During Semafor’s Mixed Signals podcast, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said TikTok is “very much applying lessons they’ve learned in China to the rest of the world:”
Super apps, which are very popular in China, are not popular in the same way outside of China, and I think they’re turning into a Chinese super app — and that may or may not work outside of China.
US-based car reviewers are going gaga over Chinese EVs. Their audiences wonder why they can’t buy them.
The platform is testing a way for users to indicate what topics they want to see in content, beginning with Reels. Instagram said previously that this was in the works. The topics appear to be extremely specific — things like Bad Bunny, “Japanese artisan menswear,” “vintage Patek,” and so on. In other words: help Instagram improve its algorithm.
Meta’s AI translation feature initially worked with English and Spanish.
Plain old pictures are out; content is in.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri discovered this week that his “I’m not listening to you through your phone” T-shirt was raising a lot of questions already answered by his shirt. But real heads know that Instagram doesn’t need to listen to you, because it already knows everything anyway.
Nixel:
Yeah, we don’t listen to you… just endlessly track you across the internet building up so much data that it seems exactly like we do
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
The change should make it easier to not have your own comments get buried.
Now, users with 100,000 followers or more can narrow down DMs with the addition of new filters and the ability to create folders. Creators can also customize shortcuts to navigate to certain categories of messages, such as requests.
Maybe this will help solve T-Pain’s missing messages problem.
That means no more scrolling through profiles to find the second half of a reel. If a creator links their videos, you can jump directly to the next one by tapping the “Watch Part 2” button beneath the reel’s caption.
The Wall Street Journal interviewed several “clippers,” or the people who dice up longer videos into short, grabby clips that get posted to accounts across Instagram and TikTok. One person, whose clipping business earns $20,000 to $30,000 per month, told the WSJ that “the only way to be famous in today’s internet world is with clips.”
[The Wall Street Journal]
The new Instagram Maps request to enable location services (feeding Meta valuable ad targeting data from your Android or iPhone) has spawned incredulous reactions, along with claims it’s on by default, despite Adam Mosseri’s denials.
Still, he says, “We’ll get out a few design improvements as quickly as possible.”
Adult-managed accounts that primarily post pictures of children will no longer be recommended to adult users “who have shown potentially suspicious behavior,” according to Meta, and vice versa — making them harder to find in Search. This was announced today alongside new features for teen accounts that make it easier to report and block unwanted contact in DMs.
[about.fb.com]
Reportedly in testing since June, I’ve now been served three of these unskippable “Ad break” ads over the last two days. It’s jarring, and has accelerated my desire to quit the platform that’s increasingly less fun and flooded with AI slop.
YouTube is a hit on TVs, and Meta and TikTok are looking to get in on that battleground, The Information reports. What will launch first: Instagram for TV or Instagram for iPad?
[theinformation.com]
The recently-launched CapCut clone is also adding more text effects and will let you apply voice enhancement to voiceovers. Check out all of the new updates in a post from Instagram’s Creators account.
to readers of Katherine Losse’s The Boy Kings. The Financial Times makes a compelling case that loser-bro Zuck is who he has always been. Also, his feelings were very hurt when we all had a good laugh about Meta’s avatars (“Legs coming soon!”). No wonder he wants AI friends, who’ll never mock him like that.
