Social

Facebook is rolling out a new feature to enhance users’ audio experience on the platform. The social media giant has unveiled Live Audio Rooms to public figures, creators, and groups globally. The new feature — launched in response to rising interest in Clubhouse — will allow users to host live audio discussions on the platform.

WhatsApp is spotted working on a new section to let users manage their chat backup size and exclude specific content such as documents and photos from their cloud backup, according to a report. The change could initially be limited to Android devices and may work with the backups being stored on Google Drive. WhatsApp is

Facebook’s Instagram said on Monday it is testing a feature to notify users of outages or technical issues directly on the photo-sharing app, days after two outages disrupted the social media giant’s services. The test will run in the United States and will go on for a few months, Instagram said in a blog post.

A Facebook executive said Sunday that the company would introduce new measures on its apps to prompt teens away from harmful content, as US lawmakers scrutinise how Facebook and subsidiaries like Instagram affect young people’s mental health. Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, also expressed openness to the idea of letting regulators have access

Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov seems to know just the right way to celebrate his 37th birthday. The founder of the cross-platform cloud-based instant messaging system turned a year older on October 10, and chose to drop some life lessons for his followers. He chose to do it on Telegram itself. Given that he

Twitter said it has agreed to sell mobile advertisement company MoPub to AppLovin for $1.05 billion (roughly Rs. 7,850 crores) in cash, as the microblogging platform looks to focus more on advertisements on its own app and website. MoPub, which generated about $188 million (roughly Rs. 1,400 crores) in annual revenue for Twitter last year,

Facebook on Friday said it will stop allowing the sale of land in Amazon rainforest conservation areas at marketplaces on the social network or its Instagram and WhatsApp services. The announcement came as Facebook defends itself against accusations that it has long put profit over societal good, and caused some online to question why it

WhatsApp was recently spotted testing end-to-end encrypted cloud backups. The change is rolling out to beta testers on both Android and iOS platforms, according to a report. WhatsApp’s new update aims to protect backups stored on Google Drive and iCloud by giving users the option to encrypt them. The process adds an additional layer of

Facebook on Friday said users around the world again had problems accessing its services for hours due to a tweak of its system, just days after a massive outage caused in a similar fashion. “Sincere apologies to anyone who wasn’t able to access our products in the last couple of hours,” a Facebook spokesperson told

Facebook has redesigned its Page sections in India to make it easier to differentiate between personal and public profiles. Facebook Pages are different from profiles and they are specifically meant for businesses, brands, organisations and public figures to share their stories and connect with people. The new Page design, Facebook says, aims to make it

YouTube will no longer make its annual year-end rewind videos, the company has confirmed. YouTube Rewind, a project that was cancelled last year due to COVID-19, will not make a comeback this year. In fact, the company has decided to stop making rewind videos altogether claiming that the platform is too massive and incorporating all

Facebook has slowed down the rollout of new products in recent days, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Executives at the social media company have also put a hold on some work on existing products, the report said. Facebook did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Snap is launching an in-app tool to educate users searching for drug-related key words on Snapchat about the dangers of drugs and is working on tools for parents to help keep teenagers safe on the service, the company said on Thursday. The announcement comes after a public safety alert from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)

Twitter is testing a new feature that allows users to get the vibe of a conversation before they join in. The microblogging platform is testing new prompts on both Android and iOS apps, it announced today. The new ‘prompts’ feature will warn users before they get involved in a conversation that could get heated. It

WhatsApp for Android is in testing a profile photo privacy setting that will let users hide their profile photos from specific contacts, according to a report. The custom privacy setting may come alongside the existing options to let you show your profile photo to everyone, all contacts, and nobody. The change is said to be

Pinterest will roll out new features for brands to promote products and ideas to users, the digital pinboard company said Wednesday, part of an effort to grow online shopping on its site. The features come as social media rivals including Facebook, TikTok and Snap compete for the lucrative e-commerce market with in-app shopping or virtual

Instagram is merging IGTV — its long-form video format — and feed videos on the platform into Instagram Video. The Facebook-owned app will display a new Video tab on the app that displays all video content under one umbrella. Video creators will now get handy features such as trimming, filters, as well as people and

Apologising for the disruption in the services of Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram, tech giant’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that services are returning online on Tuesday. “Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger are coming back online now,” Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. “Sorry for the disruption today – I know how much you rely on

Facebook’s six-hour outage the previous day shows the repercussions from relying on just a few big players and underscores the need for more rivals, EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said on Tuesday. The outage prevented the company’s 3.5 billion users from accessing its social media and messaging services such as WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger, the largest

Facebook has complied with Russian demands to delete some banned content, but it could still face a hefty fine as it was slow to do so, the Vedomosti newspaper cited state communications regulator Roskomnadzor as saying on Monday. Russia has increased pressure on foreign tech firms in recent months as part of a long-running push

A Facebook executive said in an interview on Sunday with CNN that the company does not believe that its social media service is a primary contributor to the political polarisation that has become widespread in the United States. The company’s vice president of policy and global affairs, Nick Clegg, spoke ahead of an expected Sunday

Discord, the Slack-like chat app, recently said that it’s going to sunset its Stage Discovery tool on October 4, less than six months after it launched. Rolled out in June, Stage Discovery was designed to help users find its social audio rooms called Stage Channels. It used machine learning to curate a list of channels

WhatsApp is found to be upgrading the existing voice messages function on its platform with a global voice message player that would allow you to listen to voice messages when you look at your recent chats. The update is reportedly in development for beta testers at the present stage. Separately, WhatsApp is reported to have

WhatsApp now allows you to permanently hide chats by archiving them, even if new messages come in that conversation. This feature from the Facebook-owned messaging company is a great way of shutting off unwanted conversations, and keeping them from showing up in your main list of chats. The Archive folder essentially allows users to ignore

US senators on Thursday grilled Facebook on its plans to better protect young users on its apps, drawing on leaked internal research that showed the social media giant was aware of how its Instagram app harmed the mental health of teens. The hearing in front of the Senate consumer protection subcommittee was called after the Wall

Major social media stars including Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, and Charli D’Amelio are among celebrities whose Instagram followers experience more negative feelings about their self-image, according to internal Facebook research revealed by the Wall Street Journal this week, raising questions about the impact of celebrity culture online. The Journal released the leaked research slide decks

WhatsApp banned over 2 million accounts in the month of August to curb abuse and prevent harmful behaviour on the platform. The latest transparency report from WhatsApp, published to comply with the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, reveals that it banned a total 20,70,000 accounts in one month.

Social audio chat app Clubhouse is launching the ability to record and replay conversations and also download 30-second clips to share on social media or other sites, it said on Thursday. The app will also roll out an improved search function to help people find live and scheduled audio rooms, users and clubs oriented around

TikTok is joining hands with creators and artists like Lil Nas X, Rudy Willingham, Bella Poarch, and Curtis Roach to issue its first non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles. TikTok Top Moments from the Bytedance-owned app will feature six original NFT videos from creators. The TikTok creators will work with established NFT creators like Coin Artist, x0r,

Facebook has announced a set of new features to enhance integration between Instagram and Messenger. The new features include cross-app group communication, new group typing indicators, and polls on Instagram DMs (direct messages). The cross-app group feature chat allows people to start group chats between their Instagram and Messenger contacts, while with the group typing