Tuminds Newsflash – February 2016
Instagram Finally Gives In and Makes Life Easier
Since Instagram came into existence, it’s users have pleaded with the platform to provide multiple account support. And it seems like Instagram are finally ready to listen and make one of it’s most requested features now possible.
The ability to toggle between multiple accounts first appeared on the photo-centric app on Android back in November, during which time the platform was still testing it. However, following the latest update of the app (version 7.15), iPhone users are now able to make use of this “life-changing” feature.
To call it “life-changing” may be a slight exaggeration, but it really will save users who manage more than one account, a huge amount of time and make the experience of using the app much more enjoyable and efficient. The change can be accessed from the user’s account settings in their profile, and when one or more additional accounts have been added, users can switch between them by tapping on the username icon at the top of their profile.
This will be especially useful to brands on Instagram who may have more than one account based on their product or service offering and for those within the company who are responsible for managing the accounts, but also have a personal account. Gone are the days of logging in and out to access a different account. Hallelujah!
Facebook Celebrates Its Birthday and Continues To Grow
Facebook turned 12 earlier in the month and in celebration of this, they decided to create their own holiday called “Friends Day”. It worked in a similar way to “Year In Review”, with users’ being sent a Friends Day video, which compiled photos of them with their friends.
Turning another year older has also sparked some inspiration and drive to improve it’s offering to their 1.59 billion users across the world. This includes the launch of several new additions to the network including a new tool called Audience Optimisation which reveals how Facebook divides its users and the number of people who belong to each segment. This is hugely valuable data to any marketer as brands can now identify their preferred audience for a post by searching for and selecting interests relevant to their message.
Facebook have also been busy prepping a rival to Twitter’s “Moments” feature in the form of “Instant Articles”. This new feature will allow publishers to provide users with rich content all kept within the platform, as opposed to showing a small part of a larger story that is hosted elsewhere. This is good news for both brands and their audiences as users are given high-quality content to read that is easy and simple to access and in return, brands receive higher levels of engagement and interaction.
And finally, in their most recent reveal (and yes, this has all happened in February) Facebook have expanded on their “Like” button reactions. This fun new feature now enables users to react to friends’ posts in an array of emotions and gestures, including love, laughter, sadness, anger and wow. Facebook clearly anticipated the popularity of this new addition and have launched the new reactions worldwide on iOS, Android and the web version.
Snapchat has been working hard on its Discover feature and bringing on multiple major publishers who have been quick to identify the value in Snapchat; this includes BuzzFeed, Refinery29 and Mashable. However, the social network is going a step further and following in the footsteps of many of the other major platforms by announcing plans to expand into e-commerce and make the Discover section of the app shoppable, allowing customers to buy products from selected brands. Although in the very early stages, Snapchat already has a payments feature known as Snapcash, which should make implementing the e-commerce function a lot smoother and more of a seamless experience for its users.
Twitter Switches Up The Timeline
With the level of activity on Twitter dropping, the platform knows they need to provide their users with something new and have been playing around with the way content is delivered and appears on the timeline. Earlier this month, it revealed a new “relevancy over recency” algorithm, which in effect, rewards better content, whether that be paid or organic. With this tweak, Twitter aims to keep in line with the network’s real-time nature but acknowledges the fact that trending topics and tweets can be missed by users. Dubbed an extension of Twitter’s “While You Were Away” feature, the new timeline will be available on both mobile and desktop interfaces.
