Instagram Launches Reels and Instagram Shop Tabs
Many of us noticed Instagram’s app update when we woke up to an Instagram Shop in place of our notifications tab. On November 12, Instagram unveiled its new Shop and Reels tab on the retooled navigation bar at the screen’s bottom. Instagram’s goals with the updates are to make shopping on Instagram and discovering Reels easier for its users. Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, had this to say about the updates: “We don’t take these changes lightly — we haven’t updated Instagram’s home screen in a big way for quite a while. But how people create and enjoy culture has changed, and the biggest risk to Instagram is not that we change too fast, but that we don’t change and become irrelevant.”
Now that the Reels tab and Instagram Shop tab are where notifications used to be, users quickly shared their criticism of the new app update. Many believe Instagram is prioritizing Reels content and shopping over main feed content that users actually want to see. Popular accounts like James Charles along with others Tweeted about the update claiming they wish Instagram would go back to being simpler and focused on users’ main feed content.
Twitter Introduces New Stories Feature
Another one of our beloved social platforms is changing *sigh*. Twitter introduced their new Stories feature, “Fleets,” where users can post content that will disappear in 24 hours. Fleets appear at the top of the mobile app like most apps with a Stories component, and users can view the Stories/Fleets of the accounts they follow and vice versa. However, because of the high demand, Twitter suffered some performance issues, including Fleets lagging and struggling to load and the mobile app continually freezing and closing. After several users Tweeted their concerns, Twitter acknowledged the problem and assured the community that they were working to fix it. The already high demand for Fleets is considered an early sign of success for the new feature.
Mark Zuckerberg Confirms Biden's Presidency and Ensures that the Election Was Fair
On Thursday, November 11, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged Vice President Biden’s presidential win to his employees at a company-wide meeting. His comments come almost a week after major news sources on Saturday, November 7, projected and confirmed a Biden/Harris win to the public.
Zuckerberg is subject to criticism from many of Biden’s staffers for Facebook’s interference with elections in past years. In recent reports, employees at Facebook say they are mostly relieved that the 2020 Presidential election is over and without any claims of “foreign interference or rampant misinformation.” Zuckerberg also reported at the meeting that no fraud took place. “It’s important that people have confidence that the election was fundamentally fair, and that goes for the tens of millions of people that voted for Trump.”
Spotify Rolls Out New Podcast Feature
Spotify’s new feature aims to give podcast listeners a better way to organize and save the podcasts they’re listening to. The new feature called “Your Episodes” allows users to bookmark individual episodes and add them to their new “Your Episodes” playlist. Find the playlist pinned to the top of a user’s Spotify music library and podcast episodes. This new feature is useful for saving episodes of podcasts users don’t subscribe to. For example, when a podcast has an episode featuring a favorite celebrity or if a user wants to sample a new podcast without subscribing to it yet. The playlist can hold up to 10,000 episodes.
