Acquired by Facebook in 2012 for what is now the bargain price of $1 billion, Instagram continues to be a flagship platform within the Meta portfolio and TechCrunch continues to cover its evolution. Instagram has recently shifted its focus toward Reels, its short-form video product that is strongly reminiscent of TikTok, and its latest offshoot platform Threads, which is the company’s X challenger that could also become the wider public’s introduction to the fediverse and federated social networks.
Instagram is introducing a few new changes to its ranking systems to better highlight content from smaller, original creators.
Meta’s Threads social network passed the 150 million monthly users mark recently, but the company is not slowing down its growth engine. To increase engagement, the social media giant is…
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Gen Z is losing its political voice on social media
President Joe Biden signed the bill this week that could ban TikTok from the U.S. if its parent company ByteDance doesn’t sell the platform. According to young political content creators, the ban could decimate Gen Z’s access to political news and information. “An unfortunately large amount of 18- to 24-year-olds…
Threads and Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced today that Threads is launching a new feature that lets users filter out words and phrases from their feeds and mentions. The “Hidden…
Meta’s making several big moves today to promote its AI services across its platform. The company has upgraded its AI chatbot with its newest large language model, Llama 3, and…
TikTok is rolling out its Instagram competitor, TikTok Notes, in select markets. The app is available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in Canada and Australia, the…
The Oversight Board, Meta’s semi-independent policy council, is turning its attention to how the company’s social platforms are handling explicit, AI-generated images. Tuesday, it announced investigations into two separate cases…
Meta-owned social network Threads is finally testing a “Recent” filter to sort search results.
Meta to close Threads in Turkey to comply with injunction prohibiting data sharing with Instagram
Meta will “temporarily” shutter Threads in Turkey on April 29, in response to an injunction imposed by the country’s competition authority.
Meta is pushing ahead with its efforts to make its generative AI-powered products available to more users. Apart from testing Meta AI chatbot with users in countries like India on…
Meta said on Thursday that it is testing new features on Instagram intended to help safeguard young people from unwanted nudity or sextortion scams. This includes a feature called “Nudity…
If you haven’t been seeing much political content on Instagram lately, there’s a reason for that. Since March, Instagram and Threads have instituted a new default setting that limits political…
After opening its developer API to select companies for testing in March, Meta’s Twitter/X competitor Threads is now introducing developer documentation and a sign-up sheet for interested parties ahead of…
TikTok’s upcoming Instagram competitor app for sharing photos could be named TikTok Notes, according to screenshots posted by users. TikTok also confirmed the app was in development. Over the last…
Despite its similarities, Instagram Threads is no X. That’s not to say people weren’t discussing the earthquake on Threads — many were.
For the second time in just over a month, Meta’s apps, including WhatsApp, and to some extent, Messenger and Instagram, faced outages and intermittent issues. While it’s rare for services…
The fediverse — the name for the social network made of interconnected servers, like Mastodon and others — got another boost of legitimacy Tuesday as the @Potus (President of the…
Instagram is developing a “Blend” feature that creates a private feed of Reels recommended for you and a friend. The company told TechCrunch on Friday that the feature is an…
As the election cycle heats up, Instagram and Threads will be cooling down the amount of political content entering many users’ feeds. These changes, which limit the reach of political…
It’s election season in the U.S., and Instagram has changed the way that it recommends political content. On both Instagram and the newer X competitor Threads, this change won’t impact…
Threads has officially entered the fediverse. Meta announced on Thursday that its beta experience of sharing Threads accounts to the fediverse is now open to users ages 18 and up…
Threads, the Twitter-like app from Instagram, is rolling out its “trending now” feature widely to all users in the U.S. The official rollout comes a month after the app started…
Instagram is working on a “Spins” feature for Reels, its short-form video TikTok clone, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The feature, which was first spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi,…
After rivaling music streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple music with TikTok Music, ByteDance might be looking at creating an Instagram competitor named TikTok Photos, code found in the TikTok…
Meta’s newest app Threads, a would-be Twitter/X rival, may not want politics on its platform, but it’s coming to the app anyway — or so Threads’ search trends indicate. The…
Threads, the Twitter-like app from Instagram, is rolling out the ability for users to save a draft and take photos within the app. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the features…
Instagram has quietly added a secret emoji game that you can access in your DMs. The goal of the game is simple: Use your finger to move the paddle at…
Reports are coming in that a number of Meta’s top social apps, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, are all experiencing an outage on Tuesday morning. When loading the apps or…
Google today announced its latest set of Pixel-related features for phones tablets, and watches, such as 10-bit video support for Instagram, expansion of the Circle to search feature, automatic workout…
Instagram announced today that it’s rolling out the ability for users to edit their direct messages for up to 15 minutes after sending them. The company also announced that users will…
