The way YouTube counts Shorts views is changing from today (31st March). Bringing it in line with TikTok and Instagram, YouTube will now display the number of times a Short starts to play or replay, instead of only counting after someone watches a video for a specific length of time.
TikTok Shop is expanding its European presence by launching in France, Germany, and Italy. TikTok Shop is actively recruiting Europe-based sellers, with Carrefour joining in France, and AboutYou and Cosnova participating in Germany. The platform allows users to host livestreams to sell items and earn commissions.
Facebook is adding a new Facebook Friends tab that will only showcase updates from friends, without any other recommended content. The idea is to bring back features focused on Facebook’s original mission of connecting people with friends through a social networking experience, and it’s initially available in the US and Canada.
Elon Musk (remember him?) has announced that his AI venture xAI has acquired X. “xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” Musk wrote on X Friday. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.” XAI has used data from social media posts on X to train its models, and its chatbot Grok is a prominent feature on the platform.
