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!

• The 2nd annual Yeggies celebrating the best new media content creators in Edmonton took place on Friday. Check out who won the top award, plus all other winners here! Congratulations everyone! I was honoured to have been a judge!

• Snapchat lied about photos ‘disappearing forever’ – The company settles with U.S. federal watchdog over charges that it deceived customers about disappearing nature of messages. Is anyone really surprised?

• Read this: Why the viral video ‘Look Up’ is sentimental nonsense.

• Interesting – You can now add items to your Amazon shopping cart by hashtagging #AmazonCart.

Twitter is really putting the emphasis on photo-sharing. (Photo credit: Techcrunch)

• Twitter allowing multiple photos per tweet and putting an emphasis on visual tweets isn’t new but its now sending emails out encouraging users highlighting its various photo-related tools. “Emphasizing its photo sharing (and messaging) abilities is one way for Twitter to try to ignite a more mainstream user-base, since picture-based communications are such an established digital habit now.”

• Rest in Peace, Facebook Poke. No, not the actual poke button, but the Facebook Poke app (which I had never heard of before hearing about its demise lol).

• It looks like Google is testing a ‘huge’ Gmail redesign! Tabs will be gone, Hangouts will be integrated, pinning will replace starring.

• Netflix is raising its monthly price by $1 for new subscribers, says prices for current members won’t change for 2 years. Only a matter of time!

• Twitter is ramping up account security, introducing a new ‘streamlined password reset experience’ as well as identification/blocking of suspicious log-ins.

• Speaking of security, bitly is urging users to change their passwords after a possible breach.

• Well then. A Texas high school student makes deal with teacher that if he can get 15,000 retweets his whole class can skip their finals. (The school district says the students are taking the exam anyway, lol).

• Australian researchers say those who don’t get immediate feedback on social media suffer from a lack of belonging and despair.

• Shame on these people – hotel guests are blackmailing owners with threat of negative reviews.

• I’m really looking forward to the Monday release of CTV Edmonton’s “#yeghappy” video (set to Pharrell’s incredibly catchy ‘Happy’) The station account + morning show personalities have been teasing it all weekend! Soon-to-be viral hit?

The most popular cat on Instagram will make a virtual appearance at the Edmonton International Cat Festival!

• The most popular cat on Instagram is going to be making a virtual appearance at the Edmonton International Cat Festival on June 7!! :) I’m interviewing the last of the three celebrity cat guests this week! Get your tickets here!

• Check out this week’s Cat Saturday photos! My favourites are 5, 6, 10, 12, 14, 19, 25, 28, 31, 34 and 38!!

• Also can’t link to Cat Saturday without mentioning this recent Buzzfeed listing of the 100 most important cat photos!!

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

Linda

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