Twitter has tweaked its search results just in time for the New Year! With a dash of machine learning thrown in, the platform is moving away from reverse chronological order in search to relevance order. Get ready for more of this in the future!
Listen up! Book readings, interviews, and news radio are coming to Facebook thanks to its new Live Audio feature. Designed to complement video streams with a lower-bandwidth option, the new feature will bring audio-first content like podcasts to users’ news feeds.
Nearly eight months after Facebook added group calls to its Messenger app, the social network is expanding the feature. You can now make group video chats with 6 people at a time, while up to 50 people can listen in to the conversation and participate. Pretty cool, right?
Facebook’s ability to notify users of a talked-about event occurring in the present moment, be it a natural phenomenon or your favourite singer’s concert, is powerful. See how the platform is going to build on its strength in 2017.
Video/Visual
There’s some good news for Vine users. Although there’s no doubt that Twitter failed to make the most of its 2013 Vine acquisition, the company announced it will keep Vine alive as a simplified app for only shooting 6-second videos.
Instagram’s storm of updates continues. First up, the social network is adding more editing tools so you can add stickers to your video and photo stories. Of course, holiday stickers are ready to go.
We know smiling on photos is not every celebrity’s cup of tea. Until now. Smile Vector is a new Twitter bot that can make any celebrity shine with the help of artificial intelligence. Will we ever trust our own eyes again?
Winner
Snapchat isn’t just a key way to recruit new fans to Copa90 – a global football network, it’s a quickly becoming the “ultimate recruitment ad”…
Loser
Facebook has allegedly made misleading claims over its ability to match consumers’ Facebook and WhatsApp accounts, during 2014 investigations into its takeover of the messaging service. And now the European Commission is bearing its regulatory teeth at the social network.
Marketers, alert! Yes, another Facebook metrics issues is here. It’s the fourth time in recent months for Facebook to admit providing inaccurate data. The social giant has been underreporting iPhone traffic on some Instant Articles.
On top of that, Facebook is under intense scrutiny from German lawmakers over how the world’s largest social network defines hate speech and other offensive content.
Creative Spot
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) taps into the gaming industry with its newly released Virtual Reality game “Last Call”. The game is targeted to millennial males and designed to curb drunk driving during the holiday season. No more lazy nights in… Oh wait.
