TikTok briefly went dark in the US over the weekend, after the Supreme Court denied a bid by Chinese owner ByteDance to overturn a law banning it. But it was back after a day with a message thanking incoming president Donald Trump for his "efforts" in restoring the app.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyng762q4eo
TikTok users in the US are migrating to a Chinese app called RedNote with the threat of a ban just days away. The move by users who call themselves "TikTok refugees" has made RedNote the most downloaded app on Apple's US App Store on Monday. RedNote is a TikTok competitor popular with young people in China, Taiwan and other Mandarin-speaking populations.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2475l7zpqyo
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Decentralized social network Mastodon has announced plans to transfer its ownership to a new nonprofit entity. Ownership of Mastodon will move away from the control of CEO Eugen Rochko, in contrast to the power exerted by other social media CEOs like Meta cofounder Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk. “Simply, we are going to transfer ownership of key Mastodon ecosystem and platform components to a new nonprofit organization,” Mastodon says in a blog post, “affirming the intent that Mastodon should not be owned or controlled by a single individual.”
https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/13/24342603/mastodon-non-profit-ownership-ceo-eugen-rochko
A new app called Tapestry promising to unify social media, news, and RSS in one place, is nearing completion. Designed by Iconfactory, the same team that created the third-party Twitter client Twitterific back in the day, Tapestry was unveiled at the beginning of the year as a tool that could better organize today’s fragmented online media, allowing users to track their favorite blogs, news sites, and social networks from a single app. This week, the company announced an update on Tapestry’s progress, saying that it planned to officially launch the app to the public in “early 2025.”
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/19/tapestry-a-new-app-for-tracking-social-media-news-blogs-and-more-will-launch-in-early-2025/
Instagram is officially rolling out “trial reels” to give creators a way to test out new content by publishing videos that don’t appear to their followers. The feature, which launched in testing in May, allows creators to experiment with new ideas and see what performs best without having to worry about how their followers may react.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/10/instagram-rolls-out-trial-reels-that-arent-shown-to-a-creators-followers/
Career-networking site LinkedIn has told Australian lawmakers it is too dull for kids to warrant its inclusion in a proposed ban on social media for under 16 year olds. "LinkedIn simply does not have content interesting and appealing to minors," the Microsoft-owned company said in a submission to an Australian senate committee.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2dz2z72y8o
Instead, the company has announced that in mid-December, it will sunset the City Guide. However, although the Foursquare app is going away, the company is opening its Places database to the world. Django co-creator Simon Willison has already investigated the database and has some info on how it's hosted and how to access it.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/27/foursquare_to_close/