social networking
Teddy Solomon just moved to a new house in Palo Alto, so he turned to the Stanford community on Fizz to furnish his room. “Every time I show up to…
Misinformation works, and a handful of social ‘supersharers’ sent 80% of it in 2020
The studies, by researchers at MIT, Ben-Gurion University, Cambridge and Northeastern, were independently conducted but complement each other well.
Tumblr, the blogging site acquired twice, is launching its “Communities” feature in open beta, the Tumblr Labs division has announced. The feature offers a dedicated space for users to connect…
Why Meta is looking to the fediverse as the future for social media
Meta’s move into the open social web, also known as the fediverse, is puzzling. Does the Facebook owner see open protocols as the future? Will it embrace the fediverse only…
Lyrak to take on X by combining the best of Twitter with fediverse integration
Lyrak is a new X rival that aims to differentiate itself by focusing on real-time news and monetization options for creators.
Threads opens beta to let users connect their accounts to the fediverse
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 tests the ability to save posts as it continues to compete with X
Instagram Threads is getting a highly requested feature that puts it in closer competition with X/Twitter. The text-based social networking app is experimenting with the ability to save posts, allowing…
Threads will allow you to follow Mastodon users by year-end, according to Meta meeting details
Threads’ roadmap for integrations with the fediverse, aka the network of decentralized apps that includes Twitter/X rival Mastodon and others, has been revealed. A new blog post by Tom Coates,…
Tumblr tests ‘Communities,’ semi-private groups with their own moderators and feeds
After scaling back operations and reassigning staff to other projects, Tumblr owner Automattic’s CEO Matt Mullenweg said that the company would home in on the parts of Tumblr’s service that…
Why Mozilla is betting on a decentralized social networking future
Consumers are hungry for a new way of social networking, where trust and safety are paramount and power isn’t centralized with a Big Tech CEO in charge… or at least…
Communia hopes to build a digital safe space for women
Olivia Deramus’ company Communia competes in TechCrunch’s Battlefield 200, with the mission to create a safe digital space for women.
Substack expands further into social networking with a new ‘Follow’ button
Substack is adding a new feature to make its platform feel more like a social network, as the company announced on Tuesday that users can now follow writers. The new…
RTRO launches an algorithm-free social app for friends, creators and brands
Ahead of Meta’s launch of a text-based social network, female-founded social networking startup RTRO is launching its app this week with the goal of connecting brands, creators and their fans…
TikTok considers ditching its ‘Friends’ tab for a new ‘Explore’ experience focused on discovery
Unlike Facebook, TikTok grew in popularity by connecting users with their interests, not their real-life friends and family. In fact, many people today deny the app’s request to upload their…
Discord opens up paid subscriptions so servers can sell premium perks
After launching premium memberships as a pilot late last year, Discord will now allow more servers to offer paid memberships in exchange for special server-specific perks. Plenty of Discord communities…
Twitter expands access to its experimental Status feature…but not to its paid subscribers
Twitter’s throwback feature, Twitter Status, is today expanding its list of potential status updates to choose from, in a continuation of tests that began this July. The feature, which is…
Tencent, the biggest social networking and video games company in China, hasn’t really managed to scale its popular products in the Western mainstream. The behemoth’s international expansion for the most…
Facebook is losing its grip as a ‘Top 10’ app as BeReal and TikTok grow
Facebook this year has been struggling to maintain its position among the Top 10 apps on the U.S. App Store, according to an analysis of iPhone App Store data. As…
Bumble experiments with group chats, polls and video calls for its new social networking feature, ‘Hive’
Dating app maker Bumble revealed more of its plans to strengthen its social networking features during last week’s Q2 earnings, which saw the company’s shares slump over its lowered financial outlook…
This Week in Apps: Elon wants out, TikTok’s content ratings, a new milestone for subscription revenue
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached…
Reddit is launching a new NFT-based avatar marketplace today that allows you to purchase blockchain-based profile pictures for a fixed rate. The company said that you need not have a…
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The next big social platform is the smartphone’s homescreen
BeReal, LiveIn, Locket… what do these new consumer social apps have in common besides a highly ranked position on the App Store’s Top Charts? They engage their users through a combination of push notifications and homescreen widgets, instead of forcing people to spend a long time browsing their app, scrolling…
Andreessen Horowitz’s Sriram Krishnan on crypto social networking
Web3 has plenty of money going for it — well, yes quite a bit less than a few months ago — but it’s still hard…
Meta rolls out Horizon Home, making it easier to meet up in the metaverse
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that Horizon Home will roll out as part of a new update to the Quest 2 headset. Despite Meta’s insistence that virtual…
In search of engagement, Twitter brings algorithmic timelines to Communities
Twitter Communities — the private, interest-based networking feature launched last year — will now gain their own algorithmic-based timelines, similar to Twitter’s Home timeline where the most relevant and engaging…
Poparazzi hits 5M+ downloads a year after launch, confirms its $15M Series A
Poparazzi, the anti-Instagram social app that hit the top of the App Store last year, is today, for the first time, detailing the growth stats for its business, its future…
Gen Z social app Yubo rolls out age ‘estimating’ technology to better identify minors using its service
Yubo, a social livestreaming app popular with a Gen Z audience, announced today it’s becoming one of the first major social platforms to adopt a new age verification technique that…
Bumble is planning to expand further into social networking with a new communities feature
Dating platform Bumble is looking to enhance its non-dating social features with a further investment into its Bumble BFF feature, first launched in 2016. This friend-finding feature currently uses the…
Metaverse app BUD raises another $37M, plans to launch NFTs
BUD, a nascent app taking a shot at creating a metaverse for Gen Z to play and interact with each other, has raised another round of funding in three months.…
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Russia’s war hits Yandex, the ‘Google of Russia’
Putin’s regime continues to tighten its grip on how information on the war in Ukraine is shared in Russia, and in the wake of that, tech giants in the country — which, like Facebook, Google and Twitter, are also major players in the media sphere — are starting to restructure…
