Social

Every social media platform needs to not only attract but then keep different types of audience. TikTok has already bet big on sport, and now it is doubling down on it with TikTok GamePlan.

Available globally, the resource provides fans of sport – including football and athletics – with detailed, up-to-the-minute analysis not of sport itself, but of the behavior of other fans, trending conversations and more.

The end of the year means endless round ups of the best products, services and more. It also means that lookbacks such as Spotify Unwrapped are made available, and now X has decided to get in on the action by taking a look back at what the past year was like on Elon Musk’s social platform.

What does this look like? Number. Numbers and statistics. So, if stats are not your thing, look away not. Otherwise, let’s delve in and see what has been happening on X throughout 2025.

All social media platforms are about connections, and Bluesky is no different. The problem that a social platform with a focus on privacy and security has is that it can be hard to track down people you know that you would like to connect to.

It is with this in mind that Bluesky is launching a new contact import feature called – somewhat uninspiringly – Find Friends. One of the aims, apart from connecting people, is to help cut down on spammy methods of tracking people down.

The seemingly never-ending story of TikTok and its place in the US could be coming to an end. A new deal between TikTok’s parent company ByteDance and US investors allows the social platform to continue operating in the country.

Reports from CNBC say that TikTok has signed an agreement to create a new US joint venture. The arrangement involves a number of big investors, and the resulting entity is known as TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC.

In a bid to help clamp down on spam on the platform, Instagram has announced new limitations on the use of hashtags. While there is certainly some value in hashtags for the tracking and categorization possibilities they offer, they are also open to abuse.

If you have been confused, frustrated, angered or otherwise responded negatively to an Instagram post which has dozens and dozens of hashtags, the new policy will come as good news. Details were shared about the changes not in a news release or even an Instagram post, but in a post to Threads.

Today is the first day on which the desktop version of Facebook Messenger no longer works. As Meta announced back in October, the Mac and Windows versions of the Facebook Messenger app have now been discontinued.

For anyone who has been a regular user of the desktop app, the appearance of notifications should have served as a warning ahead of time. Now anyone attempting to log into the app will be redirected to either the Facebook website or the Facebook desktop app, depending on whether they are using Windows or macOS.

New tools are landing thick and fast in WhatsApp, with Meta announcing, “another bundle of features just in time for the holidays”. There is a lot to explore, but the highlight that is being pushed is the voicemail-like missed calls messages.

There are also changes to voice and video chats, including voice chat reactions and speaker spotlighting in group videos. In addition to genuinely useful updates, there are some additions which are just nice to have – such as new stickers on Status.

After testing giving users control over the algorithm that controls the display of Reels on Instagram, Meta has now rolled out this personalization feature to everyone in the US.

With algorithms so easily thrown off by a rogue period of viewing, these new controls give users a way to redirect the algorithm back in the direction they would prefer. It is a quick and easy way to make it clear the type of content you are definitely interested in, as well as indicating the stuff that you really don’t want to see.

Meta has announced a series of major design changes to Facebook which it will be hoping will help it to maintain a place of significance in a swamped social media world. The changes are pretty much across the board, but changes to Feeds are likely to be most noticeable.

Revamps to the Feed, search, and navigation systems are consumer facing, but Facebook has not forgotten creators. Improvements have been made to streamline the creation of both Feed posts and Stories.

A long-awaited change has landed in Instagram, providing users of the social media platform with a new way to share other people’s stories to their own timeline.

Instagram has stood apart from other social platforms in a number of ways, but notably in the lack of option for the sharing of other people’s public content. Now this is changing, helping to bring Instagram in line with other platforms, and giving users something they have been asking for for a very long time.

In a few short weeks, Microsoft is removing its Copilot chatbot from WhatsApp. The company says that while it has helped millions of people, the removal comes because of a change to Meta’s platform policies.

As of January 15, WhatsApp is purging all LLM chatbots from the platform, so Microsoft has little choice in the matter. The company stresses that Copilot itself is living on in plenty of other places, and has some helpful information for those who will be affected by the change.

Meta is giving all Facebook users the option of posting under a nickname in Facebook Groups. While the option to post anonymously already exists, the nickname option takes things a little further.

The use of a nickname still allows for a degree of anonymity, while simultaneously allowing for some expression of personality. Additionally, posting with a nickname makes it easier for other people to track things that have been posted by the same person.

If you are a seasoned user of WhatsApp, brace yourself for a blast from the past. The company has just announced that it is bringing back one of its earliest features in a new and improved form.

What is returning is the About feature, a simple text field that can be used to share information about yourself, your availability, or anything else you can think of. It is not entirely dissimilar to the Notes feature of Instagram.

Creators on all social media platforms have a lot to worry about, but the theft or reuse of content must be near the top of the list. To help combat this, Meta has launched Facebook content protection to help prevent Reels from being stolen.

The automated tool can warn Facebook creators when their Reels are detected being reused on either Facebook or Instagram. If reuse is detected, creators have a number of options available to them, including blocking anything being used without consent.

Cast your mind back a few years – well, several, actually – and you may well remember Vine. The social network focused on short-form videos, and it was killed off nearly 10 years ago. Now, re-entering a very busy social arena, Vine is back.

This time, the platform is going by the name diVine, and it is partly funded by one of Jack Dorsey’s ventures. This is not just a relaunch of the old video sharing platform; there is an attempt to resurrect as much of the original content as possible.