Social Media Notes
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!
Note: I missed last week (Sept. 21-27) so this round-up may include some older news from that week as well!
- Twitter is apparently thinking about removing its 140-character tweet limit. NO! The limit is what makes Twitter so very Twitter… though people do get around it with threaded tweets, screenshot images, and etc. but those quick, scannable bursts is what (I think) makes the platform so different from others. :'(
- You go Instagram! In less than a year, the photo-sharing social network has gone from 300 to more than 400 million active users.
- Your Facebook profile can now be a moving GIF. Similar to Snapchat’s “profile pictures” and Twitter used to allow GIFs (though very, very tiny ones) as profile pictures too.
- See this take from Techcrunch on why Snapchat’s permanent GIF profile pictures are a big deal.
- Speaking of Snapchat – since releasing their pretty weird new filters, it looks like they’re rolling out new filters each day. Pretty clever strategy to get users excited about using Snapchat each day. Now it looks like Snapchat will be rolling out sponsored filters – filters that will likely promote TV shows or movies that you can use with your snaps.
- Results from a new CNN study – the first large scale study to look at kids/teens and why social media matters so much to them – have been released. Some of the findings: Teens are so anxious and constantly checking their phones because 61% of them want to see if their posts are getting likes and comments, 36% want to see if friends are doing things without them, and 21% said they want to make sure no one was saying mean things about them. Some are checking social media more than 100 times a day. The results are being worked into a whole documentary (led by Anderson Cooper).
- Yet another Facebook privacy status update hoax filled our feeds the last couple of weeks. I just can’t believe how many of my (what I thought) were fairly logical, intelligent Facebook friends fell for this. I liked John Oliver’s take on it (there were also tons of our funny videos that came out in response to this). Please be smarter, world.
- More new product testing from Twitter: Poll your friends within your tweets.
- Looks like you can also upload video from desktop to your tweets now. Though it’s currently pretty spotty whether or not the video loads.
- I see these kinds of manuals being useful for a lot of different organizations/type of people these days: Twitter apparently has a handy 136-page manual for politicians/government.
- Um. Apparently this is a thing – introducing “Peeple” the ‘Yelp for People’ app. You basically review/rate people… (edit) When I first added this link, Peeple was still around. Now it looks like Peeple has shut down its social media accounts and is planning on launching a ‘nicer’ version of itself next week.
- Medium has some new funding ($57 million) and is expected to announce new features and partnerships later this week.
- It’s never been easier to create your own website – now you can do it right from your phone, with Weebly (free website maker)’s new mobile app.
- Did you see this week’s Cat Saturday photos?!
Thoughts on these stories? Tweet @ me or leave a comment below!
Linda
