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The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on all things vertical video, follow David Pierce. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.

For a while, every social and media platform had its own identity. YouTube was for clips of TV shows and movies, and the home of so many members of a burgeoning creator community. Instagram was mostly pictures. Netflix was trying to be the on-demand HBO. Facebook was about friends. Twitter was about news. Snapchat was a messaging app.

All these apps did have one important thing in common, though: They were growing up alongside the smartphone. Billions of new people were coming online for the first time, and they began to make content that made sense for the tall, skinny new devices in their hands. Selfies were a vertical art form, both because the photos filled the screen better and because it was just easier to hold the phone and take the photo that way. Some resisted the idea of vertical video for years — they’d argue that our eyes are meant to scan horizontally rather than vertically, and that vertical video looked bad on widescreen laptops. But ultimately phones won, and we hold our phones upright, so our phone experiences turned upright. That includes entertainment.

As has been true so many times, Snap figured this out before anyone. It launched Stories in late 2013 as a slightly more relaxed way to see what your friends are up to. CEO Evan Spiegel called it a “totally new way to share your day with friends — or everyone.” It took off in a massive way, and by the middle of 2014 was the most popular feature on Snapchat. That’s the kind of virality that Mark Zuckerberg tends to notice, and by August of 2016, the feature had been copied more or less exactly into Instagram. Kevin Systrom, then the CEO of Instagram, said of Spiegel and Snapchat that “they deserve all the credit” for Stories. The implication? That this was no longer a proprietary feature of a single social network; it was just in the air. Stories were for everyone. They started showing up on LinkedIn, Tinder, Medium, and so many other places.

Stories weren’t always video, but as cameras and upload speeds improved, video became the dominant medium in many ephemeral spaces. And video stories had two semi-magical properties: They were perfectly suited to endless, mindless scrolling, and they made it really easy to integrate ads. Only a few months after turning on Stories in Instagram, by which point half the platform’s users were already using Stories, Facebook began flooding ads into the product. The semi-randomness of Stories made ads actually seem less intrusive — you’d see a photo of a dog, a video of a hike, an ad for jeans, your friend’s makeup routine, brunch pics, an ad for blush. Video ads felt more premium, took up the whole screen, and were thus far more lucrative for the social platforms.

With apologies to the short, brilliant life of Vine, the six-second video platform that helped invent so much about the video-first social network, it wasn’t until TikTok took off that things really turned again. The platform launched in the US in 2018, but had been popular for a few years in China as Douyin and elsewhere as Musical.ly. TikTok combined the vertical-first format of Stories with the permanence of YouTube, but it also made video easier than ever. It had filters like Instagram and Snapchat, but also supplied a steady stream of video ideas through the platform’s many trends, offered access to music and sound effects, and made it easy to stitch or duet a video.

By defaulting to the purely algorithmic For You page, TikTok also freed creators from caring about curating their profile or worrying about posting too much — you could just pump out videos and trust the algorithm to deliver them. And so that’s what people did. Pretty quickly, TikTok became one of the fastest growing apps on the planet, and its daily usage numbers became the envy of the industry. Instagram may have had more users, but TikTok users spent far more time TikToking.

When TikTok became a phenomenon, just about everyone jumped on the vertical video bandwagon. Reels launched in 2020 and became a core feature of both Instagram and Facebook; YouTube created Shorts a year later. By the end of 2021, Twitter had both launched and killed a similar feature called Fleets. By this point, this kind of full-screen, vertical-scrolling video was part of the lingua franca of the smartphone. At the same time, in a search for ever more engagement, these platforms were learning another lesson from TikTok: to stop relying on your friends to post interesting content, and instead to show you whatever the algorithm thinks you might like. Social networks were gone, replaced by social media — entertainment with a comments section.

Short-form, vertical video has effectively won the internet. Business is booming, and viewers show no sign of tuning out. Meta said in 2024 that Instagram users were spending more than half their time in Reels, and said in 2025 the feature was turning into a $50 billion annual business across Meta’s apps. About 63 percent of young adults and teens are on TikTok, per Pew Research Center, and one in five teens reported being on the app “almost constantly.” YouTube reported 200 billion daily views of Shorts at the end of 2025, and said that Shorts earned more money per watch hour than standard YouTube videos.

The last three or four years have been about relentless standardization in social media. The pace with which these products copy each other, and regress back toward parity, has been absolutely astonishing. First, Shorts and Reels both aped TikTok’s design, its duetting and stitching, and its close relationship with sounds and music. Then they bought into TikTok’s idea of prioritizing content over connection — followers are dead, long live the algorithm. TikTok pushed hard into shopping, then suddenly Reels and Shorts became a lot more shoppable. YouTube began to grow on TVs, and suddenly TikTok and Instagram started investing in its own TV apps. Videos got longer and longer across platforms, to allow more ads. All the apps got really into livestreaming for a while. And micro dramas. They’ve relentlessly copied each other on big things like letting users control their algorithm, and small things like Clear Mode.

As the social platforms spin endlessly around each other, they’ve gotten some surprising company. Company after company started to notice their content floating around social media platforms, often in dubiously legal ways, and tried to take some of the watch time for themselves. Spotify decided it, too, wanted to be a video service, and built a vertical-scrolling feed for users to explore. Disney built a TikTok clone for ESPN and another for Disney Plus, both called Verts. Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount Plus all called their clones Clips.

There are two reasons for the ongoing onslaught of short-form vertical video: time spent and advertising. The endlessly scrolling video feed turns out to be one of the most engrossing forms of entertainment ever devised (to the point that it has become a regulatory problem for the social platforms), and in a relentless competition for eyeballs and attention, it has become everyone’s best idea. In 2024, when Meta switched its default video player to a vertical-first layout across all platforms, the race was officially won.

Meanwhile, as those platforms have captured more of our time and attention, short-form video has become a dominant force of advertising on the internet, which means advertisers are already comfortable making ads designed to go between videos in the feed. And as so many companies turn to AI to do their ad targeting, all they really need is the creative to get started. “So long as clients give us different assets — a six-second ad, a 15-second ad, a long-format, a vertical ad — AI is essentially powering everything else,” YouTube’s Brian Albert told me last year. “From the audiences you’re reaching, to the contextual placements, to the ad that’s actually showing.” The combination of AI and vertical video has become a self-fulfilling prophecy: The more it wins, the easier it becomes for everyone else to get on board, and so it just keeps winning.

Vertical video haters, I have bad news: It’s only going to get worse. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are if anything going to become more short-form and vertical, since those short videos are easier to make and easier to load into endlessly scrolling feeds. Video services used to require you to pick something and press play, but now all they need is for you to open the app and they can start showing you ads. They’re not going to want to go back. Here’s how dominant video is: Facebook is testing a new version of the app that loads a full-screen video feed when you open the app. If that happens, there will be no Facebook — only Reels. After all this time, they’ve trained users to want and expect this kind of fast-paced, instant-gratification entertainment, to the point where even a full-length movie can feel like a chore.

Meanwhile, after years of raising prices, streaming services around the world are hoping they can turn to advertising to keep growing. For a while, they could coast on the back of linear TV, borrowing those ads to run on digital platforms. But a TikTok ad won’t make any sense on Netflix, so Netflix decided the best thing to do is build something that looks more like TikTok. A recent HubSpot report found that short-form video was by a wide margin both the most-used and most successful form of marketing content in 2025, and that it was the format in which marketers planned to invest the most this year.

All that said, there are glimmers of a bigger shift beginning to happen. Fed up with the algorithm, some users are starting to demand the return of friends and family in social media. But more broadly, more and more young people are deciding to put down their phones, resist the invasion of AI into their lives, and look for different kinds of entertainment. Movie theaters are having a big year; one of the year’s most exciting new phones is a flip phone. As long as we live in this era of social media and entertainment, vertical video is going to win. It would take a cultural revolution to stop it — and there might just be one brewing.

  • The best way to understand TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat in particular right now is as a combination of two things: a streaming service and an inbox. Studies have found that the most popular thing to do is watch videos, and the second most popular thing is to send videos to someone else. Actually posting? Way down the list. (YouTube, by the way, is desperately trying to make DMs happen.)
  • If you’ve made it this far and you’re thinking, no way, you’re way overstating it? I’m so sorry to say this, but you might just be old. At this point, YouTube and Facebook cross generations and demographics, but Pew and others have found that TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram are effectively ubiquitous among young people in particular.
  • It’s important to remember that views are lies. Everyone on the internet has an incentive to make their platform seem big and vibrant and popular, and they will invent whatever new metrics they need to do so.
  • New York published a great piece earlier this year about the shifting vibes on YouTube, and the ways in which the creator economy is being unmoored in part by the shift to vertical video. Yeah, the platforms have figured out how to make money from your video feed, but it’s not as simple for creators.
  • All the way back in 2015, The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo made a good case for vertical video. It’s a fun reminder of just how contentious the idea was!
  • You should read my colleague Mia Sato’s story on the clip economy, which turns shows, movies, podcasts, and more into bite-size pieces for social platforms. It’s a weird industry, but it works — and you can see why the streamers want to compete.
  • Here’s a really good breakdown of all the things TikTok got right, from its algorithm to its whole approach to content. Every bit of it has been copied relentlessly ever since.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
#vertical #video #takeoverColumn,Creators,Facebook,Instagram,Meta,Social Media,Streaming,Tech,The Stepback,TikTok,YouTube"> The vertical video takeover is hereThis is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on all things vertical video, follow David Pierce. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.For a while, every social and media platform had its own identity. YouTube was for clips of TV shows and movies, and the home of so many members of a burgeoning creator community. Instagram was mostly pictures. Netflix was trying to be the on-demand HBO. Facebook was about friends. Twitter was about news. Snapchat was a messaging app.All these apps did have one important thing in common, though: They were growing up alongside the smartphone. Billions of new people were coming online for the first time, and they began to make content that made sense for the tall, skinny new devices in their hands. Selfies were a vertical art form, both because the photos filled the screen better and because it was just easier to hold the phone and take the photo that way. Some resisted the idea of vertical video for years — they’d argue that our eyes are meant to scan horizontally rather than vertically, and that vertical video looked bad on widescreen laptops. But ultimately phones won, and we hold our phones upright, so our phone experiences turned upright. That includes entertainment.As has been true so many times, Snap figured this out before anyone. It launched Stories in late 2013 as a slightly more relaxed way to see what your friends are up to. CEO Evan Spiegel called it a “totally new way to share your day with friends — or everyone.” It took off in a massive way, and by the middle of 2014 was the most popular feature on Snapchat. That’s the kind of virality that Mark Zuckerberg tends to notice, and by August of 2016, the feature had been copied more or less exactly into Instagram. Kevin Systrom, then the CEO of Instagram, said of Spiegel and Snapchat that “they deserve all the credit” for Stories. The implication? That this was no longer a proprietary feature of a single social network; it was just in the air. Stories were for everyone. They started showing up on LinkedIn, Tinder, Medium, and so many other places.Stories weren’t always video, but as cameras and upload speeds improved, video became the dominant medium in many ephemeral spaces. And video stories had two semi-magical properties: They were perfectly suited to endless, mindless scrolling, and they made it really easy to integrate ads. Only a few months after turning on Stories in Instagram, by which point half the platform’s users were already using Stories, Facebook began flooding ads into the product. The semi-randomness of Stories made ads actually seem less intrusive — you’d see a photo of a dog, a video of a hike, an ad for jeans, your friend’s makeup routine, brunch pics, an ad for blush. Video ads felt more premium, took up the whole screen, and were thus far more lucrative for the social platforms.With apologies to the short, brilliant life of Vine, the six-second video platform that helped invent so much about the video-first social network, it wasn’t until TikTok took off that things really turned again. The platform launched in the US in 2018, but had been popular for a few years in China as Douyin and elsewhere as Musical.ly. TikTok combined the vertical-first format of Stories with the permanence of YouTube, but it also made video easier than ever. It had filters like Instagram and Snapchat, but also supplied a steady stream of video ideas through the platform’s many trends, offered access to music and sound effects, and made it easy to stitch or duet a video.By defaulting to the purely algorithmic For You page, TikTok also freed creators from caring about curating their profile or worrying about posting too much — you could just pump out videos and trust the algorithm to deliver them. And so that’s what people did. Pretty quickly, TikTok became one of the fastest growing apps on the planet, and its daily usage numbers became the envy of the industry. Instagram may have had more users, but TikTok users spent far more time TikToking.When TikTok became a phenomenon, just about everyone jumped on the vertical video bandwagon. Reels launched in 2020 and became a core feature of both Instagram and Facebook; YouTube created Shorts a year later. By the end of 2021, Twitter had both launched and killed a similar feature called Fleets. By this point, this kind of full-screen, vertical-scrolling video was part of the lingua franca of the smartphone. At the same time, in a search for ever more engagement, these platforms were learning another lesson from TikTok: to stop relying on your friends to post interesting content, and instead to show you whatever the algorithm thinks you might like. Social networks were gone, replaced by social media — entertainment with a comments section.Short-form, vertical video has effectively won the internet. Business is booming, and viewers show no sign of tuning out. Meta said in 2024 that Instagram users were spending more than half their time in Reels, and said in 2025 the feature was turning into a billion annual business across Meta’s apps. About 63 percent of young adults and teens are on TikTok, per Pew Research Center, and one in five teens reported being on the app “almost constantly.” YouTube reported 200 billion daily views of Shorts at the end of 2025, and said that Shorts earned more money per watch hour than standard YouTube videos.The last three or four years have been about relentless standardization in social media. The pace with which these products copy each other, and regress back toward parity, has been absolutely astonishing. First, Shorts and Reels both aped TikTok’s design, its duetting and stitching, and its close relationship with sounds and music. Then they bought into TikTok’s idea of prioritizing content over connection — followers are dead, long live the algorithm. TikTok pushed hard into shopping, then suddenly Reels and Shorts became a lot more shoppable. YouTube began to grow on TVs, and suddenly TikTok and Instagram started investing in its own TV apps. Videos got longer and longer across platforms, to allow more ads. All the apps got really into livestreaming for a while. And micro dramas. They’ve relentlessly copied each other on big things like letting users control their algorithm, and small things like Clear Mode.As the social platforms spin endlessly around each other, they’ve gotten some surprising company. Company after company started to notice their content floating around social media platforms, often in dubiously legal ways, and tried to take some of the watch time for themselves. Spotify decided it, too, wanted to be a video service, and built a vertical-scrolling feed for users to explore. Disney built a TikTok clone for ESPN and another for Disney Plus, both called Verts. Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount Plus all called their clones Clips.There are two reasons for the ongoing onslaught of short-form vertical video: time spent and advertising. The endlessly scrolling video feed turns out to be one of the most engrossing forms of entertainment ever devised (to the point that it has become a regulatory problem for the social platforms), and in a relentless competition for eyeballs and attention, it has become everyone’s best idea. In 2024, when Meta switched its default video player to a vertical-first layout across all platforms, the race was officially won.Meanwhile, as those platforms have captured more of our time and attention, short-form video has become a dominant force of advertising on the internet, which means advertisers are already comfortable making ads designed to go between videos in the feed. And as so many companies turn to AI to do their ad targeting, all they really need is the creative to get started. “So long as clients give us different assets — a six-second ad, a 15-second ad, a long-format, a vertical ad — AI is essentially powering everything else,” YouTube’s Brian Albert told me last year. “From the audiences you’re reaching, to the contextual placements, to the ad that’s actually showing.” The combination of AI and vertical video has become a self-fulfilling prophecy: The more it wins, the easier it becomes for everyone else to get on board, and so it just keeps winning.Vertical video haters, I have bad news: It’s only going to get worse. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are if anything going to become more short-form and vertical, since those short videos are easier to make and easier to load into endlessly scrolling feeds. Video services used to require you to pick something and press play, but now all they need is for you to open the app and they can start showing you ads. They’re not going to want to go back. Here’s how dominant video is: Facebook is testing a new version of the app that loads a full-screen video feed when you open the app. If that happens, there will be no Facebook — only Reels. After all this time, they’ve trained users to want and expect this kind of fast-paced, instant-gratification entertainment, to the point where even a full-length movie can feel like a chore.Meanwhile, after years of raising prices, streaming services around the world are hoping they can turn to advertising to keep growing. For a while, they could coast on the back of linear TV, borrowing those ads to run on digital platforms. But a TikTok ad won’t make any sense on Netflix, so Netflix decided the best thing to do is build something that looks more like TikTok. A recent HubSpot report found that short-form video was by a wide margin both the most-used and most successful form of marketing content in 2025, and that it was the format in which marketers planned to invest the most this year.All that said, there are glimmers of a bigger shift beginning to happen. Fed up with the algorithm, some users are starting to demand the return of friends and family in social media. But more broadly, more and more young people are deciding to put down their phones, resist the invasion of AI into their lives, and look for different kinds of entertainment. Movie theaters are having a big year; one of the year’s most exciting new phones is a flip phone. As long as we live in this era of social media and entertainment, vertical video is going to win. It would take a cultural revolution to stop it — and there might just be one brewing.The best way to understand TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat in particular right now is as a combination of two things: a streaming service and an inbox. Studies have found that the most popular thing to do is watch videos, and the second most popular thing is to send videos to someone else. Actually posting? Way down the list. (YouTube, by the way, is desperately trying to make DMs happen.)If you’ve made it this far and you’re thinking, no way, you’re way overstating it? I’m so sorry to say this, but you might just be old. At this point, YouTube and Facebook cross generations and demographics, but Pew and others have found that TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram are effectively ubiquitous among young people in particular.It’s important to remember that views are lies. Everyone on the internet has an incentive to make their platform seem big and vibrant and popular, and they will invent whatever new metrics they need to do so.New York published a great piece earlier this year about the shifting vibes on YouTube, and the ways in which the creator economy is being unmoored in part by the shift to vertical video. Yeah, the platforms have figured out how to make money from your video feed, but it’s not as simple for creators. All the way back in 2015, The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo made a good case for vertical video. It’s a fun reminder of just how contentious the idea was!You should read my colleague Mia Sato’s story on the clip economy, which turns shows, movies, podcasts, and more into bite-size pieces for social platforms. It’s a weird industry, but it works — and you can see why the streamers want to compete.Here’s a really good breakdown of all the things TikTok got right, from its algorithm to its whole approach to content. Every bit of it has been copied relentlessly ever since.Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.David PierceCloseDavid PiercePosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by David PierceColumnCloseColumnPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ColumnCreatorsCloseCreatorsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All CreatorsFacebookCloseFacebookPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All FacebookInstagramCloseInstagramPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All InstagramMetaCloseMetaPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All MetaSocial MediaCloseSocial MediaPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Social MediaStreamingCloseStreamingPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All StreamingTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechThe StepbackCloseThe StepbackPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All The StepbackTikTokCloseTikTokPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TikTokYouTubeCloseYouTubePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All YouTube#vertical #video #takeoverColumn,Creators,Facebook,Instagram,Meta,Social Media,Streaming,Tech,The Stepback,TikTok,YouTube
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The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on all things vertical video, follow David Pierce. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.

For a while, every social and media platform had its own identity. YouTube was for clips of TV shows and movies, and the home of so many members of a burgeoning creator community. Instagram was mostly pictures. Netflix was trying to be the on-demand HBO. Facebook was about friends. Twitter was about news. Snapchat was a messaging app.

All these apps did have one important thing in common, though: They were growing up alongside the smartphone. Billions of new people were coming online for the first time, and they began to make content that made sense for the tall, skinny new devices in their hands. Selfies were a vertical art form, both because the photos filled the screen better and because it was just easier to hold the phone and take the photo that way. Some resisted the idea of vertical video for years — they’d argue that our eyes are meant to scan horizontally rather than vertically, and that vertical video looked bad on widescreen laptops. But ultimately phones won, and we hold our phones upright, so our phone experiences turned upright. That includes entertainment.

As has been true so many times, Snap figured this out before anyone. It launched Stories in late 2013 as a slightly more relaxed way to see what your friends are up to. CEO Evan Spiegel called it a “totally new way to share your day with friends — or everyone.” It took off in a massive way, and by the middle of 2014 was the most popular feature on Snapchat. That’s the kind of virality that Mark Zuckerberg tends to notice, and by August of 2016, the feature had been copied more or less exactly into Instagram. Kevin Systrom, then the CEO of Instagram, said of Spiegel and Snapchat that “they deserve all the credit” for Stories. The implication? That this was no longer a proprietary feature of a single social network; it was just in the air. Stories were for everyone. They started showing up on LinkedIn, Tinder, Medium, and so many other places.

Stories weren’t always video, but as cameras and upload speeds improved, video became the dominant medium in many ephemeral spaces. And video stories had two semi-magical properties: They were perfectly suited to endless, mindless scrolling, and they made it really easy to integrate ads. Only a few months after turning on Stories in Instagram, by which point half the platform’s users were already using Stories, Facebook began flooding ads into the product. The semi-randomness of Stories made ads actually seem less intrusive — you’d see a photo of a dog, a video of a hike, an ad for jeans, your friend’s makeup routine, brunch pics, an ad for blush. Video ads felt more premium, took up the whole screen, and were thus far more lucrative for the social platforms.

With apologies to the short, brilliant life of Vine, the six-second video platform that helped invent so much about the video-first social network, it wasn’t until TikTok took off that things really turned again. The platform launched in the US in 2018, but had been popular for a few years in China as Douyin and elsewhere as Musical.ly. TikTok combined the vertical-first format of Stories with the permanence of YouTube, but it also made video easier than ever. It had filters like Instagram and Snapchat, but also supplied a steady stream of video ideas through the platform’s many trends, offered access to music and sound effects, and made it easy to stitch or duet a video.

By defaulting to the purely algorithmic For You page, TikTok also freed creators from caring about curating their profile or worrying about posting too much — you could just pump out videos and trust the algorithm to deliver them. And so that’s what people did. Pretty quickly, TikTok became one of the fastest growing apps on the planet, and its daily usage numbers became the envy of the industry. Instagram may have had more users, but TikTok users spent far more time TikToking.

When TikTok became a phenomenon, just about everyone jumped on the vertical video bandwagon. Reels launched in 2020 and became a core feature of both Instagram and Facebook; YouTube created Shorts a year later. By the end of 2021, Twitter had both launched and killed a similar feature called Fleets. By this point, this kind of full-screen, vertical-scrolling video was part of the lingua franca of the smartphone. At the same time, in a search for ever more engagement, these platforms were learning another lesson from TikTok: to stop relying on your friends to post interesting content, and instead to show you whatever the algorithm thinks you might like. Social networks were gone, replaced by social media — entertainment with a comments section.

Short-form, vertical video has effectively won the internet. Business is booming, and viewers show no sign of tuning out. Meta said in 2024 that Instagram users were spending more than half their time in Reels, and said in 2025 the feature was turning into a $50 billion annual business across Meta’s apps. About 63 percent of young adults and teens are on TikTok, per Pew Research Center, and one in five teens reported being on the app “almost constantly.” YouTube reported 200 billion daily views of Shorts at the end of 2025, and said that Shorts earned more money per watch hour than standard YouTube videos.

The last three or four years have been about relentless standardization in social media. The pace with which these products copy each other, and regress back toward parity, has been absolutely astonishing. First, Shorts and Reels both aped TikTok’s design, its duetting and stitching, and its close relationship with sounds and music. Then they bought into TikTok’s idea of prioritizing content over connection — followers are dead, long live the algorithm. TikTok pushed hard into shopping, then suddenly Reels and Shorts became a lot more shoppable. YouTube began to grow on TVs, and suddenly TikTok and Instagram started investing in its own TV apps. Videos got longer and longer across platforms, to allow more ads. All the apps got really into livestreaming for a while. And micro dramas. They’ve relentlessly copied each other on big things like letting users control their algorithm, and small things like Clear Mode.

As the social platforms spin endlessly around each other, they’ve gotten some surprising company. Company after company started to notice their content floating around social media platforms, often in dubiously legal ways, and tried to take some of the watch time for themselves. Spotify decided it, too, wanted to be a video service, and built a vertical-scrolling feed for users to explore. Disney built a TikTok clone for ESPN and another for Disney Plus, both called Verts. Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount Plus all called their clones Clips.

There are two reasons for the ongoing onslaught of short-form vertical video: time spent and advertising. The endlessly scrolling video feed turns out to be one of the most engrossing forms of entertainment ever devised (to the point that it has become a regulatory problem for the social platforms), and in a relentless competition for eyeballs and attention, it has become everyone’s best idea. In 2024, when Meta switched its default video player to a vertical-first layout across all platforms, the race was officially won.

Meanwhile, as those platforms have captured more of our time and attention, short-form video has become a dominant force of advertising on the internet, which means advertisers are already comfortable making ads designed to go between videos in the feed. And as so many companies turn to AI to do their ad targeting, all they really need is the creative to get started. “So long as clients give us different assets — a six-second ad, a 15-second ad, a long-format, a vertical ad — AI is essentially powering everything else,” YouTube’s Brian Albert told me last year. “From the audiences you’re reaching, to the contextual placements, to the ad that’s actually showing.” The combination of AI and vertical video has become a self-fulfilling prophecy: The more it wins, the easier it becomes for everyone else to get on board, and so it just keeps winning.

Vertical video haters, I have bad news: It’s only going to get worse. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are if anything going to become more short-form and vertical, since those short videos are easier to make and easier to load into endlessly scrolling feeds. Video services used to require you to pick something and press play, but now all they need is for you to open the app and they can start showing you ads. They’re not going to want to go back. Here’s how dominant video is: Facebook is testing a new version of the app that loads a full-screen video feed when you open the app. If that happens, there will be no Facebook — only Reels. After all this time, they’ve trained users to want and expect this kind of fast-paced, instant-gratification entertainment, to the point where even a full-length movie can feel like a chore.

Meanwhile, after years of raising prices, streaming services around the world are hoping they can turn to advertising to keep growing. For a while, they could coast on the back of linear TV, borrowing those ads to run on digital platforms. But a TikTok ad won’t make any sense on Netflix, so Netflix decided the best thing to do is build something that looks more like TikTok. A recent HubSpot report found that short-form video was by a wide margin both the most-used and most successful form of marketing content in 2025, and that it was the format in which marketers planned to invest the most this year.

All that said, there are glimmers of a bigger shift beginning to happen. Fed up with the algorithm, some users are starting to demand the return of friends and family in social media. But more broadly, more and more young people are deciding to put down their phones, resist the invasion of AI into their lives, and look for different kinds of entertainment. Movie theaters are having a big year; one of the year’s most exciting new phones is a flip phone. As long as we live in this era of social media and entertainment, vertical video is going to win. It would take a cultural revolution to stop it — and there might just be one brewing.

  • The best way to understand TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat in particular right now is as a combination of two things: a streaming service and an inbox. Studies have found that the most popular thing to do is watch videos, and the second most popular thing is to send videos to someone else. Actually posting? Way down the list. (YouTube, by the way, is desperately trying to make DMs happen.)
  • If you’ve made it this far and you’re thinking, no way, you’re way overstating it? I’m so sorry to say this, but you might just be old. At this point, YouTube and Facebook cross generations and demographics, but Pew and others have found that TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram are effectively ubiquitous among young people in particular.
  • It’s important to remember that views are lies. Everyone on the internet has an incentive to make their platform seem big and vibrant and popular, and they will invent whatever new metrics they need to do so.
  • New York published a great piece earlier this year about the shifting vibes on YouTube, and the ways in which the creator economy is being unmoored in part by the shift to vertical video. Yeah, the platforms have figured out how to make money from your video feed, but it’s not as simple for creators.
  • All the way back in 2015, The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo made a good case for vertical video. It’s a fun reminder of just how contentious the idea was!
  • You should read my colleague Mia Sato’s story on the clip economy, which turns shows, movies, podcasts, and more into bite-size pieces for social platforms. It’s a weird industry, but it works — and you can see why the streamers want to compete.
  • Here’s a really good breakdown of all the things TikTok got right, from its algorithm to its whole approach to content. Every bit of it has been copied relentlessly ever since.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.

#vertical #video #takeoverColumn,Creators,Facebook,Instagram,Meta,Social Media,Streaming,Tech,The Stepback,TikTok,YouTube">The vertical video takeover is here

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on all things vertical video, follow David Pierce. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.

For a while, every social and media platform had its own identity. YouTube was for clips of TV shows and movies, and the home of so many members of a burgeoning creator community. Instagram was mostly pictures. Netflix was trying to be the on-demand HBO. Facebook was about friends. Twitter was about news. Snapchat was a messaging app.

All these apps did have one important thing in common, though: They were growing up alongside the smartphone. Billions of new people were coming online for the first time, and they began to make content that made sense for the tall, skinny new devices in their hands. Selfies were a vertical art form, both because the photos filled the screen better and because it was just easier to hold the phone and take the photo that way. Some resisted the idea of vertical video for years — they’d argue that our eyes are meant to scan horizontally rather than vertically, and that vertical video looked bad on widescreen laptops. But ultimately phones won, and we hold our phones upright, so our phone experiences turned upright. That includes entertainment.

As has been true so many times, Snap figured this out before anyone. It launched Stories in late 2013 as a slightly more relaxed way to see what your friends are up to. CEO Evan Spiegel called it a “totally new way to share your day with friends — or everyone.” It took off in a massive way, and by the middle of 2014 was the most popular feature on Snapchat. That’s the kind of virality that Mark Zuckerberg tends to notice, and by August of 2016, the feature had been copied more or less exactly into Instagram. Kevin Systrom, then the CEO of Instagram, said of Spiegel and Snapchat that “they deserve all the credit” for Stories. The implication? That this was no longer a proprietary feature of a single social network; it was just in the air. Stories were for everyone. They started showing up on LinkedIn, Tinder, Medium, and so many other places.

Stories weren’t always video, but as cameras and upload speeds improved, video became the dominant medium in many ephemeral spaces. And video stories had two semi-magical properties: They were perfectly suited to endless, mindless scrolling, and they made it really easy to integrate ads. Only a few months after turning on Stories in Instagram, by which point half the platform’s users were already using Stories, Facebook began flooding ads into the product. The semi-randomness of Stories made ads actually seem less intrusive — you’d see a photo of a dog, a video of a hike, an ad for jeans, your friend’s makeup routine, brunch pics, an ad for blush. Video ads felt more premium, took up the whole screen, and were thus far more lucrative for the social platforms.

With apologies to the short, brilliant life of Vine, the six-second video platform that helped invent so much about the video-first social network, it wasn’t until TikTok took off that things really turned again. The platform launched in the US in 2018, but had been popular for a few years in China as Douyin and elsewhere as Musical.ly. TikTok combined the vertical-first format of Stories with the permanence of YouTube, but it also made video easier than ever. It had filters like Instagram and Snapchat, but also supplied a steady stream of video ideas through the platform’s many trends, offered access to music and sound effects, and made it easy to stitch or duet a video.

By defaulting to the purely algorithmic For You page, TikTok also freed creators from caring about curating their profile or worrying about posting too much — you could just pump out videos and trust the algorithm to deliver them. And so that’s what people did. Pretty quickly, TikTok became one of the fastest growing apps on the planet, and its daily usage numbers became the envy of the industry. Instagram may have had more users, but TikTok users spent far more time TikToking.

When TikTok became a phenomenon, just about everyone jumped on the vertical video bandwagon. Reels launched in 2020 and became a core feature of both Instagram and Facebook; YouTube created Shorts a year later. By the end of 2021, Twitter had both launched and killed a similar feature called Fleets. By this point, this kind of full-screen, vertical-scrolling video was part of the lingua franca of the smartphone. At the same time, in a search for ever more engagement, these platforms were learning another lesson from TikTok: to stop relying on your friends to post interesting content, and instead to show you whatever the algorithm thinks you might like. Social networks were gone, replaced by social media — entertainment with a comments section.

Short-form, vertical video has effectively won the internet. Business is booming, and viewers show no sign of tuning out. Meta said in 2024 that Instagram users were spending more than half their time in Reels, and said in 2025 the feature was turning into a $50 billion annual business across Meta’s apps. About 63 percent of young adults and teens are on TikTok, per Pew Research Center, and one in five teens reported being on the app “almost constantly.” YouTube reported 200 billion daily views of Shorts at the end of 2025, and said that Shorts earned more money per watch hour than standard YouTube videos.

The last three or four years have been about relentless standardization in social media. The pace with which these products copy each other, and regress back toward parity, has been absolutely astonishing. First, Shorts and Reels both aped TikTok’s design, its duetting and stitching, and its close relationship with sounds and music. Then they bought into TikTok’s idea of prioritizing content over connection — followers are dead, long live the algorithm. TikTok pushed hard into shopping, then suddenly Reels and Shorts became a lot more shoppable. YouTube began to grow on TVs, and suddenly TikTok and Instagram started investing in its own TV apps. Videos got longer and longer across platforms, to allow more ads. All the apps got really into livestreaming for a while. And micro dramas. They’ve relentlessly copied each other on big things like letting users control their algorithm, and small things like Clear Mode.

As the social platforms spin endlessly around each other, they’ve gotten some surprising company. Company after company started to notice their content floating around social media platforms, often in dubiously legal ways, and tried to take some of the watch time for themselves. Spotify decided it, too, wanted to be a video service, and built a vertical-scrolling feed for users to explore. Disney built a TikTok clone for ESPN and another for Disney Plus, both called Verts. Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount Plus all called their clones Clips.

There are two reasons for the ongoing onslaught of short-form vertical video: time spent and advertising. The endlessly scrolling video feed turns out to be one of the most engrossing forms of entertainment ever devised (to the point that it has become a regulatory problem for the social platforms), and in a relentless competition for eyeballs and attention, it has become everyone’s best idea. In 2024, when Meta switched its default video player to a vertical-first layout across all platforms, the race was officially won.

Meanwhile, as those platforms have captured more of our time and attention, short-form video has become a dominant force of advertising on the internet, which means advertisers are already comfortable making ads designed to go between videos in the feed. And as so many companies turn to AI to do their ad targeting, all they really need is the creative to get started. “So long as clients give us different assets — a six-second ad, a 15-second ad, a long-format, a vertical ad — AI is essentially powering everything else,” YouTube’s Brian Albert told me last year. “From the audiences you’re reaching, to the contextual placements, to the ad that’s actually showing.” The combination of AI and vertical video has become a self-fulfilling prophecy: The more it wins, the easier it becomes for everyone else to get on board, and so it just keeps winning.

Vertical video haters, I have bad news: It’s only going to get worse. TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram are if anything going to become more short-form and vertical, since those short videos are easier to make and easier to load into endlessly scrolling feeds. Video services used to require you to pick something and press play, but now all they need is for you to open the app and they can start showing you ads. They’re not going to want to go back. Here’s how dominant video is: Facebook is testing a new version of the app that loads a full-screen video feed when you open the app. If that happens, there will be no Facebook — only Reels. After all this time, they’ve trained users to want and expect this kind of fast-paced, instant-gratification entertainment, to the point where even a full-length movie can feel like a chore.

Meanwhile, after years of raising prices, streaming services around the world are hoping they can turn to advertising to keep growing. For a while, they could coast on the back of linear TV, borrowing those ads to run on digital platforms. But a TikTok ad won’t make any sense on Netflix, so Netflix decided the best thing to do is build something that looks more like TikTok. A recent HubSpot report found that short-form video was by a wide margin both the most-used and most successful form of marketing content in 2025, and that it was the format in which marketers planned to invest the most this year.

All that said, there are glimmers of a bigger shift beginning to happen. Fed up with the algorithm, some users are starting to demand the return of friends and family in social media. But more broadly, more and more young people are deciding to put down their phones, resist the invasion of AI into their lives, and look for different kinds of entertainment. Movie theaters are having a big year; one of the year’s most exciting new phones is a flip phone. As long as we live in this era of social media and entertainment, vertical video is going to win. It would take a cultural revolution to stop it — and there might just be one brewing.

  • The best way to understand TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat in particular right now is as a combination of two things: a streaming service and an inbox. Studies have found that the most popular thing to do is watch videos, and the second most popular thing is to send videos to someone else. Actually posting? Way down the list. (YouTube, by the way, is desperately trying to make DMs happen.)
  • If you’ve made it this far and you’re thinking, no way, you’re way overstating it? I’m so sorry to say this, but you might just be old. At this point, YouTube and Facebook cross generations and demographics, but Pew and others have found that TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram are effectively ubiquitous among young people in particular.
  • It’s important to remember that views are lies. Everyone on the internet has an incentive to make their platform seem big and vibrant and popular, and they will invent whatever new metrics they need to do so.
  • New York published a great piece earlier this year about the shifting vibes on YouTube, and the ways in which the creator economy is being unmoored in part by the shift to vertical video. Yeah, the platforms have figured out how to make money from your video feed, but it’s not as simple for creators.
  • All the way back in 2015, The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo made a good case for vertical video. It’s a fun reminder of just how contentious the idea was!
  • You should read my colleague Mia Sato’s story on the clip economy, which turns shows, movies, podcasts, and more into bite-size pieces for social platforms. It’s a weird industry, but it works — and you can see why the streamers want to compete.
  • Here’s a really good breakdown of all the things TikTok got right, from its algorithm to its whole approach to content. Every bit of it has been copied relentlessly ever since.
Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
#vertical #video #takeoverColumn,Creators,Facebook,Instagram,Meta,Social Media,Streaming,Tech,The Stepback,TikTok,YouTube

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech…

artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track “Five Years,” which is about, among other things, the end of the world.

“Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want—but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also takes special care to highlight use cases for its controversial smart glasses that are not, say, harassing women while surreptitiously recording them.)

The snippet of “Five Years” used in the ad includes the following lyrics:

I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies

I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare

I had to cram so many things to store everything in there

And all the fat, skinny people

And all the tall, short people

And all the nobody people

And all the somebody people

I never thought I’d need so many people

Perhaps understandably, it skips other parts of the song, including the opening:

News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying

When reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said he “would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about ‘Five Years’ and its meaning: having optimism for the future.” Brennan sent along a 1972 quote about the song that he sourced to BowieBible.com.

“People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism,” reads the quote, which is itself sourced from NME Magazine. “If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like … It’s going to be unbelievably technological.”

Nevertheless, BowieBible.com also notes that the song “speaks of a dystopian nightmare in which Earth enters its final five years, for reasons undisclosed, and the ensuing panic, violence, and attempts at redemption.”

BowieBible.com also quotes from a 2018 interview with drummer Mick Woodmansey: “Well, we chatted about it, and we knew it was about the end of the world and pretty depressing,” Woodmansey said of the song. “I remember when we recorded it, he was actually in tears. He was doing the vocal and he was actually crying.”

According to Jeremy D. Larson, the deputy director of Condé Nast sister publication Pitchfork, taking songs out of context for commercials is a time-honored tradition. He points to a Carnival Cruise ad that uses an Iggy Pop song about heroin addiction. (He also says that since Warner Chappell Music owns Bowie’s catalog, they are the ones with discretion over where his songs end up.)

#Metas #FeelGood #Song #Worlddavid bowie,meta,smart glasses,ads,apocalypse,artificial intelligence"> Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World EndingOn Thursday morning, Meta published an ad to its official Instagram account with the message that artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track “Five Years,” which is about, among other things, the end of the world.“Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want—but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also takes special care to highlight use cases for its controversial smart glasses that are not, say, harassing women while surreptitiously recording them.)The snippet of “Five Years” used in the ad includes the following lyrics:I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodiesI saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVsMy brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spareI had to cram so many things to store everything in thereAnd all the fat, skinny peopleAnd all the tall, short peopleAnd all the nobody peopleAnd all the somebody peopleI never thought I’d need so many peoplePerhaps understandably, it skips other parts of the song, including the opening:News had just come overWe had five years left to cry inNews guy wept and told usEarth was really dyingWhen reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said he “would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about ‘Five Years’ and its meaning: having optimism for the future.” Brennan sent along a 1972 quote about the song that he sourced to BowieBible.com.“People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism,” reads the quote, which is itself sourced from NME Magazine. “If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like … It’s going to be unbelievably technological.”Nevertheless, BowieBible.com also notes that the song “speaks of a dystopian nightmare in which Earth enters its final five years, for reasons undisclosed, and the ensuing panic, violence, and attempts at redemption.”BowieBible.com also quotes from a 2018 interview with drummer Mick Woodmansey: “Well, we chatted about it, and we knew it was about the end of the world and pretty depressing,” Woodmansey said of the song. “I remember when we recorded it, he was actually in tears. He was doing the vocal and he was actually crying.”According to Jeremy D. Larson, the deputy director of Condé Nast sister publication Pitchfork, taking songs out of context for commercials is a time-honored tradition. He points to a Carnival Cruise ad that uses an Iggy Pop song about heroin addiction. (He also says that since Warner Chappell Music owns Bowie’s catalog, they are the ones with discretion over where his songs end up.)#Metas #FeelGood #Song #Worlddavid bowie,meta,smart glasses,ads,apocalypse,artificial intelligence
Tech-news

artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track “Five Years,” which is about, among other things, the end of the world.

“Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want—but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also takes special care to highlight use cases for its controversial smart glasses that are not, say, harassing women while surreptitiously recording them.)

The snippet of “Five Years” used in the ad includes the following lyrics:

I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies

I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare

I had to cram so many things to store everything in there

And all the fat, skinny people

And all the tall, short people

And all the nobody people

And all the somebody people

I never thought I’d need so many people

Perhaps understandably, it skips other parts of the song, including the opening:

News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying

When reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said he “would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about ‘Five Years’ and its meaning: having optimism for the future.” Brennan sent along a 1972 quote about the song that he sourced to BowieBible.com.

“People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism,” reads the quote, which is itself sourced from NME Magazine. “If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like … It’s going to be unbelievably technological.”

Nevertheless, BowieBible.com also notes that the song “speaks of a dystopian nightmare in which Earth enters its final five years, for reasons undisclosed, and the ensuing panic, violence, and attempts at redemption.”

BowieBible.com also quotes from a 2018 interview with drummer Mick Woodmansey: “Well, we chatted about it, and we knew it was about the end of the world and pretty depressing,” Woodmansey said of the song. “I remember when we recorded it, he was actually in tears. He was doing the vocal and he was actually crying.”

According to Jeremy D. Larson, the deputy director of Condé Nast sister publication Pitchfork, taking songs out of context for commercials is a time-honored tradition. He points to a Carnival Cruise ad that uses an Iggy Pop song about heroin addiction. (He also says that since Warner Chappell Music owns Bowie’s catalog, they are the ones with discretion over where his songs end up.)

#Metas #FeelGood #Song #Worlddavid bowie,meta,smart glasses,ads,apocalypse,artificial intelligence">Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World Ending

On Thursday morning, Meta published an ad to its official Instagram account with the message that artificial intelligence will not “make us less connected” or “leave us behind.” It was set to the 1972 David Bowie track “Five Years,” which is about, among other things, the end of the world.

“Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want—but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the narrator says, as a toddler plays with a butterfly, two parents laugh with their infant, and Jalen Brunson waves at the Knicks Championship Parade. (The ad also takes special care to highlight use cases for its controversial smart glasses that are not, say, harassing women while surreptitiously recording them.)

The snippet of “Five Years” used in the ad includes the following lyrics:

I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies

I saw boys, toys, electric irons and TVs

My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare

I had to cram so many things to store everything in there

And all the fat, skinny people

And all the tall, short people

And all the nobody people

And all the somebody people

I never thought I’d need so many people

Perhaps understandably, it skips other parts of the song, including the opening:

News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying

When reached for comment, Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said he “would like to highlight what David Bowie himself said about ‘Five Years’ and its meaning: having optimism for the future.” Brennan sent along a 1972 quote about the song that he sourced to BowieBible.com.

“People are so incredibly serious and scared of the future that I would wish to turn the feeling the other way, into a wave of optimism,” reads the quote, which is itself sourced from NME Magazine. “If one can take the micky out of the future, and what it is going to be like … It’s going to be unbelievably technological.”

Nevertheless, BowieBible.com also notes that the song “speaks of a dystopian nightmare in which Earth enters its final five years, for reasons undisclosed, and the ensuing panic, violence, and attempts at redemption.”

BowieBible.com also quotes from a 2018 interview with drummer Mick Woodmansey: “Well, we chatted about it, and we knew it was about the end of the world and pretty depressing,” Woodmansey said of the song. “I remember when we recorded it, he was actually in tears. He was doing the vocal and he was actually crying.”

According to Jeremy D. Larson, the deputy director of Condé Nast sister publication Pitchfork, taking songs out of context for commercials is a time-honored tradition. He points to a Carnival Cruise ad that uses an Iggy Pop song about heroin addiction. (He also says that since Warner Chappell Music owns Bowie’s catalog, they are the ones with discretion over where his songs end up.)

#Metas #FeelGood #Song #Worlddavid bowie,meta,smart glasses,ads,apocalypse,artificial intelligence

On Thursday morning, Meta published an ad to its official Instagram account with the message…

Glow, a cybersecurity startup founded by former Meta and Snowflake executives, emerged from stealth as a unicorn, betting that artificial intelligence is reshaping how enterprises secure employee devices.

The Palo Alto-headquartered startup on Wednesday said it raised $180 million in an all-equity Series A funding round that valued it at $1.2 billion, with backing from Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Greenoaks, and Redpoint Ventures, alongside participation from Index Ventures, Swish Ventures, Lux Capital, Operator Collective, and Holly Ventures. The investment made Glow one of the latest cybersecurity startups to achieve unicorn status before publicly disclosing revenue metrics.

As more enterprises deploy AI tools and attackers increasingly use generative AI to automate phishing, develop malware, and launch more sophisticated cyberattacks, companies are rethinking how they secure endpoints — from employee laptops to servers and other connected devices. Concerns have intensified since Anthropic unveiled its Mythos AI model, which the company said demonstrated advanced capabilities in identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities, prompting broader debate over AI-assisted cyberattacks. Glow is betting that this shift requires a new approach to endpoint security.

Founded in 2025, Glow is building an endpoint security platform that helps enterprises monitor and control the software, AI agents, and developer tools running on employee devices. The startup said the platform uses specialized AI agents to continuously map enterprise environments, assess risk in real time, and enforce security policies.

“If you think of the past decade, everything was moving to the cloud and SaaS. Suddenly, AI lands on the endpoint in a way we’ve never seen,” co-founder and chief executive Roi Tiger (pictured above, center) said in an interview.

Tiger, a former Meta vice president of engineering, co-founded Glow alongside former Snowflake cybersecurity strategy head Omer Singer (pictured above, left), former Claroty vice president of research and development Ophir Arie (pictured above, right), and former Meta engineering leader Arnon Joseph. The startup’s leadership team also includes chief operating officer Emily Heath, a former chief information security officer at United Airlines and DocuSign who served on the board of Wiz through its $32 billion acquisition by Google and was previously a partner at Cyberstarts.

Even though it has only just emerged from stealth, Glow said it already has paying customers across industries including healthcare, retail, and financial services. However, it declined to disclose customer names and numbers. The startup’s typical deployments, Tiger said, span tens of thousands of employee devices across global organizations.

To power the platform, Glow uses AI models from Anthropic and Google’s Gemini through Amazon Bedrock, while building its own software to provide the models with enterprise context and improve their reliability for security tasks, Tiger told TechCrunch.

Glow’s platform, Tiger said, has already prevented malicious npm packages, third-party software components used to build applications, from being installed in customer environments, identified AI agents attempting to pull in such software, and detected employee devices where endpoint detection and response tools were missing or operating with reduced functionality.

Glow enters a crowded endpoint security market dominated by companies including CrowdStrike, Microsoft, SentinelOne, and Palo Alto Networks. Tiger said existing endpoint detection and response products focus primarily on detecting threats after they emerge, whereas Glow is designed to prevent risky software, AI agents, and developer tools from entering enterprise environments in the first place.

The startup employs nearly 100 people, about 70% of whom are in Israel and the remainder in the U.S. Whether AI-native endpoint security platforms become a distinct category remains to be seen, as enterprises are only beginning to grapple with the security implications of increasingly capable AI models.

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#Glow #emerges #stealth #1.2B #valuation #challenge #endpoint #security #era #TechCrunchGlow,redpoint ventures,Sequoia Capital,Meta,Greenoaks Capital,cyberstarts"> Glow emerges from stealth at .2B valuation to challenge endpoint security in the AI era | TechCrunch Glow, a cybersecurity startup founded by former Meta and Snowflake executives, emerged from stealth as a unicorn, betting that artificial intelligence is reshaping how enterprises secure employee devices. The Palo Alto-headquartered startup on Wednesday said it raised 0 million in an all-equity Series A funding round that valued it at .2 billion, with backing from Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Greenoaks, and Redpoint Ventures, alongside participation from Index Ventures, Swish Ventures, Lux Capital, Operator Collective, and Holly Ventures. The investment made Glow one of the latest cybersecurity startups to achieve unicorn status before publicly disclosing revenue metrics. As more enterprises deploy AI tools and attackers increasingly use generative AI to automate phishing, develop malware, and launch more sophisticated cyberattacks, companies are rethinking how they secure endpoints — from employee laptops to servers and other connected devices. Concerns have intensified since Anthropic unveiled its Mythos AI model, which the company said demonstrated advanced capabilities in identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities, prompting broader debate over AI-assisted cyberattacks. Glow is betting that this shift requires a new approach to endpoint security. Founded in 2025, Glow is building an endpoint security platform that helps enterprises monitor and control the software, AI agents, and developer tools running on employee devices. The startup said the platform uses specialized AI agents to continuously map enterprise environments, assess risk in real time, and enforce security policies. “If you think of the past decade, everything was moving to the cloud and SaaS. Suddenly, AI lands on the endpoint in a way we’ve never seen,” co-founder and chief executive Roi Tiger (pictured above, center) said in an interview. Tiger, a former Meta vice president of engineering, co-founded Glow alongside former Snowflake cybersecurity strategy head Omer Singer (pictured above, left), former Claroty vice president of research and development Ophir Arie (pictured above, right), and former Meta engineering leader Arnon Joseph. The startup’s leadership team also includes chief operating officer Emily Heath, a former chief information security officer at United Airlines and DocuSign who served on the board of Wiz through its billion acquisition by Google and was previously a partner at Cyberstarts. Even though it has only just emerged from stealth, Glow said it already has paying customers across industries including healthcare, retail, and financial services. However, it declined to disclose customer names and numbers. The startup’s typical deployments, Tiger said, span tens of thousands of employee devices across global organizations. To power the platform, Glow uses AI models from Anthropic and Google’s Gemini through Amazon Bedrock, while building its own software to provide the models with enterprise context and improve their reliability for security tasks, Tiger told TechCrunch. Glow’s platform, Tiger said, has already prevented malicious npm packages, third-party software components used to build applications, from being installed in customer environments, identified AI agents attempting to pull in such software, and detected employee devices where endpoint detection and response tools were missing or operating with reduced functionality. Glow enters a crowded endpoint security market dominated by companies including CrowdStrike, Microsoft, SentinelOne, and Palo Alto Networks. Tiger said existing endpoint detection and response products focus primarily on detecting threats after they emerge, whereas Glow is designed to prevent risky software, AI agents, and developer tools from entering enterprise environments in the first place. The startup employs nearly 100 people, about 70% of whom are in Israel and the remainder in the U.S. Whether AI-native endpoint security platforms become a distinct category remains to be seen, as enterprises are only beginning to grapple with the security implications of increasingly capable AI models. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Glow #emerges #stealth #1.2B #valuation #challenge #endpoint #security #era #TechCrunchGlow,redpoint ventures,Sequoia Capital,Meta,Greenoaks Capital,cyberstarts
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Glow, a cybersecurity startup founded by former Meta and Snowflake executives, emerged from stealth as a unicorn, betting that artificial intelligence is reshaping how enterprises secure employee devices.

The Palo Alto-headquartered startup on Wednesday said it raised $180 million in an all-equity Series A funding round that valued it at $1.2 billion, with backing from Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Greenoaks, and Redpoint Ventures, alongside participation from Index Ventures, Swish Ventures, Lux Capital, Operator Collective, and Holly Ventures. The investment made Glow one of the latest cybersecurity startups to achieve unicorn status before publicly disclosing revenue metrics.

As more enterprises deploy AI tools and attackers increasingly use generative AI to automate phishing, develop malware, and launch more sophisticated cyberattacks, companies are rethinking how they secure endpoints — from employee laptops to servers and other connected devices. Concerns have intensified since Anthropic unveiled its Mythos AI model, which the company said demonstrated advanced capabilities in identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities, prompting broader debate over AI-assisted cyberattacks. Glow is betting that this shift requires a new approach to endpoint security.

Founded in 2025, Glow is building an endpoint security platform that helps enterprises monitor and control the software, AI agents, and developer tools running on employee devices. The startup said the platform uses specialized AI agents to continuously map enterprise environments, assess risk in real time, and enforce security policies.

“If you think of the past decade, everything was moving to the cloud and SaaS. Suddenly, AI lands on the endpoint in a way we’ve never seen,” co-founder and chief executive Roi Tiger (pictured above, center) said in an interview.

Tiger, a former Meta vice president of engineering, co-founded Glow alongside former Snowflake cybersecurity strategy head Omer Singer (pictured above, left), former Claroty vice president of research and development Ophir Arie (pictured above, right), and former Meta engineering leader Arnon Joseph. The startup’s leadership team also includes chief operating officer Emily Heath, a former chief information security officer at United Airlines and DocuSign who served on the board of Wiz through its $32 billion acquisition by Google and was previously a partner at Cyberstarts.

Even though it has only just emerged from stealth, Glow said it already has paying customers across industries including healthcare, retail, and financial services. However, it declined to disclose customer names and numbers. The startup’s typical deployments, Tiger said, span tens of thousands of employee devices across global organizations.

To power the platform, Glow uses AI models from Anthropic and Google’s Gemini through Amazon Bedrock, while building its own software to provide the models with enterprise context and improve their reliability for security tasks, Tiger told TechCrunch.

Glow’s platform, Tiger said, has already prevented malicious npm packages, third-party software components used to build applications, from being installed in customer environments, identified AI agents attempting to pull in such software, and detected employee devices where endpoint detection and response tools were missing or operating with reduced functionality.

Glow enters a crowded endpoint security market dominated by companies including CrowdStrike, Microsoft, SentinelOne, and Palo Alto Networks. Tiger said existing endpoint detection and response products focus primarily on detecting threats after they emerge, whereas Glow is designed to prevent risky software, AI agents, and developer tools from entering enterprise environments in the first place.

The startup employs nearly 100 people, about 70% of whom are in Israel and the remainder in the U.S. Whether AI-native endpoint security platforms become a distinct category remains to be seen, as enterprises are only beginning to grapple with the security implications of increasingly capable AI models.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#Glow #emerges #stealth #1.2B #valuation #challenge #endpoint #security #era #TechCrunchGlow,redpoint ventures,Sequoia Capital,Meta,Greenoaks Capital,cyberstarts">Glow emerges from stealth at $1.2B valuation to challenge endpoint security in the AI era | TechCrunch

Glow, a cybersecurity startup founded by former Meta and Snowflake executives, emerged from stealth as a unicorn, betting that artificial intelligence is reshaping how enterprises secure employee devices.

The Palo Alto-headquartered startup on Wednesday said it raised $180 million in an all-equity Series A funding round that valued it at $1.2 billion, with backing from Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Greenoaks, and Redpoint Ventures, alongside participation from Index Ventures, Swish Ventures, Lux Capital, Operator Collective, and Holly Ventures. The investment made Glow one of the latest cybersecurity startups to achieve unicorn status before publicly disclosing revenue metrics.

As more enterprises deploy AI tools and attackers increasingly use generative AI to automate phishing, develop malware, and launch more sophisticated cyberattacks, companies are rethinking how they secure endpoints — from employee laptops to servers and other connected devices. Concerns have intensified since Anthropic unveiled its Mythos AI model, which the company said demonstrated advanced capabilities in identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities, prompting broader debate over AI-assisted cyberattacks. Glow is betting that this shift requires a new approach to endpoint security.

Founded in 2025, Glow is building an endpoint security platform that helps enterprises monitor and control the software, AI agents, and developer tools running on employee devices. The startup said the platform uses specialized AI agents to continuously map enterprise environments, assess risk in real time, and enforce security policies.

“If you think of the past decade, everything was moving to the cloud and SaaS. Suddenly, AI lands on the endpoint in a way we’ve never seen,” co-founder and chief executive Roi Tiger (pictured above, center) said in an interview.

Tiger, a former Meta vice president of engineering, co-founded Glow alongside former Snowflake cybersecurity strategy head Omer Singer (pictured above, left), former Claroty vice president of research and development Ophir Arie (pictured above, right), and former Meta engineering leader Arnon Joseph. The startup’s leadership team also includes chief operating officer Emily Heath, a former chief information security officer at United Airlines and DocuSign who served on the board of Wiz through its $32 billion acquisition by Google and was previously a partner at Cyberstarts.

Even though it has only just emerged from stealth, Glow said it already has paying customers across industries including healthcare, retail, and financial services. However, it declined to disclose customer names and numbers. The startup’s typical deployments, Tiger said, span tens of thousands of employee devices across global organizations.

To power the platform, Glow uses AI models from Anthropic and Google’s Gemini through Amazon Bedrock, while building its own software to provide the models with enterprise context and improve their reliability for security tasks, Tiger told TechCrunch.

Glow’s platform, Tiger said, has already prevented malicious npm packages, third-party software components used to build applications, from being installed in customer environments, identified AI agents attempting to pull in such software, and detected employee devices where endpoint detection and response tools were missing or operating with reduced functionality.

Glow enters a crowded endpoint security market dominated by companies including CrowdStrike, Microsoft, SentinelOne, and Palo Alto Networks. Tiger said existing endpoint detection and response products focus primarily on detecting threats after they emerge, whereas Glow is designed to prevent risky software, AI agents, and developer tools from entering enterprise environments in the first place.

The startup employs nearly 100 people, about 70% of whom are in Israel and the remainder in the U.S. Whether AI-native endpoint security platforms become a distinct category remains to be seen, as enterprises are only beginning to grapple with the security implications of increasingly capable AI models.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#Glow #emerges #stealth #1.2B #valuation #challenge #endpoint #security #era #TechCrunchGlow,redpoint ventures,Sequoia Capital,Meta,Greenoaks Capital,cyberstarts

Glow, a cybersecurity startup founded by former Meta and Snowflake executives, emerged from stealth as…

according to the Financial Times. The wearer could then ask Meta AI about the captured audio and images.

However, the images and audio might not be directly available to the user. Here’s how the FT describes one way the glasses could use the data:

In one proposed system, raw footage and audio would not be stored by Meta or made available to the user, several people said. Instead, the metadata from that audio and images would be extracted and uploaded to the server for Meta’s AI to query, which proponents argue would have fewer privacy implications.

But currently, Meta is planning for the LED recording indicator to remain off in “super sensing” mode, the FT reports. In a July 2025 whitepaper, the company said that it would reserve the LED indicator for “active capture” scenarios where the user is saving photos or videos, and leave it off during “AI Feature” use — such as scanning a menu — to avoid users becoming too used to the indicator. (If the indicator was on during the “super sensing” mode, it might also be harder to know when the glasses are actually recording video.)

Meta is also discussing if it would use the captured data for training its AI models. It may also bring the “super sensing” features to glasses it has already released, the FT says.

“While we don’t comment on internal prototypes, we’re committed to getting our glasses right because they need to be loved by both people wearing them and those around them,” Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold says in a statement to The Verge. Arnold also notes that “Our approach has been to develop new technologies that will help people throughout their day, with privacy built in from the ground up.”

Meta hasn’t been shy about some type of always-aware glasses being a possibility. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call, said that he was “really excited to see the glasses evolve from being able to answer questions to being able to be a personal agent that’s with you all day long, helping you remember things and achieve your goals.” In a March blog post about new Ray-Ban Meta glasses, the company wrote that “with ongoing software updates, Meta AI on glasses will transition from something you have to prompt with a question each time, to a more continuous, in-the-moment assistant that can help throughout the day.”

#Meta #reportedly #working #smart #glasses #recording #timeGadgets,Meta,News,Privacy,Tech,Wearable"> Meta is reportedly working on smart glasses that would be recording all the timeMeta might be the next company to make an always-on AI wearable. The company is working on prototype “super sensing” always-aware smart glasses that could continuously record audio and snap photos “every few seconds,” according to the Financial Times. The wearer could then ask Meta AI about the captured audio and images.However, the images and audio might not be directly available to the user. Here’s how the FT describes one way the glasses could use the data:In one proposed system, raw footage and audio would not be stored by Meta or made available to the user, several people said. Instead, the metadata from that audio and images would be extracted and uploaded to the server for Meta’s AI to query, which proponents argue would have fewer privacy implications.But currently, Meta is planning for the LED recording indicator to remain off in “super sensing” mode, the FT reports. In a July 2025 whitepaper, the company said that it would reserve the LED indicator for “active capture” scenarios where the user is saving photos or videos, and leave it off during “AI Feature” use — such as scanning a menu — to avoid users becoming too used to the indicator. (If the indicator was on during the “super sensing” mode, it might also be harder to know when the glasses are actually recording video.)Meta is also discussing if it would use the captured data for training its AI models. It may also bring the “super sensing” features to glasses it has already released, the FT says.“While we don’t comment on internal prototypes, we’re committed to getting our glasses right because they need to be loved by both people wearing them and those around them,” Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold says in a statement to The Verge. Arnold also notes that “Our approach has been to develop new technologies that will help people throughout their day, with privacy built in from the ground up.”Meta hasn’t been shy about some type of always-aware glasses being a possibility. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call, said that he was “really excited to see the glasses evolve from being able to answer questions to being able to be a personal agent that’s with you all day long, helping you remember things and achieve your goals.” In a March blog post about new Ray-Ban Meta glasses, the company wrote that “with ongoing software updates, Meta AI on glasses will transition from something you have to prompt with a question each time, to a more continuous, in-the-moment assistant that can help throughout the day.”#Meta #reportedly #working #smart #glasses #recording #timeGadgets,Meta,News,Privacy,Tech,Wearable
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according to the Financial Times. The wearer could then ask Meta AI about the captured audio and images.

However, the images and audio might not be directly available to the user. Here’s how the FT describes one way the glasses could use the data:

In one proposed system, raw footage and audio would not be stored by Meta or made available to the user, several people said. Instead, the metadata from that audio and images would be extracted and uploaded to the server for Meta’s AI to query, which proponents argue would have fewer privacy implications.

But currently, Meta is planning for the LED recording indicator to remain off in “super sensing” mode, the FT reports. In a July 2025 whitepaper, the company said that it would reserve the LED indicator for “active capture” scenarios where the user is saving photos or videos, and leave it off during “AI Feature” use — such as scanning a menu — to avoid users becoming too used to the indicator. (If the indicator was on during the “super sensing” mode, it might also be harder to know when the glasses are actually recording video.)

Meta is also discussing if it would use the captured data for training its AI models. It may also bring the “super sensing” features to glasses it has already released, the FT says.

“While we don’t comment on internal prototypes, we’re committed to getting our glasses right because they need to be loved by both people wearing them and those around them,” Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold says in a statement to The Verge. Arnold also notes that “Our approach has been to develop new technologies that will help people throughout their day, with privacy built in from the ground up.”

Meta hasn’t been shy about some type of always-aware glasses being a possibility. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call, said that he was “really excited to see the glasses evolve from being able to answer questions to being able to be a personal agent that’s with you all day long, helping you remember things and achieve your goals.” In a March blog post about new Ray-Ban Meta glasses, the company wrote that “with ongoing software updates, Meta AI on glasses will transition from something you have to prompt with a question each time, to a more continuous, in-the-moment assistant that can help throughout the day.”

#Meta #reportedly #working #smart #glasses #recording #timeGadgets,Meta,News,Privacy,Tech,Wearable">Meta is reportedly working on smart glasses that would be recording all the time

Meta might be the next company to make an always-on AI wearable. The company is working on prototype “super sensing” always-aware smart glasses that could continuously record audio and snap photos “every few seconds,” according to the Financial Times. The wearer could then ask Meta AI about the captured audio and images.

However, the images and audio might not be directly available to the user. Here’s how the FT describes one way the glasses could use the data:

In one proposed system, raw footage and audio would not be stored by Meta or made available to the user, several people said. Instead, the metadata from that audio and images would be extracted and uploaded to the server for Meta’s AI to query, which proponents argue would have fewer privacy implications.

But currently, Meta is planning for the LED recording indicator to remain off in “super sensing” mode, the FT reports. In a July 2025 whitepaper, the company said that it would reserve the LED indicator for “active capture” scenarios where the user is saving photos or videos, and leave it off during “AI Feature” use — such as scanning a menu — to avoid users becoming too used to the indicator. (If the indicator was on during the “super sensing” mode, it might also be harder to know when the glasses are actually recording video.)

Meta is also discussing if it would use the captured data for training its AI models. It may also bring the “super sensing” features to glasses it has already released, the FT says.

“While we don’t comment on internal prototypes, we’re committed to getting our glasses right because they need to be loved by both people wearing them and those around them,” Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold says in a statement to The Verge. Arnold also notes that “Our approach has been to develop new technologies that will help people throughout their day, with privacy built in from the ground up.”

Meta hasn’t been shy about some type of always-aware glasses being a possibility. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call, said that he was “really excited to see the glasses evolve from being able to answer questions to being able to be a personal agent that’s with you all day long, helping you remember things and achieve your goals.” In a March blog post about new Ray-Ban Meta glasses, the company wrote that “with ongoing software updates, Meta AI on glasses will transition from something you have to prompt with a question each time, to a more continuous, in-the-moment assistant that can help throughout the day.”

#Meta #reportedly #working #smart #glasses #recording #timeGadgets,Meta,News,Privacy,Tech,Wearable

Meta might be the next company to make an always-on AI wearable. The company is…

Solos’ new smart glasses are the audio-only AirGo A6 and the second iteration of its camera-enabled glasses, the Solos AirGo V2. The latter was first announced last year as an effort to directly “outshine Meta.” These $299 glasses do just about everything you’d expect from Meta’s new $299 Meta Smartglasses, including photo and video capture, playing music, and interacting with an AI-powered assistant that can see what you see. They can be fitted with prescription lenses and have a 10- to 12-hour battery life.

The AirGo V2 glasses can also be paired with a new Privacy Kit, a set of clip-on accessories that let wearers control what their camera glasses can access. The clip-on privacy shield blocks the cameras from view and from recording the world, allowing you to keep wearing the glasses in audio-only mode. There’s also a clip-on polarized lens, and the full kit of modular options costs $79.

Selling a privacy kit as a clip-on accessory is perhaps not the most effective way to stave off concerns about people running around with small, discreet cameras on their faces. Having to buy a separate item, then clip it on and off every time you want to use or disable the camera, is a lot of extra steps that will likely keep people from bothering with privacy at all. Also, there isn’t anything stopping bad actors from removing the clip-on blockers later in an interaction—say, after entering an event that prohibits camera recording.

Image may contain Cutlery Fork Blade Razor and Weapon

Courtesy of Solos Smartglasses

Solos’ first camera-enabled glasses, the Solos AirGo Vision, launched in 2024. WIRED put them in the “Don’t Bother” section of our Best Smart Glasses gallery, citing some decent design choices, albeit ones held back by middling media capture quality, frustrating touch controls, and a power-hungry app that demands too many permissions. All in all, the glasses haven’t quite reached the standard Meta has set with its popular smart glasses.

Meta has been the dominant force in the smart glasses market, but other big companies are trying to fill in the cracks. Google and Samsung have a partnership to build out Google’s Android XR platform, with new glasses arriving later this year from eyewear brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Apple has reportedly been building its own smart glasses as well.

Some smaller companies are adjusting their target markets to counter Meta, like Even Realities and its camera-free glasses. Solos’ reemphasis on privacy comes after a period of widespread criticism of Meta’s glasses. The devices have been called creepy “pervert glasses” and were criticized after the company silently added face recognition code to its glasses, then quickly removed it after public outcry following a WIRED report. Meta hasn’t done itself any favors since then, announcing last week that it will start charging for features on its smart glasses that have previously been free.

Meta has acknowledged that a market for audio-only smart glasses exists, as CTO Andrew Bosworth said in a private Q&A session with media that he thinks there is “market demand for that product for sure.” But Meta hasn’t moved away from its camera-forward spectacles yet. It may very well make audio-only glasses in the future. Until then, companies like Solos are eager to chip away at that market.

#Smart #Glasses #Solos #Privacy #Shield #Camerascameras,design,smart glasses,wearables,artificial intelligence,meta"> These New Smart Glasses From Solos Come With a Privacy Shield for the CamerasSmart glasses company Solos has long focused on audio-only smart glasses. On Tuesday, it announced two new pairs of glasses, one of which has a camera—but you can buy a separate accessory to hide the camera for privacy’s sake.Solos’ new smart glasses are the audio-only AirGo A6 and the second iteration of its camera-enabled glasses, the Solos AirGo V2. The latter was first announced last year as an effort to directly “outshine Meta.” These 9 glasses do just about everything you’d expect from Meta’s new 9 Meta Smartglasses, including photo and video capture, playing music, and interacting with an AI-powered assistant that can see what you see. They can be fitted with prescription lenses and have a 10- to 12-hour battery life.The AirGo V2 glasses can also be paired with a new Privacy Kit, a set of clip-on accessories that let wearers control what their camera glasses can access. The clip-on privacy shield blocks the cameras from view and from recording the world, allowing you to keep wearing the glasses in audio-only mode. There’s also a clip-on polarized lens, and the full kit of modular options costs .Selling a privacy kit as a clip-on accessory is perhaps not the most effective way to stave off concerns about people running around with small, discreet cameras on their faces. Having to buy a separate item, then clip it on and off every time you want to use or disable the camera, is a lot of extra steps that will likely keep people from bothering with privacy at all. Also, there isn’t anything stopping bad actors from removing the clip-on blockers later in an interaction—say, after entering an event that prohibits camera recording.Courtesy of Solos SmartglassesSolos’ first camera-enabled glasses, the Solos AirGo Vision, launched in 2024. WIRED put them in the “Don’t Bother” section of our Best Smart Glasses gallery, citing some decent design choices, albeit ones held back by middling media capture quality, frustrating touch controls, and a power-hungry app that demands too many permissions. All in all, the glasses haven’t quite reached the standard Meta has set with its popular smart glasses.Meta has been the dominant force in the smart glasses market, but other big companies are trying to fill in the cracks. Google and Samsung have a partnership to build out Google’s Android XR platform, with new glasses arriving later this year from eyewear brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Apple has reportedly been building its own smart glasses as well.Some smaller companies are adjusting their target markets to counter Meta, like Even Realities and its camera-free glasses. Solos’ reemphasis on privacy comes after a period of widespread criticism of Meta’s glasses. The devices have been called creepy “pervert glasses” and were criticized after the company silently added face recognition code to its glasses, then quickly removed it after public outcry following a WIRED report. Meta hasn’t done itself any favors since then, announcing last week that it will start charging for features on its smart glasses that have previously been free.Meta has acknowledged that a market for audio-only smart glasses exists, as CTO Andrew Bosworth said in a private Q&A session with media that he thinks there is “market demand for that product for sure.” But Meta hasn’t moved away from its camera-forward spectacles yet. It may very well make audio-only glasses in the future. Until then, companies like Solos are eager to chip away at that market.#Smart #Glasses #Solos #Privacy #Shield #Camerascameras,design,smart glasses,wearables,artificial intelligence,meta
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Solos’ new smart glasses are the audio-only AirGo A6 and the second iteration of its camera-enabled glasses, the Solos AirGo V2. The latter was first announced last year as an effort to directly “outshine Meta.” These $299 glasses do just about everything you’d expect from Meta’s new $299 Meta Smartglasses, including photo and video capture, playing music, and interacting with an AI-powered assistant that can see what you see. They can be fitted with prescription lenses and have a 10- to 12-hour battery life.

The AirGo V2 glasses can also be paired with a new Privacy Kit, a set of clip-on accessories that let wearers control what their camera glasses can access. The clip-on privacy shield blocks the cameras from view and from recording the world, allowing you to keep wearing the glasses in audio-only mode. There’s also a clip-on polarized lens, and the full kit of modular options costs $79.

Selling a privacy kit as a clip-on accessory is perhaps not the most effective way to stave off concerns about people running around with small, discreet cameras on their faces. Having to buy a separate item, then clip it on and off every time you want to use or disable the camera, is a lot of extra steps that will likely keep people from bothering with privacy at all. Also, there isn’t anything stopping bad actors from removing the clip-on blockers later in an interaction—say, after entering an event that prohibits camera recording.

Image may contain Cutlery Fork Blade Razor and Weapon

Courtesy of Solos Smartglasses

Solos’ first camera-enabled glasses, the Solos AirGo Vision, launched in 2024. WIRED put them in the “Don’t Bother” section of our Best Smart Glasses gallery, citing some decent design choices, albeit ones held back by middling media capture quality, frustrating touch controls, and a power-hungry app that demands too many permissions. All in all, the glasses haven’t quite reached the standard Meta has set with its popular smart glasses.

Meta has been the dominant force in the smart glasses market, but other big companies are trying to fill in the cracks. Google and Samsung have a partnership to build out Google’s Android XR platform, with new glasses arriving later this year from eyewear brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Apple has reportedly been building its own smart glasses as well.

Some smaller companies are adjusting their target markets to counter Meta, like Even Realities and its camera-free glasses. Solos’ reemphasis on privacy comes after a period of widespread criticism of Meta’s glasses. The devices have been called creepy “pervert glasses” and were criticized after the company silently added face recognition code to its glasses, then quickly removed it after public outcry following a WIRED report. Meta hasn’t done itself any favors since then, announcing last week that it will start charging for features on its smart glasses that have previously been free.

Meta has acknowledged that a market for audio-only smart glasses exists, as CTO Andrew Bosworth said in a private Q&A session with media that he thinks there is “market demand for that product for sure.” But Meta hasn’t moved away from its camera-forward spectacles yet. It may very well make audio-only glasses in the future. Until then, companies like Solos are eager to chip away at that market.

#Smart #Glasses #Solos #Privacy #Shield #Camerascameras,design,smart glasses,wearables,artificial intelligence,meta">These New Smart Glasses From Solos Come With a Privacy Shield for the Cameras

Smart glasses company Solos has long focused on audio-only smart glasses. On Tuesday, it announced two new pairs of glasses, one of which has a camera—but you can buy a separate accessory to hide the camera for privacy’s sake.

Solos’ new smart glasses are the audio-only AirGo A6 and the second iteration of its camera-enabled glasses, the Solos AirGo V2. The latter was first announced last year as an effort to directly “outshine Meta.” These $299 glasses do just about everything you’d expect from Meta’s new $299 Meta Smartglasses, including photo and video capture, playing music, and interacting with an AI-powered assistant that can see what you see. They can be fitted with prescription lenses and have a 10- to 12-hour battery life.

The AirGo V2 glasses can also be paired with a new Privacy Kit, a set of clip-on accessories that let wearers control what their camera glasses can access. The clip-on privacy shield blocks the cameras from view and from recording the world, allowing you to keep wearing the glasses in audio-only mode. There’s also a clip-on polarized lens, and the full kit of modular options costs $79.

Selling a privacy kit as a clip-on accessory is perhaps not the most effective way to stave off concerns about people running around with small, discreet cameras on their faces. Having to buy a separate item, then clip it on and off every time you want to use or disable the camera, is a lot of extra steps that will likely keep people from bothering with privacy at all. Also, there isn’t anything stopping bad actors from removing the clip-on blockers later in an interaction—say, after entering an event that prohibits camera recording.

Image may contain Cutlery Fork Blade Razor and Weapon

Courtesy of Solos Smartglasses

Solos’ first camera-enabled glasses, the Solos AirGo Vision, launched in 2024. WIRED put them in the “Don’t Bother” section of our Best Smart Glasses gallery, citing some decent design choices, albeit ones held back by middling media capture quality, frustrating touch controls, and a power-hungry app that demands too many permissions. All in all, the glasses haven’t quite reached the standard Meta has set with its popular smart glasses.

Meta has been the dominant force in the smart glasses market, but other big companies are trying to fill in the cracks. Google and Samsung have a partnership to build out Google’s Android XR platform, with new glasses arriving later this year from eyewear brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. Apple has reportedly been building its own smart glasses as well.

Some smaller companies are adjusting their target markets to counter Meta, like Even Realities and its camera-free glasses. Solos’ reemphasis on privacy comes after a period of widespread criticism of Meta’s glasses. The devices have been called creepy “pervert glasses” and were criticized after the company silently added face recognition code to its glasses, then quickly removed it after public outcry following a WIRED report. Meta hasn’t done itself any favors since then, announcing last week that it will start charging for features on its smart glasses that have previously been free.

Meta has acknowledged that a market for audio-only smart glasses exists, as CTO Andrew Bosworth said in a private Q&A session with media that he thinks there is “market demand for that product for sure.” But Meta hasn’t moved away from its camera-forward spectacles yet. It may very well make audio-only glasses in the future. Until then, companies like Solos are eager to chip away at that market.

#Smart #Glasses #Solos #Privacy #Shield #Camerascameras,design,smart glasses,wearables,artificial intelligence,meta

Smart glasses company Solos has long focused on audio-only smart glasses. On Tuesday, it announced…

WIRED discovered code in the public-facing Meta AI app, suggesting that Meta was gearing up to debut a face recognition feature in its consumer smart glasses, technology that may have been trained by a company that builds surveillance tools for the US military and police departments. After WIRED’s report, Meta deleted the code, and none of this technology is present in the new Meta Glasses. Ankit Brahmbhatt, senior director of Product Management for AI Glasses at Meta, tells WIRED there are “no plans for facial recognition,” as it’s not the focus for what the company is building here.

Meta’s goal with these glasses is to get them onto more faces. “It’s more than just whether they fit—fit and comfort are extremely critical to get right—but it’s also your personal brand,” Bristol says. “It’s a really important decision if we want people to wear them as daily driver glasses.” If more people start wearing these Meta Glasses, that means more people are using Meta AI.

Bristol and Bosworth both lamented that with many of today’s AI tools, you have to supply the context manually, whether by providing a picture, document, or search query. With smart glasses, the AI assistant sees what you’re seeing, and that’s one less burden on your part. “It’s not that the thing isn’t smart enough—sometimes that’s a problem—it’s the amount of work I have to do to get it up to speed,” Bosworth says.

But making smart glasses comfier is just one step. Many people are still concerned about the privacy oversteps made possible by wearable cameras that can discreetly record the user’s surroundings. Bosworth believes such anxieties are akin to what happened when smartphones first put high-quality cameras in our pockets.

“There’s this social norming thing that has to happen,” he says. “The glasses are very popular … that doesn’t mean we aren’t worried about every corner case.”

The new Meta Glasses arrive at a turbulent time for the company’s relationship with its workforce. Bosworth himself sent an internal memo to employees last week promising better communication, stability, and workplace perks to improve morale, which is at an all-time low.

#Metas #Smart #Glasses #Sale #Todaymeta,smart glasses,design,wearables,cameras"> Meta’s Very Own Smart Glasses Go on Sale Today for 9Speaking of, Bosworth says Meta has heard feedback that some folks don’t care for the camera capabilities on its smart glasses and would prefer audio-only glasses. “There’s a market demand for that product for sure.” Bosworth then said, “one thing at a time.”The Meta Fury. Photograph: Julian ChokkattuEarlier this month, WIRED discovered code in the public-facing Meta AI app, suggesting that Meta was gearing up to debut a face recognition feature in its consumer smart glasses, technology that may have been trained by a company that builds surveillance tools for the US military and police departments. After WIRED’s report, Meta deleted the code, and none of this technology is present in the new Meta Glasses. Ankit Brahmbhatt, senior director of Product Management for AI Glasses at Meta, tells WIRED there are “no plans for facial recognition,” as it’s not the focus for what the company is building here.Meta’s goal with these glasses is to get them onto more faces. “It’s more than just whether they fit—fit and comfort are extremely critical to get right—but it’s also your personal brand,” Bristol says. “It’s a really important decision if we want people to wear them as daily driver glasses.” If more people start wearing these Meta Glasses, that means more people are using Meta AI.Bristol and Bosworth both lamented that with many of today’s AI tools, you have to supply the context manually, whether by providing a picture, document, or search query. With smart glasses, the AI assistant sees what you’re seeing, and that’s one less burden on your part. “It’s not that the thing isn’t smart enough—sometimes that’s a problem—it’s the amount of work I have to do to get it up to speed,” Bosworth says.But making smart glasses comfier is just one step. Many people are still concerned about the privacy oversteps made possible by wearable cameras that can discreetly record the user’s surroundings. Bosworth believes such anxieties are akin to what happened when smartphones first put high-quality cameras in our pockets.“There’s this social norming thing that has to happen,” he says. “The glasses are very popular … that doesn’t mean we aren’t worried about every corner case.”The new Meta Glasses arrive at a turbulent time for the company’s relationship with its workforce. Bosworth himself sent an internal memo to employees last week promising better communication, stability, and workplace perks to improve morale, which is at an all-time low.#Metas #Smart #Glasses #Sale #Todaymeta,smart glasses,design,wearables,cameras
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WIRED discovered code in the public-facing Meta AI app, suggesting that Meta was gearing up to debut a face recognition feature in its consumer smart glasses, technology that may have been trained by a company that builds surveillance tools for the US military and police departments. After WIRED’s report, Meta deleted the code, and none of this technology is present in the new Meta Glasses. Ankit Brahmbhatt, senior director of Product Management for AI Glasses at Meta, tells WIRED there are “no plans for facial recognition,” as it’s not the focus for what the company is building here.

Meta’s goal with these glasses is to get them onto more faces. “It’s more than just whether they fit—fit and comfort are extremely critical to get right—but it’s also your personal brand,” Bristol says. “It’s a really important decision if we want people to wear them as daily driver glasses.” If more people start wearing these Meta Glasses, that means more people are using Meta AI.

Bristol and Bosworth both lamented that with many of today’s AI tools, you have to supply the context manually, whether by providing a picture, document, or search query. With smart glasses, the AI assistant sees what you’re seeing, and that’s one less burden on your part. “It’s not that the thing isn’t smart enough—sometimes that’s a problem—it’s the amount of work I have to do to get it up to speed,” Bosworth says.

But making smart glasses comfier is just one step. Many people are still concerned about the privacy oversteps made possible by wearable cameras that can discreetly record the user’s surroundings. Bosworth believes such anxieties are akin to what happened when smartphones first put high-quality cameras in our pockets.

“There’s this social norming thing that has to happen,” he says. “The glasses are very popular … that doesn’t mean we aren’t worried about every corner case.”

The new Meta Glasses arrive at a turbulent time for the company’s relationship with its workforce. Bosworth himself sent an internal memo to employees last week promising better communication, stability, and workplace perks to improve morale, which is at an all-time low.

#Metas #Smart #Glasses #Sale #Todaymeta,smart glasses,design,wearables,cameras">Meta’s Very Own Smart Glasses Go on Sale Today for $299

Speaking of, Bosworth says Meta has heard feedback that some folks don’t care for the camera capabilities on its smart glasses and would prefer audio-only glasses. “There’s a market demand for that product for sure.” Bosworth then said, “one thing at a time.”

Image may contain Accessories Glasses and Sunglasses

The Meta Fury.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Earlier this month, WIRED discovered code in the public-facing Meta AI app, suggesting that Meta was gearing up to debut a face recognition feature in its consumer smart glasses, technology that may have been trained by a company that builds surveillance tools for the US military and police departments. After WIRED’s report, Meta deleted the code, and none of this technology is present in the new Meta Glasses. Ankit Brahmbhatt, senior director of Product Management for AI Glasses at Meta, tells WIRED there are “no plans for facial recognition,” as it’s not the focus for what the company is building here.

Meta’s goal with these glasses is to get them onto more faces. “It’s more than just whether they fit—fit and comfort are extremely critical to get right—but it’s also your personal brand,” Bristol says. “It’s a really important decision if we want people to wear them as daily driver glasses.” If more people start wearing these Meta Glasses, that means more people are using Meta AI.

Bristol and Bosworth both lamented that with many of today’s AI tools, you have to supply the context manually, whether by providing a picture, document, or search query. With smart glasses, the AI assistant sees what you’re seeing, and that’s one less burden on your part. “It’s not that the thing isn’t smart enough—sometimes that’s a problem—it’s the amount of work I have to do to get it up to speed,” Bosworth says.

But making smart glasses comfier is just one step. Many people are still concerned about the privacy oversteps made possible by wearable cameras that can discreetly record the user’s surroundings. Bosworth believes such anxieties are akin to what happened when smartphones first put high-quality cameras in our pockets.

“There’s this social norming thing that has to happen,” he says. “The glasses are very popular … that doesn’t mean we aren’t worried about every corner case.”

The new Meta Glasses arrive at a turbulent time for the company’s relationship with its workforce. Bosworth himself sent an internal memo to employees last week promising better communication, stability, and workplace perks to improve morale, which is at an all-time low.

#Metas #Smart #Glasses #Sale #Todaymeta,smart glasses,design,wearables,cameras

Speaking of, Bosworth says Meta has heard feedback that some folks don't care for the…

roughly two months ago on national security grounds.

Meta has cut Manus off from its internal systems, Bloomberg reported, preventing employees from using Manus tools for internal projects as the two companies move toward a full separation.

Meanwhile, according to May reports, the co-founders of Manus have held preliminary discussions about raising approximately $1 billion from outside investors to reclaim the startup from Meta, a move that could pave the way for a Chinese joint venture structure and an eventual listing in Hong Kong, a venue that has seen a surge in AI listings this year for Chinese AI startups like MiniMax and Zhipu.

What was supposed to be a landmark exit for Chinese AI is quickly unraveling. The move underscores Beijing’s determination to retain control over strategically sensitive technology, regardless of a company’s offshore incorporation.

In addition to the forced divestiture, Chinese authorities have since expanded travel restrictions to researchers and executives at private firms, requiring government approval before heading abroad. China is also tightening its grip on foreign capital, with reports indicating that top AI firms, including Moonshot AI, StepFun, and ByteDance, will need government sign-off before accepting U.S. investment, adding another layer to Beijing’s sweeping effort to control its AI sector.

Even as Meta moves to sever ties with Manus, the agentic AI startup has continued to ship new features, rolling out integrations with Similarweb and Shopify.

Manus drew widespread attention with a viral agent demo relocated its staff to Singapore in mid-2025 before announcing a $2 billion acquisition by Meta in December. Chinese regulators moved to scrutinize the transaction earlier this year, citing potential violations of technology export controls and foreign investment rules.

Manus investors, including California-based venture firm Benchmark, have already received their proceeds from the acquisition, while Asian backers, including Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund, have indicated they will cooperate with the unwinding process, according to the WSJ.

Manus’ Chinese origins with parent company Butterfly Effect drew scrutiny on both sides of the Pacific, with Senator John Cornyn questioning whether American capital should flow to a Chinese-linked firm.

Meta and Manus did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#Meta #reportedly #moves #unwind #Manus #deal #Beijings #demand #TechCrunchChina,manus,Manus AI,Meta"> Meta reportedly moves to unwind B Manus deal after Beijing’s demand | TechCrunch Meta has begun dismantling its billion acquisition of Manus, completing an operational separation from the Chinese-founded AI startup and halting data sharing between the two companies. This is the most concrete step yet toward complying with a divestiture order Beijing issued roughly two months ago on national security grounds. Meta has cut Manus off from its internal systems, Bloomberg reported, preventing employees from using Manus tools for internal projects as the two companies move toward a full separation. Meanwhile, according to May reports, the co-founders of Manus have held preliminary discussions about raising approximately billion from outside investors to reclaim the startup from Meta, a move that could pave the way for a Chinese joint venture structure and an eventual listing in Hong Kong, a venue that has seen a surge in AI listings this year for Chinese AI startups like MiniMax and Zhipu. What was supposed to be a landmark exit for Chinese AI is quickly unraveling. The move underscores Beijing’s determination to retain control over strategically sensitive technology, regardless of a company’s offshore incorporation. In addition to the forced divestiture, Chinese authorities have since expanded travel restrictions to researchers and executives at private firms, requiring government approval before heading abroad. China is also tightening its grip on foreign capital, with reports indicating that top AI firms, including Moonshot AI, StepFun, and ByteDance, will need government sign-off before accepting U.S. investment, adding another layer to Beijing’s sweeping effort to control its AI sector. Even as Meta moves to sever ties with Manus, the agentic AI startup has continued to ship new features, rolling out integrations with Similarweb and Shopify. Manus drew widespread attention with a viral agent demo relocated its staff to Singapore in mid-2025 before announcing a billion acquisition by Meta in December. Chinese regulators moved to scrutinize the transaction earlier this year, citing potential violations of technology export controls and foreign investment rules. Manus investors, including California-based venture firm Benchmark, have already received their proceeds from the acquisition, while Asian backers, including Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund, have indicated they will cooperate with the unwinding process, according to the WSJ. Manus’ Chinese origins with parent company Butterfly Effect drew scrutiny on both sides of the Pacific, with Senator John Cornyn questioning whether American capital should flow to a Chinese-linked firm. Meta and Manus did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#Meta #reportedly #moves #unwind #Manus #deal #Beijings #demand #TechCrunchChina,manus,Manus AI,Meta
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roughly two months ago on national security grounds.

Meta has cut Manus off from its internal systems, Bloomberg reported, preventing employees from using Manus tools for internal projects as the two companies move toward a full separation.

Meanwhile, according to May reports, the co-founders of Manus have held preliminary discussions about raising approximately $1 billion from outside investors to reclaim the startup from Meta, a move that could pave the way for a Chinese joint venture structure and an eventual listing in Hong Kong, a venue that has seen a surge in AI listings this year for Chinese AI startups like MiniMax and Zhipu.

What was supposed to be a landmark exit for Chinese AI is quickly unraveling. The move underscores Beijing’s determination to retain control over strategically sensitive technology, regardless of a company’s offshore incorporation.

In addition to the forced divestiture, Chinese authorities have since expanded travel restrictions to researchers and executives at private firms, requiring government approval before heading abroad. China is also tightening its grip on foreign capital, with reports indicating that top AI firms, including Moonshot AI, StepFun, and ByteDance, will need government sign-off before accepting U.S. investment, adding another layer to Beijing’s sweeping effort to control its AI sector.

Even as Meta moves to sever ties with Manus, the agentic AI startup has continued to ship new features, rolling out integrations with Similarweb and Shopify.

Manus drew widespread attention with a viral agent demo relocated its staff to Singapore in mid-2025 before announcing a $2 billion acquisition by Meta in December. Chinese regulators moved to scrutinize the transaction earlier this year, citing potential violations of technology export controls and foreign investment rules.

Manus investors, including California-based venture firm Benchmark, have already received their proceeds from the acquisition, while Asian backers, including Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund, have indicated they will cooperate with the unwinding process, according to the WSJ.

Manus’ Chinese origins with parent company Butterfly Effect drew scrutiny on both sides of the Pacific, with Senator John Cornyn questioning whether American capital should flow to a Chinese-linked firm.

Meta and Manus did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#Meta #reportedly #moves #unwind #Manus #deal #Beijings #demand #TechCrunchChina,manus,Manus AI,Meta">Meta reportedly moves to unwind $2B Manus deal after Beijing’s demand | TechCrunch

Meta has begun dismantling its $2 billion acquisition of Manus, completing an operational separation from the Chinese-founded AI startup and halting data sharing between the two companies. This is the most concrete step yet toward complying with a divestiture order Beijing issued roughly two months ago on national security grounds.

Meta has cut Manus off from its internal systems, Bloomberg reported, preventing employees from using Manus tools for internal projects as the two companies move toward a full separation.

Meanwhile, according to May reports, the co-founders of Manus have held preliminary discussions about raising approximately $1 billion from outside investors to reclaim the startup from Meta, a move that could pave the way for a Chinese joint venture structure and an eventual listing in Hong Kong, a venue that has seen a surge in AI listings this year for Chinese AI startups like MiniMax and Zhipu.

What was supposed to be a landmark exit for Chinese AI is quickly unraveling. The move underscores Beijing’s determination to retain control over strategically sensitive technology, regardless of a company’s offshore incorporation.

In addition to the forced divestiture, Chinese authorities have since expanded travel restrictions to researchers and executives at private firms, requiring government approval before heading abroad. China is also tightening its grip on foreign capital, with reports indicating that top AI firms, including Moonshot AI, StepFun, and ByteDance, will need government sign-off before accepting U.S. investment, adding another layer to Beijing’s sweeping effort to control its AI sector.

Even as Meta moves to sever ties with Manus, the agentic AI startup has continued to ship new features, rolling out integrations with Similarweb and Shopify.

Manus drew widespread attention with a viral agent demo relocated its staff to Singapore in mid-2025 before announcing a $2 billion acquisition by Meta in December. Chinese regulators moved to scrutinize the transaction earlier this year, citing potential violations of technology export controls and foreign investment rules.

Manus investors, including California-based venture firm Benchmark, have already received their proceeds from the acquisition, while Asian backers, including Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund, have indicated they will cooperate with the unwinding process, according to the WSJ.

Manus’ Chinese origins with parent company Butterfly Effect drew scrutiny on both sides of the Pacific, with Senator John Cornyn questioning whether American capital should flow to a Chinese-linked firm.

Meta and Manus did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#Meta #reportedly #moves #unwind #Manus #deal #Beijings #demand #TechCrunchChina,manus,Manus AI,Meta

Meta has begun dismantling its $2 billion acquisition of Manus, completing an operational separation from…

. For one, they actually exist in a way that has been commercially viable, thanks mostly to Meta. With the help of Ray-Ban branding, Meta has sold millions of smart glasses, and, if recent reporting is any indication, it already has several more pairs on the way this year alone.

Its initial success hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have pulled Google, Samsung, and potentially even Apple into the mix, with the former two companies planning to release their own pair this year. And that’s not even counting the various other upstarts that have managed to carve out a niche already.

The interest in face-worn wearables is palpable, and in a lot of ways, smart glasses, for all of their obvious flaws, feel concrete. But as concrete as the interest is, the category also feels as nebulous as ever, and Meta, for all its popularity, is a perfect example.

Meta’s Smart Glasses Are Long Ways From Their ‘Eureka’ Moment Smart glasses have come a long way since the days of Google Glass. For one, they actually exist in a way that has been commercially viable, thanks mostly to Meta. With the help of Ray-Ban branding, Meta has sold millions of smart glasses, and, if recent reporting is any indication, it already has several more pairs on the way this year alone. Its initial success hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have pulled Google, Samsung, and potentially even Apple into the mix, with the former two companies planning to release their own pair this year. And that’s not even counting the various other upstarts that have managed to carve out a niche already. The interest in face-worn wearables is palpable, and in a lot of ways, smart glasses, for all of their obvious flaws, feel concrete. But as concrete as the interest is, the category also feels as nebulous as ever, and Meta, for all its popularity, is a perfect example. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Take apps, for instance. Meta has made some strides since the launch of the Meta Ray-Ban Display last year to try to add more functionality, but for the most part, it still feels like there’s not a ton to do once they’re on your face. You can get notifications, you can get directions, and you can swipe through Instagram Reels, and sure, it’s novel to be doing those things on a small screen on your face, but they don’t necessarily add up to a game-changing experience. Meta clearly knows that those “core” apps aren’t enough, which is why it recently opened up its developer program for the Meta Ray-Ban Display so that people can make apps that use both the built-in screen as well as the included Neural Band, the wristband you use to control the UI inside the smart glasses. While the apps being built are in early stages and aren’t being made generally available to people who own the smart glasses yet, initial results are… something? There are people making speedometers, apps that control your smart home, and Doom (because, of course). Someone even made the bold choice of making an app that can unlock your car. Again, they’re interesting ideas, but I’m not sure that any of them will have people rushing out to spend 0 on a pair of smart glasses. Meta’s non-display smart glasses face similar issues. While I like the fact that you can use them as an open-ear audio device—they’re great for calling and listening to music while you’re riding a bike or exercising—some of the banner features of Meta’s “AI glasses” feel less-than-useful, and one of them is the AI itself. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Features like computer vision, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to answer questions about the world around you, are somewhat novel, but maybe not altogether useful for most. Don’t get me wrong, I think it could be great for accessibility purposes—people who have vision impairments could use computer vision to parse their surroundings. But for a general audience, the AI part of AI glasses can feel underwhelming, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. “The biggest hurdle to success that I see so far for Meta is the quality of Meta AI and the slow nature of getting third-party apps onboard,” says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, which follows the consumer tech space closely. “The ways that they enhance my life in their most simple form, as smart glasses, are still pretty much paired to just Meta apps.” Outside of translating a menu or telling you about items in your surroundings, I’ve yet to see lots of practical uses for computer vision, and that’s not even factoring in the bad habit that Meta AI has of getting things wrong, which is a real issue in my experience using the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. I get that not every new gadget has to have a purpose right off the bat. Take the Apple Watch, for example, which entered the scene as a frivolous accessory to your iPhone. In many ways, you can write off smart glasses for the same reasons that people wrote off the Apple Watch at first. Yes, it delivers notifications and comes in a wearable form factor, but it mostly duplicates the experience of using your phone. And not only that, it’s utterly dependent on your phone to work, same as Meta’s Ray-Bans and Oakleys. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Those criticisms didn’t hold up forever, though. Eventually, the Apple Watch found health tracking features like heart rate monitoring and crash detection, and now it’s a device unto itself that also acts as an accessory to your iPhone. The thing is, health features aren’t exactly up for grabs anymore, though Meta has tried to introduce nutrition tracking as a feature, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to log what you eat and then gives you AI-powered recommendations. Whether that gets any traction remains to be seen, but I personally don’t envision loads of people lining up to have Meta AI shame them for their diets. So, smart glasses will have to find their own niche, just like the Apple Watch, though whether such a niche really exists is anyone’s guess. It’s not that smart glasses can’t be useful at times—they can—but as it stands, even Meta lacks a “killer app” to drive adoption. Sure, people like recording stuff, but that is an entire can of worms from a privacy perspective, and for as many people that want smart glasses for their recording abilities, there are just as many that hate them for it. Millions of units sold or not, smart glasses like Meta’s still feel like they’re a long way from the proverbial Apple Watch moment—a holy grail that is never guaranteed to arrive. #Metas #Smart #Glasses #Long #Ways #Eureka #MomentMeta,Ray-Ban Meta,smart glasses,The Next Interface,Wearables
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

Take apps, for instance. Meta has made some strides since the launch of the Meta Ray-Ban Display last year to try to add more functionality, but for the most part, it still feels like there’s not a ton to do once they’re on your face. You can get notifications, you can get directions, and you can swipe through Instagram Reels, and sure, it’s novel to be doing those things on a small screen on your face, but they don’t necessarily add up to a game-changing experience.

Meta clearly knows that those “core” apps aren’t enough, which is why it recently opened up its developer program for the Meta Ray-Ban Display so that people can make apps that use both the built-in screen as well as the included Neural Band, the wristband you use to control the UI inside the smart glasses.

While the apps being built are in early stages and aren’t being made generally available to people who own the smart glasses yet, initial results are… something? There are people making speedometers, apps that control your smart home, and Doom (because, of course). Someone even made the bold choice of making an app that can unlock your car. Again, they’re interesting ideas, but I’m not sure that any of them will have people rushing out to spend $800 on a pair of smart glasses.

Meta’s non-display smart glasses face similar issues. While I like the fact that you can use them as an open-ear audio device—they’re great for calling and listening to music while you’re riding a bike or exercising—some of the banner features of Meta’s “AI glasses” feel less-than-useful, and one of them is the AI itself.

Ray Ban Meta Gen 2 09
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

Features like computer vision, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to answer questions about the world around you, are somewhat novel, but maybe not altogether useful for most. Don’t get me wrong, I think it could be great for accessibility purposes—people who have vision impairments could use computer vision to parse their surroundings. But for a general audience, the AI part of AI glasses can feel underwhelming, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.

“The biggest hurdle to success that I see so far for Meta is the quality of Meta AI and the slow nature of getting third-party apps onboard,” says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, which follows the consumer tech space closely. “The ways that they enhance my life in their most simple form, as smart glasses, are still pretty much paired to just Meta apps.”

Outside of translating a menu or telling you about items in your surroundings, I’ve yet to see lots of practical uses for computer vision, and that’s not even factoring in the bad habit that Meta AI has of getting things wrong, which is a real issue in my experience using the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses.

I get that not every new gadget has to have a purpose right off the bat. Take the Apple Watch, for example, which entered the scene as a frivolous accessory to your iPhone. In many ways, you can write off smart glasses for the same reasons that people wrote off the Apple Watch at first. Yes, it delivers notifications and comes in a wearable form factor, but it mostly duplicates the experience of using your phone. And not only that, it’s utterly dependent on your phone to work, same as Meta’s Ray-Bans and Oakleys.

Meta Ray Ban Display neural band
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

Those criticisms didn’t hold up forever, though. Eventually, the Apple Watch found health tracking features like heart rate monitoring and crash detection, and now it’s a device unto itself that also acts as an accessory to your iPhone. The thing is, health features aren’t exactly up for grabs anymore, though Meta has tried to introduce nutrition tracking as a feature, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to log what you eat and then gives you AI-powered recommendations. Whether that gets any traction remains to be seen, but I personally don’t envision loads of people lining up to have Meta AI shame them for their diets.

So, smart glasses will have to find their own niche, just like the Apple Watch, though whether such a niche really exists is anyone’s guess. It’s not that smart glasses can’t be useful at times—they can—but as it stands, even Meta lacks a “killer app” to drive adoption. Sure, people like recording stuff, but that is an entire can of worms from a privacy perspective, and for as many people that want smart glasses for their recording abilities, there are just as many that hate them for it.

Millions of units sold or not, smart glasses like Meta’s still feel like they’re a long way from the proverbial Apple Watch moment—a holy grail that is never guaranteed to arrive.

#Metas #Smart #Glasses #Long #Ways #Eureka #MomentMeta,Ray-Ban Meta,smart glasses,The Next Interface,Wearables"> Meta’s Smart Glasses Are Long Ways From Their ‘Eureka’ Moment Smart glasses have come a long way since the days of Google Glass. For one, they actually exist in a way that has been commercially viable, thanks mostly to Meta. With the help of Ray-Ban branding, Meta has sold millions of smart glasses, and, if recent reporting is any indication, it already has several more pairs on the way this year alone. Its initial success hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have pulled Google, Samsung, and potentially even Apple into the mix, with the former two companies planning to release their own pair this year. And that’s not even counting the various other upstarts that have managed to carve out a niche already. The interest in face-worn wearables is palpable, and in a lot of ways, smart glasses, for all of their obvious flaws, feel concrete. But as concrete as the interest is, the category also feels as nebulous as ever, and Meta, for all its popularity, is a perfect example. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Take apps, for instance. Meta has made some strides since the launch of the Meta Ray-Ban Display last year to try to add more functionality, but for the most part, it still feels like there’s not a ton to do once they’re on your face. You can get notifications, you can get directions, and you can swipe through Instagram Reels, and sure, it’s novel to be doing those things on a small screen on your face, but they don’t necessarily add up to a game-changing experience. Meta clearly knows that those “core” apps aren’t enough, which is why it recently opened up its developer program for the Meta Ray-Ban Display so that people can make apps that use both the built-in screen as well as the included Neural Band, the wristband you use to control the UI inside the smart glasses. While the apps being built are in early stages and aren’t being made generally available to people who own the smart glasses yet, initial results are… something? There are people making speedometers, apps that control your smart home, and Doom (because, of course). Someone even made the bold choice of making an app that can unlock your car. Again, they’re interesting ideas, but I’m not sure that any of them will have people rushing out to spend 0 on a pair of smart glasses. Meta’s non-display smart glasses face similar issues. While I like the fact that you can use them as an open-ear audio device—they’re great for calling and listening to music while you’re riding a bike or exercising—some of the banner features of Meta’s “AI glasses” feel less-than-useful, and one of them is the AI itself. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Features like computer vision, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to answer questions about the world around you, are somewhat novel, but maybe not altogether useful for most. Don’t get me wrong, I think it could be great for accessibility purposes—people who have vision impairments could use computer vision to parse their surroundings. But for a general audience, the AI part of AI glasses can feel underwhelming, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. “The biggest hurdle to success that I see so far for Meta is the quality of Meta AI and the slow nature of getting third-party apps onboard,” says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, which follows the consumer tech space closely. “The ways that they enhance my life in their most simple form, as smart glasses, are still pretty much paired to just Meta apps.” Outside of translating a menu or telling you about items in your surroundings, I’ve yet to see lots of practical uses for computer vision, and that’s not even factoring in the bad habit that Meta AI has of getting things wrong, which is a real issue in my experience using the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. I get that not every new gadget has to have a purpose right off the bat. Take the Apple Watch, for example, which entered the scene as a frivolous accessory to your iPhone. In many ways, you can write off smart glasses for the same reasons that people wrote off the Apple Watch at first. Yes, it delivers notifications and comes in a wearable form factor, but it mostly duplicates the experience of using your phone. And not only that, it’s utterly dependent on your phone to work, same as Meta’s Ray-Bans and Oakleys. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Those criticisms didn’t hold up forever, though. Eventually, the Apple Watch found health tracking features like heart rate monitoring and crash detection, and now it’s a device unto itself that also acts as an accessory to your iPhone. The thing is, health features aren’t exactly up for grabs anymore, though Meta has tried to introduce nutrition tracking as a feature, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to log what you eat and then gives you AI-powered recommendations. Whether that gets any traction remains to be seen, but I personally don’t envision loads of people lining up to have Meta AI shame them for their diets. So, smart glasses will have to find their own niche, just like the Apple Watch, though whether such a niche really exists is anyone’s guess. It’s not that smart glasses can’t be useful at times—they can—but as it stands, even Meta lacks a “killer app” to drive adoption. Sure, people like recording stuff, but that is an entire can of worms from a privacy perspective, and for as many people that want smart glasses for their recording abilities, there are just as many that hate them for it. Millions of units sold or not, smart glasses like Meta’s still feel like they’re a long way from the proverbial Apple Watch moment—a holy grail that is never guaranteed to arrive. #Metas #Smart #Glasses #Long #Ways #Eureka #MomentMeta,Ray-Ban Meta,smart glasses,The Next Interface,Wearables
Tech-news

. For one, they actually exist in a way that has been commercially viable, thanks mostly to Meta. With the help of Ray-Ban branding, Meta has sold millions of smart glasses, and, if recent reporting is any indication, it already has several more pairs on the way this year alone.

Its initial success hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have pulled Google, Samsung, and potentially even Apple into the mix, with the former two companies planning to release their own pair this year. And that’s not even counting the various other upstarts that have managed to carve out a niche already.

The interest in face-worn wearables is palpable, and in a lot of ways, smart glasses, for all of their obvious flaws, feel concrete. But as concrete as the interest is, the category also feels as nebulous as ever, and Meta, for all its popularity, is a perfect example.

Meta’s Smart Glasses Are Long Ways From Their ‘Eureka’ Moment Smart glasses have come a long way since the days of Google Glass. For one, they actually exist in a way that has been commercially viable, thanks mostly to Meta. With the help of Ray-Ban branding, Meta has sold millions of smart glasses, and, if recent reporting is any indication, it already has several more pairs on the way this year alone. Its initial success hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have pulled Google, Samsung, and potentially even Apple into the mix, with the former two companies planning to release their own pair this year. And that’s not even counting the various other upstarts that have managed to carve out a niche already. The interest in face-worn wearables is palpable, and in a lot of ways, smart glasses, for all of their obvious flaws, feel concrete. But as concrete as the interest is, the category also feels as nebulous as ever, and Meta, for all its popularity, is a perfect example. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Take apps, for instance. Meta has made some strides since the launch of the Meta Ray-Ban Display last year to try to add more functionality, but for the most part, it still feels like there’s not a ton to do once they’re on your face. You can get notifications, you can get directions, and you can swipe through Instagram Reels, and sure, it’s novel to be doing those things on a small screen on your face, but they don’t necessarily add up to a game-changing experience. Meta clearly knows that those “core” apps aren’t enough, which is why it recently opened up its developer program for the Meta Ray-Ban Display so that people can make apps that use both the built-in screen as well as the included Neural Band, the wristband you use to control the UI inside the smart glasses. While the apps being built are in early stages and aren’t being made generally available to people who own the smart glasses yet, initial results are… something? There are people making speedometers, apps that control your smart home, and Doom (because, of course). Someone even made the bold choice of making an app that can unlock your car. Again, they’re interesting ideas, but I’m not sure that any of them will have people rushing out to spend 0 on a pair of smart glasses. Meta’s non-display smart glasses face similar issues. While I like the fact that you can use them as an open-ear audio device—they’re great for calling and listening to music while you’re riding a bike or exercising—some of the banner features of Meta’s “AI glasses” feel less-than-useful, and one of them is the AI itself. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Features like computer vision, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to answer questions about the world around you, are somewhat novel, but maybe not altogether useful for most. Don’t get me wrong, I think it could be great for accessibility purposes—people who have vision impairments could use computer vision to parse their surroundings. But for a general audience, the AI part of AI glasses can feel underwhelming, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. “The biggest hurdle to success that I see so far for Meta is the quality of Meta AI and the slow nature of getting third-party apps onboard,” says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, which follows the consumer tech space closely. “The ways that they enhance my life in their most simple form, as smart glasses, are still pretty much paired to just Meta apps.” Outside of translating a menu or telling you about items in your surroundings, I’ve yet to see lots of practical uses for computer vision, and that’s not even factoring in the bad habit that Meta AI has of getting things wrong, which is a real issue in my experience using the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. I get that not every new gadget has to have a purpose right off the bat. Take the Apple Watch, for example, which entered the scene as a frivolous accessory to your iPhone. In many ways, you can write off smart glasses for the same reasons that people wrote off the Apple Watch at first. Yes, it delivers notifications and comes in a wearable form factor, but it mostly duplicates the experience of using your phone. And not only that, it’s utterly dependent on your phone to work, same as Meta’s Ray-Bans and Oakleys. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Those criticisms didn’t hold up forever, though. Eventually, the Apple Watch found health tracking features like heart rate monitoring and crash detection, and now it’s a device unto itself that also acts as an accessory to your iPhone. The thing is, health features aren’t exactly up for grabs anymore, though Meta has tried to introduce nutrition tracking as a feature, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to log what you eat and then gives you AI-powered recommendations. Whether that gets any traction remains to be seen, but I personally don’t envision loads of people lining up to have Meta AI shame them for their diets. So, smart glasses will have to find their own niche, just like the Apple Watch, though whether such a niche really exists is anyone’s guess. It’s not that smart glasses can’t be useful at times—they can—but as it stands, even Meta lacks a “killer app” to drive adoption. Sure, people like recording stuff, but that is an entire can of worms from a privacy perspective, and for as many people that want smart glasses for their recording abilities, there are just as many that hate them for it. Millions of units sold or not, smart glasses like Meta’s still feel like they’re a long way from the proverbial Apple Watch moment—a holy grail that is never guaranteed to arrive. #Metas #Smart #Glasses #Long #Ways #Eureka #MomentMeta,Ray-Ban Meta,smart glasses,The Next Interface,Wearables
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

Take apps, for instance. Meta has made some strides since the launch of the Meta Ray-Ban Display last year to try to add more functionality, but for the most part, it still feels like there’s not a ton to do once they’re on your face. You can get notifications, you can get directions, and you can swipe through Instagram Reels, and sure, it’s novel to be doing those things on a small screen on your face, but they don’t necessarily add up to a game-changing experience.

Meta clearly knows that those “core” apps aren’t enough, which is why it recently opened up its developer program for the Meta Ray-Ban Display so that people can make apps that use both the built-in screen as well as the included Neural Band, the wristband you use to control the UI inside the smart glasses.

While the apps being built are in early stages and aren’t being made generally available to people who own the smart glasses yet, initial results are… something? There are people making speedometers, apps that control your smart home, and Doom (because, of course). Someone even made the bold choice of making an app that can unlock your car. Again, they’re interesting ideas, but I’m not sure that any of them will have people rushing out to spend $800 on a pair of smart glasses.

Meta’s non-display smart glasses face similar issues. While I like the fact that you can use them as an open-ear audio device—they’re great for calling and listening to music while you’re riding a bike or exercising—some of the banner features of Meta’s “AI glasses” feel less-than-useful, and one of them is the AI itself.

Ray Ban Meta Gen 2 09
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

Features like computer vision, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to answer questions about the world around you, are somewhat novel, but maybe not altogether useful for most. Don’t get me wrong, I think it could be great for accessibility purposes—people who have vision impairments could use computer vision to parse their surroundings. But for a general audience, the AI part of AI glasses can feel underwhelming, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.

“The biggest hurdle to success that I see so far for Meta is the quality of Meta AI and the slow nature of getting third-party apps onboard,” says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, which follows the consumer tech space closely. “The ways that they enhance my life in their most simple form, as smart glasses, are still pretty much paired to just Meta apps.”

Outside of translating a menu or telling you about items in your surroundings, I’ve yet to see lots of practical uses for computer vision, and that’s not even factoring in the bad habit that Meta AI has of getting things wrong, which is a real issue in my experience using the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses.

I get that not every new gadget has to have a purpose right off the bat. Take the Apple Watch, for example, which entered the scene as a frivolous accessory to your iPhone. In many ways, you can write off smart glasses for the same reasons that people wrote off the Apple Watch at first. Yes, it delivers notifications and comes in a wearable form factor, but it mostly duplicates the experience of using your phone. And not only that, it’s utterly dependent on your phone to work, same as Meta’s Ray-Bans and Oakleys.

Meta Ray Ban Display neural band
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

Those criticisms didn’t hold up forever, though. Eventually, the Apple Watch found health tracking features like heart rate monitoring and crash detection, and now it’s a device unto itself that also acts as an accessory to your iPhone. The thing is, health features aren’t exactly up for grabs anymore, though Meta has tried to introduce nutrition tracking as a feature, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to log what you eat and then gives you AI-powered recommendations. Whether that gets any traction remains to be seen, but I personally don’t envision loads of people lining up to have Meta AI shame them for their diets.

So, smart glasses will have to find their own niche, just like the Apple Watch, though whether such a niche really exists is anyone’s guess. It’s not that smart glasses can’t be useful at times—they can—but as it stands, even Meta lacks a “killer app” to drive adoption. Sure, people like recording stuff, but that is an entire can of worms from a privacy perspective, and for as many people that want smart glasses for their recording abilities, there are just as many that hate them for it.

Millions of units sold or not, smart glasses like Meta’s still feel like they’re a long way from the proverbial Apple Watch moment—a holy grail that is never guaranteed to arrive.

#Metas #Smart #Glasses #Long #Ways #Eureka #MomentMeta,Ray-Ban Meta,smart glasses,The Next Interface,Wearables">Meta’s Smart Glasses Are Long Ways From Their ‘Eureka’ Moment

Smart glasses have come a long way since the days of Google Glass. For one, they actually exist in a way that has been commercially viable, thanks mostly to Meta. With the help of Ray-Ban branding, Meta has sold millions of smart glasses, and, if recent reporting is any indication, it already has several more pairs on the way this year alone.

Its initial success hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have pulled Google, Samsung, and potentially even Apple into the mix, with the former two companies planning to release their own pair this year. And that’s not even counting the various other upstarts that have managed to carve out a niche already.

The interest in face-worn wearables is palpable, and in a lot of ways, smart glasses, for all of their obvious flaws, feel concrete. But as concrete as the interest is, the category also feels as nebulous as ever, and Meta, for all its popularity, is a perfect example.

Meta’s Smart Glasses Are Long Ways From Their ‘Eureka’ Moment Smart glasses have come a long way since the days of Google Glass. For one, they actually exist in a way that has been commercially viable, thanks mostly to Meta. With the help of Ray-Ban branding, Meta has sold millions of smart glasses, and, if recent reporting is any indication, it already has several more pairs on the way this year alone. Its initial success hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have pulled Google, Samsung, and potentially even Apple into the mix, with the former two companies planning to release their own pair this year. And that’s not even counting the various other upstarts that have managed to carve out a niche already. The interest in face-worn wearables is palpable, and in a lot of ways, smart glasses, for all of their obvious flaws, feel concrete. But as concrete as the interest is, the category also feels as nebulous as ever, and Meta, for all its popularity, is a perfect example. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Take apps, for instance. Meta has made some strides since the launch of the Meta Ray-Ban Display last year to try to add more functionality, but for the most part, it still feels like there’s not a ton to do once they’re on your face. You can get notifications, you can get directions, and you can swipe through Instagram Reels, and sure, it’s novel to be doing those things on a small screen on your face, but they don’t necessarily add up to a game-changing experience. Meta clearly knows that those “core” apps aren’t enough, which is why it recently opened up its developer program for the Meta Ray-Ban Display so that people can make apps that use both the built-in screen as well as the included Neural Band, the wristband you use to control the UI inside the smart glasses. While the apps being built are in early stages and aren’t being made generally available to people who own the smart glasses yet, initial results are… something? There are people making speedometers, apps that control your smart home, and Doom (because, of course). Someone even made the bold choice of making an app that can unlock your car. Again, they’re interesting ideas, but I’m not sure that any of them will have people rushing out to spend 0 on a pair of smart glasses. Meta’s non-display smart glasses face similar issues. While I like the fact that you can use them as an open-ear audio device—they’re great for calling and listening to music while you’re riding a bike or exercising—some of the banner features of Meta’s “AI glasses” feel less-than-useful, and one of them is the AI itself. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Features like computer vision, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to answer questions about the world around you, are somewhat novel, but maybe not altogether useful for most. Don’t get me wrong, I think it could be great for accessibility purposes—people who have vision impairments could use computer vision to parse their surroundings. But for a general audience, the AI part of AI glasses can feel underwhelming, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. “The biggest hurdle to success that I see so far for Meta is the quality of Meta AI and the slow nature of getting third-party apps onboard,” says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, which follows the consumer tech space closely. “The ways that they enhance my life in their most simple form, as smart glasses, are still pretty much paired to just Meta apps.” Outside of translating a menu or telling you about items in your surroundings, I’ve yet to see lots of practical uses for computer vision, and that’s not even factoring in the bad habit that Meta AI has of getting things wrong, which is a real issue in my experience using the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. I get that not every new gadget has to have a purpose right off the bat. Take the Apple Watch, for example, which entered the scene as a frivolous accessory to your iPhone. In many ways, you can write off smart glasses for the same reasons that people wrote off the Apple Watch at first. Yes, it delivers notifications and comes in a wearable form factor, but it mostly duplicates the experience of using your phone. And not only that, it’s utterly dependent on your phone to work, same as Meta’s Ray-Bans and Oakleys. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Those criticisms didn’t hold up forever, though. Eventually, the Apple Watch found health tracking features like heart rate monitoring and crash detection, and now it’s a device unto itself that also acts as an accessory to your iPhone. The thing is, health features aren’t exactly up for grabs anymore, though Meta has tried to introduce nutrition tracking as a feature, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to log what you eat and then gives you AI-powered recommendations. Whether that gets any traction remains to be seen, but I personally don’t envision loads of people lining up to have Meta AI shame them for their diets. So, smart glasses will have to find their own niche, just like the Apple Watch, though whether such a niche really exists is anyone’s guess. It’s not that smart glasses can’t be useful at times—they can—but as it stands, even Meta lacks a “killer app” to drive adoption. Sure, people like recording stuff, but that is an entire can of worms from a privacy perspective, and for as many people that want smart glasses for their recording abilities, there are just as many that hate them for it. Millions of units sold or not, smart glasses like Meta’s still feel like they’re a long way from the proverbial Apple Watch moment—a holy grail that is never guaranteed to arrive. #Metas #Smart #Glasses #Long #Ways #Eureka #MomentMeta,Ray-Ban Meta,smart glasses,The Next Interface,Wearables
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

Take apps, for instance. Meta has made some strides since the launch of the Meta Ray-Ban Display last year to try to add more functionality, but for the most part, it still feels like there’s not a ton to do once they’re on your face. You can get notifications, you can get directions, and you can swipe through Instagram Reels, and sure, it’s novel to be doing those things on a small screen on your face, but they don’t necessarily add up to a game-changing experience.

Meta clearly knows that those “core” apps aren’t enough, which is why it recently opened up its developer program for the Meta Ray-Ban Display so that people can make apps that use both the built-in screen as well as the included Neural Band, the wristband you use to control the UI inside the smart glasses.

While the apps being built are in early stages and aren’t being made generally available to people who own the smart glasses yet, initial results are… something? There are people making speedometers, apps that control your smart home, and Doom (because, of course). Someone even made the bold choice of making an app that can unlock your car. Again, they’re interesting ideas, but I’m not sure that any of them will have people rushing out to spend $800 on a pair of smart glasses.

Meta’s non-display smart glasses face similar issues. While I like the fact that you can use them as an open-ear audio device—they’re great for calling and listening to music while you’re riding a bike or exercising—some of the banner features of Meta’s “AI glasses” feel less-than-useful, and one of them is the AI itself.

Ray Ban Meta Gen 2 09
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

Features like computer vision, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to answer questions about the world around you, are somewhat novel, but maybe not altogether useful for most. Don’t get me wrong, I think it could be great for accessibility purposes—people who have vision impairments could use computer vision to parse their surroundings. But for a general audience, the AI part of AI glasses can feel underwhelming, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.

“The biggest hurdle to success that I see so far for Meta is the quality of Meta AI and the slow nature of getting third-party apps onboard,” says Anshel Sag, principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, which follows the consumer tech space closely. “The ways that they enhance my life in their most simple form, as smart glasses, are still pretty much paired to just Meta apps.”

Outside of translating a menu or telling you about items in your surroundings, I’ve yet to see lots of practical uses for computer vision, and that’s not even factoring in the bad habit that Meta AI has of getting things wrong, which is a real issue in my experience using the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses.

I get that not every new gadget has to have a purpose right off the bat. Take the Apple Watch, for example, which entered the scene as a frivolous accessory to your iPhone. In many ways, you can write off smart glasses for the same reasons that people wrote off the Apple Watch at first. Yes, it delivers notifications and comes in a wearable form factor, but it mostly duplicates the experience of using your phone. And not only that, it’s utterly dependent on your phone to work, same as Meta’s Ray-Bans and Oakleys.

Meta Ray Ban Display neural band
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

Those criticisms didn’t hold up forever, though. Eventually, the Apple Watch found health tracking features like heart rate monitoring and crash detection, and now it’s a device unto itself that also acts as an accessory to your iPhone. The thing is, health features aren’t exactly up for grabs anymore, though Meta has tried to introduce nutrition tracking as a feature, which uses the camera on the smart glasses to log what you eat and then gives you AI-powered recommendations. Whether that gets any traction remains to be seen, but I personally don’t envision loads of people lining up to have Meta AI shame them for their diets.

So, smart glasses will have to find their own niche, just like the Apple Watch, though whether such a niche really exists is anyone’s guess. It’s not that smart glasses can’t be useful at times—they can—but as it stands, even Meta lacks a “killer app” to drive adoption. Sure, people like recording stuff, but that is an entire can of worms from a privacy perspective, and for as many people that want smart glasses for their recording abilities, there are just as many that hate them for it.

Millions of units sold or not, smart glasses like Meta’s still feel like they’re a long way from the proverbial Apple Watch moment—a holy grail that is never guaranteed to arrive.

#Metas #Smart #Glasses #Long #Ways #Eureka #MomentMeta,Ray-Ban Meta,smart glasses,The Next Interface,Wearables

Smart glasses have come a long way since the days of Google Glass. For one,…

year after it was announced, Instagram says it’s delivering the ability to rearrange the posts in your profile grid. It had been available to some people in test groups, but as of June 8th, it’s rolling out widely via the Android and iPhone mobile apps.

Until now, the posts on your Instagram profile have been locked in chronological order beyond the ability to pin three posts at the top, but once the feature is live on your account, you can long-press and drag posts freely, no matter how old they are. Any posts that are pinned will remain at the top.

#Instagram #finally #letting #reorganize #profile #gridApps,Instagram,Meta,News,Tech"> Instagram is finally letting everyone reorganize their profile gridNearly a year after it was announced, Instagram says it’s delivering the ability to rearrange the posts in your profile grid. It had been available to some people in test groups, but as of June 8th, it’s rolling out widely via the Android and iPhone mobile apps.Until now, the posts on your Instagram profile have been locked in chronological order beyond the ability to pin three posts at the top, but once the feature is live on your account, you can long-press and drag posts freely, no matter how old they are. Any posts that are pinned will remain at the top.#Instagram #finally #letting #reorganize #profile #gridApps,Instagram,Meta,News,Tech
Tech-news

year after it was announced, Instagram says it’s delivering the ability to rearrange the posts in your profile grid. It had been available to some people in test groups, but as of June 8th, it’s rolling out widely via the Android and iPhone mobile apps.

Until now, the posts on your Instagram profile have been locked in chronological order beyond the ability to pin three posts at the top, but once the feature is live on your account, you can long-press and drag posts freely, no matter how old they are. Any posts that are pinned will remain at the top.

#Instagram #finally #letting #reorganize #profile #gridApps,Instagram,Meta,News,Tech">Instagram is finally letting everyone reorganize their profile grid

Nearly a year after it was announced, Instagram says it’s delivering the ability to rearrange the posts in your profile grid. It had been available to some people in test groups, but as of June 8th, it’s rolling out widely via the Android and iPhone mobile apps.

Until now, the posts on your Instagram profile have been locked in chronological order beyond the ability to pin three posts at the top, but once the feature is live on your account, you can long-press and drag posts freely, no matter how old they are. Any posts that are pinned will remain at the top.

#Instagram #finally #letting #reorganize #profile #gridApps,Instagram,Meta,News,Tech

Nearly a year after it was announced, Instagram says it’s delivering the ability to rearrange…

App Store page.

In practice, it is just a standalone app version of Facebook’s existing Groups feature, in which Facebook users can join groups and participate in discussions. In the new standalone app, the feed is entirely focused on the conversations taking place in the groups you are already a part of on your existing Facebook account. Forum and Facebook are still linked, meaning that you can enter Forum with your Facebook login, and whatever you post on there will be visible in your groups on the Facebook app as well.

Some readers might be getting deja vu, and rightfully so, because this is Meta’s second attempt at launching a stand-alone Facebook Groups app. Then known as Facebook, the company launched a similar, dedicated app back in 2014 that was ultimately discontinued in 2017.

Perhaps to spice things up a bit, this time around, Meta is also including a dedicated AI assistant in the app. The “Ask” feature on the app will rely on the information posted on the group pages to respond to users looking for “opinions, advice or recommendations,” Meta said. There is also an additional AI assistant for group admins, which will supposedly assist them with tasks like content moderation.

Some financial analysts considered the app a direct threat to Reddit, causing the company’s stock to end the day down more than 5%, but the apps have vastly different existing user bases. Either way, it’s too soon to tell whether there will eventually be significant user migration from Reddit to Forum.

This isn’t Meta’s first attempt at making its own version of an already successful app or feature. The company released its Twitter competitor app Threads in 2023, and most recently, it debuted Instants, an Instagram app that aims to replicate the successes of Snapchat and BeReal with instant, disappearing photos.

Interestingly, this time around, Meta released this app with little fanfare. There was no major announcement or press release that we could find. The app just appeared on the App Store, and some eagle-eyed users noticed it. Which raises the question, could this be the start of an AI-enabled flood of new apps that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly promised employees?

Late last month, the Wall Street Journal published a piece detailing a companywide meeting in which Zuckerberg talked about Meta’s AI overhaul that has been used to justify a brutal round of layoffs. According to the report, Zuckerberg touted the efficiency gains from infusing AI into workflows and how the company will “be able to spin up more new projects” now because of this. Those new projects, according to the report, include creating more apps.

“So like Chris [Cox, Meta’s chief product officer] and I have been talking about, ‘all right, well, can we build 50 new apps? Like, yeah, probably,” Zuckerberg is quoted to have said in the article. “But we probably should start by doing a few before we just, like, ramp up trying to do 50 all at once.”

#Metas #Latest #App #RedditForum,Meta,Reddit"> Meta’s Latest App Looks Like Reddit Meta has a new app on the App Store, and it looks an awful lot like Reddit. The app, called Forum, is “a dedicated space built for deeper discussions, real answers and communities you care about,” according to its App Store page. In practice, it is just a standalone app version of Facebook’s existing Groups feature, in which Facebook users can join groups and participate in discussions. In the new standalone app, the feed is entirely focused on the conversations taking place in the groups you are already a part of on your existing Facebook account. Forum and Facebook are still linked, meaning that you can enter Forum with your Facebook login, and whatever you post on there will be visible in your groups on the Facebook app as well. Some readers might be getting deja vu, and rightfully so, because this is Meta’s second attempt at launching a stand-alone Facebook Groups app. Then known as Facebook, the company launched a similar, dedicated app back in 2014 that was ultimately discontinued in 2017. Perhaps to spice things up a bit, this time around, Meta is also including a dedicated AI assistant in the app. The “Ask” feature on the app will rely on the information posted on the group pages to respond to users looking for “opinions, advice or recommendations,” Meta said. There is also an additional AI assistant for group admins, which will supposedly assist them with tasks like content moderation. Some financial analysts considered the app a direct threat to Reddit, causing the company’s stock to end the day down more than 5%, but the apps have vastly different existing user bases. Either way, it’s too soon to tell whether there will eventually be significant user migration from Reddit to Forum. This isn’t Meta’s first attempt at making its own version of an already successful app or feature. The company released its Twitter competitor app Threads in 2023, and most recently, it debuted Instants, an Instagram app that aims to replicate the successes of Snapchat and BeReal with instant, disappearing photos. Interestingly, this time around, Meta released this app with little fanfare. There was no major announcement or press release that we could find. The app just appeared on the App Store, and some eagle-eyed users noticed it. Which raises the question, could this be the start of an AI-enabled flood of new apps that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly promised employees? Late last month, the Wall Street Journal published a piece detailing a companywide meeting in which Zuckerberg talked about Meta’s AI overhaul that has been used to justify a brutal round of layoffs. According to the report, Zuckerberg touted the efficiency gains from infusing AI into workflows and how the company will “be able to spin up more new projects” now because of this. Those new projects, according to the report, include creating more apps. “So like Chris [Cox, Meta’s chief product officer] and I have been talking about, ‘all right, well, can we build 50 new apps? Like, yeah, probably,” Zuckerberg is quoted to have said in the article. “But we probably should start by doing a few before we just, like, ramp up trying to do 50 all at once.” #Metas #Latest #App #RedditForum,Meta,Reddit
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App Store page.

In practice, it is just a standalone app version of Facebook’s existing Groups feature, in which Facebook users can join groups and participate in discussions. In the new standalone app, the feed is entirely focused on the conversations taking place in the groups you are already a part of on your existing Facebook account. Forum and Facebook are still linked, meaning that you can enter Forum with your Facebook login, and whatever you post on there will be visible in your groups on the Facebook app as well.

Some readers might be getting deja vu, and rightfully so, because this is Meta’s second attempt at launching a stand-alone Facebook Groups app. Then known as Facebook, the company launched a similar, dedicated app back in 2014 that was ultimately discontinued in 2017.

Perhaps to spice things up a bit, this time around, Meta is also including a dedicated AI assistant in the app. The “Ask” feature on the app will rely on the information posted on the group pages to respond to users looking for “opinions, advice or recommendations,” Meta said. There is also an additional AI assistant for group admins, which will supposedly assist them with tasks like content moderation.

Some financial analysts considered the app a direct threat to Reddit, causing the company’s stock to end the day down more than 5%, but the apps have vastly different existing user bases. Either way, it’s too soon to tell whether there will eventually be significant user migration from Reddit to Forum.

This isn’t Meta’s first attempt at making its own version of an already successful app or feature. The company released its Twitter competitor app Threads in 2023, and most recently, it debuted Instants, an Instagram app that aims to replicate the successes of Snapchat and BeReal with instant, disappearing photos.

Interestingly, this time around, Meta released this app with little fanfare. There was no major announcement or press release that we could find. The app just appeared on the App Store, and some eagle-eyed users noticed it. Which raises the question, could this be the start of an AI-enabled flood of new apps that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly promised employees?

Late last month, the Wall Street Journal published a piece detailing a companywide meeting in which Zuckerberg talked about Meta’s AI overhaul that has been used to justify a brutal round of layoffs. According to the report, Zuckerberg touted the efficiency gains from infusing AI into workflows and how the company will “be able to spin up more new projects” now because of this. Those new projects, according to the report, include creating more apps.

“So like Chris [Cox, Meta’s chief product officer] and I have been talking about, ‘all right, well, can we build 50 new apps? Like, yeah, probably,” Zuckerberg is quoted to have said in the article. “But we probably should start by doing a few before we just, like, ramp up trying to do 50 all at once.”

#Metas #Latest #App #RedditForum,Meta,Reddit">Meta’s Latest App Looks Like RedditMeta’s Latest App Looks Like Reddit Meta has a new app on the App Store, and it looks an awful lot like Reddit. The app, called Forum, is “a dedicated space built for deeper discussions, real answers and communities you care about,” according to its App Store page. In practice, it is just a standalone app version of Facebook’s existing Groups feature, in which Facebook users can join groups and participate in discussions. In the new standalone app, the feed is entirely focused on the conversations taking place in the groups you are already a part of on your existing Facebook account. Forum and Facebook are still linked, meaning that you can enter Forum with your Facebook login, and whatever you post on there will be visible in your groups on the Facebook app as well. Some readers might be getting deja vu, and rightfully so, because this is Meta’s second attempt at launching a stand-alone Facebook Groups app. Then known as Facebook, the company launched a similar, dedicated app back in 2014 that was ultimately discontinued in 2017. Perhaps to spice things up a bit, this time around, Meta is also including a dedicated AI assistant in the app. The “Ask” feature on the app will rely on the information posted on the group pages to respond to users looking for “opinions, advice or recommendations,” Meta said. There is also an additional AI assistant for group admins, which will supposedly assist them with tasks like content moderation. Some financial analysts considered the app a direct threat to Reddit, causing the company’s stock to end the day down more than 5%, but the apps have vastly different existing user bases. Either way, it’s too soon to tell whether there will eventually be significant user migration from Reddit to Forum. This isn’t Meta’s first attempt at making its own version of an already successful app or feature. The company released its Twitter competitor app Threads in 2023, and most recently, it debuted Instants, an Instagram app that aims to replicate the successes of Snapchat and BeReal with instant, disappearing photos. Interestingly, this time around, Meta released this app with little fanfare. There was no major announcement or press release that we could find. The app just appeared on the App Store, and some eagle-eyed users noticed it. Which raises the question, could this be the start of an AI-enabled flood of new apps that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly promised employees? Late last month, the Wall Street Journal published a piece detailing a companywide meeting in which Zuckerberg talked about Meta’s AI overhaul that has been used to justify a brutal round of layoffs. According to the report, Zuckerberg touted the efficiency gains from infusing AI into workflows and how the company will “be able to spin up more new projects” now because of this. Those new projects, according to the report, include creating more apps. “So like Chris [Cox, Meta’s chief product officer] and I have been talking about, ‘all right, well, can we build 50 new apps? Like, yeah, probably,” Zuckerberg is quoted to have said in the article. “But we probably should start by doing a few before we just, like, ramp up trying to do 50 all at once.” #Metas #Latest #App #RedditForum,Meta,Reddit

Meta has a new app on the App Store, and it looks an awful lot like Reddit.

The app, called Forum, is “a dedicated space built for deeper discussions, real answers and communities you care about,” according to its App Store page.

In practice, it is just a standalone app version of Facebook’s existing Groups feature, in which Facebook users can join groups and participate in discussions. In the new standalone app, the feed is entirely focused on the conversations taking place in the groups you are already a part of on your existing Facebook account. Forum and Facebook are still linked, meaning that you can enter Forum with your Facebook login, and whatever you post on there will be visible in your groups on the Facebook app as well.

Some readers might be getting deja vu, and rightfully so, because this is Meta’s second attempt at launching a stand-alone Facebook Groups app. Then known as Facebook, the company launched a similar, dedicated app back in 2014 that was ultimately discontinued in 2017.

Perhaps to spice things up a bit, this time around, Meta is also including a dedicated AI assistant in the app. The “Ask” feature on the app will rely on the information posted on the group pages to respond to users looking for “opinions, advice or recommendations,” Meta said. There is also an additional AI assistant for group admins, which will supposedly assist them with tasks like content moderation.

Some financial analysts considered the app a direct threat to Reddit, causing the company’s stock to end the day down more than 5%, but the apps have vastly different existing user bases. Either way, it’s too soon to tell whether there will eventually be significant user migration from Reddit to Forum.

This isn’t Meta’s first attempt at making its own version of an already successful app or feature. The company released its Twitter competitor app Threads in 2023, and most recently, it debuted Instants, an Instagram app that aims to replicate the successes of Snapchat and BeReal with instant, disappearing photos.

Interestingly, this time around, Meta released this app with little fanfare. There was no major announcement or press release that we could find. The app just appeared on the App Store, and some eagle-eyed users noticed it. Which raises the question, could this be the start of an AI-enabled flood of new apps that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly promised employees?

Late last month, the Wall Street Journal published a piece detailing a companywide meeting in which Zuckerberg talked about Meta’s AI overhaul that has been used to justify a brutal round of layoffs. According to the report, Zuckerberg touted the efficiency gains from infusing AI into workflows and how the company will “be able to spin up more new projects” now because of this. Those new projects, according to the report, include creating more apps.

“So like Chris [Cox, Meta’s chief product officer] and I have been talking about, ‘all right, well, can we build 50 new apps? Like, yeah, probably,” Zuckerberg is quoted to have said in the article. “But we probably should start by doing a few before we just, like, ramp up trying to do 50 all at once.”

#Metas #Latest #App #RedditForum,Meta,Reddit

Meta has a new app on the App Store, and it looks an awful lot…