Here’s this week’s round-up of social media (& sometimes tech) news. Come back weekly for what I hope to be a fun & informative blog post on social stories that caught my eye throughout the week! 

• Congrats to Janet McNally, you’ve won a 1-hour social media consult with me! I’ll be sending you an email to set something up. Thanks for entering my giveaway to celebrate 100+ Social Media Notes!

• I thought this was so interesting: Business Insider’s What Teens Are Like in 2016 report has a lot of funny, young people slang, but also shows that Snapchat and Instagram really are on top for the younger demographic, with Facebook and Twitter fizzling out, plus more tech/social teen trends.

• I always try to be aware of how much I’m reaching for my phone at dinner with friends or family. This new IKEA smartphone charging dining table may be just what I need to pay more attention.

• Reactions are coming to Facebook over the next few weeks. Facebook Page owners may have noticed an updated ‘Reactions’ tab to their Insights tab, soon everyone can express more than just “like” – including angry, sad, wow, haha, love emojis.

• I see so many blogs that get crazy shares originating from Medium these days, and thought this post on why you should publish “anywhere but Medium” is pretty interesting and makes some great points.

• I have been following the @chefjacqueslamerde account on Instagram for awhile now – it’s a parody/satire feed that pokes fun at fancy, beautifully plated food, and instead uses candy and other not-so-fancy items to create these food masterpieces. It’s finally been revealed that a Canadian chef is behind the account, which has more than 118,000 followers! So funny. I’m actually surprised the person behind it is a female chef, because from the captions (lots of BROS lol) I’ve always thought it was a guy chef.

• New emojis, new emojis, new emojis! The Emoji Consortium (Unicode Consoritum) has accepted 74 new emojis including hand taking selfie with phone, drooling smiley, and fingers crossed. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE PUKING EMOJI?

• This piece from The New Yorker on “The End of Twitter” makes me feel a bit sad. But I would agree, so many (not great) changes lately as well as rumoured changes on the horizon seem to show that Twitter’s lost its way (at least, the way that made me fall in love with the platform to begin with). I don’t think this is actually the end of Twitter, but it’s certainly been on a downward spiral for awhile now…

• A Toronto man was found guilty of harassing Alberta Conservative MP Michelle Rempel on Twitter. The article also mentions a ruling from Toronto court last week where a man was acquitted of harassing two women on Twitter. Interestingly: “Skeene’s conviction serves as an example of tweets that cross into criminality, while Gregory Alan Elliott’s acquittal demonstrates the high bar for proving criminal harassment in the courts. Not only does the complainant need to feel threatened, but their fear must be deemed objectively reasonable.”

• Ugh…. Facebook is once again tweaking their News Feed algorithms which will affect which stories/posts appear on users’ feeds. Could be (continued) bad news for Business Pages and brands to get engagement/reach on their posts without investing money into sponsored posts.

• It’s now easier to add users on Snapchat by giving each user a personalized URL. Add me at: https://www.snapchat.com/add/lindorkyeg

• Neat: Snapchat is expanding its geofilters to include live scores from major sporting events!
• Milestones: WhatsApp and Gmail both top 1 billion monthly active users!

• Facebook had been testing live streaming with celebrities, and is now rolling out the feature for all American iPhone users – going head to head with Twitter/Periscope and Meerkat (are people still using Meerkat?)

• But Periscope is also upping their live stream game – by integrating with GoPros!

• Facebook’s also bragging about some new numbers in its quarterly update: claiming 100 million hours of video are watched a day, more than a billion users are using Groups, and more than 80 million are registered to its Facebook Lite app for developing countries.

• Unbelievable. (Or maybe not) But after Rihanna tweeted a photo wearing bejeweled Dolce & Gabanna headphones and talking about her new album – the headphones sold out. Sheeeesh! Twitter/celebrity power.

• Tinder users are all saying ‘finally!’ you can now upload profile photos directly to the app instead of selecting from Facebook. You can also use GIFs and bigger emojis to chat with your match-ups.

• Speaking of Tinder, if you want to the most successful matches, apparently you should be using the app at night, particularly between 8 and 9 p.m.

• We’re hearing more from ‘social media influencers’ (models, fashion bloggers, etc.) about their highly ‘curated’ social media lives. Here’s another story from the Vancouver Sun to add to the mix: on how social media success is all about striking a balance.

• Here’s an interesting look from The Guardian – on millennials who have deactivated their social media accounts – why, and how it’s affected their lives.

• What’s up Twitter? I – along with many others in Edmonton – were dealing with an influx of spam/robot accounts following us the last few days. Really, not cool! I must have blocked over 200 accounts.

• Here’s the week’s Cat Saturday photos! Almost all of the photos this week are a-meowzing!

Thoughts on these stories? Tweet @ me or leave a comment below!

Linda

Follow @lindork