Last year, Apple introduced Emergency SOS, which allows the iPhone 14 to connect to satellites to send emergency calls and texts. Now, Qualcomm has unveiled its own satellite messaging features for Android phones. It’s called Snapdragon Satellite, and it will allow devices equipped with the company’s X70 modems to connect to satellites in order to send messages when no cellular signal is available.

The feature, which is expected to be available on phones beginning in the second half of 2023, is the result of a partnership with longtime satellite phone maker Iridium. Thanks to the partnership, Android phones equipped with the X70 modem and Qualcomm’s SOC will be able to connect to Iridium's satellite network for off-grid texting in both emergency and non-emergency situations.

As with much of Qualcomm’s tech, exactly how these features will look and feel will largely be determined by the individual phone makers. Device makers will have considerable flexibility in terms of how they implement satellite messaging, particularly for person-to-person texts. But while we don’t know exactly how it will look when it launches, Qualcomm offered an early look at the technology at CES, which provided a pretty good idea of what to expect in terms of functionality.

Karissa Bell / Engadget

As with Apple’s Emergency SOS, you’ll need to be outside with a clear view of the sky in order to use satellite messaging. When enabled, an on-screen message will offer guidance for where to point your device in order to connect to a satellite.

The demo we saw wasn’t exactly an off-grid location. The desert campground about 30 minutes away from the Las Vegas Strip may have looked the part, but it had full 5G service during our visit. However, Qualcomm reps demonstrated the process for connecting to satellites and it only took a few seconds to move the phone into position. And they claimed connecting in a true off-grid environment should be nearly as seamless.

Once connected to a satellite, the demo devices were able to send text messages to a preset whitelist of contacts. Qualcomm says that feature will remain in place to ensure spam texts won't clog up the satellite networks. However, the company noted that OEMs could make the messaging feel more like a traditional messaging app than the demo interface we previewed. 

There are a few other limitations compared with standard messaging apps. Satellite messages are limited to 140 bytes or about 160 characters, making them more like an old-school SMS than what you’d expect with modern apps. And you can’t send photos or videos via satellite.

Karissa Bell / Engadget

It’s also worth noting that unlike Apple’s Emergency SOS, Qualcomm intends Snapdragon Satellite to be used for non-emergency messaging as well. That could make the Android version a little more useful as you could use satellite messaging to stay in touch with family and friends in areas where you’d normally be out of reach. However, there will likely be additional charges associated with non-emergency texts so you’ll probably still want to moderate your usage of the feature. (Qualcomm declined to speculate on how much these messages might cost, but it seems safe to assume these messages will be costlier than a typical SMS.)

Also, unlike Apple’s satellite communication features, which also allows people to make emergency voice calls, Snapdragon Satellite only allows for emergency texts, not calls. For truly urgent situations, the company has partnered with Garmin, which makes a satellite-based emergency communication device of its own called inReach. That means emergency texts will be routed to the same team that handles SOS calls from inReach devices.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get a lot of specifics about when we’ll see phones with Snapdragon Satellite hit shelves, or how many devices could have these capabilities. For now, Samsung says it expects to see satellite-ready phones from “multiple” OEMs starting in the second half of 2023. At the same time, that doesn’t mean the features are guaranteed for all Android phones with an X70 modem and Qualcomm SOC. According to Qualcomm, that’s because X70-equipped phones launching before the second half of the year don’t have all the necessary hardware to support Snapdragon Satellite connectivity.

But, now that we know the hardware requirements, in the coming months we should begin to get a better idea of which devices will have the satellite messaging capabilities.

I’ve written before about the benefits of a good, cheap kitchen scale, especially for baking. But there’s still something especially tedious about weighing out all your ingredients one-by-one in separate bowls and containers.

GE’s new stand mixer solves that issue in a clever, if expensive, way. The new $999 Profile Smart Mixer, which the company is showing off at CES, has all the features of a typical stand mixer, but has a digital scale and voice controls built in to help streamline your bakes,

The scale is integrated into the base of the mixer. A button on top controls the tare function, so you can just dump your ingredients straight into the bowl without measuring out each item separately in its own container. Or, you could remove the 7-quart bowl and weigh the ingredients in a different vessel.

James Trew / Engadget

The mixer gets even smarter if you use the companion SmartHQ app, which can guide you through specific recipes, step-by-step. It also allows you to take advantage of something GE calls “Auto Sense,” which it claims can detect subtle changes in texture in order to prevent over or under-mixing for recipes in its app. While the app has a relatively small selection of recipes for now, it could be useful for more novice bakers or anyone intimidated by a more complicated recipe. The company notes that it expects to regularly refresh the app with new content.

Even if you prefer to use your own recipes, there are other handy features. The mixer has voice controls, compatible with Google and Amazon’s smart speakers, so you can start and stop mixing, or change up the speed with just your voice. GE also notes that the mixer speed goes up to 11, which it says is closer to the speed of a blender than a typical stand mixer, which may offer more flexibility with certain recipes.

With a starting “suggested” price of $999, it’s spendier than even most high-end stand mixers, but the added convenience could be worth the splurge.

For the past several months, TikTok has been working on new ways to age-restrict certain types of content as part of a broader push to ramp up safety features for younger users. The app unveiled a new ratings system earlier this year, called Content Levels, to help it identify more “mature” content.

Now, the company has another update on those efforts. In a blog post, the company says that it’s launching a new version of its “borderline suggestive model,” which the company uses to automatically identify “sexually explicit, suggestive, or borderline content.” According to a TikTok spokesperson, the new model is better able to detect so-called “borderline content,” videos that don’t explicitly break the app’s rules, but may not be suitable for younger users.

TikTok isn’t the only platform to filter out this type of content from recommendations. Instagram has long attempted to weed borderline content out of its recommendations as well. But content with more “mature” themes, but that doesn’t contain explicit nudity, has long been more difficult for automated systems to consistently detect. TikTok didn’t offer specifics on how much more accurate the new system is, but it shared that in the last 30 days the company has “prevented teen accounts from viewing over 1 million overtly sexually suggestive videos.”

Elsewhere, the app is also rolling out the ability for creators to restrict their videos to adult viewers. This feature was previously only available for live videos, but will now be enabled for short-form clips as well.

There’s never really been a shortage of reasons to spend less time on Twitter. Even before Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover, the platform was long plagued by misinformation, hate speech, harassment and other ills that made it less than welcoming.

There’s never been a better time to quit Twitter. The Elon Musk-induced chaos at the company has breathed new life into a crop of alternative platforms, and has inspired a new wave of competing efforts to win over disillusioned Twitter users.

Competition emerges

Of all the alternatives out there, none have benefited as much as Mastodon. The open-source service was created in 2016, and first gained notoriety in 2017, when some Twitter users were upset with changes the company had made to the functionality of @-replies. At that time though, it didn’t gain much traction outside a small base of hardcore enthusiasts.

Mel Melcon via Getty Images

That all changed from the second Musk announced he wanted to buy Twitter. Mastodon saw an immediate spike back in April and the momentum has only increased, according to the nonprofit. “Mastodon has recently exploded in popularity, jumping from approx. 300K monthly active users to 2.5M between the months of October and November, with more and more journalists, political figures, writers, actors and organizations moving over,” founder Eugen Rochko wrote in a recent blog post.

The service isn’t a perfect analog to Twitter. Its platform, which runs on thousands of servers, can make signing up a bit confusing. And a couple of the platform’s most popular servers, like mastodon.social, have at times halted new sign-ups due to surging demand.

But, as Rochko points out, the decentralized platform has become one of the top platforms of choice for some of Twitter’s most influential — and most followed — users. Tellingly, when Musk briefly imposed a ban on accounts promoting alternative social networks, Mastodon’s official Twitter account was the only social app to be suspended.

Mastodon is far from the only previously-niche app to get a boost from turmoil at Twitter. Other apps like CounterSocial, which has a Tweetdeck-like interface, and Tribel, which describes itself as a “pro-democracy Twitter alternative” have also seen an uptick in sign-ups.

There’s also a wave of competition from fresh upstarts. Post News, a new service from former Waze CEO Noam Bardin has also tried to capitalize on Twitter’s dysfunction. The service, which is currently invitation-only, rushed to launch an early version of its beta in November in hopes of drawing away disillusioned Twitter users. Post, which bills itself as a place “to discover, read, watch, discuss and share premium news content without subscriptions or ads,” has more than 610,000 people on its waitlist, according to Bardin.

The Washington Post via Getty Images

Another app that’s emerged, seemingly out of nowhere, is Hive Social, an image-centric platform with a feed that looks more like Instagram than Twitter. The service was founded in 2019, and hit 1.5 million users in November, according to the company. The site has had some notable security issues, which it claims to have fixed, but has still managed to make an impression with Gen Z Twitter users.

Legacy platforms are also trying to seize the opportunity created by growing apathy for Twitter. Tumblr claimed to see a surge in new and returning users, according to Matt Mullenweg, CEO of parent company Automattic. The site has also made a habit of trolling Musk and his new policies for Twitter, including with the addition of a $7.99 “Important Blue Internet Checkmark” for users’ blogs. Mullenweg has also said Tumblr will adopt ActivityPub, the protocol powering Mastodon, to make the two services interoperable.

Meta is also keen to challenge its longtime rival. The company recently launched a new “Notes” feature within Instagram that allows users to share status updates at the top of their inbox. At 60 characters, it's hardly a full-fledged Twitter alternative, but it might not be the last such feature we see from Meta. The New York Timesreports that the company has discussed several ideas to go after Twitter’s “bread and butter.”

The future for Twitter Quitters

It’s hardly the first time that unpopular decisions within Twitter have sparked an interest in alternatives. But in the past, surges to outside platforms have been relatively short lived. And most would-be competitors are still only a fraction of the size of Twitter.

Even with an influx of new users, Mastodon, Post News, Hive Social and Tumblr are still substantially smaller than Twitter. And, as unpopular and autocratic and Musk’s policy decisions seem, the idea of starting over on a new platform can feel daunting. Not everyone can easily rebuild their social graphs on alternative sites, and some may find the growing crop of Twitter clones to also be unwelcoming (this is especially true if you rely on accessibility features, as many of the newer platforms haven’t invested much in these features.)

Still, this particular moment feels different than other times when Twitter has struggled to keep disgruntled users around. For one, there are more choices than ever before for those looking for a reason to leave. But it’s also unique because there are more people actually active on these alternatives than ever before.

It’s never exactly easy to pull the plug on a social media account you’ve had for years. For many of us, our accounts are filled with years of photos, memories and memes that aren’t easy to part with ,even if we are ready to stop the daily scrolling habit. For Facebook, Instagram and other Meta-run services, deleting an account entirely isn’t necessarily straightforward, either.

And even though all the services are run by the same company, there isn’t one centralized way to delete all your Meta-associated accounts. The good news is that removing these accounts is in many cases a lot easier than it has been in the past, even if there are sometimes a few extra steps involved. Keep reading to find out exactly how to delete your Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Oculus accounts.

First, download your data

Regardless of your reasons for wanting to leave your accounts behind, it’s worth it to take the time to download all your data before you delete them for good. Downloading your data will ensure you have a record of your prior posts, messages, photos and other activity.

These data archives look a little different for each service, but in general they contain your previous posts, a record of what accounts you follow, your messages and even some of your past activity on the services. Some, like Facebook, will even provide a record of what the site’s advertisers know about you.

In other words: it’s a lot of data. And it may not seem like a lot of that is worth hanging onto, but if you’ve used an account for years it’s a good way to preserve a record of your past photos, videos and other posts. (Though you should also be prepared for it to surface some data you might not want to remember, like conversations with former partners or cringey college photos.)

On Facebook, you can access your archive from: Settings & Privacy -> Settings -> Your Facebook Information -> download your information -> request download.

On Instagram, it’s More -> Settings -> Privacy and Security -> Data download -> Request download.

On WhatsApp, it’s Settings -> Account -> Request account info. (Of note, WhatsApp’s reports don’t include the content of your actual messages. If you want to preserve a copy of your messages, you’ll need to export your chat history on each message thread you wish to hang onto.

On Messenger, downloads have to be initiated through the mobile app. On both Android and iOS, go to Account Settings (located in the “chats” tab) -> Your Facebook Information -> Download your information. You’ll then be able to specify a few aspects of the data, like the media quality, data format and date range you want the download to cover.

For Oculus and Meta Quest users, you can use the “download your information” tool linked here.

Once you have your data archives stashed away, you’ll be ready to permanently nuke your accounts. Though, like the data downloads, it can take up to several days for the process to be complete.

How to delete Facebook

Dado Ruvic / reuters

Before you permanently delete Facebook, a word of caution: nuking your account will also nuke third-party accounts where you’ve also used Facebook to log-in. In some cases, you might be able to recover them via the app’s support channels, but there’s no guarantee. Follow the steps here to review which apps and websites you use Facebook as a log in.

Likewise, if your Oculus account is linked to your Facebook identity, then deleting your Facebook will also permanently delete your Oculus account, including your past purchases. (Of note, Meta now allows VR users to create a separate “Meta account” that doesn’t rely on Facebook.)

Once you’re sure you’re ready to delete, you can find the option from Settings & Privacy -> Settings -> Your Facebook Information -> Deactivation and Deletion -> Delete Account -> Continue to account deletion -> Delete Account

However, even after you’ve smashed the final “delete” button, Facebook notes that it still takes around 30 days for your information to be purged entirely. That also means that if you do happen to change your mind within 30 days, you can cancel the request. According to the company, it can take up to 90 days for the deletion process to complete, though your profile and other info won’t be visible to others on Facebook during that time.

How to delete Instagram

Wachiwit via Getty Images

For Instagram, you need to go to the “delete your account” page, which can be found here. From there, you’ll have to select a reason from the drop-down menu, and enter your password.

As with Facebook, Instagram notes that it can take “up to 90 days from the beginning of the deletion process to delete all the things you've posted,” though posts won’t be visible to others on the platform during that time.

How to delete Facebook Messenger

If you delete a Facebook account, your Messenger account will also be permanently deleted so you don’t need to go through extra steps if you’ve already purged your Facebook presence. But it’s also worth noting that simply deactivating your Facebook won’t affect your ability to use Messenger or other users’ ability to find you on the app.

If, however, you happen to use Messenger without an associated Facebook account, you can delete your account via the app. On Both iOS and Android: Account Settings -> Delete Your Account and Information and enter your password.

How to delete WhatsApp

WhatsApp accounts can be deleted directly from the app via Settings -> Account -> Delete My Account. The app will then prompt you to enter your phone number. As with facebook and Instagram, the company says the full deletion process can take up to 90 days.

How to delete an Oculus or Meta account

Sam Rutherford/Engadget

As noted above, if you used Facebook to login to your Oculus account, then deleting Facebook will take care of it. If, however, your Oculus login was separate, you need to log in to your account on Oculus’ website from a browser, then navigate to My Profile -> Privacy Center -> Delete Your Oculus Account.

Of note, this process will only work until January 1, 2023, when Meta will force all Oculus accounts to migrate to the new Meta accounts mentioned above. For those newer Meta accounts, you can delete your presence by heading to auth.meta.com/settings, logging in, selecting “delete your account,” entering your password again and choosing “delete your data.”

Again, keep in mind this will prevent you from using your VR headset, and will remove any past purchases you’ve made.

A year ago, Meta was riding high on the metaverse. The company had just completed its rebranding from Facebook to Meta. Social networks, as Mark Zuckerberg explained, were no longer a singular focus for the company. “From now on, we're going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook first,” he said.

Now, as Meta finishes its first full year as a “metaverse company,” the outlook is considerably less rosy. The company has lost billions of dollars on Reality Labs, the division overseeing its metaverse work. Its stock has cratered. The company has, for the first time, shed thousands of employees in mass layoffs. Even longtime shareholders are starting to do what was once unthinkable: question Zuckerberg’s vision for the future.

At the same time, Meta still hasn’t clearly articulated what the metaverse is or effectively made the case for why the billions of people currently using its social media apps would want to be part of an “embodied internet.” Worse still, the company’s initial metaverse product has proved underwhelming, and turned the metaverse into a punchline, rather than a source of anticipation.

We still don’t know what the metaverse is for

Meta and Zuckerberg have offered various definitions over the last year. The metaverse is the “successor to the mobile internet,” and “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience.” It’s virtual reality, but also (eventually) augmented reality. It will also, somehow, tie into our existing social graphs on Facebook and Instagram. But, unlike Facebook and Instagram, it will be interoperable with other companies’ platforms. It might have something to do with NFTs and web3.

“The defining characteristic of the metaverse is that you really feel like you're present with other people or in another place,” Zuckerberg said during an interview at SXSW in February. “You might look at documents, you might look at a website but in the future you're going to be in it.”

Zuckerberg might think this is explaining the beginnings of some grand vision for a future internet, but it also just sounds a lot like plain old virtual reality. Moreover, it’s telling that one of his go-to examples is “looking at documents.” Over the last year, the company has leaned hard into Horizon Workrooms, its social VR experience geared toward office workers.

Meta

When the company showed off its new high-end Quest Pro, it offered up Horizon Workrooms as one of the key experiences optimized for the new headset. You can now recreate a whole virtual workspace in VR. Soon, you’ll be able to use a slew of office and productivity software, from Zoom to Microsoft Word.

But the idea of working in VR with a headset strapped to your face is still pretty far from appealing to most people. And there are a vanishingly small number of jobs and industries where working in VR is even remotely justified.

Perhaps what’s most telling is that Meta has apparently struggled to persuade its own employees to use Workrooms. Despite making Quest 2 headsets free to all employees last year, a recent push from Zuckerberg for teams to start holding meetings in VR revealed that many either hadn’t taken advantage of the offer or hadn’t set the headset up, The New York Timesreported.

Meta’s metaverse is a meme for bad graphics

Without a clear vision, it became far too easy for Meta’s critics to seize on aesthetic issues and other problems. For now, the closest thing Meta has to the “metaverse” is Horizon Worlds, its social VR playground where users are free to explore as their avatar. But the experience of actually using it is far different than the polished videos and demos Meta has shared.

This was never more apparent than when Zuckerberg earnestly posted a screenshot of his avatar in front of the Eiffel Tower and Barcelona’s Sagrada Familia to mark Horizon World’s launch in France and Spain. The screenshot was hilariously bad and quickly took on a life of its own as people mocked the “1995 level graphics.”

Meta

Zuckerberg quickly promised new and improved avatars, and showed off a more realistic likeness of himself, saying that “graphics in Horizon are capable of much more.” (A post on LinkedIn, which has since been deleted, later revealed that the “improved” Zuck avatar took about a month and “40 iterations” to complete.)

Then, at the company’s Connect event, Zuckerberg promised an even bigger advancement: legs. Soon, Horizon’s cartoonish, legless avatars would be replaced with ones resembling actual, walking humans. We watched as Zuckerberg’s “full body” avatar casually strolled around Horizon Worlds. But while it was first thought to be a turning point — adding leg tracking to VR has been a notoriously tricky problem — it turned out this particular demo was more stagecraft than actual innovation. The company later confirmed that the demo was created with motion capture and wasn’t live VR.

Meta still says that its avatars will eventually have legs, but it’s not clear when, or if the feature will even look like the demo.

The metaverse is a money pit

It’s impossible to ignore that Zuckerberg’s metaverse pivot has also coincided with the company’s worst financial performance in recent memory. Meta’s revenue has shrunk for two straight quarters for the first time ever. Its stock has lost more than 60 percent of its value this year, wiping out billions of dollars.

To be fair, the metaverse isn’t entirely to blame. Apple’s anti-tracking changes in iOS have hurt the company’s advertising business. And the entire industry is reeling from an economic downturn that’s affected even the largest tech giants.

At the same time, Meta is undeniably losing vast amounts of money on its metaverse investments. Reality Labs lost $10 billion in 2021, and 2022’s losses already amounted to $9 billion by the third quarter. Those losses are expected to “grow significantly” in 2023, according to the company’s CFO.

Meta

It’s no surprise, then, that Meta’s investors are starting to question whether all this metaverse stuff is really worth it. The CEO of Altimeter Capital, a longtime Meta shareholder, made headlines when he wrote an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg earlier this year that called the company’s metaverse investments “super-sized and terrifying, even by Silicon Valley standards.”

In the company’s most recent earnings call, where Zuckerberg more often fields peppy questions about the company’s ad business, one analyst also raised the issue of “experimental bets versus proven bets.”

“I think everyone wants to hear why you think this pays off,” he asked. Zuckerberg, who seemed a bit flustered by the question, replied that “the metaverse work is a longer term set of efforts that we're working on, but I think that it’s going to end up working.” Patience, he said, will be rewarded.

The algorithm that powers TikTok’s “For You” page has long been a source of fascination and suspicion. Fans often remark on the app’s eerie accuracy, while TikTok critics have at times speculated the company could subtly manipulate its algorithm to influence its users in more nefarious ways.

Now, the company is taking new steps to demystify some aspects of its algorithm. The app is introducing a feature that will “help people understand why a particular video has been recommended to them.” With the update, users will be able to tap on a new question mark icon, which will list some factors that played a role in the recommendation.

In a blog post, the company notes that its “recommendation system is powered by technical models” and the feature is meant to make “technical details more easily understandable.” For now, that also means the details shared sound a bit vague. For example, “this video is popular in the United States,” and “you are following Hanna” are two of the explanations provided by Tiktok. Other explanations may be based on “user interactions, such as content you watch, like or share, comments you post, or searches.”

The company says it plans to add “more granularity and transparency” to the feature over time, though, so the explanations could eventually get more detailed. A TikTok spokesperson said that future versions may also incorporate other factors that influence the app's algorithm, like an individual’s account settings.

While the feature will likely not do much to assuage critics who think TikTok, or parent company ByteDance, uses the algorithm to manipulate users, it could help make its recommendations a bit more understandable to its users. And the change is part of a broader move from TikTok to prove it's willing to be more transparent about the inner workings of its app. The company has also partnered with Oracle to conduct a review of its algorithms and content moderation system.

Jack Dorsey has waded into the Twitter Files discourse. Writing in a newsletter, Dorsey lightly criticizes the manner the files have been released, and condemned attacks on former Twitter executives.

“I continue to believe there was no ill intent or hidden agendas, and everyone acted according to the best information we had at the time,” Dorsey wrote. “As for the files, I wish they were released Wikileaks-style, with many more eyes and interpretations to consider. There’s nothing to hide…only a lot to learn from.”

The response is the first time the former CEO has addressed the “Twitter Files” in detail. The disclosures detail some of the company’s internal deliberations surrounding controversial decisions, like Donald Trump’s suspension and Twitter’s handling of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. However, the “files” have only been made available to a handful of individuals, who have only published snippets of Slack messages, emails, and screenshots from Twitter’s internal tools. The underlying documents have not been released widely, or provided to other media outlets.

Notably, Dorsey also addressed the ongoing harassment of former Twitter executives. “The current attacks on my former colleagues could be dangerous and doesn’t solve anything,” he wrote. “If you want to blame, direct it at me and my actions, or lack thereof.” CNNreported Monday that Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former Trust & Safety head, had “fled his home” after a surge in violent threats against him.

Interestingly, Dorsey doesn’t mention Musk by name in his lengthy post. Dorsey had once said that “Elon is the singular solution I trust” for Twitter, though it’s unclear if he still feels that way. Dorsey, whose personal email was made public in the original installment of the Twitter Files, didn’t respond when asked if he stands by the statement.

As with other recent statements from Dorsey, he also shares lots of ideas about how content moderation should work — namely that algorithms should be used in favor of “a centralized system — and his hopes for an “open protocol” that could “make social media a native part of the internet.” And he revealed that he intends to give messaging app Signal $1 million a year as part of an effort to fund companies working on such protocols.

You can read Dorsey’s entire post here.

Instagram’s BeReal clone is now official. Meta introduced “Candid Stories,” a new feature with Instagram Stories that recreates BeReal’s signature once-a-day selfies.

BeReal, which originally launched in 2019, has gained a steady following over the last year, particularly among teens and Gen Z users. The app markets itself as a more authentic alternative to mainstream social media platforms, since it only allows once-daily posting and has limited ways for users to interact with one another.

Like BeReal, Instagram’s Candid will prompt users once a day to share a selfie, and users will only be able to see their friend’s Candids once they have uploaded their own. Candid selfies, like BeReal posts, will snap a photo with both a device’s front and rear-facing cameras simultaneously.

Meta has been working on a version of Candid since at least this summer, when a feature called “candid Challenges” was spotted in the app. The company said at the time it was an “internal prototype.” Snapchat and TikTok have also launched takes on BeReal in recent months.

Meta

But BeReal isn’t the only platform Instagram is taking on with its latest update. The app is also introducing a new “Notes” feature, which allows users to append a 60-character status update to their profile in Instagram’s inbox. As with Candid, Instagram has been testing Notes for months, but the feature may have taken on new significance following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. The New York Times reported last week that some at Meta have suggested Notes could help the company compete with Twitter at a moment when many are searching for alternatives.

Instagram is also introducing a few other features geared toward getting users to interact in smaller groups. “Group Profiles” will allow groups of friends to create shared profiles with multiple contributors. Likewise, the app is testing “collaborative collections” so multiple people can share posts to the same space in the app.

After more than a decade, Flipboard is adding a new layer of social features to its platform. The service is adding new commenting and creation tools to its magazines as part of a broader “shift in emphasis towards community and conversations.”

Flipboard has had commenting features for years, but it’s been fairly basic, and hasn’t been a prominent part of the service, which until now has mostly been known as a place to read and share articles rather than a destination to talk about them. But with its latest update, the company is hoping to turn its signature magazines into the types of communities you might find on Reddit or Twitter.

To start, Flipboard is introducing “notes,” which allow users to add original content — whether it’s photos, videos, links or commentary — and add it to shared magazines. Other members of the magazine can then jump in with their own comments and add to the conversation. The idea, according to Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, is for these notes to become lively areas of discussion for people interested in the same “micro-communities.”

The company is also adding a new “communities” section to its app, which will highlight magazines and specific curators (Flipboard’s term for the people who manage topic-based magazines) to follow. All the new features are out now on the web, and are launching on its iOS and Android apps in January.

The company has been quietly testing the updates since July. It says there’s already been a noticeable uptick in engagement in magazines where the new interactivity is enabled.The changes also help make Flipboard into more of an alternative to Twitter for those who primarily use the Elon Musk-run service for consuming news. McCue says that Flipboard’s new social features predate Musk’s takeover of the company, and that he’s still a “Twitter believer.” But he acknowledges Flipboard’s shift is well-timed as some people are increasingly looking for different spaces to interact.

“It's not like you're in a giant open town square, and everyone's just shouting at the top of their lungs,” McCue tells Engadget. “It's more like we're the little restaurants around the town square and people are at different dinner tables talking. There's a different tone when you have these smaller groups.”