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! 

• Wow! Here’s what push notifications look like when you have 8 million followers on Instagram and you’ve just posted a new photo. Hint: Insane! I imagine most celebrities turn off their push notifications, lol (and in this video you can totally understand why).

• A new generation of internal, company social networks will take off this year – that’s one of six predictions of social media changes coming to business in 2016.

• I’m already so impressed with what Snapchat has done to monetize and partner with brands/businesses but here’s a look at how Snapchat plans to compete with Facebook for more advertisers’ dollars this coming year including incorporating algorithms with its Discover feed. (Twitter is also looking at doing an algorithm-style, non-chronological order Facebook-style feed too, which makes me sad).

• Snapchat’s video viewing numbers are rivalling Facebook’s – a new report says Snapchat users watch 7 billion clips every day (Facebook said they were seeing 8 billion daily video views). I would argue Snapchat’s is far more relevant as people need to actively engage in clicking and viewing the videos versus Facebook’s auto-play.

• This should also add to those view numbers: The White House is now targeting its younger demographic by launching an official Snapchat account. 

• Interesting: Twitter is being used by a U.S. widow for ‘giving voice to the Islamic State’. The woman says Twitter is ‘knowingly letting the militant Islamist group use its network to spread propaganda, raise money and attract recruits.’

• If you don’t like how videos on Facebook auto-play, you won’t be getting away from it on Twitter either. Looks like live stream videos from Periscope will soon autoplay inside of tweets on Twitter so you no longer need to open another site or open the app to watch Periscope streams.

• Hooray? Twitter is celebrating 1.7 billion poll votes – calling the polls feature which launched in October, a huge success. To celebrate, they’re now letting you set  a time duration for your polls.

• It looks like the faster you shoot to social networking popularity, the faster you die. That Peach app everyone was talking about last week has been declared ‘dead.’ 

• Another story to add to the “our social media life is not as good as we pretend it is” narrative that so many popular bloggers/models/etc. seem to be contributing to lately: ‘Jaded, numb ad bickering – travel blogging couple reveal pain behind their perfect photos.’ 

• Reading about the people behind memes/photos that go viral are always so interesting (and horrifying/sad.. depending on the story). This Taiwanese model says a photo of her that became a meme has ruined her life.

• YouTube’s biggest star PewDiePie has launched a network for online video creators. Looks like he and some other super YouTubers will ‘create content, raise money for charity and so much more…’ Should be effective as they have millions of subscribers/billions of views between them all.

• Use social media to your advantage when it comes to the job hunt! We know that employers/recruiters are looking at your social media posts before they decide to hire you. A new study says your Facebook profile picture can make the difference between a hire. People with pictures where they aren’t smiling were less likely to land a first interview.

• Arizona is turning to Twitter to shame dads who don’t pay child support. “For too long, you’ve been able to remain anonymous, able to skirt your financial and legal responsibilities with no shame… effective immediately, the state is going to begin posting photos, names, and money owed by these losers on social media with the hashtag #deadbeat.”

• There’s some interesting thoughts in this Pew Research study on whether Americans care about privacy (answer: depends, and depends on situations).

• Speaking of privacy, here are some nice tips to improve your Twitter security! (though I think Twitter should do away with the ‘protect your tweets/private accounts’ function). One of the scenarios is related to social, and Pew summarizes that “a general dislike of social media and the information that people share on those platforms” may be affecting respondents’ views.

• Are you a gamer? Will you tweet more now that Twitter has launched its Twitter Gaming hub? “Whether folks are discovering a new game, tweeting at a game personality, keeping up with gaming news or following their favourite eSport, we want to make it easy for gaming fans to find and join the most vibrant conversations about games.” I’d love to see an official Twitter hub for cats, lol.

• These promotions are always so interesting – to promote the new movie How to Be Single, users could tweet to get a free pizza delivered to them. Because single people need pizza right, lol.

• Is this cat *the* cat of the Internet? Check out its a-meowzing ‘selfies’.

• Check out the week’s Cat Saturday photos!

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

Linda

Follow @lindork