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Instagram and Facebook apps add features, move ever-closer to TikTok parity

Meta has introduced new tools for the Reels video feature on Instagram and Facebook that are a one-two punch against TikTok. The company announced the new features on Thursday, saying they would make it easier for content creators who prefer one or both of the platforms to their behemoth long-form video competitor to better connect with their audience.

On Instagram, Meta has extended Reels to 90 seconds, giving users more time to express themselves and promote their brands and products. In addition to the extended run time, Reels is also getting stickers that were once exclusive to Instagram Stories. Aside from the captions that are present at the beginning of a video, users will be able to use polls, stickers, and emoji slider stickers when showing their viewers new things or comparing what hairstyle, outfit, or product design they might like best.

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To up the ante on TikTok, Instagram is implementing the Template feature, allowing creators to recreate a reel based on an existing template. With a push of the “Use Template” button, they’ll be able to pull the audio and clip sequence from the original reel and edit it with their own content. For more originality, they can use their own audio with the Import Audio feature, which is useful when they want to give commentary on current events and add background music that they can pull from any video on their camera roll that’s at least five seconds long.

Meanwhile, Facebook users will now take their Facebook Reels creation out of the confines of their Android and iOS devices to their desktop, which makes it easier to schedule their Reels posts. Meta is also rolling out video clipping tools on Creator Studio for creators to cut and edit their otherwise longer videos down to 60-second Reels. Audio-wise, it is now allowing Facebook Reels users to narrate their videos, implementing text-to-speech audio, and has launched Sound Sync, which lets users sync video clips to the beat of their favorite songs.

The new Reels features come on the heels of Facebook’s Messenger app adding the Call tab for users to make audio and video calls to their friends and family without going into their chats. Just as Messenger is becoming more like WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram are turning into TikTok, if not overtaking it.

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Forget Twitter — this social media app has ChatGPT built-in
Koo app store listing

Koo, a social media app developed in India that pushes itself as a Twitter replacement, is deploying ChatGPT smarts to prop its appeal. The company says Koo is the “first microblogging platform in the world” to integrate ChatGPT to boost the creative flow. Koo follows in the footsteps of Snapchat in deploying ChatGPT for some cutting-edge AI bragging rights.
At the moment, the ChatGPT integration is only available to creators with a sizeable following or those with a verified badge. However, it will soon be available for everyone without any follower count restriction. So far, the company hasn’t said anything about charging users for the feature, or whether it might be moved to a premium tier in the near future, considering the fact that OpenAI’s viral tool is embracing the API route for commercial usage.

Aside from text prompts, Koo users can also use the voice dictation feature to interact with the AI. The draft section of Koo app will let users accomplish tasks like “finding the top news of the day or asking for a quote from a well-known personality or even asking for the post or a blog to be written.” The latter is worrisome, which I’ve briefly discussed below. There's also some precedent for that out there with apps like Paragraph AI doing everything from generating content in various styles to taking over even your messaging app conversations.
Koo is pushing itself as a Twitter alternative and says it has accumulated over 50 million downloads ... but hasn’t disclosed the number of users. However, it looks like the Koo is trying to boost its appeal by recruiting the hottest new tool on the internet, one that will also be immensely convenient to churn out human-like thoughtful content in bulk — which is again the easy route to grabbing more eyeballs.

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I created the perfect iPhone home screen — and you can too
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With iOS 14, Apple began to open the floodgates for software customization on the iPhone. For the first time, you could add widgets to the home screen and even change app icons to custom ones without the need for a jailbreak. And iOS 16 gave us some more customization options in the form of the lock screen, although the interface for that is su-par, to say the least.

While I see a lot of people still use a stock grid layout on their home screen, I took some time when iOS 14 first came out to customize my iOS experience. I enjoy that it’s not just a boring grid of stock icons — having custom icons and widgets really mix things up a bit and gives me a more informative home screen.

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If you own a 5G-capable smartphone — which are all of the best phones today — there’s a good chance you’ve seen different 5G network icons showing up in your status bar. It’s a stark contrast to the pre-5G days when your phone showed “4G” or “LTE” no matter where you went.

It can get a bit confusing to see a 5G indicator one moment and then “5G UC” or “5G UW” the next. It’s not something you need to worry too much about, as you don’t usually have much control over it, but it’s still helpful to understand what these different symbols mean — and why they matter.
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