Read Receipts, Managing Trolls and the Obligatory Apple Adventure
It’s a new week, which means it’s time for another edition of Social Select. This week we’re talking location-based content, the new iPhone gamechanger, and getting stuck in lifts.
This changes… some things: iOS 7
The new iPhone has been announced and it’s got a whole bunch of new and exciting features, including brighter and bolder screen with a boosted brightness, and a dual camera in the 7 Plus model.
To cater for the new iPhone model, Instagram is going to be rolling out some new features on the app, including better zoom functions when taking photos (to cater to the optical zoom of the 7 Plus), video-to-gif functionality (essentially removing the need for the external Boomerang app) and a whole redesign of the coloured image filters.
The phone itself is one of the biggest leaps for Apple — it’s waterproof-ish, meaning you can drop it in the sink or the bath or a puddle, but don’t go deep-sea diving with it. There’s also a faster processor and a better battery life (good for Pokemon Go adventures). The camera on both the 7 and 7Plus capture excellent quality shots, and have improved quality in low light — no more awkward flash at concerts or in dimly-lit bars.
The downsides?
No headphone jack (but an adapter for the lightning port).
Home button is click free and takes a bit to adjust to.
Dual camera is only on the Plus.
Seriously, no headphone jack.
CHANNEL UPDATES
RIP Our Story, Photo Maps
Snapchat has decided to cull its Our Story section to put more focus on Live Moments — you know, those FOMO-inducing videos of Coachella and Summer on the other side of the world. An interesting move, considering the Our Story feature pulled in a very humble 10–20 million views for each story. Along with the decision to get rid of this location-based content, Snapchat has also “eliminated” several jobs — definitely not threatening at all.
Instagram has also decided to phase out photo maps — that part of the app that nobody really used, apart from that one time you accidentally hit the location tag and stumbled into a dark pocket of Instagram. Admittedly, these location-based collages were good for brands to gather Nice Content™️ around a particular place or event, but the use of hashtags suffice.
Farewell, Photo Maps, we hardly knew thee.
Facebook is going to make it easier for you to spend all your money
Spending money online is dangerously easy, and it’s even easier now that you can buy things through Facebook Messenger from brands that you love. Instead of having to go all the way to an online store, fill up your basket, have a slight panic attack about how broke you are and abandon the site, there’s now the option to buy things straight away through Facebook. So handy! No time to hesitate!
Brands now have the option to direct traffic from paid ads to their messenger too, with Call To Arms buttons like ‘Shop Now’, or ‘Learn More’. It means that less time will likely be spent on brands’ sites, but the ability to use messenger bots to help convert consumers into customers will no doubt increase loyalists, and potentially increase retention rates, too.
As well as this, the Facebook Messenger update will have a welcome screen so consumers who don’t know how to talk to brands can have some handy conversation tips and context to the interaction. The update will also make it easier for users to share bots and individual messages with their friends — to help them decide what to buy, or send them a product that their mate will like*.
*probably not like, but it’s the thought that counts.
Instagram’s Filtering Out The Trolls (Finally)
Troll be gone! Instagram is rolling out custom keyword filters for comments. No more manually sorting through comments, trying to find the offensive language or incessant trolling. Instagram has given all users — not just celebs and brands — the ability to filter out anything that is offensive, or not in line with the Online Brand™️ us commonfolk want to keep pristine and pure.
This has the potential for people to erase or dismiss conversation that needs to happen (eg. being called out on bad behaviour), but we can only hope that this feature will be used for good — maybe Taylor Swift should have filtered out the snake emoji and ‘SSSSSSS’
Comments will display on posts a little differently, too. This means that people that you interact with/are friends with/are not random lurking men who comment on every single one of your selfies, will have their comments pushed to the top of the post, and everything else will show up underneath your Best Instagram Pals.
Branded Emojis, the major 🔑 of Twitter
Emojis are undoubtedly the best. They’re now proven to increase the amount of warm & fuzzy feelings in our hearts when we look at them. They’re tiny and adorable. Branded emojis are even better, because they’re normally tiny versions of larger things.
Branded emojis are also doing incredibly good things for brands, with a reported 420% increase in impressions, and a huge swing towards younger users. It’s important to catch these younger users and turn them into consumers, and what better way than by tiny adorable images that they already love. Let’s be real, the youth probably only talk to each other with emojis, so speaking their language is always going to be a successful strategy.
Twitter is reinforcing your fear of read receipts, by introducing read receipts.
The anxiety fuelled purely by … and ✔️Seen is a fear that nobody before our time has ever experienced. The feeling of pure dread when you’ve messaged something important, something game-changing, an online leap of faith and then… that little read receipt sits there, and you’re hanging in mental limbo.
There is an option to toggle read receipts on and off, so you can ease the nerves of the other end of the DM conversation — or keep it on to really mess with them. Read receipts are a powerful tool. Use them wisely.
BONUS ROUND
The internet is a strange place full of secrets — like that one super-elite social networking platform that was created for super-rich people to talk to other super-rich people without the rabble and hubbub of the commoners and lower class.
The platform — known as the Netropolitan Club — had a buy-in price of $9000USD, and an annual fee of $6000USD. Surprisingly, it didn’t last.
Apparently there just weren’t enough rich people who knew how to use the internet without consulting their grandchildren.
And Amtrak tweeted a woman stuck in a lift…seven months after she tweeted about being stuck in a lift.
Good one.
SocialSelect is a weekly aggregation of the things that matter from the scariest parts of the internet, brought to you by Marcel Sydney.
