Tuminds Newsflash – November
Back in September, Snapchat introduced 7 filters that can be applied when taking a selfie. Using facial recognition technology, the filters have been very effective, thus making them extremely entertaining and popular within the Snapchattin’ community.
The question is: are people willing to pay in order to put a quirky filter on their selfie? Well we are going to find out… This month Snapchat have introduced a 99p charge to users who select a certain lens. There are still 7 filters that can be used free of charge, but for the majority of options, they now have to be paid for in advance of being used. However, once users decide to part with their cash for that perfectly funny/scary/freaky filter, it is a one-time payment and they do get keep the lens and use it as many times as they wish.
The store can be accessed the same way that users would normally access the free lenses; flip the screen to selfie mode, touch your face until the filter options appear and swipe through them until the 99p charge appears.
At the end of October, Snapchat also launched “Speed Modifiers”, allowing users to apply slo-mo, fast-forward and rewind effects to their videos.
Pinterest Help You Find More Of What You Love
It’s one of the most annoying and frustrating things about the internet (apart from slow Wi-Fi of course); when you find the ideal dress for the event you are going to or the perfect mirror for your new bedroom… but you don’t know where it’s from or where you can buy it!
Given that Pinterest is an image based social platform, it is considered one of the biggest culprits and they feel your pain. The site is now making anything you see in a pin easily searchable. Using their new visual search tool, which is supported by a deep learning algorithm, people can zoom into any pin and select a specific part (similar to cropping an image). Pinterest will then scan the selection and pull up similar pins that it matches. You can also filter results further by selecting the relevant topic for your search. This new feature is being made available to users globally.
Facebook at Work, the company’s own version of their social platform for colleagues in the workplace, have just launched the work version of the Messenger app; “Work Chat”. The new app allows employees to message each other directly, start and participate in group chats, share image and video content and make calls to each other.
You may not have even heard of Facebook at Work, as it has been in private testing since its launch in January. However, it is more popular than you may think with hundreds of companies using it, including Heineken USA, Hootsuite and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The RBS in particular are one of the biggest users of the platform and aim to have 30,000 of their workers on the network by March 2016 and its entire workforce of 100,000 active by the end of next year.
Employers have been able to set up new accounts for their staff and users can choose to link their personal and work profiles together. It is currently being used to share documents, have discussions, make announcements and manage projects, collaborations and events. Facebook have launched the site as a freemium service and aim to compete with Microsoft’s Yammer, Salesforce Chatter and Slack and it could even be used to communicate and store information in the way Sharepoint does.
The app has just launched on the Google Play store, with the iOS version to be released in the near future.
