Last week, Artifact, a buzzy news app from Instagram’s co-founders, announced it was shutting down after failing to gain critical mass.
New data indicates that Artifact couldn’t catch up to the competition and struggled to grow its user base outside the U.S.
According to data from app intelligence provider Appfigures, Artifact saw an estimated 444,000 downloads since its February 2023 launch.
Artifact also struggled to gain an international following, which could have helped it thrive even if U.S. downloads stalled.
By adding more functionality, Artifact may have potentially confused users as to when or why they should use it.
Internal Meta documents about child safety have been unsealed as part of a lawsuit filed by the New Mexico Department of Justice against both Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
The documents reveal that Meta not only intentionally marketed its messaging platforms to children, but also knew about the massive volume of inappropriate and sexually explicit content being shared between adults and minors.
“For years, Meta employees tried to sound the alarm about how decisions made by Meta executives subjected children to dangerous solicitations and child exploitation,” Torrez continued.
Meta’s acknowledgement of the child safety issues on its platform is particularly damning.
When including reports from Instagram (5 million) and WhatsApp (1 million), Meta platforms are responsible for about 85% of all reports made to NCMEC.
On Friday, the startup announced via a blog post it had made the decision to “wind down operations” of the app launched over a year ago, saying that the market opportunity wasn’t big enough to warrant continued investment.
It also employed several AI tools to summarize news, rewrite clickbait headlines, and surface the best content.
Existing posts will remain visible for the time being, and Artifact will continue to operate its “core news capability” through the end of February.
In part, the way users are finding news and information is changing with the arrival of AI.
The co-founder had spoken about AI’s role at Artifact at this past fall’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco.
Instagram has cut 60 technical program manager positions, eliminating a layer of management at the company, according to a new report from The Information.
The impacted employees have two months to apply for other jobs at the company.
After the two-month period, their employment will be terminated if they are unable to secure a different role at the company.
The changes mean that Instagram is going to sharpen its focus on supporting creators who are most likely to drive teen engagement on the platform.
Despite the continued and ongoing regulatory pressure that Meta is facing, Instagram is still focused on teen engagement and retention.
Instagram has a feature where you can add music directly to your posts — a popular option among users who want to add life to their content and show off their musical taste.
Then, you click on the music note icon at the top of the editing screen, which brings you to Instagram’s music library of over 12,000 songs.
Previously only available on Stories and Reels, Instagram expanded its music feature in 2022 to bring the capability to image posts.
However, Instagram has yet to support music on carousels with videos.
The app is also reportedly experimenting with music on profiles — a nod to the MySpace era.
Instagram launched a new feature where you can create customized “Add Yours” templates with GIFs, images and text, allowing you to make your own meme-able Stories for followers to participate in.
To create an Add Yours template, start uploading a Story and add elements like a GIF, custom text or an image from the gallery.
Then tap on the “Add Yours Templates” sticker and select which elements you want to pin.
Now anyone can take an Add Yours prompt and add their own spin to it, allowing for more creative expression and collaboration.
Similarly, Instagram introduced a “template browser” for Reels in July, letting you discover and customize pre-made templates to add to your videos.
Instagram introduced its generative AI-powered background editing tool to U.S.-based users Wednesday.
Meta’s lead for generative AI Ahmad Al-Dahle posted on Threads saying that the tool will let users change the background to their images through prompts for Stories.
Earlier this week, Snapchat released a new tool for its paying users that let them create and send AI-generated images.
Earlier this year, the social network rolled out the ability for Snapchat+ users to populate prompt-based backgrounds.
At the same time, the company also launched a standalone AI-image generator called Imagine with Meta, powered by its own model called Emu.
Instagram is launching the ability for users to post video Notes, the company announced on Wednesday.
Up until now, you could only post text or emojis to your status update.
Now, you can post a two-second looping video Note that will be visible to your mutual followers or Close Friends for 24 hours.
Another differentiator between video Notes and video Stories is that you can only post content from your front-facing camera when sharing video Notes.
Plus, you have to capture the content in the app when posting a video Note, which means that you can’t upload a video from your phone’s camera gallery.
With two large-scale elections in the U.S. in India next year, Threads aims to introduce a fact-checking checking program to the social network.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that the social platform currently matches ratings from Facebook or Instagram to similar content.
Separately, Meta shared in a blog post that soon U.S-based Threads users will be able to increase, decrease, or maintain the same level of demotion on fact-checked posts.
Meta and Threads haven’t been keen on bolstering news on the platform.
And while Threads has stayed away from news until now, with fact-checking programs it will have to get involved.
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