August vacation? Don’t worry: here’s a roundup of everything you might have missed while your “out of office” was on in August. (Don’t miss #7.)
- Facebook debuted a new video section called “Watch.” The section will feature original content from publishers, news organizations and media companies such as National Geographic, Mashable and A&E. Shows will be featured based on the user’s interests, engagement and activities.
- Google develops a new project called “Stamp,” that features vertical, fast-loading collections of AMP mobile webpages.
- Facebook and Instagram debut redesigns to improve clickability and commenting. Among other changes, Facebook turned comments into bubbles (Messenger-style), makes it clearer where threads start and end in comments, and Instagram now allows comments to be threaded.
- Facebook Stories is being tested on desktop. Currently Stories are accessed only through the Facebook mobile app.
- YouTube expands a new feature worldwide, one that lets users message each other and send video links while watching video.
- You can now share your Facebook Story publicly, instead of it being visible only to your family and friends.
- Reddit launches a video-upload option that enables native uploading of videos, images, text and GIFs.
- Facebook hires more fact-checkers and invests in more advanced machine learning to identify false and misleading stories for these fact checkers.
- Pinterest adds “Lens” and search for visual discovery to its home feed, and allows ads to be surfaced via searches from the home feed.
- The Instagram API opens to allow Business Profiles to access metrics and insights, as well as comment moderation options such as the ability to hide or turn off comments.
- Facebook changes its famous algorithm to show more stories that load quickly on mobile — and fewer stories that are slow to load.
- Facebook rolls out a “related articles” feature that appears before a user reads a story, and emphasizes content that provides a different point of view than the article puts forward, or a note from Facebook’s fact-checkers on the topic the article addresses.
- YouTube introduces gestures for video controls, including a swipe-next option for video viewing in the same way you swipe to view Snapchat and Instagram Story content.
- Twitter tests a $99/month subscription option that boosts your visibility in others’ timelines, in effect another option for “promoted accounts.”
- Snapchat partners with college newspapers to create campus “editions” of Stories for Discover.
- Amazon launches a new social network called Spark, a social media shopping network that is intended to compete with Pinterest’s rising prominence in “social commerce.”
- Amazon is rumored to be working on a social media platform called Anytime, a messaging app that will compete with others such as WeChat or Facebook Messenger.
- Giphy experiments with “sponsored GIFs,” allowing media makers and advertisers to place GIFs in search results.
- Instagram adds a “Live With” option to live broadcasts; tap “add” to bring in another friend into a live video.
- Facebook is rumored to be developing hardware that is a video chat “device,” featuring a wide-angle camera lens that automatically scans for people and movement. Facebook is also working on a smart speaker to compete with the Amazon Echo and Google Home.
- As SnappyTV transitions into Twitter Media Studio, publishers retain the ability to share clips to non-Twitter platforms such as Facebook and YouTube — for now. SnappyTV allows users to create video, images and GIFs from an original video stream.
- LinkedIn publishing grows more robust, now with the ability to upload multiple images in a single post, native video upload, and a draft sharing option among different LinkedIn users.
- Facebook allows a new type of Custom Audience for advertising — people who responded to a Facebook event.
- LinkedIn rolls out promoted video posts for brands, as well as pre- and mid-roll advertising.
- Snapchat rolls out an advanced advertising portal (“Advanced Mode”), allowing users to automate ad campaigns with hundreds of different targeting and creative options.
- Facebook kills its Groups app, which had let users access all Facebook Groups from a single point; as well as its Lifestage app meant for a younger audience.
- Facebook says it will not charge advertisers for accidental ad clicks (if a user bounces back within 2 seconds). Previously advertisers had been charged for any type of click.
- Facebook rolls out a Trending News section on the mobile app, including a story’s headline, photo, name of the media outlet that’s reporting it, and how many other sources are available on the topic.
- On Facebook, influencers can now tag a brand they’re working with, turning the post into a sponsored post; this allows the advertiser or brand to boost this influencer’s post directly from that person’s feed.
- Similar to TV, advertisers on Facebook can now run ads in the stream of another publisher’s videos.
- In an effort to add transparency and brand awareness for news outlets, Facebook adds publisher logos next to articles in both Trending and Search.
- Both Facebook and Twitter add college football to its live video programming.
- YouTube introduces a “Breaking News” category, as the platform becomes an increasingly important news source for Generation Z.