Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review! Last week, we took a break from contextualization for some guides to consumption. This week, we’re looking at what’s happening in the mind of one Jack Dorsey. You can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny. the big thing While […]
Instagram will shut down its companion app Threads by year end
Instagram’s standalone messaging app Threads is shutting down. The app will no longer be supported by the end of December 2021, the company confirmed to TechCrunch after reports began circulating via social media of its impending closure. Instagram is planning to alert its existing Threads users with an in-app notice beginning on November 23, which […]
Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, raises trust and security questions over its e2e encryption
Frances Haugen, one of (now) multiple Facebook whistleblowers who have come forward in recent years with damning testimony related to product safety, gave testimony in front of the UK parliament today — where, in one key moment, she was invited to clarify her views on end-to-end encryption following a report in the British newspaper the […]
Facebook and Instagram went down again this afternoon
It’s been a rough week for Facebook, and it seems that Friday afternoon had no mercy for the tech giant. After one of their longest outages in company history on Monday, Facebook went down again on Friday afternoon. The outage affected all Facebook properties, including WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. ut oh pic.twitter.com/NqA3xpWKsN — Matt Navarra […]
Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are slowly returning. Why did they disappear to begin with?
Facebook’s day-long outage is by far its longest and most extreme in years. At around 9 a.m. PDT on the U.S. West Coast — where the social giant is headquartered — Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger seemed to vanish from the internet. The outage continued through market close, with the company’s stock dropping around […]
Tech stocks drop as Q4 begins; software shares, Facebook plunge 5%
What’s the opposite of stonks? Shares of technology companies are sharply lower in the United States today, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite falling 2.4% in early-afternoon trading. Inside of the larger tech industry, things are even worse. The WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund, essentially a way to trade the Bessemer Cloud Index as an aggregate, is […]
Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp are all down
Global users are experiencing outages on Facebook, including all social networks the company owns, which include Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. When navigating to these websites, a server error will appear — Instagram shows a “5xx server error,” which indicates that this is an issue with Facebook’s servers. Users are also unable to send messages or […]
Facebook grilled in Senate hearing over teen mental health
Last night, Facebook published two annotated slide decks in an attempt to contextualize the documents that the Wall Street Journal published this month, which reported evidence that the company is aware of its negative impact on teen mental health. These documents were released in anticipation of today’s Senate hearing on the mental health harms of […]
Facebook revamps its business tool lineup following threats to its ad targeting business
Facebook today is announcing the launch of new products and features for business owners, following the threat to its ad targeting business driven by Apple’s new privacy features, which now allow mobile users to opt out of being tracked across their iOS apps. The social networking giant has repeatedly argued that Apple’s changes would impact […]
Driven by livestreams, consumer spending in social apps to hit $17.2B in 2025
The livestreaming boom is driving a significant uptick in the creator economy, as a new forecast estimates consumers will spend $6.78 billion in social apps in 2021. That figure will grow to $17.2 billion annually by 2025, according to data from mobile data firm App Annie, which notes the upward trend represents a five-year compound […]