Social

Facebook’s Collections, which allow users to organize content found on Facebook — like posts, photos, videos, and more —  are now becoming more broadly shareable. The company says it’s currently testing a feature in the U.S. market that will allow Facebook users to share curated collections with friends, contributors, or even the public. Prior to

Twitter tries to make audio tweets a thing, the U.K. backtracks on its contact-tracing app and Apple’s App Store revenue share is at the center of a new controversy. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 18, 2020. 1. Twitter begins rolling out audio tweets on iOS Twitter is rolling out audio tweets, which do exactly

Twitter is rolling out to its platform a new type of tweet — audio tweets — allowing users to share thoughts in audio form inside their feeds. The feature will only be available to some iOS users for now, though the company says all iOS users should have access “in the coming weeks.” No word

FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks has examined the President’s Executive Order that attempts to spur the FCC into action against social media companies and found it wanting. “There are good reasons for the FCC to stay out of this debate,” he said. “The decision is ours alone.” The Order targets Section 230 of the Communications Decency

Facebook adds a personal off switch for political ads, T-Mobile lays off hundreds of Sprint employees and a content management platform raises $80 million. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 17, 2020. 1. Facebook adds option for US users to turn off political ads, launches voting info hub Facebook made the controversial decision not to

Ethan Smith Contributor Ethan Smith is founder and CEO of Graphite, an SEO and growth marketing agency based in San Francisco. Ethan has served as a strategic advisor to Ticketmaster, MasterClass, Thumbtack and Honey. COVID-19 has transformed the way Americans use their phones and the way they spend their time and money online. These shifts

Mobile social networking app for women, Peanut, is expanding into video chat to help better support its users amid the coronavirus outbreak. The company, which began its life with a focus on motherhood, has evolved over the years to reach women looking to discuss a range of topics — including pregnancy, marriage, parenthood, and even

After months of talks and trials, WhatsApp has finally pulled the trigger on payments in its app. Today the Facebook-owned messaging service announced that users in Brazil would be the first to be able to send and receive money by way of its messaging app, using Facebook Pay, the payments service WhatsApp owner Facebook launched

Chinese internet giant ByteDance has announced plans to discontinue two of its apps in India, its biggest overseas market, and urged its users to move to TikTok. Vigo Video and Vigo Lite, two apps that allow users to create and share short-form sketches and lip-syncing to Bollywood songs, posted a message early Monday (local time)

After a very high-profile departure and a year away from the company, Facebook’s former chief product officer Chris Cox will return to his long-held position with the company. Cox shared the news Thursday in a Facebook post with a photo of his company badge. Elaborating on his return to Facebook, Cox explained that the unique

Facebook is reportedly getting into the venture capital game, but for young entrepreneurs working in social media, ignoring or deleting that particular friend request could be the right call. According to a report in Axios, the company is building up a corporate fund under the auspices of its “New Product Experimentation” team, which launched last

The digitally face-swapped videos known as deepfakes aren’t going anywhere, but if platforms want to be able to keep an eye on them, they need to find them first. Doing so was the object of Facebook’s “Deepfake Detection Challenge,” launched last year. After months of competition the winners have emerged, and they’re… better than guessing.

Over the past few years, Snapchat has been building up an increasingly complex weave of partnerships. They have their advertising partners that power the vast majority of their monetization efforts. They have app developers on Snap Kit that they are also selling new features like CameraKit and Minis too. They’re bringing game developers on board

Platform operators should treat personal media and mass media differently John Funge 8 hours John Funge Contributor John Funge is the Chief Product Officer at DataTribe, a cybersecurity startup foundry. He’s founded, built and sold three technology companies. Social media in its current form is broken. In 20 years, we’ll look back at the social

When it comes to Twitter tweaks, the focus in the last several months seems to have been more on working on ways to make its platform less prone to being abused by people who use it to spread false and misleading information and harassment, and generally weaponise it for aims that are ultimately harmful. But

Margaret Sessa-Hawkins Contributor Margaret Sessa-Hawkins is a MapLight contributor and journalist who focuses on the influence of deceptive online political messaging. Ann M. Ravel Contributor Ann M. Ravel is the Digital Deception Project Director at MapLight and previously served as chair of the Federal Election Commission. More posts by this contributor For true transparency around

A new Twitter test feature aiming to “promote informed discussion” will nudge users to read before they retweet. The company describes the test as a step to help people be more aware of what they’re sharing in a broader effort to inspire “healthier conversations” on the platform. Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you

Platforms still aren’t doing enough to tackle disinformation related to the coronavirus crisis, the European Commission said today. In a Communication it is pressing tech platforms to produce monthly reports about their efforts in this area, asking for more detailed data on actions being taken to promote authoritative content; improve users’ awareness; and limit coronavirus

Facebook News, the social network’s dedicated section devoted to journalism, is today launching for all users in the U.S. The feature was first introduced in October 2019 as a limited test in the U.S. The product represents Facebook’s much-debated new effort in wooing publishers to its platform with the promise of increased distribution. In addition to

Conspiracy theories claiming a connection between 5G technology and the coronavirus have been around since the pandemic’s early days and apparently they’re still going strong. So strong, in fact, that Twitter began applying a label to some tweets about COVID-19 and 5G, encouraging users to “get the facts” about the virus. As Business Insider reported,

Twitter is developing a new in-app system for requesting verification, according to a recent finding from reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, which Twitter has since confirmed. The discovery involves an added “Request Verification” option that appears in a redesigned account settings screen. This feature is not launched to the public, Twitter says. Wong typically digs

Twitter sees record downloads, Signal adds a new face-blurring feature and Facebook rethinks its approach to government-backed media. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 5, 2020. 1. Twitter has a record-breaking week as users looked for news of protests and COVID-19 Civil unrest due to the nationwide George Floyd protests drove Twitter to a record

One of the earliest disruptions created by the novel coronavirus manifested in the form of event cancellations. Some of the world’s biggest tech conferences, like F8 and Google NEXT, got postponed and others turned to digital options to still connect. Even Disrupt is going digital this year. It is an unprecedented time for the events

Alexis Ohanian, the founder and former CEO of Reddit, stepped down from his position on the company’s board Friday as the U.S. roils with nationwide protests against police brutality after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, an unarmed black man. Ohanian is calling on the company he founded to fill his position with a black board

Snapchat is the latest social media company to take on the president, Fitbit gets approval for its emergency ventilator and we review the new Sonos soundbar. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 4, 2020. 1. Snapchat is no longer promoting Trump’s posts Snap announced that it will not be promoting content from President Donald Trump’s

Civil unrest due to the nationwide George Floyd protests drove Twitter to see a record number of new installs this week, according to data from two app store intelligence firms, Apptopia and Sensor Tower. While the firms’ exact findings differed in terms of the total number of new downloads or when records were broken, the

Facebook will soon add labels to news outlets owned or otherwise controlled by a government, marking that information as, if not necessarily false or unreliable, at least worth considering the origin of. Those so labeled will also be banned from buying ads starting this summer. The company announced its plan to do this a few

LinkedIn is announcing some new features for advertisers — retargeting capabilities tied on video ads and lead generation forms, as well as new brand safety integrations for the LinkedIn Audience Network. Abhishek Shrivastava, the senior director of product for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, told me that his team has been shifting its product plans in response

Facebook said on Wednesday it has entered into a global deal with Saregama, one of India’s oldest and largest music labels, to license its music for video and other social experiences across its eponymous service and Instagram. The partnership, which comes weeks after Swedish music giant Spotify also signed a deal with Saregama, will allow

Snap announced this morning that it will not be promoting content from President Trump’s Snapchat account in its Discover tab following statements from Trump last week on Twitter, which threatened that protestors could be met with “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons.” The move is notable for many reasons, but is particularly interesting because social media