Social Media Sunday: Facebook's Wall Brawl, Reactions, Tumblr to Double Down on Mobile
This week in social media, Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg publicly rebuked some of his employees, while Facebook Reactions finally added more ways to respond to posts. Meanwhile, Snapchat unveiled a new money-making scheme, and Tumblr hired a new executive who wants to "double down" on mobile.
It's time for Social Media Sunday!
Black Lives Matter
Silicon Valley is known for its diversity problem. The tech industry's homogeneous workplace culture reared its head in a controversial way at Facebook this week, to the point that Zuckerberg gave his employees a scolding.
At Facebook headquarters, there's a physical "Wall" (a chalkboard) that's meant for employees to use much like Facebook's digital equivalent, expressing themselves with posts. Some employees wrote "Black Lives Matter" on the wall. Then other employees crossed the message out and replaced it with "all lives matter."
By the end of the week, Zuckerberg posted a note to his employees about the exclusionary signals some were sending on the wall, as Gizmodo first reported.
"There have been several instances" of people crossing out and replacing the "black lives matter" message, wrote Zuckerberg about the controversy. "Despite my clear communication... last week that this was unacceptable, and messages from other leaders from across the company, this has happened again," he continued. "I was already very disappointed by this disrespectful behavior before, but after my communication I now consider this malicious as well."
Zuckerberg went on to explain how crossing out someone's message showed intolerance, why "black lives matter" is a specific but not exclusionary message while "all lives matter" is a reactionary, intolerant one, and that he has directed company officials to get to the bottom of the situation.
Live Video on Android Soon
Facebook Live, the company's live video feature, launched in December, but only for iPhones. Now the Android equivalent will start to roll out to the U.S. and other countries in the next week.
Android users will know they got the update when they are able to see a video button along with the usual options for posting photos and other media in the "What's on your mind" box at the top of the News Feed.
Reactions Finally Arrive
After over a year of development and testing, the Facebook Like button -- a terribly one-sided and sometimes awkward sentiment to use when reacting to a friend's post -- just got some new neighbors.
Response options on the social media site have expanded to include Love, Haha, Yay, Wow, Sad and Angry. Latin Post previously reported on user reactions to the new Facebook Reactions feature.
Snapchat
New Custom Geofilters
Snapchat began rolling out a new type of geofilter, the tags that allow snaps to identify location, called "On-Demand Geofilters" this week.
The new feature allows users to create custom filters that will appear for a short time within the Snapchat app to denote locations for users' private events or locations for business posts -- for a price. Mashable notes the costs range by location and application, from $5 to several thousands. Expect a custom on-demand geofilter for an individual's wedding to be on the low end, while geofilters for businesses seeking to reach out to customers to cost more.
Tumblr
New CTO
Tumblr has hired the vice president of engineering of The New York Times to fill the roll of chief technology officer at the social blogging company, according to Fast Company.
Brian Murphy, who spearheaded work on The New York Times' mobile apps, will officially take the reigns of the engineering department at Tumblr in March. He said he plans to "double down" on mobile to help keep Tumblr relevant and worth some of the millions Yahoo paid for it, as the parent company begins downsizing.