Facebook is giving publishers the power to make Instant Articles more visually immersive with 360-degree video and photo support.
Launched in May of last year, Facebook Instant Articles are the company’s very own take on Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). The publishing tools essentially allow media outlets and bloggers to host their articles directly on Facebook, with the social network promising faster loading times, ad revenue options, and embeddable “interactive” features. The latter includes a number of visual options, such as high-res photo galleries, navigable maps, and parallax videos that play as you scroll through articles. Now, you can add 360-video and photo support to that already impressive list.
Thanks to the availability of 360 cameras, more creators, publishers, and filmmakers are utilizing the visual format to enhance their work. From awards shows to documentaries, 360 videos are increasingly making the news, but navigating them on a mobile display hasn’t been as easy as it is on desktop. Starting today, that’s all going to change, on Facebook at least.
Now, when you access an Instant Article via the Facebook mobile app for iOS and Android, you will be able to watch its 360 media content by simply tilting and panning your smartphone to guide the action. The visuals will appear in-line with the article, and can be expanded to full-screen with a tap. If you want to keep things traditional, you can also touch and drag the media to the section you wish to view, or (if the publisher has enabled Facebook’s 360 guide feature) you can simply sit back and let the video pan to the best point-of-view.
Facebook media partners USA Today and German paper Bild have already started adding 360 media to their Instant Articles. The former utilized the format within its piece on National Parks, with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns narrating the 360-video segments. Bild used 360 videos in its visual tour of the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier. Publishers can add multiple 360 videos and photos to each Instant Article.
“Instant Articles is a complementary canvas for 360 media,” writes Josh Roberts, Product Manager, Facebook. “Journalists and storytellers can share richer stories and paint more vivid scenes by joining 360 content with other Instant Articles elements.”
Discord is trying to push more visibility on the internet for some of its biggest communities, and there's a good chance your messages could end up in a Google Search. The platform is preparing to make conversations from certain public servers searchable on the web, so there's a privacy setting you might want to check before the rollout begins.
According to Discord's official announcement, the changes will roll out in two stages. Starting November 16, qualifying servers will have public web pages featuring automated summaries of conversations. By mid-December, individual messages from eligible public channels could also appear word-for-word in Google and other search engines.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?