It’s Monday, which means it’s time for another installment of Spark Bites by Spark Growth! Maybe it’s the summer heat getting everyone riled up online, but this week’s rollout of social media updates is especially concerned with battling cyber bullies and hate speech.
Here’s what’s happened in the social media world this past week:
Instagram:
- Instagram has unleashed a new social media update including a new filter! But it’s not just any typical Instagram filter. This filter will block offensive comments on posts and live videos. You just need to enable it in the settings and voila! Your haters are gone (or at least silenced).
- On a similar note, Instagram has also stepped up its spam filter tool, which also blocks spam from posts and live videos.
- Instagram now has a feature to reply to Stories with photos and videos. Not a crazy new development, but it does seem to be another step towards a photo-based chat. One could even go so far as to call it a snap-based chat…
Facebook:
- As Facebook passes the 2 billion monthly user milestone – and let’s just take a moment to recognize how crazy that is, because that’s literally over a quarter of the earth’s population – the company prepares to build its own “village” of 1,500 homes for its employees in Silicon Valley. First Google, now Facebook? Can’t wait until the inevitable Social Media Nation becomes a thing.
- Facebook announced that it will be experimenting with advertising on its popular Messenger app. This is an awesome opportunity for businesses to get in front of even more people. After all, Messenger has over a billion monthly users, which is like, more than 2 billion eyes seeing their advertisements. That’s pretty crazy.
- We’re pretty excited about this next one too: Facebook’s camera app is going to feature a built-in GIF creator! If you couldn’t tell by now, the team here at Spark Growth has a bit of a love affair with GIFs, so we’re definitely hyped to start using this feature.
Google:
- It goes without saying that just about everyone is stoked for the new season of Game of Thrones. The staff at Google are apparently also fans. Google Maps launched an update that allows users to visit iconic locations from the hit TV show. Which is a great idea, because we all know we’d want to visit Westeros, but now we don’t have to worry about getting attacked by dragons and White Walkers! And…this guy:
Twitter:
- Haters gonna hate – but you don’t have to know about it! Twitter is rolling out options to mute notifications from most types of accounts, so long as you’re not following those accounts.
Snapchat:
- Snapchat is getting all kinds of new updates in its ongoing competition with Instagram Stories. Here are some of the cool new things you can now do in the app:
- Attach a website to your Snap to share links easily.
- Add a Backdrop to your Snaps — just outline what you want in the foreground and choose a background!
- Voice Filters, which changes your voice and other sounds.
- On-Demand Geofilter — pick an area on the map and create a Geofilter for your event right inside Snapchat. The greater the area, the higher the price to pay.
Now how long will it be until we see these on Insta Stories? Anyone want to put down some bets?
That’s all for this week’s social media updates! We’ll see you back here next Monday for another dose of social media news.
