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WhatsApp is working on Communities, a way to create groups within groups
Yo dawg, I heard you like groups, so here is a group within a group
WhatsApp is working on several new features like message reactions, new privacy controls, encrypted cloud backups, multi-device support, and more in a bid to better compete with the likes of Telegram and Signal. Now, new screenshots detail another new feature under development for the Facebook Meta-owned messaging platform: Communities. First spotted by XDA Developers over a month ago, WABetaInfo is providing more insight into it today.
Do you have a killer software idea that would be perfect for the next OnePlus device? The Chinese phone manufacturer has announced its new Ideas initiative that taps into the OnePlus community to uncover the next big OxygenOS feature. Through this program, members can submit their software ideas to a public wishlist, vote on their favorites, and help bring them to life.
YouTube's community features began showing up around a couple of years ago but it took a year for the feature to reach more channels and start popping up in users' home feeds on mobile. However, on the web, these posts were not as easily accessible: you had to go to each channel's page to see if it had any community updates. That won't be the case for long though, as posts are starting to show up on the home page for a few users.
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Google's been focusing on India a lot lately. Following Areo, a food delivery and home services app, and Tez, a mobile payments app, the company has just introduced Neighbourly, a Q&A app through which you can ask and answer questions about places and events in your community.
There have been a few signs already this year that Facebook is maybe feeling the heat. Perhaps younger users are tending towards trendier, more dynamic forms of social media. Perhaps older users are tiring of such platforms altogether and going back to sending hand-written letters. Whatever the reason, Facebook understands that it needs to make some changes to keep its users coming back.
Google has just unveiled a brand-new app designed for sharing inspiring stories between users who make up local communities. By giving every user the same platform, Bulletin hopes to unearth and highlight interesting news that would otherwise go unheard.
In light of the spam issue on its social networking platform, Google has announced that it's rolling out a new tool for community moderators. Dubbed "Remove, report, and ban," the company hopes that this will help to curb the swill problem on Google+.
ZTE's crowdsourced phone, the ZTE Hawkeye, hasn't done remarkably well since it was announced at CES. The Kickstarter campaign has only raised 7% of the $500,000 goal, and funding has only increased by $4,000 in the past six days. Now ZTE is going back to the community, asking what could be done to improve the device.
I'll admit, YouTube has added some strange features lately, and at first glance this seemed like yet another useless addition. Starting with a few select channels, a new 'Community' tab will appear on the channel's profile, both on mobile apps and the desktop site. This essentially works like a social feed for the channel, allowing content creators to share text, images, GIFs, livestreams, and more straight through the YouTube app. You can even choose to receive push notifications for Community posts.
The world of open source collaborative projects can be murky at times, and throwing crowdfunding into the mix doesn't make it any clearer. This odd intersection is the source of much drama in the small but passionate community that wants to see Android become as widespread on the desktop as it is on mobile. Members of the open source development team over at the Android-x86 Project, which aims to make Android operable on standard PC hardware, claim that Kickstarter project Console OS has "stolen" Android x86 code and presented it, at least in part, as its own creation.
The SwiftKey folks have released a new version of the popular third-party keyboard that comes with support for thirteen new Indian languages bundled in, but it's all still tucked away in beta form. Users who download the 5.1 beta will get access to Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Nepali, and Sinhala (Nepali and Sinhala are not Indian languages but SwiftKey opted to lump them in because they belong to the same Indo-Aryan language family). These languages join Hindi and Hinglish, which are already included in the app.
The Tastemade community caters both to users who like watching videos of other people's food and those who enjoy taking pictures of their own. The network, which spreads across various social media sites and an iOS app, encourages users to share their thoughts, expertise, and food experiences with others. Now Android users are free to hit up Google Play and take part in the festivities as well, assuming that they have a Samsung device.
The Google+ Android app jumped to a new version last week, and shortly after, its Play Store page updated with a change log topped by one problematic item:
Thingiverse is an awful name, but the community behind it shows far more creativity. Just a quick visit to the website reveals pages upon pages of nifty things people have spawned using 3D printers, complete with guidelines for replicating the objects yourself. Now MakerBot has condensed this community down into something that can fit in your pocket. With the new Thingiverse Android app, previously released for iOS back in October, users can browse, like, and comment on the expansive selection of plastic objects from anywhere they wish.
More and more developers are taking advantage of the nifty new ability to start a semi-closed beta on the Google Play Store via Google+. The latest is TeslaCoil Software, makers of the customization tool WidgetLocker (among other things). If you want to try out the latest and possibly greatest version of WidgetLocker, just head for this Google+ Community and join in.
One of the problems of living in modern times is that it's easy for us to shut ourselves off from our communities, living in a place for years without ever meeting the Smiths down the road or the Patels across the street. If you've wished for a way to resolve this issue that doesn't require the awkwardness of knocking on your neighbor's door, you're in luck, because there's now an app for that. Nextdoor is a private social network that aims to connect neighbors with their community in a way even anti-social people can get behind.
Earlier on Wednesday, there was a bit of a scare when CyanogenMod wrote a blog post instructing users to transition to cyanogenmod.org instead of the .com address the group has used up until now. As the story goes, a member of the team donated the domain back in the early days and had managed it ever since. Until recently when control of the domain was in question during a dispute with said user. According to the original post, this person was asking for a substantial fee for the address, as well as access to Google Apps accounts that managed a number of public-facing email accounts.
If there's one thing Android lovers can unite around, it's that we have the best community around. When CyanogenMod put out the call back in February asking for donations to get some new servers, the community responded enthusiastically. Now, the most popular third-party ROM developer is announcing that the servers are online and capable of building CM9 in nine minutes. Whoa.
The extremely popular photo-sharing app Instagram, just days after hitting the Play Store, has received another update, this time bringing some pretty awesome changes.