Tech News

After promising a feature that lets you easily bookmark tweets, Twitter is now rolling it out on iOS. The new design displays the bookmark button under the expanded tweet view. Making it easier to add a post to your bookmarks.

Before today’s change, you had to tap on the share button to open the sharing card and then tap on the bookmark option to save a tweet. In addition to the new button, as soon as you tap on the button, you will see a banner at the top of the screen that says “Show all bookmarks.”

The option is currently visible only on the iOS app, but we can expect that Twitter will roll this out to Android and the web soon.

Earlier this month, Elon Musk promised to bring the bookmark button to the detailed tweet view. Now, it is finally rolling out to end users. Many people have used the “Like” button as a bookmark feature — just because it was cumbersome to save and retrieve tweets as bookmarks. But this new button placement might change things a bit.

Notably, if you have a Twitter Blue subscription — which is now also available on Android — you can use the bookmark folders feature to arrange them better.

Along with this, Twitter has also updated its Android app to show the two timeline options in two side-by-side separate tabs. The company first rolled out the default “For You” timeline and chronological “Following” timeline to iOS last week.

Later it brought this view to the web as well. At that time, Twitter remembered your choice of timeline even if you closed the tab. So for instance, if you chose “Following” and opened Twitter in a new tab after closing it, the “Following” timeline appeared as the default feed. However, the company now seems to have made the change in such a way that you will see the “For You” feed by default if you refresh the page or open Twitter in a new tab.

Meanwhile last night, the company made changes to its API terms, effectively killing third-party clients. As a result, well-known apps like Twitterrific have started pulling their apps from the app stores.

Twitter puts more emphasis on the bookmark feature on iOS by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Entertainment company Fandom has laid off an unspecified number of employees across multiple properties including Giant Bomb, GameSpot and Metacritic. These properties are mainly focused on publishing content around gaming and TV shows.

According to a report by Variety, the company employs around 500 people, and the layoffs have affected roughly 10% of its staff across different sites. Employees were caught off-guard by this surprise announcement made by CEO Perkins Miller during an all-hands meeting, as per Kotaku.

The job cuts come months after Fandom acquired a host of brands — Comic Vine, Cord Cutters News, GameFAQs, GameSpot, Giant Bomb, Metacritic, and TV Guide — from Red Ventures in October. Sources told TechCrunch at that time that the size of the deal was around $55 million.

During the acquisition announcement, Fandom said that this deal will help the company “super-serve” its advertising partners and provide fuel for its data platform and gaming e-commerce verticals. Fandom was founded in 2004 by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and entrepreneur Angela Beesley

Some folks like GameSpot entertainment editor Mat Elfring, video producer Jess O’Brien aka “Voidburger”, and graphic designer Justin Vachon tweeted about frustrating layoffs.

We have reached out to Fandom for a comment, and we will update the story if we hear back.

Several gaming and entertainment media outlets have faced layoffs in the last few months. Some IGN staffers were impacted last month while Polygon employees were axed as a part of Vox job cuts in July.

Fandom lays off employees across Giant Bomb, GameSpot and Metacritic by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

As the market of social media influencers is getting bigger in India, the South Asian nation has introduced endorsement guidelines to limit unfair trade practices and misleading promotions on the web.

On Friday, the Department of Consumer Affairs held a press conference to announce new guidelines to make it mandatory for social media influencers to disclose promotional content in accordance with the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

Failing to follow the guidelines will make social media influencers liable for a fine of up to $12,300 (1 million Indian rupees). In the case of repeated offenders, the penalty can go up to $61,600 (5 million Indian rupees), the Indian government department said.

The department specified that the guidelines apply to social media influencers as well as virtual avatars promoting products and services online. The disclosures should be easy to notice in post descriptions where you can usually find hashtags or links. It should also be prominent enough to be noticeable in the content, the department said.

When it comes to promoted content in videos, the department said that disclosures for paid promotions should be placed in the video — not just in the description — and be made in both audio and video format. Influencers must also disclose if they promote a brand, service or product during live streams, per the guidelines.

The department said the disclosures and endorsements should be in the language of the content.

“Today’s guidelines are aimed at social influencers who have a material connection with the brand they want to promote on various social media platforms. So this is an obligation for them to behave responsibly,” consumer affairs department secretary Rohit Kumar Singh told reporters.

The official said the department was in talks with tech companies to deploy some crawling algorithms to identify offenders. Meanwhile, consumers can file complaints if they find an influencer violating the guidelines, the secretary said.

“You can never cover it 100%. This is a cat-and-mouse thing… So, the idea is to protect the interests of the consumers and let him not being taken for a ride by showing him something as unbiased whereas actually, it is a paid thing,” he added.

According to the secretary, the size of the social media influencer market in India in 2022 was $157 million. It could reach as much as $345 million by 2025.

India releases guidelines for social media influencers accepting paid promotions by Jagmeet Singh originally published on TechCrunch