Bluesky will be getting “communities,” which will function as smaller spaces where you can “go deeper and hang out with people who care about the same stuff” sometime this year, according to head of product Alex Benzer. They will be built on the decentralized AT Protocol that underpins Bluesky, with Benzer saying that “it’s a […]
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on AI confusion, follow Robert Hart. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it started At first, AI influencers were relatively easy to identify – and to […]
These newer social apps offer alternatives to Big Tech’s feeds, focusing on interests, creativity, and community.
DIYer and TikTok user Annike Tan, who goes by @ubeboobey, can carry her cyberdeck around without anyone noticing because it doesn’t look like a computer at all. Tan, who has been featured in The Cut and Wired, went viral earlier this year with a mermaid-themed cyberdeck she made inside an old purse. She has since […]
X will now let you ‘react with video’ to posts.
Some news: The Vergecast is now a daily podcast! Starting today, we’ll be posting every weekday, with even more gadgets and rankings and conversations and feelings and podcasts-within-podcasts. We’re excited for all the ways this new schedule lets us tell new kinds of stories, experiment with new tech and new formats, and involve you even […]
In its latest update, Bluesky is getting into long-form content.
Meta is rolling out paid subscription plans for Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp worldwide, while also testing new AI, creator, and business-focused offerings under its broader “Meta One” subscription brand.
Once upon a time, you could probably guess why most things appeared on your feed. Maybe you followed the creator who posted it; maybe you’d liked their stuff in the past; maybe all your friends were into them. That’s not how it works anymore, though. The stuff you see on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and […]
Meta’s new Forum app for iPhones takes Facebook Groups and moves them to a dedicated app with a dedicated AI chatbot to go with it, like an AI revamp of the ill-fated Groups app Facebook shut down in 2017. Rather than going to ChatGPT or tacking “Reddit” onto the end of a Google search, Forum […]