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This week, Meta's social media platforms experienced an outage on Super Tuesday, Apple squares off against the EU, and Instagram rolls out new features for DMs. Check out all the latest news below…
Instagram is leaning into private messaging with a raft of new features that signal changes in how its two billion-plus users are spending time on the app. Users can now edit DMs for up to 15 minutes after sending, pin three chats to the top of their feed, add ‘read’ receipts for all DM chats and specific threads, and enjoy a new feature to save stickers. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has been open in saying Instagram’s main social activity is in direct messaging and these changes look to improve the feature for users.
The 96th Oscars ceremony takes place on Sunday night, and TikTok has unveiled new activations to celebrate Hollywood's biggest night. The social network has announced that creators Joe Aragon and Yasmine Sahid will host a live stream event on the red carpet, and there will be a dedicated search feature for related content and Oscar-themed effects to boost engagement. TikTok's presence at the event could act as a major driver for viewership for those less inclined to watch the full ceremony itself.
On Super Tuesday (U.S. primary elections day) users on Facebook, Instagram and Threads were greeted with an ‘error’ message and were unable to log in to their accounts. Reports of the outage began around 10am EST, and the company’s communication manager, Andy Stone, posted on X to inform users the problem was being addressed. The cause of the outage is still unclear but many have commented that it was oddly timed on such an important day. However, the incident did give X usage a slight boost, with Elon Musk poking fun at Meta with a tweet about his platform’s reliability.
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This week, Apple was hit with one of the largest antitrust fines in history (€1.8 billion) after Spotify and other music streaming companies claimed the company prevented them from offering their services on iOS stores. From today a new EU Digital Markets Act law has come into force, which aims to impose severe limitations on how companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon manage their respective app stores, with severe fines for failing to comply. Could this be a sign of a power shift among the tech giants?
Threads is testing a new API with selected third-party platforms that allows content scheduling, authentication, and fetching posted content. The new API is not expected to be fully rolled out until June, but the company's focus on content management features could increasingly attract brands and users that have become disillusioned by platforms such as X.
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