Social Media Recap - here are the news and updates from August week 1!

There’s constant stream of updates and innovations with the social media platforms we use on daily basis. Every week, we will bring to you the latest happenings in the world of social media marketing, the platforms, and digital media marketing. Here are some recent trends with major Social Media platforms from the first week of August-

Activity Dashboard added to Facebook and Instagram: If you scroll for hours and hours on your social media and waste your precious time then Facebook and Instagram will notify you about it (Get ready to realise how much time we spend on social media feeds!) It’s because Facebook and Instagram have added activity dashboard which will record the time you have spent on social media. In other words, it will keep a track of time you have been lurking on Social Media.
Facebook activity dashboard

Facebook to Replace ‘Share’ button with ‘Message’: Facebook is currently running a test where the share button is replaced with a message button. This means that instead of sharing it entirely with your hundreds of friends; you can send it to people whom you want as a personal message just like how it is on Instagram. This new feature will likely cause a decline in people sharing too many posts on Facebook. Great news for the users who are bombarded by too many posts on their feed, but not so good for the marketers!

LinkedIn crossed 575 Million Members: LinkedIn has reached another milestone of crossing 575 million members recently. Apart from that, they have introduced better listing of profiles. This will help the users to display their previous job profiles more accurately. A lot of people were requesting LinkedIn to introduce this feature since a long time and LinkedIn has considered their request. Whatever changes you make in your job profile or designation at your work will be noted and categorized in a single listing.

Facebook’s Personalized Shortcuts: Many people have noticed variations in the function bar of Facebook. It looked like Facebook was conducting a test but turned out it was a new update of Facebook. Now Facebook is showing its users a customized set of shortcuts according to their activity. For instance, if you visit a certain page on Facebook few times then Facebook will create a personalized shortcut bar of that page for you. For now the icons are shown as per the usage but it’s been reported that Facebook will eventually build this into a proper function so that people can have more control on their content which they want to see.

Vertical Videos on YouTube: This might disappoint a lot of film makers and YouTube lovers because YouTube just introduced vertical videos in its new updates for web and mobile app both. In this version YouTube will enlarge the video vertically which was originally meant for mobile. However, this version is not welcomed by many users because they believe that it spoils the originality of YouTube.
YouTube vertical videos
WhatsApp Status to show Ads: There was a time where WhatsApp used to explain why they don’t sell ads on their platform but those days are gone. Facebook taking over WhatsApp has completely changed the story of the game. According to Wall Street Journal, Facebook will be using WhatsApp status updates as a possible source of Business and generating revenue. WhatsApp Status updates will be using Facebook’s native advertising system.

Pinterest Expanding its Advertising System: Pinterest has recently introduced a format of promoted videos for all the advertisers. Pinterest too has a large number of users and it’s considerably a great platform for marketers and advertisers, owing to the visually appealing interface. So, this opportunity can be prominent for those who are looking forward to promote their Brands since Pinterest has increased its video’s width by 4 times.