Meta Platforms has updated its Facebook video player to offer a consistent vertical view for Reels, Facebook Live and long-form content, making vertical the default view. The upgraded player adds controls including fullscreen mode for horizontal videos, a slider to parse through longer videos, and “tap” functionality to bring up additional options, like “pause,” or jumping back or forward in 10-second increments. The new video player will roll out first on iOS and Android in the U.S. and Canada, then globally in the coming months. Continue reading Facebook Updates Video Player to Take On TikTok, YouTube

Google’s YouTube has created a new model for its Shorts feed that lets creators share short-form videos as exclusive content for their paying viewers. The feature gives creators an opportunity to share exclusive content with their most ardent fans, in addition to other perks for paying subscribers, like badges, custom emojis, live streams and more. TikTok recently loosened its subscription requirements for creators, allowing more of them to participate. In March, the ByteDance owned service said it is renaming TikTok Live as “Subscription” and is opening it to “regular creators,” letting them post exclusive content that paying users can see. Continue reading YouTube Creators Can Now Share Exclusive Shorts with Fans

Microsoft-owned business and employment-focused social platform LinkedIn plans to add games and a vertical-scroll feed of short videos. But the career-centric platform will still be all work, even as it adds play. The intent is to have the TikTok-like video feed filled with professionally themed content, and the games will be geared toward relationship building, while also potentially getting people to spend more time using LinkedIn. The video feed is in the test phase, while code hinting at the direction of the gaming feature has been discovered by some astute app watchers. Continue reading LinkedIn Tests Vertical Video Feed, Experiments with Games

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill into law preventing children under 14 from creating new social media accounts, and requiring platforms to delete existing accounts, with no opportunity for parental consent. For children 14- to 15-years of age, consent of a parent or guardian is required to create or maintain accounts. Without it, or upon request, the accounts and personal data must be deleted, with fines of up to $50,000 per incident per platform. The law, set to take effect in January 2025, is being called the most restrictive passed by any state and is sure to face First Amendment scrutiny by the courts. Continue reading Florida Enacts the Nation’s Most Restrictive Social Media Law

The House of Representatives passed a bill that bars data brokers from selling the sensitive personal information of U.S. citizens to foreign adversaries, identified in the federal code as China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela. The Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024 passed unanimously on Wednesday, 414-0. The bill prohibits organizations that profit from selling personal consumer information from making it accessible to foreign adversary countries or entities controlled by them, authorizing the Federal Trade Commission to impose civil fines of more than $50,000 per violation. Continue reading Bill Barring Brokers from Selling Personal Data Passes House

Having fended off challenges in the short-form video sphere since its late 2016 launch, it now appears TikTok is playing offense, laying the groundwork for a photo-sharing app that has drawn comparisons to Instagram and Pinterest. Avid TikTok users are probably familiar with a feature that lets them post still images as moving images that can be examined by advancing frame-by-frame. Now TikTok seems to want to improve that approach by building a separate TikTok Photos app to which users of the primary platform can export and showcase their still images to Android and iOS. Continue reading TikTok Updates Its Code to Sync to Separate ‘TikTok Photos’

The House of Representatives voted 352 to 65 today to pass a bill that could lead to a nationwide ban of popular video-sharing app TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance and currently used by 170 million Americans. The bill, introduced out of concern for national security, would prohibit TikTok from app stores in the U.S. unless it is spun off from ByteDance. It is not clear how the Senate will respond to the proposed legislation, which advanced unanimously by the House Energy and Commerce Committee (50-0), and President Biden indicated he would sign. Meanwhile, China’s foreign ministry has called the measure an “act of bullying.” Continue reading House Passes Bill That Could Remove TikTok from App Stores

London-based AI video startup Haiper has emerged from stealth mode with $13.8 million in seed funding and a platform that generates up to two seconds of HD video from text prompts or images. Founded by alumni from Google DeepMind, TikTok and various academic research labs, Haiper is built around a bespoke foundation model that aims to serve the needs of the creative community while the company pursues a path to artificial general intelligence (AGI). Haiper is offering a free trial of what is currently a web-based user interface similar to offerings from Runway and Pika. Continue reading AI Video Startup Haiper Announces Funding and Plans for AGI

The House of Representatives has introduced a bill that would make it illegal in the U.S. to distribute TikTok under its current ownership. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act “prevents app store availability or web hosting services in the U.S. for ByteDance-controlled applications, including TikTok, unless the application severs ties to entities like ByteDance that are subject to the control of a foreign adversary,” according to a sponsor statement. Violators would be subject to a penalty of $5,000 for every U.S. user that “accessed, maintained or updated” any “foreign adversary controlled applications” from its platform. Continue reading House Intros a Bill to Penalize App Stores Distributing TikTok

In its continuing effort to expand in-app shopping activity, TikTok is testing an option to allow users to automatically identify products in their uploads — a march toward making all objects shoppable. The test lets select users toggle to “Identify Similar Objects” within a video. When activated, the AI-powered ISO highlights matching products that can be purchased in-app. TikTok has been exploring the feature for deployment in the United States this past year. TikTok parent ByteDance has for some time been using the in-stream shopping feature in the platform’s Chinese sister platform, Douyin. Continue reading TikTok Tests Feature Designed to Streamline In-App Shopping

Users appear to prefer Meta Platforms’ Threads to Elon Musk’s social platform X, based on the disparity between the number of downloads, which is widening. Globally, Meta’s Instagram spinoff — which has many of the same features as the app formerly known as Twitter — has recently been seeing three times as many daily downloads as X on iOS devices, and more than twice as many from the Google Play app store for Android. The analysis is from intelligence firm Appfigures, which this week lists Threads as No. 2 among all free app downloads, and X at No. 40. As Threads introduces new features, it is also testing a new in-app camera. Continue reading Threads Surpasses X in Downloads, Tests an In-App Camera

Florida’s legislature has passed a bill banning children younger than 16 from having social media accounts despite some pushback from Governor Ron DeSantis, who said he will be wrestling with whether to sign the measure into law. Due to a procedural requirement, DeSantis will have to sign or veto the proposed legislation before lawmakers conclude the current session in a matter of weeks. He has expressed dissatisfaction with the lack of a provision to let parents override the restriction, which would curtail access to the most popular sites, potentially impacting TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube. Continue reading Florida Pushes Forward a Social Media Ban for Kids Under 16

While YouTube and Facebook are the most-used platforms among U.S. adults, TikTok is the fastest growing, according to a new Pew Research survey on social media usage. Google’s YouTube led in popularity by a wide margin, with 83 percent of the 5,733 U.S. adults polled reporting they had used it at some point. Meta Platforms’ Facebook took second place, with 68 percent of respondents having at least tried it. Those two platforms also stood out for having the majority through each age demographic subset. Instagram, also owned by Meta, took third place, with 47 percent of respondents attesting they had used it. Continue reading YouTube, Facebook Most Popular Social Apps Among Adults

TikTok is testing a feature designed to make all posts shoppable as it goes all-in on creating what the company hopes will be a multi-billion-dollar U.S. e-commerce business. The new technology uses machine learning to identify objects in a video then prompts viewers to “find similar items on TikTok Shop” using links and in-app search. The ByteDance-owned social platform is also reportedly planning to launch multiple live-streaming studios in cities including Los Angeles where creators can go to stream shopping-themed content. The facilities are expected to be able to host multiple studios servicing dozens of creators per day. Continue reading TikTok Tests a Feature That Tags Videos with Shopping Details

Instagram’s Threads app, an X competitor designed for sharing text updates and joining public conversations, is now gaining traction after an inconsistent 2023. New data from app intelligence firm Appfigures reveals that Threads is growing, tripling its number of downloads month-over-month in December, positioning it as one of the Top 10 most downloaded apps for Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store. Ahead of Threads in downloads for December were popular apps such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and WhatsApp (Instagram took over the No. 1 spot from TikTok). Meanwhile, X continues to decline. Continue reading Instagram Threads Reaches the Top of App Store Downloads