Social

Facebook is rolling out a new Group Effects feature on Messenger video calls and Messenger Rooms. Group Effects bring new AR filters and effects that can be applied to everyone on a video call, at the same time. These Group Effects will be rolled out soon to Instagram, Facebook says. The social media giant says

Tencent’s WeChat has fixed a glitch that allowed some of its content to be searchable by external search engines, the owner of China’s most popular messaging app said on Friday, raising questions over regulators’ latest attempt to crackdown on the internet sector. Some of WeChat’s content, including articles on its public accounts page, was briefly

Shares of Snap plummeted 25 percent on Thursday after the owner of photo messaging app Snapchat said privacy changes implemented by Apple Inc on iOS devices hurt the company’s ability to target and measure its digital advertising. The Santa Monica, California-based company, which earns the vast majority of its revenue from selling digital advertising on the

The COVID-19 pandemic brought into focus the increasing role of social media in spreading conspiracy theories. A number of recent studies on online social behaviour have pointed out the immense power of Facebook, Twitter and other platforms in giving a wide reach to unverified claims. A new study has shed the light on how different

Twitter on Thursday introduced a live cricket scorecard and extended its Communities feature to India by bringing the country’s first community focussed on cricket fans called Cricket Twitter – India. The updates from the microblogging platform come in the midst of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 tournament that kicked off earlier this week

Renaming Facebook is unlikely to enable the tech giant to distance itself from regulatory and public scrutiny around the potential harms caused by its social media apps, marketing and branding experts told Reuters. Tech publication The Verge reported on Tuesday that the California-based firm is planning to change its corporate branding to reflect that as well

A group of US lawmakers said Facebook cannot be trusted to manage cryptocurrency and urged the social media platform to discontinue immediately a small pilot of its cryptocurrency wallet named Novi, which was launched on Tuesday. US Democratic senators Brian Schatz, Sherrod Brown, Richard Blumenthal, Elizabeth Warren, and Tina Smith voiced their opposition to Facebook’s two-year-old effort

Instagram is adding a bunch of new features to its Feed and Reels. The Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform has announced that it is testing the Collabs feature to strengthen the relationship between content creators. With the latest feature, users on the platform can co-author Feed posts and Reels with others. In the shared post, both the

Snap said on Tuesday it is launching a studio to help brands create augmented reality advertising and experiences, part of a move to popularise the use of technology that can overlay computer-generated images onto a person’s view of the real world. The owner of photo messaging app Snapchat first became popular with young users for

WhatsApp has integrated its joinable calls feature — which lets users join an ongoing group video — directly into group chats. The latest update will give users the option to join an ongoing group call right from the group chat tab. Joinable calls were first introduced on WhatsApp in July this year. The instant messaging

Facebook on Monday announced plans to hire 10,000 people in the European Union to build the metaverse, a virtual reality version of the Internet that the tech giant sees as the future. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice in Silicon Valley hype around the idea of the metaverse, which would blur the

The attorneys general of 14 US states sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking if the top disseminators of vaccine disinformation on the platform received special treatment from the company. The line of inquiry was generated after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen used internal documents to disclose that the social media platform has built

Microsoft is pulling the plug on LinkedIn in China nearly seven years after its launch, marking the retreat of the last major US-owned social network in China as authorities there further tighten their control over the Internet sector. LinkedIn said in a blog post on Thursday that it would replace the platform later this year

Facebook will now count activists and journalists as “involuntary” public figures and so increase protections against harassment and bullying targeted at these groups, its global safety chief said in an interview this week. The social media company, which allows more critical commentary of public figures than of private individuals, is changing its approach on the

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell on Tuesday called on Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg to preserve all documents related to a testimony last week from company whistleblower Frances Haugen. “The testimony … raises significant concerns about whether Facebook has misled the public, federal regulators, and this committee,” said Cantwell, a Democrat. “This committee will

WhatsApp has been spotted testing a new custom privacy setting for Android users to let them hide their ‘About’ status updates from specific contacts. The option to hide the ‘About’ status from specific contacts, which is yet to be available to beta testers, would be available alongside the existing privacy options. The change is likely

A new study by Online Mortgage Advisor has revealed that India has five of the top 20 happiest cities in the world to buy a home. The study also revealed that Mumbai is the least happy city to buy a home in the world, while Surat was at the fifth spot in the same list.

Twitter on Tuesday rolled out new advertisement features and revamped the algorithm that decides which advertisements users see, as part of an effort to lay the groundwork to launch future e-commerce features, the social networking company told Reuters. The new features come as Twitter is pushing to grow its performance advertising business, a strategy that

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

Twitter is rolling out a new privacy-related feature that lets users remove a follower without blocking them. The latest tool is designed to provide users greater control over their follower lists and is currently available on the Web version. Twitter was testing this option from September this year. Once a Twitter user has removed someone,