YouTube has brought a bunch of new livestreaming features to
its platform. These include the option to limit chats to subscribers only,
creating polls within chats, and creating clips from popular gaming streams.
What’s interesting about this group of features is that
these are all part of Twitch already and are used by Twitch streamers to engage
with the community, so it looks like YouTube has “borrowed” them from Twitch.
Let’s talk about these features in relation to YouTube. The option to limit chats to subscribers only is a useful one, as it can be used as a moderation tool to filter out irrelevant users and can be a good way for streamers to convince their viewers for paying. The in-chat polls can provide a simpler way for streamers to take their viewers opinions on different things in relation to the content they make and put out.
Facebook has announced a couple of new features, including
the option to schedule Stories on both Facebook and Instagram, a new business
discovery process from the News Feed, and new options for ads.
The option to schedule a Story after composing it on
Instagram or Facebook is part of Facebook’s Business Suite, which is its latest
business management platform. After scheduling a Story, you will find it displayed
on the content calendar in the Business Suite app.
This feature is likely going to be one of social managers’ favorite,
as there was no option on Facebook to schedule Stories before; something that
social managers have always wanted. By scheduling Stories, you can plan out
your complete content strategy in a better way using the help of the calendar
tool.
As the Stories format is becoming more widely used now,
Facebook is therefore, making more efforts to enhance the feature with tools
that can help brands maximize their Stories approach.
Secondly, users can also now save their Facebook and
Instagram posts as drafts in the Business Suite app, which will further
contribute to a better and more flexible planning of content.
The business discovery feature that Facebook plans to bring to the app will be linked to Page recommendations and displayed below posts in the News Feed. Related content from Pages will be highlighted below posts that users can then explore in the form of a new feed listing of images from Pages that may be similar to their interests. The topics of interest would include beauty, fitness, clothing, restaurants, etc.
The Google Assistant app is reportedly getting an update
with a new feature called Memory. This feature will include a bunch of tools,
such as a to-do list, a notes app, a Pocket-like reading list, and a Pinterest-style
collection board.
Using Memory, users can save a large variety of content like
articles, books, contacts, events, flights, hotels, images, movies, music,
notes, photos, places, playlists, products, recipes, reminders, restaurants,
screenshots, shipments, TV shows, videos, and websites.
Google Assistant already has a Memory feature that saves information, but Google has enhanced it and has integrated the Collections feature into Memory. Moreover, the sorts of things that you can save in Memory are now almost unlimited. You can then easily search for your saved items, sort, and revisit them.
YouTube is introducing a new tool on its platform, called
Checks, which is meant to make the video uploading process easier for creators
and will also assist them in the process of receiving ad revenue. With this
tool, the creator will be informed about copyrighted content present in their
video, if any, before they upload it.
The tool is going to be quite useful since previously,
creators were notified of copyright issues only after they would post their
video, as a consequence of which, their videos would be taken down or the ad
revenue would be paid to copyright holders.
Checks will use YouTube’s content ID system that will scan the video and detect a violation, after which the rights holder’s policy will be automatically applied to the video. If Content ID matches content in the video to another rights holder, the creator uploading the video will be notified through Checks to remove the copyrighted part of the video prior to its posting.
Instagram is introducing some new tools in an effort to
ensure better safety for its young user community. The company has published a
new Parents Guide after collaborating with The Child Mind Institute and
ConnectSafely in the US. The guide includes latest safety tools, privacy
settings, and conversation starters to navigate discussions between parents and
teens.
Another step that Instagram has taken is to understand its
users’ real age, as a lot of times young people lie about their date of birth
when signing up for an account. To prevent this from happening, the company is developing
new artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to help keep teens
safer.
With one of its new age-safety related features, Instagram is attempting to protect teens from unwanted contact from adults by preventing adults from sending messages to people under 18 who don’t follow them. When an adult tries to message a teen who doesn’t follow them, they will get a notification saying that DM’ing them isn’t an option.
To encourage taking the COVID-19 vaccine and promote
vaccination around the globe, Facebook has launched a bunch of tools, including
one that shows users in the US where they can get vaccinated. Users will also
be provided with links, so they can make an appointment at their local provider
in a fast and easy manner. Providers will be highlighted on a map and relevant
information will be shown to book an appointment.
To ensure more awareness among people about vaccines,
Facebook is also expanding its COVID-19 info center to Instagram. The info
center will be displayed at the top of the Instagram feed. Moreover, Instagram
is getting new stickers for Stories that will help raise awareness about
vaccines, such as the “Let’s get vaccinated” sticker.
Google has introduced a bunch of new features for Chrome OS,
including a very useful one for Android and Chromebook users, called Phone Hub. The
feature is meant to connect an Android phone to a Chromebook and will allow you
access to a number of options such as responding to text messages, checking your
phone’s battery life, setting up Wi-Fi hotspot, and locating a device.
Phone Hub will be displayed as a taskbar widget, that you can expand to view your recent Chrome tabs that you have been browsing.
In addition to that, Google is making its Wi-Fi Sync feature available on more devices. This means that you can connect to already configured Wi-Fi networks on your Android phone and other Chrome OS devices.
When Twitter first launched its version of Stories called Fleets,
the feature was simple with no additional tools or effects, unlike what
Instagram or Snapchat offer with Stories. However, Twitter recently decided to
add a new option to Fleets called Twemoji stickers, available to users
in Japan only for now.
In the Fleets composer, a new stickers tray can be found by
tapping on the smiley face icon. You can then use the search option to look for
the sticker of your choice to add to your photo or video. With the Twemoji
stickers, you can express your feelings or mood.
It looks like Twitter would consider bringing more of such visual tools to Fleets in order to expand the feature, which will help increase user engagement. Since other social platforms have already enhanced their Stories feature, it is likely that Twitter would do the same.
Twitter has announced some major features for its platform, including
one that will allow users to charge their followers for access to additional
content, and the other that will let them create and join groups based on their
interests. These features are meant to reinforce user engagement on the platform,
as they are based on models that have proven to be successful for other social
platforms.
Super Follows, which is Twitter’s new payment feature, will provide access to extra content like bonus tweets, community groups, newsletter subscriptions, and badges. Twitter shared a mock example for this, where a user charges $4.99 per month to obtain several benefits.
Google Photos is getting a new update for its video editing tools,
that includes new cropping options, the capacity to 'change perspective', apply
filters and enhance specific video elements such as brightness and contrast.
These new options will give users the opportunity to enhance their content on the go, update it and evolve their content process.
Instagram has rolled out a new feature called Recently
Deleted, to help users manage their content, as they will be able to review and
restore deleted content in the Instagram app. The company has also introduced protections
to help prevent hackers from compromising accounts and deleting shared posts.
Instagram says that it will ask users to verify themselves as their accounts’ rightful owners when permanently deleting or restoring content from Recently Deleted.
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