Social Media News – Week of 7/13
The past few weeks have been intense for social media – last week there were 17 changes and before that there were 14. This week is a bit calmer; the major player platforms are only rolling out 7 new changes. We’ve covered each of these changes in this week’s social media roundup; read on to find out more.
1. One of the biggest gripes users have about Facebook is that the lack of control over individual feeds can be frustrating. However, users now have the ability to pick and choose what they want to see in their feeds. This update allows users to prioritize who they see first, unfollow people, reconnect with people they’ve unfollowed, and discover new Pages. To learn more, check out Facebook’s newsroom post about the matter here.
2. Facebook has redesigned its friend request logo. It’s a small and subtle change, but an important one. Previously, the logo had a man in the forefront and a woman in the background – now, the two characters are displayed side-by-side.
3. As web developers, we’ve got mixed feelings about anything that auto-plays on a website. Therefore, we have mixed feelings about a new feature being introduced by Facebook: people can now embed auto-playing videos on websites (fortunately, these videos auto-play muted). If you’re interested in this, you can find out how to embed the code here.
4. Speaking of videos (which, you may have noticed, seems to be Facebook’s current focus), Facebook is now allowing users to save videos to watch later. This new feature appears in the upper right corner of videos and seems to be an attempt on Facebook’s part to get more people to watch videos within the platform.
1. Previously, advertisers had the ability to create Twitter ads that invited users to install apps. Now, these ads have the capability of including video. You can learn more about this new feature here.
Meerkat
1. We don’t often touch on Meerkat in our social media roundups. The platform struggled when Periscope, a Twitter-sponsored streaming app, was introduced. However, it appears that Meerkat is fighting its way back to the forefront of streaming apps. The platform now allows users to sign up through Facebook, and is also introducing a new feature to its video streams called Cameo, which allows users to invite other users to take over their streams. We’re looking forward to seeing how these new updates affect the size of Meerkat’s user base.
Snapchat
1. You may recall that, a few months back, Snapchat rolled out a “Discover” feature that hasn’t been incredibly successful. The feature was seemingly buried within the app – users had to take a few extra steps within the app to get to the Discover section. Snapchat is attempting to get more users to participate in the Discover feature, and the feature can now be found within the “Stories” page on the app. This will more than likely bring more views to the Discover feature.
That’s all we’ve got for this week! While there are fewer changes this week than in previous ones, the changes that are occurring are just as important. Each week, new features are rolled out to various social media platforms, and we take the time to learn and write about each one. To stay in the loop, check our social media pages and our blog!