[Image Source: today.com]
Welcome to another week of Digital Digestibles!
Meta’s Twitter rival has finally arrived as this week brings the unveiling of ‘Threads’ and it’s time to say goodbye to TikTok Now. Check out the latest news ⬇️
Meta unveils Threads as ‘friendly’ alternative to Twitter
Meta has unveiled its long-awaited competitor to Twitter in what chief executive Mark Zuckerberg pitched as a “friendly” alternative to the struggling social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
The app, called Threads, is a “text-based conversation app” where users are able to publish posts up to 500 characters long, and include links, photos and videos. As with Twitter, the posts can be replied to, liked or shared by others. Following its launch on Wednesday Zuckerberg used his own Threads account to say it had signed up 10mn users in the first seven hours.
Threads is directly linked to Instagram, Meta’s popular photo-sharing platform with more than 2bn users, and is being rolled out in more than 100 countries for iOS and Android, the company said.
TikTok Discontinues its ‘TikTok Now’ BeReal Clone
TikTok is the latest social platform to step back from the BeReal trend, with the announcement that it’s retiring ‘TikTok Now’, its copycat functionality that it launched in September last year.
It’s the latest sign that the BeReal trend is fading out, with the app itself also seeing a drop off in users, as it seeks to extend its functionality. It recently began testing a Bonus BeReal with users in the UK, as well as ‘RealPeople’, which enables users to follow celebrities.
Though BeReal says that it’s going fine. Back in April, the app reported that it’s now up to 20 million daily activities, and it’s continuing to grow around the world. That’s a jump on the 10 million users it reported in August 2022, but it also shows that it hasn’t maintained significant growth momentum in the six months since.
YouTube Tests Hyperlinked Keywords in Video Comments as a Means to Maximize In-App Discovery
YouTube’s launching a new test which will see search hyperlinks added to certain keywords within YouTube comments, as a means to drive improved discovery, and connect users to related content.
“Currently, if a viewer wants to learn more about a topic or product they find in a comment, they have to navigate away from the video they’re watching to learn more. We’re experimenting with new hyperlinked keywords in comments to reduce friction for viewers looking to discover new and relevant content on the platform.”
So it’s designed to keep your search activity in-stream, as opposed to you having to go looking for yourself.
YouTube says that phrases, or single words in comments ‘that encourage exploration’ will be hyperlinked within the test.
Twitter Restricts Non-Logged In Users from Viewing Tweets
According to various reports, Twitter is now blocking non-logged in users from viewing any tweets, in an expanded effort to stop data scrapers from accessing tweet data.
Tweet embeds appear to be still working for now, and tweets are still appearing in Google Search, so there are still ways to see some tweets outside of the app, even without an active account. But it seems that Twitter’s taking more measures to force people to log in, while also limiting unauthorized third-party access.
Which could be specifically focused on one company in particular.
As noted by T(w)itter Daily News, there are indications that OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has been accessing public tweet data, after Twitter cut it off from its API, due to the company’s use of tweets to fuel its generative AI models.