Latest Social Media News Snippets

27 Aug 2015

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Welcome to the latest social media news snippets where I help you keep up to date with the latest changes in social media and improvements to social network functionality. Here are some developments that have caught my attention with some social media tips on how you can take advantage and use to promote your business.

Facebook adds new video features - You can now choose a video to make it display more prominently on your Page. Once ‘featured’ it is displayed under the About section on the left of your Page and more prominently in the video section. You can also create playlists which is a handy feature if you have a number of videos and you wish to categorise them in the same way that you can do on YouTube and Vimeo. Thirdly, you can add a call to action button at the end of your video to direct people to your website. For an example, see the Marks and Spencer Facebook Page which makes great use of video and these 3 new features.

Siri, Cortana and now M - Facebook has announced its own digital personal assistant called M which you’ll be able to find soon in Messenger. The service is aimed at making peoples’ lives easier, with M being able to buy items, deliver gifts and pick up your dry cleaning. The difference between M and other similar services is that as well as using artificial intelligence, people known as M Trainers, are employed to take calls and book reservations, organise dry cleaning collections and pick and so on. But you won’t know whether you’re dealing with a human or artificial intelligence. Businesses will certainly want to get in on the act and be recommended and used by the service. One to watch.

Twitter improves DMs further - Direct Messaging has been improved once again. Following the option that allows you to message people even they are not following you and the addition of group messaging, Twitter has now removed the 140 character limit on DMs. This opens up all sorts of possibilities and will allow Twitter to be an even more effective customer services channel.

LinkedIn cuts down on emails - Have you noticed less emails from LinkedIn? The professionals’ network has cut down the number of emails by 40%. For those getting many invitations to connect, they now receive a single weekly digest in place of individual emails. Plus, if you subscribe to several LinkedIn Groups, they are aggregating the updates from those groups into a single email. A sensible move. If you want to fine tune the emails you receive go to Privacy and Settings/Communications/Set the frequency of emails.

Instagram adds search to website - Instagram is very much about mobile but the lack of a search function at instagram.com was a strange omission. This has now been rectified and the new search allows web users to seek out users’ accounts, and to find photos via hashtags and general terms. Handy for when you’re on desktop rather than your smartphone or tablet.the desktop rather than fiddling with your phone.

Periscope - As predicted in my previous Social Media News Snippets, it looks like live streaming app Periscope is going to be huge. Having launched in March, it already has 10 million registered users with nearly 2m daily active users watching 40 years of video per day on their tablets and smartphones. The mobile app enables anyone to broadcast live video via their smartphone or tablet to fellow Periscope and Twitter users.