If you use WhatsApp for your personal and professional messaging, it can quickly become pretty busy. It also means that any professional contacts can see your photos, status updates, and where you are. To keep things separate its a good idea to use a different phone number for each, but having two numbers doesn't mean you'll need two phones.
AT&T is framing the launch as a broader overhaul of its digital customer experience, not just a visual refresh. In its announcement, the company said the app was built around customer demand for "simplicity, speed, and control," and introduced a GenAI assistant for shopping and support.
Sport has become a powerful tool for global brand engagement, enabling companies to build deeper connections with audiences in an increasingly fragmented media landscape. Real-time data and immersive fan experiences allow brands to create personalized interactions that resonate across diverse markets and demographics.
WhatsApp is now rumored to be soon introducing a premium tier. This will be called WhatsApp Plus. It's said to offer several additional customization options to change the app theme, app icon, and accent colors, including 14 new icons and multiple color choices and interface elements.
At some point, the industry stopped arguing about whether content drives commerce and started living in the reality where the two are indistinguishable. "Content, commerce and technology are really coming forward in a special way and recognition that there aren't disparate separate systems any longer," says Cara Pratt, president of global retail and media at Circana. "There really is one connected, cohesive, intelligent ecosystem that is fueling discovery, fueling conversion and purchase."
Mobile game developers have largely been locked into app store distribution as the primary way to reach players. RCS games live in the messaging inbox, the stickiest surface on mobile, where people are already spending huge amounts of time talking to friends and family. We're building on an interaction pattern people already use every day.
They said it would never happen, but of course it was always going to - ads are coming to ChatGPT. Shirley Marschall takes a look at this little bit of history repeating... Guys, honestly, there won't be ads... Jeff Bezos: "Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service." Elon Musk: "I hate advertising." Sergey Brin and Larry Page: "We expect that advertising-funded search engines will be inherently biased towards advertisers and away from the needs of consumers."
Whilst many of the tools of social media - blogs, ugc, forums - are now increasingly brought into new web design and development, there are companies, from British Airways to Lego who view social media as the starting point - not the added feature. Others, such as ruumz.com, are already operating the 'next generation' of social networks with a new blend of online and offline activity.
As the market grows increasingly saturated with traditional digital content, brands are exploring new ways to stand out by engaging more than just sight and sound. Advances in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), spatial audio and other immersive technologies are opening the door to richer, more memorable brand experiences that feel interactive rather than interruptive. The challenge is knowing how to experiment thoughtfully and how to use these tools to deepen connection without novelty overshadowing their purpose.
Meta's Threads is pulling further ahead of Elon Musk's X on mobile, based on recent estimates from analytics firm Similarweb, reports. In the first stretch of January, Threads averaged roughly 143 million daily active users worldwide on mobile devices, compared with about 126 million for X. Similarweb's year-over-year snapshot shows Threads growing sharply, up 37.8 percent year-over-year, while X's daily mobile audience fell 11.9 percent across the same period.
Do you remember when 2007 was dubbed "The year of mobile"? That was when Apple launched the iPhone and firmly established mobile as the secondary channel for online engagement, after the desktop. The company's approach was so revolutionary that, in today's world, the mobile experience has become the primary experience for brand and customer interaction. More people search for products and services on their phones than on any other platform.
Back in October, Nothing unveiled Essential Apps - AI-generated mini-apps and widgets based on prompts, that will live on your device and can be shared with others through Nothing's Playground community platform. Today, Nothing is announcing the rollout of Essential Apps Beta, following the Alpha release from late 2025, which was only available for a small group of early adopters. With the Beta, access is gradually expanding through a waitlist, with users added in batches.
Telegram has announced that it's rolling out a fully redesigned interface for its Android app, making navigation and search quicker and more intuitive. The most notable change this redesign brings is the new bottom bar, which lets you quickly switch between the Chats, Settings, Profile, and other tabs. In addition to the UI redesign, Telegram "completely rebuilt" the interface code to maximize efficiency and increase responsiveness. You can head to the Settings > Power Saving menu to maximize performance and extend battery life.