TalkFuse Updates

Talk Fuse has had a fresh coat of paint. Everything works as it did, it just looks calmer and gives you a bit more room.

• Stories as cards. Each story sits on its own rounded card with space around it, and the vote, thumbnail and story keep the order you know.
• Themes in one place. Pick Light, Dark or System, or one of Midnight, Ember, Paper and High contrast, from the palette button at the top of the right-hand panel.
• Tidier sidebars. New outline icons, the right-hand panel in the same dark as the navigation, and sections that show a drag handle when you hover them.
• Mood faces. The mood slider now has four little faces you can tap.
• Compact feed. Prefer a denser list? Switch the feed to compact in the filter panel.
• More fonts. Thirteen more fonts for communities and profiles.
• A gentler start. New members get a short welcome and a getting started checklist.

Your own colours and fonts, and your communities' themes, are untouched. If anything looks wrong on your device, tell us in this community and we will sort it.

Light mode has had a proper going-over, and a few things around the feed have moved to where they belong.

Light mode, done properly

• A new light palette: white cards on a soft grey canvas, lighter sidebars, and proper contrast everywhere. The story summaries and TL;DR bullets that were washed out are readable again.
• TalkFuse now follows your phone or computer's light/dark setting until you press the sun/moon toggle yourself. Once you choose, it stays chosen on that device.
• Orange buttons keep their orange; orange text is a touch deeper so it stays legible on white.

Tidier rails

• Sorting (New, Hot, Top, Discussed, Trending) now lives in the filter rail along with feed types and a Topics & leaning row, so the feed itself is just stories.
• Calm mode and Focus mode sit with the theme and full-screen buttons in your account rail, on desktop and in the phone drawer.
• Today's plays is a section of your account rail rather than a strip above the feed.
• On phones, the All filters menu has more room to breathe and the side drawers line up under the header.

Smaller things

• The briefing opens downwards as one card, with the play bar as its header.
• A short cookie notice appears once; the page tour waits until you have dismissed it.
• The app takes over from the first page a little sooner after it loads.

Spotted something that looks wrong in light mode? Tell us in here.

Two new ways to make your profile yours, and a fix for anyone using their own domain.

New features

Featured

Pin up to twelve of your own photos, posts and articles above your activity. Choose a mosaic, a strip or cards, give the shelf a heading, and arrange it however you like. It picks up your accent colour and name font. Add things from the picker on your profile, or with the star on any photo in your gallery.

Tag people in photos

Open a photo and choose Tag people, then click a face. You can tag yourself in any photo you can see. When you tag a friend, they get a notification and decide whether it shows: approved tags appear in a new Tagged in gallery on their profile, and they can remove a tag at any time. Photo owners can take any tag off their own pictures, and there is a new email preference for tags under Notifications.

Fixes

• Your own domain now stays on its front page instead of switching to /@yourname, and that address is the one shared and indexed.
• A domain that hides your activity opens on the first tab it does show, and the featured shelf has its own switch in the domain settings.

It has been a busy month behind the scenes, so here is the lot in one go.

The site got picky about quality. Stories now only publish once they have a proper, validated summary, thin stuff gets culled rather than left to rot, and anything significant without a good write-up gets a research pass before it goes anywhere. The Answers section now grows itself too: evergreen Q&A pages built from well-sourced stories, each one cited. Search-wise we are properly wired into Search Console, sitemaps are clean and submitted, we ping Bing and friends the moment anything publishes or changes, and Talk Fuse is now registered with Google Publisher Center.

Taking part now actually pays. Weighing a claim on a developing story (that little "looks sound / needs a better source" control) earns points at last, and it genuinely matters: your verdicts decide what our human reviewers look at first. There is a whole new Verdicts section on its way out of testing where pending claims are dealt to you as swipeable cards, with instant points, accuracy streaks when your calls prove right, and a few new achievements for the sharp-eyed. Three daily quests now sit beside your daily chest, with a bonus chest for clearing the set and a peek at what tomorrow's chest is worth. Earning points feels better everywhere: combos chain, the chime rises, sparks fly.

Comments and chat grew up. The full editor (images, GIFs, @mentions, formatting) is now everywhere: trailer discussions, editing your own posts and comments, direct messages and the community live chat, with Enter still sending in chat like you would expect. Emoji pickers, mention lists and the GIF panel no longer get cut off by their containers, on any screen size.

The interface got a proper going-over. Sidebars now squeeze down gracefully and remember exactly how you left them, on every device you sign into. Collapsed rails stay useful: your followed sports keep their crests with live scores in the tooltips, search stays a real search box, and every icon explains itself when you hover. Trending is now one section with two tabs, what is moving on Talk Fuse and what is moving on the wider web. Stories with a picture get a soft blurred backdrop at the top of the page. The news map runs on new open map tiles, the mobile ticker behaves itself, and dozens of smaller snags got straightened out along the way.

For the sports lot: you can now follow your teams, see their next fixture at a glance in the sidebar, and soon plan travel to the away games straight off the news map.

As ever, shout in the comments if something feels off, or better, if something feels good. More soon.

A big evening of new ways into the news. The Daily Fuse is a new Tabloid entry under Main feed: today's most talked-about stories laid out like a proper front page, wearing each community's colours. Reels is now called Videos, and the clip on your screen plays itself as you browse - scroll on and it stops. Three stories into the main feed you'll find a new Videos shelf to flick through (hide it any time, just like Blindspot). Music got some love too: the Radio section opens with a Fresh Music shelf of the newest releases from the Music community, playable as a queue with one tap, and music releases in the feed now carry a play badge that pops the track into the dock while you keep browsing. The news ticker also stays put at the top of the feed now, with stories sliding beneath it.

There is a new Tabloid entry in the left navigation, just under Main feed. It lays out todays most talked-about stories as a proper newspaper front page: a splash story, a skybox of teasers, a three-column spread and an In Brief round-up, all on a newsprint sheet. Tap any headline to jump straight into the story. The page rebuilds itself from the live feed every visit, so the front page you get is always this minutes.

Big one today — TalkFuse just got a second currency and its first live chat. 🎉

💎 Gems. Alongside your reputation (⚡ XP — which now never goes down), you earn gems: rarer, spendable, and yours to use. Every achievement you unlock pays a gem, duel wins pay one each, and the weekly league podium pays 3/2/1. Everyone starts with 3 to play with. Asking TalkFuse a question now costs 1 gem instead of eating your reputation.

💬 Community live chat. Communities that earn 2,000 points unlock their own live chat — a room that sits right beside the feed. This community (Updates) has it switched on from day one, so come and say hi! Hit Live chat in the banner, join the room, and from then on new messages pop up in your Chats like any other conversation — with a link straight back to the community. You can even fire a story from the feed into the chat with the 💬 button on any card, and share whatever you're listening to on the radio into any chat with one tap.

Reputation opens doors; gems make things happen. Go earn some. ⚡💎

🎮 Patch Notes: "Sound & Vision"

Hot on the heels of the last drop: the AI news companion finds its voice, the radio becomes a jukebox, and the whole app learns to show you around. Here is the changelog.

✨ New features

🎓 Guided tours

Every section now gives you a quick spotlight tour the first time you open it, with everything but the highlighted bit blurred out. Skip any time, and replay the whole tutorial from the bottom of the right sidebar whenever you like.

🎵 Radio becomes a jukebox

One search box now finds live stations AND artists together. Pick an artist and their songs open as a playlist: start from any track, skip forwards and back, and pop the queue open right in the sidebar player, where the music keeps playing while you browse. Trending artists are one tap away, and the latest music news sits at the bottom of the page.

🗣️ Ask TalkFuse speaks

Ask a question and the answer is now read aloud in a proper newsreader voice, with the words lighting up as they are spoken, read-along style. While it thinks, you can watch it working through each article with a progress bar and a tick. Popular questions appear as one-tap chips, repeated questions answer instantly, and a close-enough match reuses an existing answer rather than making you wait. The sources open right inside the app.

🧭 A smarter sidebar

The navigation now shows what is new since you last looked: fresh stories on Home, new pins on the News Map, unseen left/right blindspots on Blindspot, and a live counter on Livestreams. Discover has moved up into the main navigation too.

📰 Briefings got headlines

Audio briefings now carry a proper front-page headline and a one-line summary instead of a timestamp, so you can tell at a glance what is in them.

📄 The paperwork

Terms, Privacy and Cookie pages now open inside the app, linked from the right sidebar. Landing on /radio drops you straight into the radio too.

🎨 Polish

• The logo is now the clean TalkFuse mark, adapting to light and dark mode.
• The filter sidebar hugs its edges: search and For You / Friends run full width, the mood slider is tighter with solid notch dots, and Ask sits flush beneath the search.
• The right sidebar pins just the buttons bar; everything else scrolls, with the profile details tucked behind a toggle.
• The sidebar music player and weather now sit directly on the panel, edge to edge.

🐛 Fixes

• Posting no longer white-screens the app when the editor opens (a WordPress 7.0 clash, now squashed).
• The daily chest went missing behind a collapsed panel: it is back, always visible, and yours may well be waiting.
• Guests keep their chosen sidebar layout between visits.
• Reputation-locked features now tell you exactly how many points away you are.

More soon. Tell us what you want next. 💬

🎮 Patch Notes: "Play the News"

The biggest drop yet. New ways to earn, call the shots, and find your way around, plus a top-to-bottom mobile glow-up. Here is the changelog.

✨ New features

🎁 Daily Reward Chest

Open a chest once a day for a variable points drop. The longer your streak, the bigger the haul, with the odd jackpot. Some chests hand you a Streak Freeze: miss a day and it saves your run automatically.

🔮 Predictions ("Calls")

Vote on a match or prediction poll and you have made a Call. Get it right and you earn points, and the more you nail in a row, the more each correct call pays out. A new Calls panel in your progress hub tracks your accuracy and your streak.

👋 First-run Onboarding

New members now get a proper welcome: pick your interests, join a few communities, and drop straight into a feed tuned to you.

✨ Ask TalkFuse

An AI news companion that answers your questions from TalkFuse's own coverage, complete with sources and a left / centre / right spread. Ask by voice, and have it read the answer back. Rolling out to the top ranks and staff first.

🎚️ Mood is now a slider

Set the tone of your news with a proper notched slider: drag from Upbeat, through Balanced, to Heavy.

📻 Briefings got a face

Every audio briefing now gets its own waveform cover art, and the mini-player shows a live waveform while it plays. It also stopped talking about itself, so it is pure news now, no roundups of roundups.

📊 Publishers on the spectrum

The Publishers directory is now a Left / Centre / Right board, ranked by the points each outlet's stories have earned rather than sheer volume. Real publications only, no more YouTube channels or search feeds sneaking in.

📱 Mobile glow-up

• A proper top header: menu on the left, logo dead centre, you on the right.
• Filters now drop down as a clean, labelled list instead of a cramped strip of icons.
• Messenger fits the screen, the send button works, presence is live, and it clears the iOS home bar.
• Swipeable profile tabs and a tidier progress screen.
• The whole app now respects the notch and the home bar.

🐛 Fixes

• Friend requests can now actually be accepted (whoops).
• Notifications open in a tidy pop-over instead of shoving the sidebar around.
• Joining a community no longer pings everyone that you "posted in it".
• Photos you post keep the right way up, and public photo posts can now show on the news map.
• Sticky, frosted sidebar headers, cleaner collapse controls, and a pile of smaller polish across the board.

More soon. Tell us what you want next. 💬

A big update just landed, and this one gives TalkFuse a voice. Here is what is new.

🎧 Listen to the news

• The Briefing - a short audio news bulletin, put together every few hours from the top stories and read aloud in a natural voice. Words light up as they are spoken, and it sits docked along the bottom of your feed so it keeps playing while you browse. Every briefing is also posted as its own item you can open, share and discuss.
• Radio - browse and search thousands of live stations, with the big British ones featured up front: BBC Radio 1, 2, 4 and 6 Music, Kerrang, Capital, Classic FM, talkSPORT and more. Pick one and it plays in a floating deck with a live waveform while you carry on reading.

🌦 Weather, woven in

• A weather card in your sidebar with today's outlook and the next few hours, plus air quality, sunrise and sunset, and an aurora nudge when the skies might put on a show.
• Live weather on the News Map: a precipitation-radar overlay you can toggle, and current conditions near you.
• Big natural events, like major earthquakes, now arrive as alerts, pinned to the map where they happened.

⚖ Rate the news, do not just react to it

• Reader lean ratings - on any story, nudge where it leans, left or right. Your vote joins everyone else's to form a community view alongside our own read, and earns you points.
• Publishers - a new directory of every outlet we track. Open one to read its stories and help rate where it leans, too.

🎵 Make the feed yours

• Moods - pick the tone of your feed: Upbeat, Balanced, Hard news or Heavy, and we tune what you see to match.
• Tune your feed - tap a category once to see more of it, again to mute it. Simple.

✨ Smoother all round

• Pop a video out to the corner and it keeps playing from the exact same spot, with no restart, and no ads replaying on Twitch and YouTube livestreams.
• Tap anything that needs a login and we now bring the sign-in panel to you and highlight it, instead of bouncing you off to a separate page.

Plenty more brewing. Thanks, as always, for being here early.

A big batch of improvements just landed. Here is what is new:

Stories

• Two-paragraph summaries and a TL;DR on stories, so you can get the gist at a glance.
• Developing stories now show a live timeline of how coverage grew, and settle into one tidy summary once the news goes quiet. The big, important ones get pinned to the News Map.
• Richer context where it fits: film trailers, live sport fixtures and results, game cards, outlet reliability cards, an "on this day" pick and trending velocity.

Getting involved

• Reactions now earn you points, and you will see them pop up as you go.
• Share to a friend: send any story, poll or update straight into a chat.
• Match prediction polls with a proper versus card and related coverage. Call it right before kick-off for bonus points.

Chat

• Minimise chats Facebook-style: keep a few conversations open at once and tuck them away as bars along the bottom.
• Images in private messages unlock at 1,500 points.

Polish

• Your own theme always styles the sidebars now, even inside a themed community.
• A cleaner collapsed sidebar, and a proper TalkFuse icon when you install the app to your desktop or home screen.

Plenty more on the way. Thanks for being here early.

One of the most powerful things about a TalkFuse community is that it can fill itself with the news it cares about - automatically. Here's how it works and what's new.

Give a community its own sources

If you run a community, you can now give it its own news sources: a search term, a website, or an RSS feed. TalkFuse checks them regularly and pulls in matching stories, so a community about - say - Sheffield fills up with Sheffield news without anyone posting a thing. Open your community's settings and choose 📡 Sources to add one.

Three kinds of source

• Search term - follow a subject, place or name and we fetch the latest matching news for it.
• Website - paste a news site and we'll find its feed automatically.
• RSS feed - point us straight at a feed you already know.

Default communities and your homepage

We've also set up default communities that power the logged-out homepage and that you'll automatically join when you sign up - so there's always something to read from your very first visit. As a member, the more communities you join, the more your feed becomes truly yours.

It all adds up to feeds that stay fresh on their own, giving every community a reason to keep people coming back.

Sharing on TalkFuse just got quicker and richer. Here's what's new when you post.

One composer for everything

Writing a status, sharing a link and creating a poll all live in the same composer now. Hit 🔗 Share a link or 📊 Poll, choose where it goes - your profile or one of your communities - and post. No separate boxes, no hunting for the right button.

Summaries, written by you or by us

When you share a link you can write your own summary in your own words. Leave it blank and we'll generate a clear two-paragraph summary for you automatically, so your share always has context.

Video that plays inline

Share a YouTube link and the video plays right inside the post - no need to click away to watch.

Post it where it belongs

Because links and polls now flow through the same composer as your updates, you can file them straight into a community or keep them on your own profile. Say your piece, ask a question, or share something worth talking about - your way.

Your community doesn't have to stay on TalkFuse. You can now put a live TalkFuse feed on any website - and share links that look great everywhere.

A live feed widget for any site

Every community and member profile can be embedded as a tidy, self-contained feed widget. Look for the Embed button on a community or profile, copy the snippet, and paste it into your own site - the feed stays live and updates itself. It's cached for speed and carries a subtle "Powered by TalkFuse" link back to the source.

oEmbed built in

TalkFuse is a full oEmbed provider, so on sites that support it you can simply paste a community or profile link and it turns into the live widget automatically - no code required.

Share cards that shine

We've also added proper social share cards. When you share a link to a community or profile, it comes through with the right title, description and image - including the latest headline - so it looks the part on social media and in chats.

However people find your community, they can now take it with them.

Communities on TalkFuse compete on a leaderboard - and we've just made that competition fair.

Points earned where they're earned

The "Top communities" board used to add up members' overall points, which meant one busy member could lift every community they'd ever joined. Now it counts only the points actually earned inside each community. Every vote, comment and share lifts the community it happened in - and nothing else.

Why it matters

It means communities genuinely compete on how active they are, not on who happens to have joined them. A small, lively community can now out-rank a large, quiet one - exactly as it should be.

Get involved

The upshot is simple: getting stuck into a community directly helps it climb the table. Vote on its stories, join the discussion, share something good - and watch it rise. Find the leaderboard in your Progress hub.

TalkFuse is more fun when there's something to play for. Two ways to compete have arrived: Leagues and Duels.

Climb the weekly Leagues

Every week you're placed in a League with around thirty other members at your level. Earn points by taking part - voting, commenting, sharing - and climb the rankings. Finish near the top and you're promoted; drift to the bottom and you're relegated. Rise through the tiers from Bronze to Silver, Gold, Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald and finally Diamond.

Keep your streak alive

Earn at least one point a day to keep a daily streak going. Streaks are a simple nudge to keep coming back - and a badge of honour in your League.

Duel anyone, head-to-head

Want a more personal challenge? Open someone's profile and hit ⚔️ Duel to go head-to-head over a few days. Whoever earns the most points wins, and it all counts towards your win/loss record and rating.

Find your League and your Duels in the Progress hub - and may the best fuser win.

Welcome to TalkFuse - a community news network where real stories meet real conversation. Whether you're here to follow the news, dig into a subject you love, or just find your people, this guide walks you through everything TalkFuse can do.

News with the full picture

Your feed brings together news from trusted sources and shows you coverage from across the spectrum, so you can see how a story is being reported by the left, the centre and the right - not just one side of it. Every story links back to its original source, and you can vote stories up or down to help surface what matters.

Communities built around what you care about

Communities are the heart of TalkFuse. Join them to shape your feed around the subjects, places and interests you care about - from world news to your own city. Each community can pull in its own news automatically, so it stays fresh without anyone lifting a finger, and you can post, discuss and share right inside it.

Share, discuss and earn

Share links worth talking about - add your own summary or let us write one for you, and YouTube videos play right inside the post. Create polls, post updates, and reply to anyone. Everything you do earns points, building your reputation and unlocking new abilities as you go.

Compete and climb

Every week you're placed in a League with others at your level - earn points to get promoted from Bronze all the way to Diamond, and keep a daily streak going. Want a personal challenge? Duel another member head-to-head over a few days and see who comes out on top.

Stay connected

Message friends privately, get notified when people reply, and build a profile that's yours. This community - TalkFuse Updates - is where we share every major new feature, so follow along here to keep up.

That's TalkFuse in a nutshell. Dive in, join a few communities, and start fusing.