Social Media News – Week of 3/30
Periscope could change the future of news forever.
Big things are happening in the world of social media this week! While every week brings new changes, once in a while a week like this will occur, and there will be major changes to most platforms. To find out what’s changing, keep reading.
1. Facebook had their annual F8 developer conference on March 25 and 26 in California, and with it came a lot of announcements about the company’s plans for the upcoming year. Facebook will be turning Messenger into its own platform, with a family of apps to go along with it. They also plan to use Messenger as a way for consumers to reach businesses – say goodbye to calling a business to ask a question; Facebook thinks that the future of contacting businesses is through Messenger. Another point that they covered was their new “Spherical Videos” feature – similar to YouTube’s new 360-degree feature, Facebook will now allow for 360-degree videos to be uploaded. Considering Facebook owns Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset, we can only assume that these will go hand-in-hand. Also, speaking of videos, Facebook is now allowing users to embed Facebook videos on other websites. Will these videos use the new continuous autoplay feature that is in the process of being rolled out? We aren’t sure yet, but we will be keeping an eye on this new feature to find out.
2. Do you use Timehop? The clever app that shows you your social media history by date will now need to share market space with Facebook’s new “On This Day” feature. While Timehop shows you posts from all of your linked social media accounts, Facebook only shows you your Facebook interactions – for now. Knowing that Facebook owns Instagram and another handful of frequently-used apps, we have a feeling that these may creep into Timehop’s market even more.
1. Twitter has begun testing autoplay videos within user’s feeds. So far, this feature is just in beta mode, but if things go well, you can expect to start seeing autoplaying ads, user uploaded-videos, and Amplify videos (which are company-promoted videos). However, you won’t see Vine videos autoplaying just yet, as they are not a part of this test market.
2. Periscope was just released by Twitter, and this new social network could possibly change the future of news forever. This platform allows for users to livestream videos from all over the world – it was already incredibly beneficial in this arena when a building exploded in NYC late last week. Multiple users uploaded live streams of this event so any user could tune in and find out exactly what was going on. We’re very excited about this new platform, and we have a feeling that it will be big.
YouTube
1. Both Facebook and Twitter have already jumped into this feature, and now YouTube is getting in on the game. YouTube will now autoplay suggested videos after you finish viewing a video. Will this be annoying or awesome? Only time will tell.
We’re very intrigued to see how the new Facebook features will play out, but we’ve got to say, the most exciting news from this week had to be the release of Periscope. This new app is one of the more innovative social media concepts we’ve seen in a while. All in all, this was a very important week for social media. Each week bring about something new, so to stay in the loop with all of the latest social media changes, check back each week for our social media roundup!