This year we have seen a number of disasters globally from the Manchester attacks to hurricane Harvey. In response, Facebook has been developing ways to help users tell friends and family members they’re safe. Last week Facebook announced a new feature called Crisis Response, which will act as a central hub for all of Facebooks safety-related tools.
The central hub will include safety checks, a feature already available that many of us will have already seen. Safety checks allow Facebook users to tell friends and family members they’re safe during natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and other life-threatening incidents.
In February, Facebook introduced Community Help, which allowed users to find and offer help to victims of a disaster. Providing resources such as water, food, or shelter. The feature has also been integrated into the hub. Find out more.
Facebook revealed that Messenger Day has 70 million daily users. It has been a slow start for Messenger Day compared to its competitors Snapchat and Instagram stories. This could signal that Messenger is beginning to hit saturation in some markets. In order to stay relevant Messenger day will need to keep innovating and mimicking the best features of their competition.
Sick of your friends sharing Gemma Collins Gifs and videos of puppies? Facebook now lets you temporarily unfollow friends, Pages or Groups for 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days. This has been introduced as an alternative to people permanently unfollowing friends or pages. To Snooze someone, tap the drop-down arrow in the right-hand corner of someone’s post. You will be given two options unfollow or Snooze.
Snapchat’s Bitmoji avatars can now be transformed into 3D animations. You can now project a 3D cartoon of yourself into the real world, where you can then have it ride a skateboard or do yoga. You can then send this animation to a friend or add it to your story. Animated Bitmoji is rolling out now globally on iOS and Android.
Instagram is now auto-playing videos in your feed on all organic videos and ads. Techcrunch has reported that when you open Instagram, videos will still autoplay with the sound off. But once you tap one video to listen to sound all the other videos in the feed will auto play. Therefore Instagram still defaults to audio off when opened. This feature has now been rolled out globaly.
More than 200 million people now use Pinterest each month. Pinterest reported that they have grown by nearly 40% since last year, with more than half of their users living outside the US.
They also announced a couple of new features their users have been asking for. The first I was VERY excited about - Board sections. You’ll be able to add sections to your boards, allowing you to save all your ideas to a single board, organized into sections.
Last week I was able to attend Social Media Week London a three-day conference that focuses on the latest trends in communication, engagement, VR, Mobile, influencer marketing, and of course social media. SMW London holds over 50 sessions and workshops, with brands such as Buzzfeed, Facebook, and ITV. I have summarized each talk to keep you all up to date on what’s happen and what key trends you will need to start adapting to your social media strategy. Find the full summary here.
Don't forget to connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn and join us next week for another weekly roundup.
By Jessica Wade
I was previously the Social Media Executive for Smart Insights and managed all of Smart Insights social media channels and social strategy. I love all things social, most of the time you will find me endlessly scrolling through Instagram. You can follow me on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.
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