TLDR: Social Media Headlines – 3 October 2025

• Inside Victoria’s Secret’s new DC store: An event at the Georgetown location, which features a brighter ambiance than previous designs, focused on a U.S.-grown cotton program.
• Target shareholder group proposes independent board chair policy: The mass retailer raised eyebrows when it announced current CEO Brian Cornell would become executive chair of the board in 2026.
• Top retail conferences in 2026: These events will cover the topics that are top of mind for executives, including AI, customer behavior and technology.
• Former Macy’s merchant heads to Five Below: The retailer also tapped Edgewell executive Daniel Sullivan as chief financial officer. Ken Bull, who has been interim CFO, remains chief operating officer.
• At Home set to emerge from bankruptcy with most of its stores: The furniture retailer is axing almost $2 billion in debt and will be owned by a group of its lenders, according to a court-approved plan.
• Meta Platforms will start using people’s conversations with its AI chatbot to help personalize ads and content, offering a glimpse of how the company intends to pay for its expensive artificial intelligence efforts.
• OpenAI is launching the Sora app, its own TikTok competitor, alongside the Sora 2 model for TechCrunch. Along with the model, the company also launched a linked social app called Sora, where users can generate videos of themselves and their friends to share on a TikTok-style algorithmic feed.
• Access alone does not guarantee meaningful participation. The Department of Communication and Digital Technologies’ roadmap puts this into context: 98% of South African users were active on social media in 2023, but fewer than a quarter shopped online, less than a fifth used e-learning, and only 22% interacted with government services digitally.
• Early data shows traffic from ChatGPT is small but converts 2-4x higher than site averages. For SEOs and retailers, visibility depends on clean product feeds, schema, and strong reviews. And if you aren’t in the shortlist, you’re invisible.
• AI-powered shopping seems here to stay, as OpenAI launched Instant Checkout, a Shopify integration, and sponsored placements.
• Meta unveils Business AI and new generative tools: Meta’s AI updates help with creatives, AI generated music, business assistant and more promise to make advertising more personalized.
• Meta: AI interactions will shape content and ad recommendations: Meta will soon use people’s AI interactions to refine content and ad targeting, giving advertisers richer intent signals for more relevant campaigns.
• Spotify opens ad inventory to Amazon and Yahoo buyers: Spotify’s new partnerships with Amazon and Yahoo give advertisers easier programmatic access to its global audio and video inventory.
• Blue Origin aims to land next New Glenn booster, then reuse it for Moon mission: The second launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket will send two NASA-funded satellites toward Mars to study the processes that drove the planet’s evolution from a warmer, wetter world to the cold, dry planet of today. A successful launch would nudge Blue Origin closer to winning certification from the Space Force to begin launching national security satellites. The company plans to recover the New Glenn rocket’s first stage booster during the mission.
• OpenAI’s Sora soars to No. 3 on the US App Store: OpenAI’s Sora app saw 56,000 downloads on its first day. It is now ranked third Top Overall app on the US App Store, despite being invite-only and limited to users in the US and Canada. The ChatGPT app and Google’s Gemini iOS apps had stronger launches, with each reaching at least 80,000 downloads on day one, but since Sora is invite-only, that may not be a fair comparison. The strong release indicates there is a demand for AI video tools with a social networking-like experience.
• Demystifying the science behind fission and fusion: Kemmerer, Wyoming, will soon be home to the most advanced nuclear facility in the world. The first-ever Natrium plant, it will bring safe, next-generation nuclear energy. The plant was designed by TerraPower, a company Bill Gates started in 2008. This article looks at the science behind the Natrium plant. TerraPower aims to bring the plant online in 2030.
• The Quest to Sequence the Genomes of Everything: The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) aims to obtain a genome sequence for every named species of eukaryotic organism on the planet by 2035. Its success will depend on researchers’ ability to scale several biotech technologies. Specialists on the front lines of the genomic revolution in biology are confident that such scaling will be possible. Having a genome sequence for every eukaryotic creature will give researchers insights into how evolution proceeded for a myriad of life forms. It could lead to the discovery and development of many drugs, enzymes, catalysts, and other chemicals of incalculable value.
• Asked to do something illegal at work? Here’s what these software engineers did: Nishad Singh had confirmation that something illegal was happening at FTX, but he stayed, and now he is facing up to 75 years in jail. A senior engineering member at Pollen is now at the mercy of the UK police with what could be a potential wire fraud case after being asked to run a script that double-charged customers (and then doing so). The Director of Engineering at Frank, a student loan startup, flat out refused to create a fake set of data to pump up customer numbers. Their refusal is what makes them the only example on this list that is totally legally safe.
• Where It’s at:// All servers speaking the AT protocol are part of ‘the atmosphere’, a web of hyperlinked JSON. Each piece of JSON in the atmosphere has its own at://URI. This post looks at the exact process of resolving an at:// URI. The AT protocol is fundamentally an abstraction over HTTP, DNS, and JSON. It turns the web into a place where content belongs to its creators, not to the apps that display it, by putting users in an authority position, separating identity from hosting, and making data portable.
• In a Sea of Tech Talent, Companies Can’t Find the Workers They Want: Many tech companies are saying that good help is hard to find. While there is an ample supply of eager and capable engineers for hire, employers say there aren’t enough people with the most in-demand skills. Companies are looking for AI-specific experience, but relatively few people have it because the technology is so new. Companies should focus on identifying candidates with transferable skills and let those people learn on the job.
• Meta Tightens Grip on AI Research, Sparking Internal Anger and Fears for Open Culture: Meta has added a new review process for academic papers, sparking internal anger. Yann LeCun, a Turing Award winner and a pivotal figure in modern AI, reportedly considered resigning over the change. The new policy is aimed at aligning pure research more closely with Meta’s product road map. It will also help mitigate potential reputational risks from controversial findings. The constant state of reorganization raises critical questions about whether Meta is able to turn its recently acquired assets into a dominant force.
• Alphabet Plans Sale, Spinoff of Verily Unit, Executive Says: Verily, a sister company to Google, develops software and services to help health practitioners advance research and improve patient care.
• Nine HTTP Edge Cases Every API Developer Should Understand: Most security vulnerabilities come from unnecessary custom code that reimplements what frameworks already do correctly.
• OpenAI wraps $6.6 billion share sale at $500 billion valuation: The share sale allowed current and former employees to sell stock.
• Anti-Aging Breakthrough: Stem Cells Reverse Signs of Aging in Monkeys: Senescence-resistant stem cells, which exhibit greater resistance to age-related stress, are a promising solution when it comes to combating degenerative aging.
• Patients Are Diagnosing Themselves With Home Tests, Devices, and Chatbots: Patient are now shouldering responsibility for diagnosing their own symptoms, tracking their own medical data, and ordering their own lab tests.
• AI is reshaping childhood in China: AI tools, from robot toys to homework-grading systems, are flooding classrooms and households in China, providing learning materials along with companionship and emotional support.
• Winning consumers back after a poor experience takes action, not words: Business leaders and customers agree that resolution should be fast, but leaders place greater value in apologies, a Sprinklr survey found.
• AI chatbots consistently fall short on complex tasks: Companies should let bots handle simple issues and escalate complex requests to AI-supported human agents to boost outcomes, loyalty and efficiency, according to Bain & Co.
• Chick-fil-A wins on order accuracy, experience at the drive-thru: Speed of service improved slightly at quick-service restaurants, but mobile orders, app payments and customizations have created more complex transactions, Intouch Insight’s report revealed.
• TikTok’s going big on Taylor Swift this month.
• Threads now has its own groups, which could help to drive more conversation growth.

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