Social media updates â February 2017

Facebook videos auto play with sound

Videos on Facebook will now auto play with the sound on as a default. This means that if your phone isn’t set to silent, then all videos on your Facebook Newsfeed will play as you scroll. Don’t worry though; you can change your settings to disable this feature. Facebook are hoping that this will encourage users to become more engaged with their video content.

Will Facebook yield business from LinkedIn?

This month Facebook rolled out a couple of new job features that could potentially disrupt business for LinkedIn. Business Pages are now able to post job vacancies which will be listed under the new Jobs tab. Users can hit the Apply Now button to instantly apply through Facebook Messenger. At the moment theses features are only available for businesses in the US and Canada but will soon be rolling out elsewhere. What do you think? Would you apply for a job through Facebook?

Facebook adds new profile flags

Facebook first launched profile frames for sports teams back in 2015 and users started to submit their own last year. In a bid to “bring people together” Facebook have now added nearly 200 flags to their profile frames library, allowing users to add their country flag to their profile pictures. With so many already available, what frame do you want to see next?

WhatsApp launches Status

This month the world’s most popular messaging app, with over 1 billion monthly users, celebrated its 8th birthday by launching a new feature. The new WhatsApp Status tab can be used to share photos, videos and GIFs which will disappear after just 24 hours. Sound familiar? Users can choose to either share an update with all of their contacts or share a status with the whole of their address book. Previously WhatsApp statuses were limited to just basic text with pre-set options such as “Available”.

Twitters “Explore” tab now includes live videos

Twitter recently launched their new Explore tab which allows users to search for or discover trending topics. This month, Twitter have added their live videos (sourced from Periscope) to its top trends. Marked with a bright red LIVE label, hopefully this will allow users more access to Twitters video content. Users will still be able to see trending hashtags and keywords within the Explore tab.

Be nice or sit on the naughty step

As part of their anti-bullying tactics, Twitter is now putting bullies in “time out” and will restrict the reach of the tweets that are sent from an abusive account. Users will also only be visible to their own followers during this down time period. This is a positive move form Twitter as they start to take a more proactive approach to creating a safer environment for its users.

New customer service feature added to Twitter

Towards the end of this month we saw the launch of a new customer service feature on Twitter. Community managers can now respond to customer messages using their own profiles instead of the companies name and photo which adds a personal touch to this service. T-Mobile is once again the first to adopt this new feature but it will soon be rolling out to other businesses.

Add up to 10 photos to your Instagram post

Users can now add up to 10 photos or videos to one post on Instagram as a single carousel that other users can swipe through. Users will no longer have to choose just one photo from a collection, but instead can upload multiple images around a theme or event. Users can edit the photos individually or apply a filter to all 10 and can also select to tag friends and add captions to each of the photos.

Snap starts selling Spectacles online in the US

Snap started selling their Spectacles back in September 2016 but were only available from Snapbot vending machines which were located in New York as pop up stores. Snap has now closed the pop-ups but have launched an online store to sell from instead, making them more widely available (to the rest of the US anyway). Unfortunately if you do want a pair (and if you live in the US), you will be waiting up to four weeks for shipping. Grab yourself a pair at Spectacles.com