Jawbone upgrades its fitness wrist band.
And we unravel the mystery of Alex from Target.
I'm Bridget Carey and this is your CNET Update.
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Jawbone has revealed two new fitness tracking wristbands and the company is just barely making it in time for the holiday shopping season, but these trackers could be hot competition for Fitbit.
First, there's the UP3.
It's the top of the line model and it costs $180.
It's an extra 50 bucks than the current up 24 model.
And with that extra cost, you get a new design and the ability to track your heart rate 24 hours a day for a week straight on just the single charge.
It also measures skin temperature.
It's fully water resistant so you could take it swimming or wear it in the shower.
It's also able to measure different activities, like yoga, tennis, or even zumba.
And like before there's also sleep tracking.
But it adds your heart rate to the analysis of your quality of sleep.
Now if you don't wanna spend so much.
But you are interested in health trackers.
There's a new entry level model called the Up Move.
It's 50$.
Now fitness devices are hot this year.
But I also need to address a social media crisis that's gripping our nation.
The mystery of Alex from Target.
The biggest viral meme on the internet this week is Alex from Target.
A young cashier with a good head of hair from Texas.
Two teen girls tweeted about him on October 26th.
A few days later, that photo became a social media phenomenon.
The photo was shared by other accounts on Twitter and Tumbler.
A hashtag was born.
And soon there were YouTube videos making fun of the popularity of this cashier.
Alex went from being an average teen in Texas to having half a million followers on Twitter and being invited to go on the Ellen show.
But there was drama late Tuesday when a marketing company took credit for the mania, claiming that this became viral when the firm shared the photo with a legion of its influential teenagers on social media.
The firm is called Breaker, and the CEO wrote a post on LinkedIn saying that his team helped fan the flames by encouraging other popular teen girls to talk about it.
Alex and the original girls that posted the first photo have nothing to do with the marketing firm.
Target also says it was not behind the viral photo.
It seems this all started as an innocent girl crush.
And some marketing company wanted to try and spread it faster as a way to show off and win new clients.
But did this marketing firm really create the meme known as Alex from Target.
That's hard to prove.
Perhaps we all created Alex from Target because we all want to believe that magic of social media that can turn anyone, even a cashier.
Into a star that gets on national TV.
So yes Virginia, there is an Alex from Target.
That's your tech news update.
I'm Bridget from CNET.
Thanks for watching.
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