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The difference between good and bad Facebooking
“Social media” is a clumsy term that entangles enriching social interaction with mindless media consumption. It’s a double-edged sword whose sides aren’t properly distinguished. Taken as a whole, we can’t decide if it “brings the world closer together” like Facebook’s new mission statement says, or leaves us depressed and isolated. Read More
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Taylor Swift’s new app, The Swift Life, is out now
In the midst of an reputational makeover, Taylor Swift is debuting a brand new app called The Swift Life. The app is a dedicated social network for Swift’s fans, letting them communicate with each other as well as get exclusive pictures, video, news and more direct from T-Swift herself. And they can communicate with Swift, too. Using an ‘extremely rare and valuable… Read More
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Facebook pushes pre-roll ads on Watch as it stops subsidizing Live
Everyone’s least favorite ads are coming to Facebook, but six-second pre-rolls will only appear on original Watch tab videos you purposefully view and not in the News Feed. Facebook is embracing pre-rolls after years of shunning them as it tries to make payouts to video creators sustainable. Read More
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Snapchat launches augmented reality developer platform Lens Studio
Snapchat is finally opening up so outside developers can help it offer infinite augmented reality experiences beyond those it designs in-house. Today, Snap launches the Lens Studio AR developer tool for desktops so anyone can create World Lenses that place interactive, imaginary 3D objects in your photos and videos. Read More
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Plenty of Fish doubles down on conversations with new features
Match Group, which houses a large portfolio of dating app brands – including most notably, Tinder, Match, and OKCupid – is prepping a notable upgrade to one of its older brands: Plenty of Fish. The dating service, often dubbed ‘POF’ by its users, was founded in 2003 then sold to Match Group in 2015 for $575 million. But it has since remained fairly quiet, in terms of… Read More
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Twitter says Russians spent ~$1k on six Brexit-related ads
Twitter has disclosed that Russian-backed accounts spent $1,031.99 to buy six Brexit-related ads on its platform during last year’s European Union referendum vote. Read More
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Click-to-WhatsApp messaging buttons are now rolling out in Facebook ads
WhatsApp has always said that it has no plans to put ads into its own app, but this is not stopping Facebook, which now owns WhatsApp, from figuring out other ways of monetizing the hugely popular messaging service, which has around 1 billion daily users. Today, Facebook is launching a new ad unit that will let businesses create a link between the two platforms: advertisers can now include… Read More
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Facebook’s Brexit probe unearths three Russian-bought “immigration” ads
Facebook has provided more details about the extent of Russian digital interference related to the UK’s Brexit vote last year. Read More
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Facebook Messaging VP David Marcus joins Coinbase board
Coinbase is growing up fast — or at least trying to. As an emblem of its current effort to accommodate the massive demand on its platform, the mainstream U.S. cryptocurrency exchange just added Facebook Vice President of Messaging Products David Marcus to its board of directors. Read More
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How hate speech crowdfunding outfit Hatreon crept back online
If you want to make a living creating white supremacist content, you’re probably not going to do it via sites like Kickstarter and Patreon, which prohibit hate speech. Fortunately there’s Hatreon, a hate speech crowdfunding site that, despite having been booted from the web by a couple hosts, is back online and eager to let you back your favorite xenophobe. Read More
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Twitter officially launches ‘threads,’ a new feature for easily posting tweetstorms
Twitter today is announcing the launch of a new feature that will allow people to more easily post tweetstorms – that is, those series of connected tweets that have grown to become a popular workaround for getting past Twitter’s character count limitation in order to share longer thoughts. The company confirmed last month it was testing the feature – which it’s now… Read More
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Storify’s standalone service is shutting down next year
Storify’s eventual shuttering has been a long time coming. The social timeline curation service was acquired by commenting platform Livefyre back in 2013, which, in turn, was picked up by Adobe in May of last year. In a pithily worded note on its homepage today, the service announced that it will cease to exist as a standalone offering starting next year. The process of disappearing from… Read More
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Facebook opens AR platform and ‘World Effects’ to all developers
Facebook is trying to close the augmented reality gap with Snapchat with the help of an army of third-party developers. Today, eight months after debuting its Augmented Reality Camera Effects platform and AR Studio tool at F8, Facebook is allowing all developers to start building AR experiences for its Facebook Camera. That includes “World Effects” that augment your environment with… Read More
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Facebook will no longer always divert international advertising revenue to Ireland
Facebook today said it is shifting to a “local selling structure” in countries outside the U.S. That means that rather than directly route its revenue to its international headquarters in Dublin, local policymakers and governments will potentially get an opportunity for greater visibility into the company’s revenue related to local advertising sales. Read More
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Facebook bats back after a second former exec accuses it of negatively impacting society
Yesterday, The Verge published comments made by investor and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya, quoting his interview last month at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he echoed recent comments made by former Facebook president Sean Parker that the platform is having deleterious effects on society. Read More
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Instagram becomes an interest network with hashtag following
Instagram has always been a social network where you follow friends and creators, but today it’s evolving with a new way to follow hashtags so you see top posts and Stories about a topic on your home page. Rather than having to dig this content out of search or the Explore tab, you can see the best #Slime videos or #FloralNails tutorials no matter who posts them. Read More
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Tinder is testing a feed of real-time updates from your matches, including posts from Instagram and Spotify
Tinder announced today it’s beginning a test of a new feature called “Feed” designed to help users learn more about their matches. The Feed, which will appear as a tab on the Messages screen, will include real-time updates from those you’ve already matched with, including things like recently added Tinder photos, plus Instagram posts and your Top Artists and Anthems… Read More
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Homeis, a culture network for immigrants, launches and nabs $4m seed round led by Spark Capital
Immigrating to a new country is one of the most challenging experiences any person can face. In a single instant, your social networks, your ability to communicate, and your knowledge of how a society functions disappears, and nearly everything has to be learned from scratch. That extraordinary dislocation is one reason why ethnic enclaves exist in large cities like New York City or San… Read More
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