Instagram

Post an image to Instagram and it will almost certainly be automatically cropped. The reason for this is that, until now, the platform has supported 4:5 aspect ratio images, as well as the Instagram staple -- the square format.

But this is not in line with how most people shoot photographs, and the platform is finally taking this into account. There is now support for a new (new to Instagram, at least), aspect ratio.

For all of the talk about establishing and maintaining connections, for the companies behind them social media platforms are about making money. Advertising plays a massive role in this, and Meta is looking for new ways to grab users’ attention.

The company has announced it is testing video ads on Threads as it explores expanding its portfolio of ad formats. There are also new ad options for creators and brands on Facebook and Instagram, as well as the slightly unusual sounding “trending ads” feature.

Clearly keen to keep pace with its main rival TikTok, Instagram has officially launched its video editing app designed to help creators produce more impression content. Available for iOS and Android the free video editing app goes by the name Edits, and it has many of the same features as TikTok’s CapCut.

Edits was first announced back in January, but now it is available for everyone to download. Instagram says that is helps you to “make great videos on your phone”, billing it as a “video creation app designed for creators”. It seems to be something of a work in progress, but does Edits have what it takes to appeal to the masses?

Teen use of social media platforms is something that is concerning for many parents and has become the subject of political and legal debates. Having introduced Instagram Teen Accounts, last year, Meta has now done the same for both Facebook and Messenger.

Just as with Instagram, Teen Accounts on the social and messaging platforms have built-in protections and restrictions.  At the same time, the company is also introducing additional controls and restrictions for teenage users on Instagram.

There is much said about the negative impact of social media on mental health and general welfare, but a new study suggests that there are benefits too -- especially for minority and marginalized groups such as the LGBTQIA+ community.

In particular, Instagram has been found to be a boost to the wellbeing of queer young people. Surveys of Instagram users in the United States and Poland showed that access to supportive online communities brought about a range of psychological benefits.

Across pretty much every social platform there is a strange focus on responding positively to content through the use of a ‘like’ button. Instagram is no different in this regard, but this could be about to change.

Some users have noticed a new down arrow button next to comments which has been confirmed by Instagram's trial of a new feature. The button enables users to dislike a comment under a post, but it does not work quite as you may expect.

YouTube has announced a partnership with Repurpose.io designed to make multi-platform publishing easier than ever. An automated system makes it possible to repost TikTok content, as well as Instagram Reels, as YouTube Shorts.

The uncertain future of TikTok in the US has shaken creators who have built up substantial and lucrative followings on the Chinese-owned social platform. YouTube is eager to make the most of this uncertainty, and is clearly hoping that the new Repurpose.io partnership will help it to steal TikTok users.

When Mark Zuckerberg announced recently that Meta was ditching fact checking on Facebook and Instagram in favor of X-style community notes, the response was very mixed. While hardly a clean line between the two camps, those with conservative political leanings tended to see this as a good thing, while those of a more liberal bent voiced concerns about the potential for misinformation.

The recent announcement about moving away from fact checking was widely seen as Zuckerberg trying to curry favor with Donald Trump, now installed as the 47th president of the USA. Now a new pronouncement from the company makes it hard to shake the notion that stepping away from fact checking was a politically motivated move.

A huge proportion of what you encounter on social media platforms is selected by algorithms (this should be news to very few people), and algorithms are problematic.

The content that is pushed to you is supposed to be based on your past interactions, the people you are connected to, the things you like, and so on, but it is easily polluted and corrupted. And this is why Instagram’s current test that gives users a way to reset their recommendations and start afresh is so welcome.

The question of how to train and improve AI tools is one that triggers fierce debate, and this is something that has come into sharp focus as It becomes clear just how Meta is teaching its own artificial intelligence.

The social media giant is -- perhaps unsurprisingly to many -- using data scrapped from Facebook and Instagram posts, but only in Australia. Why Australia? Unlike Europe where General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) necessitated Meta to give users a way to opt out of having their data used in this way, Australia has not been afforded this same opportunity. What does this mean?

The groundswell of interest in the fediverse really kicked off when Elon Musk took over at Twitter, renamed it X, and made a seemingly endless series of controversial changes and decisions. A large number of users sought new homes, and the likes of Bluesky and Mastodon reaped the benefits.

Another recent entrant into the social arena is Threads -- Meta's answer to X. For quite some time there has been talk about plans to plug Threads into the fediverse, much to the disgust of many Mastodon users. Now this day has rolled around, with Mark Zuckerberg announcing that fediverse integration is now available to some users in beta.

Meta has announced a series of updates to Instagram, all of which are likely to be welcomed by users. Perhaps the most significant change is the option to edit the DMs you've sent, but there are other notable new features -- including disabling read receipts.

The latest round of Instagram updates also sees the introduction of a message pinning option that makes it easier to access keys one-on-one or group chats. On top of all this, reply options have been upgraded, new themes have been added, and more.

The rivalry between tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg is hard to miss. There was, for a while, talk of the two men having a cage fight -- although that predictably came to nothing -- and  Zuckerberg's Meta recently introduced its "Twitter killer" app, Threads, after perceiving weakness in Musk's own social media platform (now called X).

While Threads hasn't been quite the huge hit that Meta was hoping for (just yet at least), it has clearly had some impact on X. You should never bet against Elon Musk though. If you've ever wondered what Meta's Instagram might look like if Musk took over that as part of X's expansion of the "everything app", we have the answer.

Although it only launched a couple of days ago, Meta's new Twitter rival Threads is already a big success. It's lacking some important features at the moment, although they are coming, and not all of its capabilities are obvious.

For example, it's not clear how to add a second account to Threads, or how to switch between accounts, but it is possible.

For many people the release of Threads, Instagram's text-based conversation app, represents an alternative to Twitter -- a platform which is widely considered to have become more toxic and problematic under Elon Musk. But for an even larger number of people, Threads will be their first step into this type of social media.

Switching from Twitter, Mastodon or Bluesky to Threads -- or using them in conjunction with each other -- is painless, but for anyone who has never used such a platform, the language surrounding it can be slightly mystifying. And this is why Meta has released a Threads Dictionary to bring users up to speed.