It’s no secret that Google planned to pull life support from the consumer version of Google+, its failure of a social network, in April. Until now, though, we didn’t know the exact date. That date, Google announced today, is April 2. On that date, Google will start deleting all content, including Google+ pages, photos and
Social
Roughly half of Instagram’s users 1 billion users now use Instagram Stories every day. That 500 million daily user count is up from 400 million in June 2018. 2 million advertiseres are now buying Stories ads across Facebook’s properties. CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Stories the last big game-changing feature from Facebook, but after concentrating on
In an effort to bolster its public credibility in the wake of a very rough year, Facebook is bringing a fierce former critic into the fold. Next month, longtime Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) counsel Nate Cardozo will join WhatsApp, Facebook’s encrypted chat app. Cardozo most recently held the position of Senior Information Security Counsel with
If you haven’t been paying attention to TikTok, you haven’t been paying attention. The short-form video app hailing from Beijing’s ByteDance just had its biggest month ever with the addition of 75 million new users in December — a 275 percent increase from the 20 million it added in December 2017, according a recent report
Photo-sharing app and social network Instagram was briefly taken offline on Monday afternoon, causing nothing of consequence to occur other than a brief respite from one source of the constant deluge of inconsequential information to which we all voluntarily submit ourselves. The service died at about 4:20, tragically the very moment when millions of people
In November, Facebook announced a new plan that would revamp how the company makes content policy decisions on its social network – it will begin to pass off some of the more contested decisions to an independent review board. The board will serve as the final level of escalation for appeals around reported content, acting
Tinder recently agreed to settle a $23 million class-action age discrimination lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed last April in California, alleged Tinder charged people over 30 years old twice the amount for its subscription services. The class consists of every person, 29 years of age or older at the time, who subscribed to Tinder Plus or
A year ago, Facebook-owned WhatsApp officially introduced its standalone app aimed at small business customers. Today, the WhatsApp Business app has grown to reach 5 million business customers, the company says. And now it’s making the app easier to use on the desktop and the web by porting over several of the most popular features
Twitter is testing a new tag that will make it easier to parse who started a thread. The new feature, which is starting to pop up for some users, makes it easier to find posts from the original tweeter within a thread, but may also help curb (some types of) abuse on the platform, making
Facebook today announced changes to the way it handles the removal of content from Facebook Pages that’s in violation of the social network’s Community Standards, as well as when the Page has posted items that are rated false by a third-party fact checking service. It says it will also make it harder for those whose
Having reached critical mass, Netflix shows are now influencing culture — whether that’s prompting everyone to “tidy up” or causing chaos with “Bird Box”-inspired challenges. For good or bad, what happens on Netflix is talked about, memed and shared across the social media landscape. Today, Netflix is launching a new feature aimed at better inserting
Gather a mob and Facebook will now let you make political demands. Tomorrow Facebook will encounter a slew of fresh complexities with the launch of Community Actions, its News Feed petition feature. Community Actions could unite neighbors to request change from their local and national elected officials and government agencies. But it could also provide
No one likes being stalked around the Internet by adverts. It’s the uneasy joke you can’t enjoy laughing at. Yet vast people-profiling ad businesses have made pots of money off of an unregulated Internet by putting surveillance at their core. But what if creepy ads don’t work as claimed? What if all the filthy lucre
How do you do, fellow kids? After Facebook Watch, Lasso, and IGTV failed to become hits with teens, the company has been quietly developing another youthful video product. Multiple sources confirm that Facebook has spent months building LOL, a special feed of funny videos and GIF-like clips. It’s divided into categories like “For You”, “Animals”,
Reports emerged today that the FTC is considering a fine against Facebook that would be the largest ever from the agency. Even if it were ten times the size of the largest, a $22.5 million bill sent to Google in 2012, the company would basically laugh it off. Facebook is made of money. But the
Twitter accidentally revealed some users’ “protected” (aka, private) tweets, the company disclosed this afternoon. The “Protect your Tweets” setting typically allows people to use Twitter in a non-public fashion. These users get to approve who can follow them and who can view their content. For some Android users over a period of several years, that may
Two years on from the U.S. presidential election, Facebook continues to have a major problem with Russian disinformation being megaphoned via its social tools. In a blog post today the company reveals another tranche of Kremlin-linked fake activity — saying it’s removed a total of 471 Facebook pages and accounts, as well as 41 Instagram accounts, which
Tinder has already developed a fairly robust chat platform within its dating app, with support for sharing things like Bitmoji and GIFs, and the ability to “like” messages by tapping a heart icon. Now, the company is testing a new integration – sharing music via Spotify. Tinder confirmed with TechCrunch it’s trying out a new
A study by the Pew Research Center suggests most Facebook users are still in the dark about how the company tracks and profiles them for ad-targeting purposes. Pew found three-quarters (74%) of Facebook users did not know the social networking behemoth maintains a list of their interests and traits to target them with ads, only
After launching on iOS, Twitter is giving Android users the ability to easily switch between seeing the reverse-chronological “latest tweets” and the algorithmic “top tweets” feeds on their home page. The company announced the rollout at a media event in New York. The “sparkle button” is a way for Twitter to appease long-time power tweeters while
Instagram has been earning money from businesses flooding its social network with spam notifications. Instagram hypocritically continues to sell ad space to services that charge clients for fake followers or that automatically follow/unfollow other people to get them to follow the client back. This is despite Instagram reiterating a ban on these businesses in November
Everyone has to have a podcast, apparently. Even Facebook . The social network this week launched its second-ever original podcast series, and its first one in the U.S. An arm of Facebook’s business operation, the new show “Three and a Half Degrees” will focus on entrepreneurship – specifically the lessons learned, challenges faced, and other