Social Media Notes
Here’s this week’s round-up of social media (& tech) news. Come by each week for what I hope to be a fun & informative blog post on social stories that caught my eye throughout the week!
- This is big: New Instagram update supports landscape and portrait image formats on the popular photo-sharing site. Your square grid will still look square though – it will auto adjust it in the grid to a center-cropped square. Though, the care and attention some people take to how their square image looks in the overall grid may get lost depending on how the portrait or landscape photo centre-crops. I am curious to see how (or if) this will change how some of my favourite Instagram users post!
- Who knew!!! The complete history of ‘Netflix and chill’.
- Meet ‘M’, Facebook Messenger’s new personal assistant – helping you do all the things Siri would help you do. #iRobot. Also this: The purposeful uselessness of virtual assistants from Forbes.
- The senseless shooting death of a reporter and videographer in Virginia last week was made worse when the killer uploaded a video of the murder onto Facebook and Twitter. This article about the social networks’ quick responses / action to take down the videos and remove the user is interesting.
- Smart entrepreneurs: forget selfies, the latest holiday accessory is hiring a personal photographer to document your trip and deliver a daiply supply of Instagram/social-media-friendly images for you to post online. Convenient! lol
- The Ashley Madison hack story just keeps getting worse: it’s looking more and more like the majority of female users on the site were fake accounts set up by the company itself.
- What a warning story to tell your kids… A Virginia teenager will spend 11 years in prison for helping ISIS through social media.
- An interesting take on “why parents should challenge autoplay video.” (Hint: not because it’s a data-drainer, but because of how easy it is for raphic and violent imagery/video to be shared now).
- Milestone: Last week, 1 in 7 people on Earth used Facebook – that’s more than 1 billion people in a single 24-hour time period. Who said people weren’t using Facebook anymore?
- Looks like the MTV Video Music Awards has become the most tweeted-about non-sports program to date. There’s something about posting what you’re watching on TV live in real-time, that you just can’t do on any other platform.
- Google has launched the new YouTube Gaming service – in an attempt to challenge Amazon’s Twitch. It’s a live broadcasting service for games. Did you know: the 10 most popular game channels on YouTube generate more than 2.2 BILLION monthly video views? Gamers like PewDiePie is one of YouTube’s biggest stars – he earned $7.4 million in 2014 from his channel + sponsorship deals!
- An interesting read on the Calgary Police Service’s use of social media to get information to solve cases, and connect with community. I especially love what the Edmonton Police Service has done on social media!
- A good read from the NYTimes: A 21st-century migrant’s essentials: food, shelter, and … a smartphone. “In this modern migration, smartphone maps, global positioning apps, social media and WhatsApp have become essential tools. Migrants depend on them to post real-time updates about routes, arrests, border guard movements and transport, as well as places to stay and prices, all the while keeping in touch with family and friends.”
- Did you see this week’s Cat Saturday photos?! My favourites are 1, 2, 12, 13, 20, 27 and 28!!
Thoughts on these stories? Tweet @ me or leave a comment below!
Linda