Social Media Notes
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!
Some Snapchat news:
- Face Swap – which lets you swap ‘faces’ with a friend (or painting, or animal) – has proved to be one of Snapchat’s most popular Lenses. Now they’re letting you face swap with any photo in your camera roll. You can also do unlimited replays now!
- I think this is a perfect fit – MTV Cribs is coming back, exclusively on Snapchat!
- My first experience getting a personal on-demand Snapchat geofilter! My friends created a custom goodbye Snapchat filter for me at my NAIT goodbye party last week. So cool! And so cheap – they said just $5. (More on my leaving NAIT here!)
- I’m surprised this got approved – but Snapchat’s 420 Bob Marley filter got a lot of backlash for well, encouraging digital blackface. As Mike said when he used it, ‘feels racist.’
And in other news:
- Facebook’s filled its 10x-a-year algorithm updates with the latest update focusing on showing you content you’ve actually engaged with before (like for me – all I see now is a lot of Buzzfeed food videos, nerdy articles, and cat photos lol).
- What do you think – could you do social media for the Queen? Buckingham Palace is hiring for Head of Digital Engagement!
- Cool: social media has helped counterfeit investigators – they pose as real shoppers in the battle against fake goods.
- This is an interesting read on a mysterious YouTube channel that’s been posting thousands of ‘weird videos’ over the year. What’s also creepy is after this article was posted the YouTube channel was suspended!
- A group of researchers are looking to see whether your social media posts can reveal health/medical conditions you may have. Example: They found ‘clinically obese’ individuals tended to use words that discussed how they were stationary – sitting, being still, planted, rest, etc. The bigger question at hand – would you want to allow hospitals/doctors to monitor your posts if it could help your health? Also, how to separate relevant posts from all the noise (for which there would be lots).
- ‘Checking in’ on social media is still the thing to do – so much so that Twitter is teaming up with Yelp to offer location check-ins in the UK and Japan.
- Interesting: a look at how some school boards (in the States) are using social media monitoring software themselves to keep an eye on what students are sharing (and to prevent cyberbullying, suicide, violence, etc.)
- Is Facebook the new RSS? The Verge has launched a new gadget blog called Circuit Breaker – but the blog lives as a Facebook page, with posts appearing as an Instant Article.
- Here’s the week’s Cat Saturday photos! My favourites are 3, 4, 6, 7, and 12!
Thoughts on these stories? Tweet @ me or leave a comment below!
Linda