Friday Social: TikTok Tools, Facebook’s Hobbi, and Chroma Labs
- Social Media
Our #FridaySocial is a weekly round-up of the key social media news stories from the previous seven days. Let us know your thoughts in the comments or via Twitter – @Umpf
Facebook Launches Hobbi
Facebook is adding another app to its roster – Hobbi, described as a ‘Pinterest-style’ tool to ‘capture and organise your creative process’.
The app is currently only available for iOS, and was created by Facebook’s New Product Experimentation (NPE) team. It’s yet to be seen if the app will be widely rolled out – or stick around at all. When the company announced its NPE team in 2019, it said:
“NPE Team apps will be aligned with Facebook’s mission of giving people the power to build community but will focus on shipping entirely new experiences. We decided to use this separate brand name to help set the appropriate expectations with users that NPE Team apps will change very rapidly and will be shut down if we learn that they’re not useful to people.”
TikTok Safety Features
TikTok has announced new safety features that will allow parents to control the content that their children view.
Called Family Safety Mode, the new tool links a parent account to their teen’s and, according to TikTok, allows them to oversee:
Screen Time Management: Control how long their teen can spend on TikTok each day.
Direct Messages: Limit who can send messages to the connected account or turn off direct messaging completely.
Restricted Mode: Restrict the appearance of content that may not be appropriate for all audiences.
Family Safety Mode launched in the UK on 19 February.
Facebook Testing News Feed Tabs
Legendary developer Jane M Wong has spotted a new feature that will allow users to better organise their Facebook News Feed –
Facebook is working on tabbed newsfeed for easier access to “Most Recent” and “Already Seen” feeds pic.twitter.com/8Z9KLG9nc8
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) February 18, 2020
Facebook confirmed the tabbed News Feed as a test “to make it easier to find, as well as sort by, posts you’ve already seen”
via FB’s @alexvoicahttps://t.co/Zqljaqpgl6
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) February 18, 2020
Given that the current algorithmic feed still garners complaints, with the Most Recent option only a temporary fix, the new tabbed could go down well.
Facebook has told TechCrunch that it’s testing the feature internally for now – but may test externally.
Twitter Acquires Chroma Labs
Twitter could be looking to join Instagram and Facebook in the Stories game with its acquisition of Chroma Labs.
The Chroma Stories app offers templates, frames, stickers, and effects for creating unique Story content for external apps.
Twitter Product Lead (and co-founder of Periscope) Kayvon Beykpour tweeted:
Thrilled to welcome the amazing @Chroma_Labs team including @picturejohn, @alexli, @joshuacharris to @Twitter.
They’ll join our product, design, and eng teams working to give people more creative ways to express themselves on Twitter 🎨💬
— Kayvon Beykpour (@kayvz) February 18, 2020
The standalone Chroma Stories app will continue to work for now (and you can still download it as of 19 Feb) but it won’t be updated, and Chroma is shutting down its business.
Twitter didn’t disclose the details of the acquisition to TechCrunch when approached for comment. Watch this space.