The internet has been transformed by social media, and the many platforms are now critical to how we communicate online. The Verge keeps a close eye on everything that’s happening in the social media landscape, covering key players like Meta, X, and TikTok, reporting on new features, following cultural moments, and breaking down the policies that shape how the platforms work.
You can catch the national mood from time to time using the iOS App Store’s top free apps list.
After today’s TikTok chaos, the top 20 apps there are taken up mostly by VPNs and video editing or social media posting apps, with a little ChatGPT and Temu sprinkled in for good measure.
The platform grew from “2.89M users to 25.94M users” last year and the moderation team has “roughly 100 moderators,” according to the report.
The language-learning app reports a 216 percent increase in Mandarin learners from the US compared to last year, as over 700,000 users flock to Chinese-language social app RedNote ahead of TikTok’s possible ban. Duolingo is leaning into the marketing moment, using TikTok itself to celebrate its unlikely (and unofficial) partnership with RedNote.
Users will be able to post up-to-four-image photo posts and 1-minute-long videos, according to TechCrunch. Comments will be supported, as will DMs. Developer Sebastian Vogelsang plans to launch Flashes “in a matter of weeks” after an iOS TestFlight beta period, the outlet writes.
The app will reportedly be free to use with some subscription-based features, just like Vogelsang’s other Bluesky client called Skeets.
Musk posted last night that the platform’s algorithm will soon “promote more informational/entertaining content” in order to “maximize unregretted user-seconds.”
He added in a separate post that X is working on ways to “adjust the content feed dynamically.”
The Indian government has lifted its cap that previously restricted the Venmo-like feature in WhatsApp to 100 million users.
As TechCrunch notes, Google and Walmart currently operate the vast majority of the digital payments market in the country. But that could be about to change; India is WhatsApp’s largest market with over 500 million users, and the messaging app is already heavily relied on there by small businesses.
My colleague Elizabeth Lopatto spotted a bit of shade thrown at Elon Musk’s X by yesterday’s New York Times crossword puzzle.
It got me wondering: What other answers would work here?
Tether, one of crypto’s longstanding mysteries, is dropping more than three-quarters of a billion dollars on Rumble, the far-right video sharing platform. Do click through for the statements from both companies’ CEOs, which definitely sound like normal human speech.
Guinness beer is having a moment, thanks in part to a social media challenge where folks chug the stout until the foam hits the middle of the ‘G’ on the pint glass. However, our esteemed UK colleagues want everyone to know that while Americans and our media are just now glomming onto the trend, across the pond this is old news.
[The New York Times]
Bluesky COO Rose Wang, in an interview with Buffer:
Where we want monetization to go is to align our incentives with our users, creators and developers. And so as they’re making more money, we should be making money, but if they’re not making money, we shouldn’t be making money. And so our goal is: let’s build a payment system so that it enables these payments to work on the app and across other apps on the ecosystem much easier. And then we’ll increase the volume of those transactions, and the creators and folks take home most of it, and we just take a percentage of the transaction fee.
It might take awhile before they arrive, Wang says. The planned subscription is also set to launch early next year.
They’re apparently coming “in the very near term,” Bluesky’s Emily Liu reportedly said on a call with the Online News Association.
Cory Bergman, the co-founder and VP of product at Factal, covered other tidbits from the call. Some, like Bluesky’s planned subscription and that it’s looking into enhancing account verification, aren’t totally new.
We didn’t all flock to a new platform or build on a thrilling new protocol. We went everywhere, and did everything, all at once.
Just seeing a Threads post on Instagram doesn’t count toward Threads’ more than 100 million daily active users, Zuckerberg tells Hank Green. “You’d have to tap on the post and open Threads while logged in to be counted for DAU,” Zuckerberg says.
Media critic Matt Pearce on ‘Lessons on media policy at the slaughter-bench of history’
Bluesky has been growing quickly in recent weeks, after hitting the 15 million users mark exactly a month ago. Now, the Bluesky API is showing that there are more than 25 million users, despite the app dropping out of the top 10 on the App Store. If you’re looking for people to follow on Bluesky, I’ve heard this bunch are worth a follow.
Fetterman appears to be the first Democratic senator to join Trump’s social media site, Politico reports.
And in his first post, he called Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s hush money case against Trump “total bullshit.” As Politico notes, Fetterman has been calling for Trump to be pardoned for the hush money conviction since President Biden issued a pardon for his son, Hunter.
I was just asked to complete a survey at the top of my feed that asked if I thought the app is too aggressive about taking down stuff. This tracks with Meta’s policy chief recently saying that the company wants to roll back its aggressive content policing.
