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Social Networking

04 Nov
6

Twitter Begins to Tests Safari Reader Mode As a Default for Links

In Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking | No comment

twitterTwitter is testing the use of Safari reader mode as their default for links within their site. Essentially what they have done is made it so that links from Twitter on some iOS phones default to open these links with the Safari reader mode this is already on the phone. This mode removes links, ads, and comments from these pages to simplify the page for reading. Twitter is still just in a testing stage with this and does not yet plan to release this to all iOS phones.

 

One of Twitter’s main claims about why they are working on testing this specific kind of a feature is that they would like to make opening links simpler for their users. Unfortunately, there are some flaws with the Safari reader mode itself. In many cases, when reader mode removes the visual formatting of a website it leaves behind text that is broken up oddly and awkwardly spaced. As Twitter is working to connect users to news sites, the mode may not be an ideal solution.

 

Reader mode isn’t something that comes from Twitter itself. This is something that Apple users could have enabled on their phone for many years now. It is a part of the Safari browser that is integral to the iPhone system. What Twitter is currently testing, is a way to enable this mode automatically when a link is clicked on within their social media site.

 

There has been some backlash about this testing from some of the news sites. These sites worry about loss of ad revenue because this mode eliminates the different ads from the page. Website owners are also concerned because they cannot customize specifically what people will see in this mode. Twitter users are also frustrated to hear of this testing because Twitter seems to once again be focusing on something that isn’t a main concern of their users. Twitter users still want to see an edit button for tweets and more control on abuse and trolling. The disconnect between what users want and what Twitter is up to is starting to become a big concern for Twitter users.

28 Oct
6

Instagram Update Brings Instagram Stories to The Explore Tab

In Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking | No comment

instagram photoIn a recent update, Instagram added their Instagram stories to the Explore tab within their app. The Explore tab allows users to see a variety of different types of stories and posts that relate to their interests, but don’t necessarily come from people they are following. Instagram released an update that created Instagram stories back in August. Adding these stories to the Explore tab will help to make them more prevalent on the site.

 

The goal of adding Instagram stories to the Explore tab was to boost engagement and accessibility for users on Instagram. With this tab to work with, users will be able to see stories related to their interests and through this process discover more people that they may want to follow. This is a great way for Instagram users to find accounts that are posting what they are most interested in. The update has already gone out globally among all of the iOS users. To start seeing these stores in the Explore tab, Android users have to update to Instagram version 9.5.0 or above.

 

There are mixed reviews on this particular update, which is no surprise since many Instagram users were already not too happy with the addition of Instagram stories. While having these posts show up in the Explore tab could help users to gain more followers, many people are annoyed since there are stories from random accounts on their page. Those who follow only a select group of people often don’t want to be seeing these new accounts popping up all of the time.

 

Most people recognize that this further update to Instagram is just one more way for it to compete with Snapchat. Adding the Instagram stories which are very similar to Snapchat stories to the Explore tab just makes these stories even more prevalent within the Instagram community. Further updates are likely to come out as these different apps continue to compete.

21 Oct
6

Facebook Updates Action Buttons and Adds Recommendations For Businesses

In Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking | No comment

facebookIn a recent update, Facebook made a couple of changes to help make it easier for businesses and their customers to interact without even leaving Facebook. The main parts of the update focused on adding new action buttons that make it easy for customers to place orders, get quotes, and even buy tickets to events without ever leaving the Facebook app. In addition to this, Facebook has added a recommendations feature that will make it easier for people to get recommendations from their friends.

 

Facebook’s new action buttons make it easy for customers to interact with businesses through Facebook. The Start Order, Buy Tickets, See Showtimes, and Book Now buttons make it easy for customers to make purchases and set up appointments right away through their Facebook app. Other buttons link in with messaging allowing customers to easily get quotes and request bookings through a business Facebook page. All of these buttons make it easy for customers to connect directly to the businesses, performers, and restaurants that interest them.

 

On top of this, there is a new recommendations feature designed to make it simple for Facebook users to get recommendations from their friends. This feature is focused specifically on allowing users to ask friends for recommendations within certain areas for restaurants, hair stylists, and much more. The feature makes it so that recommendations are then plotted on a map with links to the business page. Users can then visit these pages and use the action buttons to make a booking, buy tickets to an event, or order food to be delivered to their door.

 

With these new features as a big part of Facebook, many business owners will want to make sure that their business pages have features like these enabled. To do this simply update the call-to-action button on your business page. This can either link to third party apps that can then take orders or schedule appointments with these customers or link to messaging so that customers can contact your business directly. Setting up these buttons is key to building a great relationship with your customers through Facebook.

14 Oct
6

Facebook’s Voter Registration Reminder Proved the Importance of Social Media

In Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking | No comment

voteAt the end of September, Facebook proved that social media is not just a great place to talk about politics, it is a great way to change the political climate. Facebook launched a brief campaign that encouraged people to register to vote by popping up a special message saying, “Are you registered to vote? Register now to make sure you have a voice in the election.” They then offered a link to online voter registration so that people could register freely. We have just seen what the results of this campaign were.

 

During the time that Facebook had this message up on their site, a huge number of people ended up registering to vote. Many of the people who registered were within the age 17-25 demographic and the 26-35. This means that many young voters have now been registered who may not have registered otherwise. Among the states that saw the most results were California, Minnesota, and Indiana.

 

The number of people who registered to vote during the four-day period that Facebook’s message was up for is incredible, showing just how social media sites can have an influence on people. Facebook says that their reason for posting the message was to try and get better voter turnouts than we saw in the last presidential election. Their specific goal was to get many younger people to vote in this election so that they can have a say in the political climate of their world.

 

While many people are talking about how wonderful it is that Facebook has been able to create such a large number of people registering to vote, others worry that this isn’t something that companies should be able to do. Some people are concerned that by influencing young people and telling them to vote, Facebook can have actually made a change to what candidates may be favored as well.  Some are pointing to this as a problem with a profitable company and social media site being an influence within the political sphere.

07 Oct
7

Instagram Gives Perfectionists More Time to Work On Posts by Saving Drafts

In Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking | No comment

instagram draftsLast month, Instagram announced that they were finally going to be adding a much desired update that would allow users to save drafts. Since then, this update has been rolling out to Instagram app users. Before this update, many Instagram users had to find unique ways to save posts they were working on. Some would turn their phones to airplane mode even. The trouble was that hitting the back button or closing the app would mean you had to start your post all over again. For those who spend a lot of time on their Instagram posts and are likely to be interrupted as they work on their posts, this was really impractical.

 

Many users are very excited about the new feature that Instagram is using since it will allow them to tweak with their posts until they are completely satisfied. Now when editing a post, if you hit the back button a prompt will appear asking if you would like to save the post as a draft. This means that if you get distracted or have to stop working on a post for now, you’ll be able to have Instagram save it for you.

 

Once you have the time to work on the post again, you’ll be able to find the post that you were working on in a special new section of your pictures library. You’ll be able to find these conveniently located above other photos. You can then open these drafts and continue working on them to your heart’s content, until you either save them as drafts again or post them. In this section, you will also find a “manage” button which will allow you to delete drafts when you don’t want them stored anymore.

 

There are a few restrictions to how these drafts are used that some users aren’t entirely happy about. One is that you cannot save anything to a draft until you have made visual edits, tagged someone, or started to write a caption on the post. This one is relatively minor compared to the other one which is that no more visual edits can be made to the image in the post. These aside, the new feature is a great one for many users of Instagram who would like to spend a great deal of time working with their posts.

28 Sep
7

Instagram Update Provides Users With a Way to Block Abusive Comments

In Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking | No comment

taking instagram picturesWith a groundbreaking update, Instagram is striking back against trolls and internet abuse. This particular social media site has been having many troubles with internet abuse because many of the users can stay largely anonymous. This has led to people commenting on photos with rude and hurtful comments that often include harsh language. Now these users won’t be able to get away with this so easily since Instagram has launched a filter that will block this type of language.

 

While Instagram will be providing a premade list of offensive words that people can block, users will be able to personalize this list so that they can block words and even emoji that they feel are offensive or inappropriate. This will allow each user to choose which words will not appear in the comments, allowing them to create a safer space to express themselves.

 

The main reason for Instagram being one of the first social media sites to try something like this is largely because Instagram has had many problems with abusive comments. In some cases, users have had to delete their accounts because of the level of abuse. Instagram doesn’t want to lose users of course, so they are doing what they can to make sure that users aren’t discouraged from being on the social media site because of the level of abuse they might have to endure.

 

Instagram’s plan is to allow users to implement these filters so that the users can post more freely. The idea is to make it so that people don’t have to worry about expressing themselves in unique and individual ways and receiving a lot of backlash because of it. The hope is that Instagram will be able to keep experiences on their social media site a lot more positive.

16 Sep
8

Twitter Updates Features to Attract Businesses

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business communicationAs Twitter continues to fight to stay prevalent among other types of social media, it has been working on some new changes that will make it so that businesses can find new uses for the platform. Since many businesses already use Twitter, Twitter has been working on building different features that can make it so that these businesses will be able to communicate and work with their customers while using this social media platform.

 

In their new update, Twitter has added a few new features that can make it so that businesses can more easily use their Twitter accounts as a place where customers can come for customer support. They have added a customer service tag that businesses can add to their account to designate which account (if they have multiple) is the one that provides support. They have also made the message button on business pages larger so that people can easily find this button. In addition to these other changes, they have added an area where businesses can show support hours and time zones so that people know when a good time to contact them is.

 

Twitter has seen more and more companies offering support through social media so this is really the next step to make it so that businesses will be able to use Twitter in a much better way. The goal of the new changes is to make it so that Twitter is a good social media site for businesses to give support from. With many businesses doing this and customers looking for new ways to get support, this may be the best way for Twitter to encourage people to keep their accounts or to make new ones.

 

For large businesses that may already have multiple accounts on Twitter, the new features will be perfect for directing customers to the right account to send questions to. Those smaller businesses, will be given new ways to interact with their customers and by listing service hours they can set specific times to employ someone to answer these messages. With the new updates to business Twitter accounts, businesses will yet another avenue to communicate with customers.

09 Sep
10

Twitter Makes Changes to Direct Messaging

In Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking | No comment

messagingIn a recent move, Twitter released an update for their direct messaging application. The new changes to this particular feature of the website include adding typing indicators, read receipts, and also content previews beneath links that are sent over this messaging program. Many of these changes are ones that put this messaging program on a similar level to others used by different social media sites.

 

As part of the new changes to their direct messaging, Twitter has implemented read receipts. These make it so that users are able to see when the person who receives the message has looked at it. In addition to this, Twitter also has added typing indicators which are small boxes that pop up to let you know when the other person is typing. This can help you to avoid typing at the same time. These different features are all part of Facebook messaging already so there is nothing especially innovative about them.

 

Many people don’t really like having it so that the other person can tell if they have read a message. Luckily, Twitter has a solution for this. Users that don’t want to have read receipts sent to other users they are talking to can turn off this feature in the settings of the Twitter application. If they turn off read receipts, they will then be unable to see when people have read their messages in addition to other people not being able to see when they have read theirs’.

 

Twitter is continuing to add different features as they are struggling to compete with different social media sites. Many users are complaining that while Twitter continues to add updates, these are not the updates that Twitter users have been asking for. One update that Twitter users would like to see is a lift on the limit of how many direct messages can be sent in one day. For now, it looks like Twitter isn’t interested in making these user requested changes.

02 Sep
9

Latest Instagram Update Allows for Zoom On Photos and Videos

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taking picture for instagramInstagram has long been one of the biggest social media sites for photo sharing, so it should come as no surprise that they have decided to make a new change that will make it easier for people to get a closer look at the pictures and videos that friends have changed. They are launching a pinch to zoom feature that will make it easy for users to zoom in to any image on their site.

 

This new feature is currently only being rolled out for iOS users, but the plan will be to make it so that Android users will also be receiving this update in a few short weeks. These users will all be able to zoom into videos and pictures with the mere pinch of their fingers making it easy to identify everyone in a picture, especially if it is a picture with many people in it. The zoom feature will really help people who want to get a closer look at something while looking at Instagram on their phone.

 

This feature will be available throughout the Instagram app, which will mean that users will be able to use it in many different areas. The pinch to zoom feature will work on their feed, other user’s profiles, and even in the new Explore tab. It will work on both pictures and videos that are shared making it easy for anyone to get a closer look at specific parts of these images.

 

The addition of this feature makes a great deal of sense since just last year Instagram decided to increase their default image size to 1080 x 1080. With these large pictures making their debut on Instagram, having the ability to zoom in to specific sections of an image to see everything better is something that is bound to be helpful. This excellent addition will definitely make Instagram a great place to view images.

26 Aug
8

Twitter Adds a New Night Mode That is Easier On the Eyes

In Social Media, Social Media News Brief, Social Networking | No comment

phone at nightAfter several smaller applications have released versions of their apps that are better for those using them at night, Twitter has decided to also jump on board with a new night mode. Their night mode features a darker color scheme perfect for using during the night. While the update was initially only available to Android users, it has been extended to iOS as well.

 

The purpose of this new mode is to help those who use the Twitter application in the night. There have been many studies over the last few years to show that a blaring white phone screen can damage vision and cause the natural sleep rhythms of the body to become confused. As a response to this problem, Twitter has joined other applications in adding a special night mode to their app. This will allow users to switch from their standard display to a darker one that is better for those tweeting in the evening or late at night.

 

For now, Twitter’s night mode has to be toggled on and off by hand, but there are hopes that this will eventually change so that Twitter’s display will change as it gets to a certain time in the evening. In the app on Android and iOS, users will be able to change what mode they are in by changing their Twitter settings. It is easy to access the areas where you can turn the screen from one mode to the other.

 

There is some speculation that this change in Twitter and in other applications may be foreshadowing some of the features of the future iPhone 7. Some wonder if Apple will use this phone as their chance to roll out a new screen that will have the ability to more easily display darker colors without using as much battery life. Of course, for that information, we’ll have to wait for news from Apple.

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