A new app called Tapestry promising to unify social media, news, and RSS in one place, is nearing completion. Designed by Iconfactory, the same team that created the third-party Twitter client Twitterific back in the day, Tapestry was unveiled at the beginning of the year as a tool that could better organize today’s fragmented online […]

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Threads is introducing a new way to reshare photos and videos on its social network. Instead of quote-posting the original post and then adding commentary, Threads users will instead be able to click a new option, “Use media,” allowing them to just reshare the photo or video directly to a new post where they can […]

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The global app economy continued to recover in 2024, after an earlier slowdown in 2022 — at least in terms of consumer spending. In 2024, global consumer spending in mobile apps and games reached $127 billion across the App Store and Google Play, up 15.7% from the prior year. However, those increases were driven by […]

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Social magazine app maker Flipboard is reinventing itself for the new era of the open social web. While the company’s original app allowed users to collect content from blogs, news websites, and traditional social media services like Facebook and Twitter in order to create curated magazines, its new app called Surf, launching into invite-only beta […]

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Bridgy Fed, which is working to connect the social network Bluesky with the wider fediverse (i.e., the open social web), which includes sites like Mastodon and others, will be the first app incubated within a new nonprofit called A New Social. The organization, announced Tuesday, aims to bring together developers, researchers, startups, and industry leaders […]

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YouTube on Monday announced it will give creators more choice over how third parties can use their content to train their AI models. Starting today, creators and rights holders will be able to flag for YouTube if they’re permitting specific third-party AI companies to train models on the creator’s content. From a new setting within […]

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Chinese shopping app Temu was once again the most downloaded free app in the U.S., according to a list of top apps and games across the App Store released by Apple on Monday. The shopping app moved into the No. 1 slot last year, stealing the position from TikTok, which held the title in in […]

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Now with 25 million users, Bluesky is facing a test that will determine whether or not its platform will still be seen as a safe space and place of refuge from the toxicity of X. In recent days, a large number of users on Bluesky have been urging the company to ban one newcomer for […]

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A year after initial tests began, the web blogging site Tumblr, now owned by WordPress.com parent Automattic, is launching its Communities feature out of beta. Communities offer semi-private spaces on Tumblr where people can network around topics of interest, similar to Reddit’s forums known as subreddits or X’s Communities. The Communities feature first entered public […]

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Arriving in time for holiday travel and potentially lost luggage, a new feature that allows Apple AirTag owners to share the location of a lost item is now integrated with the customer service systems of two major airlines. United and Air Canada are the first launch partners for Apple’s “Find My Share Item Location” feature, […]

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In a press briefing on Wednesday, the Pentagon said it has no evidence that the mysterious drones that have been flying over New Jersey and other parts of the northeast U.S. in recent weeks were coming from a foreign entity, nor were they U.S. military drones. The comments come a day after a U.S. Congressional […]

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Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Threads on Wednesday were all experiencing issues to varying degrees as a result of a global outage affecting Meta’s apps. The cause of the outage is not yet known, but Meta has acknowledged a “technical issue” in a post on X. The company at 1:48 p.m. ET wrote, “We’re aware […]

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Alongside the release of a host of new AI features, Apple is also updating the Voice Memos app in iOS 18.2. On Wednesday, the iPhone maker announced that iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max users will be able to layer a vocal track on top of an existing instrumental recording in the Voice Memos app, […]

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ChatGPT may currently be the No. 1 app on the iPhone App Store in the U.S., but it’s not Apple’s iPhone app of the year. That honor goes to a newer app for videographers called Kino. Launched this spring from Lux, the company behind the professional photography app Halide, Kino advances mobile video recording with […]

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The future of audiobooks and AI’s impact on the publishing industry were points of discussion for HarperCollins, whose CEO, Brian Murray, spoke at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference on Tuesday. During the event, the exec praised Spotify’s entry into the audiobooks market and detailed its future growth plans in the space. He also […]

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A U.S. appeals court has overturned a decision in an antitrust lawsuit against Meta, which was filed in in late 2021 by the long-shuttered social app Phhhoto. In court, the startup alleged that Meta violated U.S. antitrust law by copying its core features and suppressing competition. U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in 2023 granted Meta’s […]

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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Monday announced that it’s sending the first round of payments to consumers tricked by Fortnite maker Epic Games into making unwanted purchases, with refunds totaling over $72 million. The settlement, first announced in December 2022 and finalized in March 2023, fined the game $245 million for its “counterintuitive, inconsistent, […]

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Social networking startup and X competitor Bluesky is working on subscriptions. The company first announced plans to develop a new revenue stream based on the subscription model when detailing its $15 million Series A back in October. Now, mockups teasing the upcoming Bluesky subscription, along with a list of possible features, have been published to […]

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A change to Meta’s developer tools is impacting third-party consumer apps that had previously integrated with Instagram. Among those affected by the changes are the Match-owned dating apps Tinder and Hinge, which had allowed their users to link their Instagram profiles to their accounts to display their posts to potential matches. Day One, the journaling […]

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Spotify Wrapped isn’t the only service offering a year-end recap these days. In addition to the year-end reviews from other streamers and social apps, Google Photos is among the apps providing users with a look back at key moments throughout the past year. The feature, “2024 Recap,” introduces a collection of memories, insights, and photos, […]

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