Social Media Sunday: Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook Messenger Apps Get Updates Integrating New Features, Upgrades
This week in social media, Facebook announced it was rolling out group voice chat to Messenger, while Snapchat upped its popular face swap feature by adding the iPhone's camera roll as an image source. Meanwhile, Twitter added Yelp integration, at least overseas, in an effort to make the platform more useful for users looking for information while they're out and about.
Another News Feed Adjustment
First off, this week Facebook tweaked its news feed yet again. But this particular adjustment may pay off for journalists, long form content producers, and avid readers of high quality writing who are always looking for the next mind blowing think piece.
Facebook announced on Thursday that it was adding a new factor to its News Feed ranking based on how long users spend reading an article they find. It also takes into account how likely users are to click on the article in the first place.
With those two factors put together, it looks like the update may help Facebook deliver content that not only appeals to users at first glance, but keeps their attention, too.
"With this change, we can better understand which articles might be interesting to you based on how long you and others read them, so you'll be more likely to see stories you're interested in reading," Facebook stated in its announcement. "This change only factors in the time people spend reading an article regardless of whether that time is spent reading an Instant Article or an article in the mobile web browser."
As Slate noted, Facebook is limiting the length of time it measures within a certain threshold, so your News Feed won't suddenly fill up with super long articles that you'll never finish.
Group Voice Chat on Messenger
Facebook also announced this week it was rolling out an update to Messenger to enable group voice chat, in what Latin Post noted was yet another step towards the company dominating all major functions of the smartphone.
The update began rolling out on Wednesday, bringing conference call-type voice chat capabilities to the Messenger app on both Android and iOS.
The feature allows for up to 50 people to be added into the same group chat, though whether you can feasibly hold a conversation at that point is debatable.
Yelp Integration
Twitter struck a deal with Yelp to add the reviewing platform's location-based content inside the Twitter app. Yelp announced the update on its blog on Friday, which is currently available for users in the U.K., Germany, and Japan.
Users can now add Yelp geotags to their tweets, which will bring up the platform's business ratings, photos, and other contextual information automatically.
For Yelp fans in the U.S., however, don't expect the feature to roll out on Twitter any time soon: As TechCrunch noted, Twitter is currently still partnered with Foursquare to provide similar location tagging and ratings in the U.S.
Snapchat
Face Swap With Your Camera Roll Pictures
Snapchat updated its app this week as well (though only the iOS version for now) with an expanded version of its hottest feature at the moment, face swap.
When it first rolled out, the face swap feature let users basically copy and paste their faces with each other in real time. Much hilarity quickly followed the rollout of face swap, so Snapchat decided to expand the feature's capabilities in its latest update.
Now iPhone Snapchatters can swap their faces with stored images on their camera roll, so now any picture you take with friends can be face swapped whenever you feel like it.
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