Tuminds Newsflash – March 2016
The Google-owned video platform YouTube is set to take on Twitter’s Periscope with their own version of live streaming. Dubbed YouTube Connect, the service will be made available for Apple and Android users and will allow people to link their streams to their Google and YouTube accounts. Additional features will include chatting and tagging tools, as well as a “news feed” section which will show the latest clips from channels a user has subscribed to.
The announcement of YouTube Connect comes at a time when the original live streaming app, Meerkat, has now exited the market due to the dominance of their rivals Periscope and Facebook Live. Twitter currently places Periscope with 10 million users and Facebook have rolled out their Live service in both the UK and US to boost its reach across the 1 billion user network; YouTube will be looking to take a share of this competitive live streaming market.
Just like its owner, Facebook, Instagram will be changing the order in which they show images in the main feed. Instead of showing images in the order they were published, the network are now using an algorithm that guesses what the user wants to see and may have missed.
Instagram claim that people miss 70% of the photos in their feed, with it becoming even harder to keep up as the site grows in popularity and traffic increases. Twitter also recently changed to a algorithmically-ordered feed, although they allow users to switch off this feature and resort back to the chronological order. Instagram are yet to reveal whether they would allow users to do the same and are still in the testing period, claiming that it will “take its time to get it right”.
This month Twitter celebrated its 10th birthday. It’s hard to believe that on March 21 in 2006, it all started with a single tweet from its founder, Jack Dorsey…
just setting up my twttr
— Jack (@jack) March 21, 2006
To mark the special day, Twitter released a two-and-a- half minute video (see below) showing the network’s role as a provider of information and activist platform for events all around the world including marriage equality, the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2011 tsunami. Interestingly the video ends with a thank you tweet that initially goes over Twitter’s 140 character limit and is then deleted and rewritten to fit in the content using emojis – maybe a sign of company plans for the future.
Starting in ?? on 3/21 and moving across the ?, we thank you for 10 incredible years.
Love, Twitter#LoveTwitterhttps://t.co/pH4WWdgK6q
— Twitter (@twitter) March 20, 2016
Facebook Wants To Swap Faces Just Like Snapchat
If you aren’t on Snapchat, then get ready to see a few new faces in your Facebook feed. The social network has purchased popular face-swapping app MSQRD, built by startup Masquerade. The app offers a range of features including live video effects for selfies and “celebrity masks” which involves facial overlays that make you look like the famous person of your choice. This may be a new feature for Facebook, but avid Snapchatters’ will be au fait with this capability as the popularity of the face swap filter has skyrocketed since its acquisition of Looksery.
This year Facebook has been enhancing the quality and capabilities of its image and video tools, so it is likely that users can expect to see MSQRD’s features pop up on the network in the very near future.
