We’re here to help you keep your finger on the pulse of the ever-changing world of social media. Don’t miss the latest changes, updates and happenings on your favorite social media platforms.
Facebook friends send money. Facebook introduced a new feature in Messenger that provides users an easy and secure way to send or receive money. This feature will be rolling out over a few months. Do you think sending money through Messenger will pave the way for users to make purchases directly from brand pages?
Meerkat makes an entrance. Meerkat is a new app that allows users to broadcast live smartphone video of themselves to all of their Twitter followers. Last week, Twitter, citing “internal policy,” restricted Meerkat’s application program interface (API) access to its social graph. This means that people a user followed on Twitter would not automatically appear in Meerkat. Without this API access, the app’s growth was expected to slow. However, in less than 12 hours after Twitter’s restriction was announced, Meerkat executives saw the number of streams more than double. Just days later, Meerkat announced the service had secured $12 million in funding.
Twitter acquires Meerkat-competitor, Periscope. Twitter officially announced its January acquisition of livestreaming app Periscope. It’s expected that Periscope will be launched as a separate app from Twitter with the ability to watch live and previously broadcasted mobile video streams.
Google loves press releases. While some members of the media may not love press releases, Google sure does. Press releases may now appear at the top of Google result searches. A Google spokesperson said, “The goal of search is to get users the right answer at any one time as quickly as possible — that may mean returning an article from an established publisher or from a smaller niche publisher or indeed it might be a press release.”
More meaningful likes. Facebook let Page managers know that a drop in Page likes was coming. Facebook updated the way Page likes are counted by removing memorialized and voluntarily deactivated accounts from Pages’ like counts. This change ensures that data on Facebook is consistent and up-to-date.
Questions about any of the news? We’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment below or reach out to us on Twitter, @carolaskyn or @rosecomm.