by admin | May 25, 2021 | Branding, Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : WhatsApp is reportedly working out on three new features, including linking your account to Instagram, in order to improve its chat and notifications for its over 1.5 billion users.
Apart from Linked Accounts, the two other features under development are: Vacation and Silent Mode, said WABetaInfo, a popular website that tracks WhatsApp, on Wednesday.
“WhatsApp is working right now on a new feature that allows to link your account with external services.
“The feature appears mainly developed for WhatsApp Business, but some references were found in the normal WhatsApp app too,” said the website.
The Linked Accounts option will be located under your profile settings.
“Currently, the first supported external service is Instagram. Tapping Instagram, after inserting your credentials, your WhatsApp account will be correctly linked to your Instagram profile,” it added.
Currently, when you archive a chat, WhatsApp automatically unarchives it once a new message is received from that chat.
With the Vacation Mode feature, archived chats won’t be unarchived if you have previously muted them.
The option will be available in WhatsApp Settings and then Notifications.
“The Vacation mode is also useful if you don’t want a specific chat in your Chats List: if you mute and archive it, you will never see it again, except if you view your Archived Chats,” the report said.
The silent mode feature for Android allows to hide the app badge for muted chats.
“Thanks to this feature, you will never see the badge when you receive a message from muted chats and groups. The feature is already enabled by default,” the report added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Popular photo-sharing platform Instagram is bringing changes to its posts to “improve” after facing backlash from users for doing away with a chronological feed.
Instagram switched to a relevancy-sorted feed in June 2016 that led to many Instagram users speaking about returning to the old feed and complaining that the algorithm often shows photographs and posts that are days old.
“Based on your feedback, we’re making changes to ensure that newer posts are more likely to appear first in feed. With these changes, your feed will feel more fresh, and you won’t miss the moments you care about,” the company wrote in a blog post late Thursday.
The Facebook-owned company said it would share more about improvements it was making to the feed in the coming months.
However, the company has no plans to return to a chronological feed, Gabriel Madway, an Instagram spokesperson, was quoted as saying by The Washington Post.
The platorm used to show posts in the order in which they were posted. But a Facebook-like algorithm was introduced in 2016 that sorted posts based on factors such as “the likelihood users would be interested in the content”.
Instagram was acquired by Facebook in 2012.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : Popular image sharing and multimedia mobile app Snapchat and Instagram have temporarily removed their Giphy GIF sticker features after users saw a racist GIF as an option to add to their photographs.
“We are very sorry. This GIF should have never appeared in Snapchat. Our team has worked with Giphy to have the GIF removed and it should no longer appear,” a Snap Inc. spokesperson was quoted as saying by Inverse late on Friday.
“We are in the process of removing Giphy from our application until we can be assured that this will never happen again,” the spokesperson added.
A 21-year-old Snapchat user from England first spotted the racist animation in the library.
The GIF “appears to suggest that millions of deaths are caused by black people committing crimes with a number counter continually rising”.
A similar racist GIF was spotted in Facebook-owned Instagram indicating that Giphy is at fault, according to TechCrunch.
“This type of content has no place on Instagram. We have stopped our integration with Giphy as they investigate the issue,” an Instagram spokesperson was quoted as saying by TechCrunch.
Both Snapchat and Instagram had introduced the feature in February that allows users to include GIFs from the media repository Giphy in their snaps and “Stories”.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Marketing Basics, Markets, Networking, Online Marketing, Social Media, Technology
San Francisco : There are now more than 25 million businesses on Instagram — up from 15 million in July — and the vast majority of them are small businesses, the Facebook-owned photo sharing app said on Friday.
As 800 million use Instagram each month to discover and follow their passions, more and more people are using it to connect with businesses they love.
“In fact, over 80 per cent of accounts on Instagram follow a business while 200 million Instagrammers actively visit the profile of a business every day,” the company said in a blog post.
One in three small businesses on Instagram say they built their business using the platform.
“Customers who follow business accounts for quality content can now easily be guided to products without disrupting their natural browsing habits, and even those with little interest in promotions can’t help but take notice,” said Joe Nullet, Vice President of Branding and Marketing, Man Outfitters, who has a presence on Instagram.
Instagram ‘Stories’ and ‘WhatsApp Status’ both now have 300 million daily active users — up from a combined 250 million for Instagram in June and WhatsApp in July.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Networking, Social Media, Technology
London : The services of Facebook and Instagram were restored after the social media platforms went down reportedly due to a global connection problem with Europe and North America, the worst affected by the fault.
As per a report in The Guardian, users of both social media sites began reporting problems late Wednesday afternoon. By evening, the number of reported problems had dropped to normal levels.
“Earlier today, a networking issue caused some people to have trouble accessing Facebook services.
“We quickly investigated and started restoring access within about an hour and we have nearly fixed the issue for everyone. We’re sorry for the inconvenience,” a Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying.
The report said the services on both website and apps were affected. Some users were able to access their accounts, with others suggesting only certain parts of the websites were functioning.
However, Facebook’s instant messaging service Messenger was unaffected.
The social media giant said it was “aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing Facebook and Instagram”.
The problems led to the hashtag #FacebookDown trending globally on Twitter.
Some users were greeted by a message when they tried to log into their accounts.
“Facebook is down for required maintenance right now, but you should be able to get back on within a few minutes. In the meantime, read more about why you’re seeing this message. Thanks for your patience…,” the message read.
Facebook, which acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, has over two billion monthly active users. Instagram, meanwhile, has 800 million monthly and 500 million daily active users — 200 million of whom use ‘Stories’ feature.
—IANS
