Facebook may be busy preparing for a video-centric future, but it also wants you to resort to using traditional text to express yourself.
To that extent, the company is launching a new customization feature that lets you change the background color that appears behind your status. The feature, which was first spotted by TechCrunch and later made official by Facebook, gives you several colors to choose from.
Instead of the default white background users are accustomed to, you’ll have the option of red, purple, yellow, orange, and variations of blue, among others. Some even come with a color gradient that looks decidedly cooler than the other flat options.
Facebook is rolling out colored status backgrounds over the next few weeks exclusively to Andorid users. They will be viewable on iOS, Android, and the web.
Earlier this year, internal rumblings at the social network revealed that the sharing of personal Facebook posts had declined 21 percent year-over-year since mid-2015. In their place, users were increasingly posting links to external content.
Even Facebook seemed to have lost hope in the humble text status. Instead, it was busy encouraging users to adopt its new Live video service — and prioritizing the format on its News Feed. In November, Facebook’s chief product officer Chris Cox predicted that by 2021 video will generate 70 percent of the traffic on the platform.
The launch of an otherwise small update such as the colored status background reveals that Facebook hasn’t given up on text just yet. And, who knows, maybe if Android users take to the new feature it will lead to more visual customization tools in the feature. Seeing as playful text and drawing tools are already available on Facebook Live and Messenger’s native camera, there’s plenty more Facebook could do to get its users sharing personal messages on its flagship platform once again.
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?