Bad Robot is getting into the gaming business. “The entertainment production company has entered a strategic relationship with Tencent, the Chinese media giant, to form Bad Robot Games,” The Hollywood Reporter writes. “The partnership will exclusively develop games by [co-founder and CEO J.J.] Abrams and Bad Robot, with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment joining the gaming arm as a minority investor.”

Snapchat is expanding the use of its Bitmoji characters for iOS users, MacRumors reports. “With the update, iPhone and iPad users will be able to send personalized Friendmojis, or Bitmoji stickers that include both you and your friend, directly in Apple's Messages app,” it writes. “Anyone who has their Bitmoji and Snapchat accounts linked together will be able to send Friendmojis in Messages.”  

After 20 years, Yahoo is shuttering its Messenger messaging app. “Yahoo, which was acquired by Verizon in 2017, didn’t give an explanation for shutting its messenger down, but given the sheer amount of already popular messaging apps on the market, it was probably hard to compete with the existing product,” Business Insider reports. “Yahoo Messenger was one of the first instant messaging apps created, but it struggled to keep up with modern apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Snapchat.”

Building on its Gaming Creator program, Facebook just launched a Gaming Creator landing page. The new page will serve as a hub for “relevant broadcasts, as well as the Level Up program, which will give emerging livestreamers access to monetization tools and marketing support,” Venture Beat reports. “The Gaming Creator program debuted in January to encourage folks to stream PC, console, and mobile games on Facebook.”

Lower socio-economic U.S. citizens drove an overall increase in Web usage in 2017, Reuters reports, citing fresh government figures. “The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) also reported that for the first time tablets were more popular than desktop computers, and that more households had a mobile data plan than wired broadband service,” it writes.

Facebook groups are apparently assisting in the illicit trade of animal parts, Wired reports. “On Facebook, wildlife traffickers can speedily connect with buyers across the globe, fast-tracking illegal, unregulated deals from within the semiprivate world of groups,” it writes. “That means, in order to tackle wildlife trading, you have to first figure out Facebook.”

Due to a “bug,” Facebook changed the suggested privacy setting for status updates to “public” from whatever users had set it to last, TechCrunch reports. This potentially made it more likely that people posted sensitive friends-only content for the whole world to see. “Facebook is now notifying 14 million people around the world who were potentially impacted by the bug to review their status updates and lock them down tighter if need be,” TC notes.

A trans YouTube creator named Chase Ross says the video platform continues to treat him like a second-class citizen. “For the past three weeks he’s been dealing with age restrictions on his videos daily; some of his older videos have been recently demonetized, or stripped of revenue-earning ads, with others being removed completely,” The Verge reports. Offering some context, The Verge notes that“YouTube’s track record with LGBT creators isn’t great."

Betting on the power of karaoke, Facebook just unveiled a Lip Sync Live feature. With the feature, users can invite friends to join their virtual karaoke party, or to just watch and add comments, Fortune reports. “Additionally, users can add effects that give the background in the lip-syncing videos some flair, much like Snapchat’s facial recognition feature that adds dog ears and super-sized eyelashes to photos and videos.”

Instagram is apparently open to hosting videos of up to an hour in length, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources. “Instagram, which allows users to post photos and brief glimpses of their lives through short videos, is getting ready to go long,” it writes. To populate the would-be feature, Instagram is reportedly talking with content creators and publishers.