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! 

On Snapchat:

• The big Snapchat news of the week is that they introduced their new Snapchat Memories feature – which basically lets users save and reuse snaps, as well as upload photo/videos from their camera roll to send out as snaps

• There are some limitations to uploading photo/videos to snap though – you can’t add typical Snapchat edits (stickers, emojis, text, etc.) to videos. Here are 4 other implications of the new feature and ways it helps brands (though brands should keep in mind the inability to edit videos)

• Here’s a great read on why advertisers are forking over big bucks (like – really big. $750,000 a day big) for custom Snapchat Lenses

• I didn’t realize Snapchat was banned in China but it looks like a competitor/copycat app called Snow is racking up 30 million Asian users in Snapchat’s place

• Also: Snapchat’s been hit with a lawsuit that claims its Discover channels are showing sexually explicit content to minors without warning them or their parents first

• And lastly in Snapchat news of the week, it looks like the ‘olds’ are slowly taking over – with 14% of US smartphone users aged 35+ now using the app (up from 2% three years ago)

And everything else:

• Everyone is talking about the new augmented reality game Pokemon Go! Even me. Check out my post on how Pokemon Go got my husband to get out and explore his city. The app is said to be more popular than Tinder (cue joke about Pokemon being better than sex lol) and have more daily active users than Twitter (after only being released a few days ago)

• Facebook has clarified its terms after live video shows Philandro Castile’s death. They’ll remove live video that mocks victims or celebrates shootings, but they won’t remove video if it was meant to raise awareness or help find a shooter

• Meanwhile Twitter is reportedly in talks with the NBA, Major League Soccer, and cable TV giant Turner, to acquire digital rights to stream live sports video

• There’s a new food app called Yummi that lets you upload and organize your meals, act as a food journal, share recipes and find places to eat

• If you’ve got a Business Instagram account then you’ll have the option of comment moderation – blocking comments with words or phrases often reported as offensive. Anyone in Canada get Business profiles yet? I am itching to test it outs analytics

• We’ve been hearing how the young have moved away from Facebook – now a new survey says the generation most likely to share content on the world’s largest social network are baby boomers. Women are also more likely to share content more than once a day compared to men

• Warner Brothers got in trouble from the FTC over a marketing campaign where the studio paid popular YouTube stars like PewDiePie to promote a Lord of the Rings video game but didn’t comply with rules around working with social media influencers

• The great social media video debate: do you need sound for social video? Facebook/Snapchat share conflicting information around user audio-video behaviour

• Here’s the week’s Cat Saturday photos! My favourites are 2, 16, 19, and 22!

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

Linda

Follow @lindork