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! 

• The saddest social media news this past week… Instagram is moving to an algorithm (Facebook style) feed – showing you photos it thinks you’ll care about (based on previous interactions) instead of photos in chronological order. It’s also very bad news for brands: “Consider this your wake up call, because if your business relies heavily on Instagram as a channel, customer acquisition is about to come with a hefty price tag instead of a perfectly edited photo.”

• Twitter is celebrating 10 years! Here’s a people’s history from Verge, including Jack’s very first tweet (setting up twtr), the creation of the @, hashtag, some of its failures, and well, 10 years later, Jack’s still setting up Twtr.

• Remember when everyone was worried because Twitter’s CEO said he was thinking of changing Twitter’s 140-character limit to 10,000 instead? In a new interview, Jack Dorsey says the 140-character limit “is staying.”

• Fascinating: Check out this story about the elite, super-secret world of L.A.’s coolest girls on Facebook is fascinating. In order to get invited to the private Facebook group, at least three women currently in the group need to recommend you. This quote was really interesting: “Facebook isn’t actually uncool. You just can’t see how the cool kids are using it.”

• Vine stars are increasingly being taken with as much (if not more) weight than their YouTube counterparts. Now they’re asking Twitter for some direct revenue/compensation for their content. I don’t know if Twitter should actually be paying these people but I do agree there should be some kind of view/advertising opportunity that would pay out like YouTube.

• Users now logged into Twitter.com on the web will also be automatically logged into Tweetdeck. 

• The Emoji Consortium has been working hard to include more diverse emojis – could less stereotypical ones be next? A new campaign is saying the range of available ‘female’ emojis is limited, and could ‘shake a young girl’s confidence as she enters her adolescent years.’

• People already flock to Twitter / Facebook to talk about the shows they watch, how about if you can just watch shows on those platforms instead? Both companies are in talks with TV programmers to work out deals that would give them rights to stream content right in the platform.

• Interesting: a judge has ruled that the social media policy/firing of a former Chipotle employee for criticizing the company on Twitter violates labour laws. The company must now offer the former employee re-employment and compensation for lost wages. I’d be really curious to read their full social media policy.

• Blogging platform Medium has launched a new feature called Collections – which will push popular, curated topics out to users.

• Here’s the week’s Cat Saturday photos! My favourites are 2, 5, 6, 12, 14, and 21!

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

Linda

Follow @lindork