Galfi met an artist she loves at a concert back in May, she didn’t ask to take any ordinary selfie with him, she asked to take a .5 selfie.

In a flash, Galfi flipped her phone around, angled it above her head and pressed the volume button to capture a fun, wide-angled picture. As she recounted the experience to CNBC, Galfi was beaming.

“I took a .5 with Aidan Bissett,” she said. “What? That’s really cool.”

The wide-angled image is colloquially called a .5 selfie, called a “point five” by Galfi and her peers. The cheeky photo trend has taken social media platforms by storm. 

The .5 selfie rose to prominence after Apple first introduced an Ultra Wide camera lens to its iPhone 11 product line. The style is particularly popular with members of Generation Z, or people born after 1997, according to the Pew Research Center

Gen Z has already witnessed the rise of smartphones, social media, and more recently, artificial intelligence, in their lifetimes, so these savvy users are accustomed to keeping up with ever-changing technology trends. 

On platforms like Instagram, for instance, Gen Z users don’t favor a perfectly curated feed full of posed and filtered photos. Instead, many are embracing a seemingly more effortless, messy, I-did-not-have-to-try-very-hard-to-capture-this-cool-outfit aesthetic. 

Enter the .5 selfie. 

“They’re not like the usual selfie, they shouldn’t be a well thought out picture that you take,” 24-year-old Rachel Aquino told CNBC in an interview. “It’s something that you just usually take on a whim, and something that really captures the moment in real time.” 

Aquino has taken a .5 photo every day for the past year. She said she uses them as an easy form of personal record keeping to capture her everyday life, her outfits, events and moments with family. 

She also likes to take .5 selfies when hanging out with friends, and she joked that if she doesn’t reach to take one, someone else will. Aquino said it usually takes her just two or three times to nail the shot since she isn’t striving for perfection. 

Rachel Aquino takes a .5 selfie.

Courtesy of Rachel Aquino

“Sometimes, I don’t look at the camera, sometimes, it’s literally the back of my head and me walking in the streets of New York, sometimes, it’s me sitting at a table with friends,” she said. “Sometimes, if I’m having a really good time and I don’t want to bother anyone, it’s like the back of everyone’s heads.”

At her job, Aquino is known as “the .5 queen,” and she said she often shares the photos to her Instagram and TikTok accounts. 

The .5 selfie is now a fixture of Instagram Stories and a popular Gen Z Instagram trend called a “photo dump,” where users share a group of up to 10 random, nonchronological photos to their main feed. Spliced between gorgeous landscapes and fancy meals, a .5 selfie can serve as a way for Gen Z to show off their personalities on the platform. 

Gabriel Lesser, a 21-year-old college student, said lots of his friends share their .5 photos on Instagram, and that they “always make the cut” in a photo dump. He said he has one friend who abides by the slogan “make Instagram casual again,” so she mainly posts .5 photos.     

“I think it just creates less of an expectation for the photo,” Lesser told CNBC in an interview. “You get some cool angles and funny, goofy proportions and you’re like, ‘This is hilarious.'”

Members of Gen Z take .5 selfies.

Courtesy of Emma Kelly, Rachel Aquino and Annika Kim Constantino

For many professional social media creators, the more casual online aesthetic has proved to be a lucrative one. Popular Gen Z creators like Alix Earle and Emma Chamberlain, who has more than 15.7 million Instagram followers, have built brands around their relatability. 

Chamberlain’s photos are edgy, fun and not totally polished, which means they could theoretically be recreated by anyone. Her more attainable vibe has helped her reach some less attainable early career milestones like inking a podcasting deal with Spotify, starting her own coffee company and traveling the world with brands like Louis Vuitton. 

Some creators have also gotten their start purely thanks to the .5 lens.

Internet users have become enamored with Sabrina Bahsoon, a creator on TikTok who is more affectionately known as “Tube Girl.” Bahsoon blew up on the video-sharing platform this year because of the .5 videos she films while taking public transit in London. Her videos ooze confidence and style, and they landed her a spot at a number of designer fashion shows this fall.

“Just to see someone out there recording and so confident and looking so good at the same time is crazy,” Aquino said. “I think that’s why Gen Z goes insane over the Tube Girl.”

How to take a .5 selfie

A member of Gen Z takes a .5 selfie.

Courtesy of Duncan Grant

To take a .5 selfie, start by opening the camera app on your iPhone. Flip the camera so you are looking at the scene in front of you, and not at your face like you would to take a traditional selfie. Tap the 0.5 button that appears over the word “photo” to access the camera’s Ultra Wide lens, and then turn your phone around so you can’t see the screen. 

The next step is all about the angle. Hold your arm out straight, raise your phone above your head and press the volume button to capture the shot. Be careful not to hit the power button by mistake. 

Since the angle of the camera is so wide, you usually don’t have to worry about squeezing multiple people into frame. As a result, .5 selfies can serve as a great way to capture large group settings or pretty backgrounds.

“Make sure you’re not shaking your arm when you’re taking them, because then you’ll get a distorted photo,” Lesser added. 

With some .5 photos, wacky distortion is actually the goal. Members of Gen Z were quick to discover that if you take a .5 photo really close to someone’s face — by pressing the phone to their forehead, for instance — you can make their eyes bulge, their nose stick out or their legs disappear. 

“If someone makes a funny face, it looks even funnier with .5,” Galfi said. “It’s kind of like making a caricature where you can make one feature stand out. I think that’s really fun.” 

Capture big and small moments

Gabriel Lesser takes a .5 selfie.

Courtesy of Gabriel Lesser

Lily McIntyre, 23, said she uses the .5 selfie to capture both the exciting and the normal events in her life. She has .5 photos depicting the scenery of her trip to Ireland, and others where she’s just hanging out in her living room.  

“I have all of these pictures that celebrate the mundane parts of my life for sure,” she told CNBC in an interview. “I feel like the beauty of the .5 is that you can apply it to anything.”

Similarly, Lesser takes at least one .5 photo a day to capture moments like a nice walk or breakfast with his grandparents. He said the .5 images serve as an easy way to document something without worrying too much about what he looks like. 

“People are tired of trying and performing for all the right angles,” Lesser said. “I think .5s are fun to take, especially as selfies, because you don’t see yourself while you’re taking it. So you don’t get to judge yourself, you don’t get to critique yourself.”

His grandparents also get a kick out of the photos, he added.

McIntyre said her generation often gets criticized for taking lots of photos and spending too much time on their phones, but she is grateful to have the “silly pictures” to look back on.

“I just think it’s a fun form of self-expression,” she said. “And it’s not limited to Gen Z. If you want to get on the .5 selfie train and you’re in a different generation, you can.”

Continue Reading

Technology

How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

Published

on

By

How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.

Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.

TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.

“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”

Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.

“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.

But there may a dark side to this growth.

As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.

“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”

Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.

“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”

Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.

While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.

Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.

Continue Reading

Technology

Elon Musk’s xAI Holdings in talks to raise $20 billion, Bloomberg News reports

Published

on

By

Elon Musk's xAI Holdings in talks to raise  billion, Bloomberg News reports

The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.

Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.

The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.

Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.

Faber Report: Elon Musk held call with current xAI investors, sources say

The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

— CNBC’s Samantha Subin contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Technology

Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

Published

on

By

Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.

GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”

The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.

Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.

Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.

Read more CNBC tech news

Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.

During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.

Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.

Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.

Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.

“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.

WATCH: Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital’s Chris Ballard

Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital's Chris Ballard

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

Continue Reading

Trending